1. Watching Wildlife Galapagos Islands (Lonely Planet)

This book describes the features and wildlife of each island, and has a listing of the animals and birds. The photos are excellent.

2. Galapagos: A Natural History Guide (Odyssey Illustrated Guides)

by Pierre Constant. More detailed than the Lonely Planet Watching Wildlife book. Well documented with pages of beautiful colour photos. There are very good descriptions of the different animals, birds, reptiles, plants, and sea life. Each island has a map and good descriptions of the paths and what you will see.

3. Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands (Lonely Planet)

The right amount of detail, well written, accurate descriptions, great maps. Has one chapter on the Galapagos.

4. Rough Guide To Ecuador

A bit more detailed than Lonely Planet. Has one chapter on the Galapagos.

1. Galapagos The Islands That Changed the World

by Paul D. Stewart. A perfect companion book to the BBC DVD, it has both magnificent colour photos and excellent writing. It describes the history of the Galapagos, including the voyage of Charles Darwin, and the wildlife and flowers and fauna.

The book ends describing each of the animals, birds, plants, and marine life; and the tourist and dive sights.

I think this is a perfect book to read before going to the Galapagos. The photos and descriptions are excellent.  I especially liked the chapter on conserving the Galapagos - something every tourist should understand.

1. Galapagos The Islands That Changed the World

This 150-minute film from BBC is filmed from the air, sea, and land. It tells how the islands were created and how the birds, animals, fish and plants adapted to survive in the harsh Galapagos environment. The video shows all the wildlife in the Galapagos Islands, including giant tortoises, marine iguanas, blue-footed boobies, albatrosses, and the only-tropical penguin on Earth.

Visually stunning with excellent narration, this is a perfect DVD to see before going to the Galapagos. I especially enjoyed the Blue Footed Boobies dive-bombing into the sea and their mating dance. The only sea-going lizard in the world, the marine iguana adapted by diving into the sea to eat seaweed. The mating ritual of the Waved Albatross, click-clack-click, was a delight.

2. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Master and Commander is a 2003 film directed by Peter Weir and starring Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey, with Paul Bettany as Dr. Stephen Maturin. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

The movie is set in 1805 in the Napoleonic Wars. After losing an initial battle, the British ship HMS Surprise pursues a French ship south through the Atlantic Ocean, around Cape Horn, and through the Pacific to the Galapagos Islands.

Master and Commander was supposedly the first movie to be shot on the Galapagos Islands, with many scenes on Bartolome. Pre-dating Darwin by 30 years, Dr. Maturin makes many discoveries, including flightless cormorants and marine iguanas.

A good story and movie, I enjoyed seeing the Galapagos scenes and especially the sense of wonder that Dr. Maturin shows seeing the amazing creatures on Galapagos.

3. Galapagos IMAX

The first 15 minutes of this 39-minute video starts off with excellent filming with especially vibrant colours of the islands, the sea and many of the Galapagos animals, like the tortoise, land and marine iguanas, and sea lions.

The rest of the film follows a marine biologist from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History descending first to 100m and then to 1000m, using a sub, below the ocean surface to collect rare and unusual species. The filming is good.

I think the title of this video is misleading since only 15 minutes of the video is spent on portion of the Galapagos that generally interests people. There's not much of a story to the film and I really did not learn anything.