Today we had an early start with a 6 am visit to Post Office Bay on Floreana Island. Floreana was a common stop over point for pirates and whalers. In 1729 a captain of a whaling ship erected a small barrel to serve as a mail drop. Crews bound for home would pick up the mail and take it with them. It is now a tradition to look in the mail barrel and if there is a card or letter for someone near your home you take it with you and hand deliver it. We got a card for someone at Bowdoin College that we’ll need to deliver when we get home.
After breakfast we suited up for a morning of deep water snorkeling off of Champion Island which is a very small island just off Floreana Island. I don’t have any pictures of the snorkeling but the guides took great photos that I will post after we return home. I am not a strong swimmer and am very uncomfortable in water –especially when there is no hope of touching bottom. When I first got out of the Zodiac and looked through the crystal clear water at the steepness of the drop off into darkness I got a little anxious. It took me about five minutes to slow down my breathing. For a few minutes I thought I would have to call it a day before I even got started because the anxiety was getting the best of me. But then I put my mask in the water and looked down and saw a white-tipped shark swim by about 20 feet below me and I forgot all about the fact that I was in the water. As we floated along on the current we were surrounded by large schools of beautiful King angelfish and Yellow-tailed surgeon fish. We encountered a group of sea lions and swam with them for while. They seemed to be quite interested in us and it was amazing to me how close they got without actually bumping into us. One of the young sea lions came up to me and put his nose right in front of my mask and then, with a single flick of his flipper, zipped past me less than an inch away. We all wanted to stay in the water longer but after 90 minutes it did start to feel cold, even with the wet suit for insulation. When we got back to the Polaris the staff had hot chocolate waiting for us!
During lunch we weighed anchor and headed to the southern most tip of Isabella Island to visit a relatively new giant tortoise rearing facility. The tortoise populations were devastated first by whalers who harvested them by the thousands because tortoises could survive for months on board ship without water and the meat is apparently very tasty. When humans settled on some of the islands in the Galapagos they brought goats and donkeys and pigs with them. These animals ate the natural food sources of the tortoises and pushed the populations further into decline. Working to bring the tortoise populations back requires long term vision. It has taken years of research to figure out the most effective strategy for hatching and rearing the young and for re-introducing them into the wild. There is still some poaching of tortoises by locals but educational programs are apparently helping with that problem as well.
If the day wasn’t full enough we had dinner with our on-board National Geographic Explorer, Dr. Sylvia Earle and then saw a preview of a new National Geographic special on the Galapagos Islands that will be released in March. Sylvia Earle is a pioneering deep sea explorer/marine biologist. She was among the first “aquanauts” and the first to walk on the bottom of the ocean floor is a self-contained, pressurized aquanaut suit. She is now working on several ocean conservation projects.
Tomorrow we see more of Isabella Island and also the youngest island in the archipelago, Fernandina.
Weather:
Sunny: 80-85 F; winds variable
Water temperature: 74 F
Floreana Island – Post Office Bay
Birds:
Yellow warbler
Brown pelican
Great blue heron
Galapagos flycatcher
Medium ground finch
Vegetarian finch (?)
Elliot’s storm petral
Wimbrel
Frigate birds
Tropic bird
Brown noddy tern
Other cool things:
Green turtle and tracks on the beach
Stripped dolphin
Common dolphin
Champion Island –
Birds:
Floreana mockingbird (very rare)
Other cool things:
Parrot fish
Chocolate chip sea star
King angelfish
Yellow tailed razor surgeon fish
White tipped shark
Sting ray
Many other fish…..
Galapagos sea lion
Isabella Island – Turtle Rearing Facility
Birds:
Wimbrel
Galapagos flamingo
Black neck stilt
Common gallinule
White cheeked pintail duck
Smooth billed ani
Galapagos mockingbird (many)
Small billed ground finch
Medium billed ground finch
Other cool things:
Lava lizard
Marine iguana
Large green dragonfly
Paper wasp (and nest)
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