Diving in Santa Cruz – Excellent shop and awesome diving experience. Been diving a few days with them, together with instructors Leo and Israel, and I highly recommend it.

  Great diving and land trip  – I cannot thank Academy Bay Diving enough for such an amazing trip! Alice was really easy and lovely to communicate with, she tailored a trip just for us and… Read More answered all of our questions. The diving itself was some of the best we have ever done, with skilled guides and a comfortable boat, we always felt safe and also had so much fun! Highly recommend.

  The best dive I have ever done and the best dive company!  – The best dive I have ever done and the best dive company! From kit fitting the night before to getting photos of our dives back at the office. They took… Read More all the hassle out of diving; easy technique to get thick wet suits on, helping get the gear on and off, clean boat and toilet, friendly expert crew with good english and sense of humour. Not to mention expert guidance in the water and seeing hammerheads, galapagos sharks, all the rays, seals, turtles, fabulously colourful reef and fish. A day to remember forever thank you so much!

  First class service  – I could say tons of great things about Academy Bay, but suffice to say that the service and people truly made it first class

  Great diving!  – Good center, everything well organized and on time, experienced guides taking care of safe diving in sometimes not so easy conditions. And really great diving spots – in 3 days… Read More we’ve seen numerous hammerhead sharks, all other Galapagos sharks, manta ray, eagle rays, various stingrays, turtles, sea lions and many, many more.

In short, if you only have a chance, go diving in Galapagos, and Academy Bay is a good choice for your diving center.

  I was pleased to feel comfortable during early part of dive after a five-year absence. However, I became unsettled near end of dive as I couldn’t make out whether the… Read More dive master wanted us to ascend or not. He kept me from floating away and then proceeded to videotape a nearby shark. Once we reboarded the boat, he insisted that I was afraid of the shark and the creature could tell that. It was irritating and disappointing to admit this in front of the other divers. When he made the decision to repeat the dive in search of more sharks, I decided to skip the second dive.

  fabulous company. boat and bathroom boat facilities were great! the guides were nice and gave you a lot of freedom to explore on your own. we really… Read More enjoyed the cave/cavern dive. we saw many galapagos sharks, eels, rays, octopus, turtles, sea snakes, jelly fish, and much more. they provide wet suits which were nice as well as a towel for each guest. we went to a bay, with many sea lions, to rest between dives and have some snacks which were very good. after the second dive we enjoyed some sandwiches. they didn’t like us removing the gear so we just held onto the boat while they took most of our gear off in the water. easy peasy for us we enjoyed seeing our dive master purchase his dinner where they dropped us off!

  One of the best diving operators I have been and I have done 650 dives. Clean neat boat with good space for everybody. Clear instructions and a good briefing before… Read More every dive. Good safety check and great help getting in and out of the water and the diving sites were superb.

  Such a professional outfit from check in thru the end. Dive crew is excellent- polite – knowledgeable and safety oriented! So impressed!

  We visited the divesites North Seymour & Mosquera and it was awesome! Many rays, hammerheads, reefsharks and other fishes. Besides that, the crew took really good care of us!

  Academy Bay Diving is recommend in Lonely Planets guide and is centrally located at the City centre/harbour, so I chose it for a day’s dive. The whole experience from the… Read More paperwork (here on ipad!), equipment adaption, transport to the dive boat and the dive was really easy, of high quality and gave me a feeling of security.
The two instructors spoke good English and explained everything well. They gave 100,% support to put on/take off the equipment, very nice and quick. And offered everybody a boyancy check before the first dive! We were two small groups that day. After the trip we were able to download the pictures & videos for free from the instructors after only 2 hours. The best experience I ever had in diveshops across the world.

  These were terrific, professional dives and wonderful experiences. They also set us up at one of the most fun/colorful hotels of our lives, Hotel Coloma.

  We stayed in Galapagos for a few weeks, based in Santa Cruz. Academy Bay Diving was recommended to us by our liveaboard coordinator.
Due to scheduling on our part, and… Read More the winter holidays, we only were able to do one 2-tank dive with Academy Bay. Our dive was to Gordon Rocks, a highly recommended dive site in Santa Cruz.
We signed up a few days before, making sure we were able to get a spot. Academy Bay is one of the few dive shops that does trips to Floreana (if you’re lucky to schedule this early enough!).
The day prior to our dive day, we brought down our gear in the afternoon, the staff going through making sure we have everything, and we were able to try on our wetsuits as well. At the time of writing, they are new, 7mm suits, so make sure to take sufficient weights!
During the paperwork, they also ask if you have any dietary requirements for lunch, and I was provided a vegan meal :)
We met at the shop at 7:15 and headed for the northern port area, taking the boat from there.
We were able to do a weight check, ensuring sufficient weight for descending.
One of the divers paid for a private guide, so our group was only 4, plus our guide; the other group had 5, then the private had 2.
Fortunately, we were lucky on our dive that day and:
a. There was only 1 other boat, which left before our second dive
b. There was very little current, which allowed us to focus on the animals. Having done a liveaboard just a couple weeks prior, the currents here can be ripping at points. Some of the dives here you just hold on to a rock, wait and watch.
On our 2 dives, we did a little watching and waiting, and a bit of exploring the site.
Our guide was great, but there was so much to see, it would be difficult to miss things. As our group was good on air, we were able to stay in a bit longer and towards the end of the dive headed for the wall, which was a bit of a washing machine.
The animals here at Gordon Rocks are amazing – scalloped hammer heads, loads of turtles (mating season), some schooling fish, a few eels and puffer fish, and rays – eagle, cownose (aka golden) and mobula (aka small manta). And our last dive had a curious sea lion come and check us out during our safety stop!
I would highly recommend Academy Bay Dive Centre as a safe and knowledgable dive shop and would dive with them again. They are one of the few reputable shops in Santa Cruz.

  A great operation in Galapagos: friendly, responsive and professional! Academy Bay is one o have in the top list for divers! – top service – great briefing and dive plan… Read More – good equipment – great boat, instructors and service – sharp on schedule… In other words, top service. these guys are keepers!

  I am an experienced diver. I’ve been diving arround the world for more than 20 years. But the attitude towards clients I have received from Academy Bay Diving I’ve never… Read More seen before.
All started yesterday when we arrived at shop to choose the equipment for the diving. You know, in Europe we are used to the attitude that clients are welcomed with smile. Not in this place…The lady in the shop did not even say hello to us.
Next day it appeared that my teenager son who is Junior Advanced Diver with an experience of a lot of technically heavy dives, such as cave, shipwreck, night and river, was not allowed to go to Gordon Rocks. In a very unpolite and rather rude way I was explained a lot of different reasons why he cannot go there…Like not enough experience, not sufficient age etc. At the end it appeared that this company does not want to do anything with children divers (hmmm, 15-years of age I guess is not a child anymore). Anyway, I was wondering, what is this technically superb dive…And guess, what…It was one of the easiest dives I’ve ever had…
To summarize…I suggest you not to have any business with this company. Especially, if you have teenager divers together with you. This company hates them, because they think they are small children. In addition, I’ve never seen such old-stylish equipment and an average dive masters. And this, of course, is for enormously high price. As for the owners of the company…I invite you to come to our Northern Europe country and do some river dives. And only afterwards you are going to be able to judge, what actually is technically hard dive.

  Excellently organiised, good information and very nice, knowledgable and helpful crew. Nice and clean boat. Safety also felt to be in focus. Very good.

  As an old diver who has been diving actively in various parts of the world since certifying back in 1992, I’ve had the pleasure of diving in many special locations,… Read More with a wide variety of dive operations.

Diving in the Galapagos speaks for itself, but (for me) the team at Academy Bay epitomize how a true top-notch, professional dive operation should be run. I had a total of 4 dives on two different days, and can honestly say I’ve never experienced such a complete and well rounded dive team. Some of the dive sites can be challenging to divers with less experience, but this team’s knowledge and focus on safety are unsurpassed.

A prime example is their practice of having you come into the shop in advance to fit properly fit all your equipment, handled by the actual Divemaster you’ll be diving with. In my case, this was my introduction to Jimmy, who was to be my Divemaster on the first day’s diving. As part of this, once you are fitted, all your gear is tagged with your personal number, to ensure no mistakes and make things more efficient on the boat.

The first session on the boat is dedicated to a quick buoyancy check for all divers new to diving with this company. This may seem excessive to some, but due to differing (higher) salinity in this area, plus other variables, proper weighting is critical. For example, I ordinarily carry about 5kg with a 6 mil suit, but here the right weight turned out to be 10 kg — literally double! And it worked super.

On the boat, the team of Jimmy and Byron as the two Divemasters, with Kevin ably assisting in the boat, was amazing. Divers get personal assistance at literally every step — from first suiting up through to assisting you back in the boat. Some experienced divers may roll their eyes at my comments here, as some aspects of this certainly happen with other dive operators, but I’ve never experience such a smooth teamwork as this. Equally worthy of mention was Daniel, the skipper of the boat, who seemed to almost be telepathic in positioning the boat safely and ideally in what sometimes proved to be rough seas.

Can’t say enough good things about this whole operation. I wish all diver operators were this good!

  Very pleased with our dive experience with Academy. We booked consecutive days and the shop allowed us to store our gear which was super helpful. Dive guides were thorough in… Read More their briefings and knowledgeable. The boat seemed well maintained and spacious. The snacks and lunch were appreciated and delicious. We recommend this shop!

  I did a day dive to north Seymour, originally booked through another agency. As global diving goes, it is rather expensive. We took a shuttle (45 minutes) to the… Read More ferry site, then went on board – two groups of 5 per guide. My group were diving for the first time with this company, so we needed equipment/buoyancy check, and then did 2 dives, spaced by 50 minutes and followed by a passable lunch. It is worthwhile to note we were not paired, and the group had several novice divers – see below for why it matters. The first dive (at 18 meters bottom) was nice and long – plenty of fish, barracudas, a couple of sharks (not hammerheads) and many moray eels. The guide was busy throughout with one of the novice divers. The second dive, which was planned as a shallow (12 meters) dive started well enough – turtle, shark, octopus – but again the guide was busy with one novice diver while another novice disappeared, forcing a premature end (the missing diver surfaced about 50 meters from us). Altogether, nice dives but very expensive and, from my viewpoint, not super safe. Note that diving in Galápagos is heavily regulated and where you dive depends on the day of the week.

  Santiago and Oscar are great dive instructors. They are very thorough and make you feel comfortable diving. They care about you having a great dive experience. It is a full… Read More service company so they help you with your equipment. Galapagos can be challenging to dive in due to the current and they offer to help you. Saw several hammerhead sharks at Gordon Rocks. Professional and friendly team from the front desk to the dive boat! Thank you for everything!