GSD''s 15-day liveaboard is built around roughly double the diving of its standard 8-day trip, and the schedule shows it: itineraries have run across dates including late July through mid-August and mid-August through late August in 2024, and late July through mid-August in 2025. The extra days aren't just added transit time — they go toward genuinely more time in the water at the destination's best sites.
The dive-site breakdown reflects that: Darwin's Arch typically gets somewhere between 13 and 18 dives across the trip, Wolf Island around 9, Punta Vicente Roca 3 to 4, and Cape Douglas 2 — plus visits to Pinzón, Roca Blanca and Roca Redonda that are exclusive to this longer itinerary and don't appear on shorter trips. Across those sites, the marine life list is long: whale sharks, hammerhead schools, tiger sharks, eagle and giant manta rays, orcas and other whale species, salema bait balls, penguins, flightless cormorants and marine iguanas.
It isn't all diving, either — the extra days allow for proper land excursions, including time on Fernandina Island and a hike at Tagus Cove up to a viewpoint over Darwin Crater Lake, alongside onboard science talks from shark specialists and sessions tied to the Galápagos Whale Shark Research Project, plus photography-technique workshops and talks on the islands' geology.
The stated philosophy behind the trip is "dive with a purpose" rather than simply maximizing bottom time — and unlike a tightly packed 8-day schedule, the 15-day version is paced with optional break days built in, rather than treating every single day as a full diving day.
Source: adapted from Galápagos Shark Diving's own published article on its 15-day scuba liveaboard.