What a day today was. As you can see, an orca came to say hi to our boat today - the facial expressions say it all…
We kicked off the morning with a hike to see the tortoises! The hike was about a mile and a half in an area called Urbina bay. This area was underwater until 1954 when an earthquake caused a dramatic uplift and about a mile of new land popped out of the sea within sec/min.
The highlight of the trip was the giant tortoises - which is one of the signature animals of the Galapagos. We must have seen a dozen of them (or more) - mostly eating, but some were cooling off in a mud puddle or digging down into the dirt to get to the cooler ground underneath. There are 6 species of tortoises on Isabela island, on on each volcano. They dont travel far from their home volcano for their whole 200 year life - so they don’t interbreed and the species stay unique. They had done studies in the past and some don’t leave a 300 foot radius for 3-5 years. They can live for up to 18 months without food if needed - so they don’t exactly need to be eating all the time. Apparently they are examples of something called Island Giantism - where lack of preditation causes species to grow dramatically.
They don’t seem to want to move much - but if you live for 200 years, you probably don’t need to get anywhere real soon. When they want to move though, they do move with a purpose.
On of the food items we saw them chomping down on was little green apples. I don’t know the proper name, but the guides called them Galapagos poison apples and, go figure, are very poisonous. They have toxins that cause internal bleeding as well as carcinogens that cause cancer (they feed this to rats in medical experiments about cancer). The tortoises can eat them just fine, but just hanging out under the tree while it’s raining can cause skin irritation and ulcers in humans - Stay Away!!!
The hike also featured Darwin’s finches and Galapagos Mockingbirds - where were of more interst to Darwin than the finches (history is weird). They are really hard to captures pictures of - but I managed to get a few good ones.
It’s not often that a PNWer sees hermit crabs in the wild - I think this might be my first time. Same ones as the ones people keep as pets - so nothing Galapagos special, but exciting for us.
We also saw quite a few terrestrial iguanas. These forested areas are where they go to dig holes and lay there eggs. It doesn’t sound like they do much to protect the young, but they are pretty careful to get the eggs deep enough that they are protected from preditors. These guys pretty cute when you compare them to the marine version..
We also saw a cat in the middle of the forest and our naturalist informed us that it probably escaped from the town and they would call the park rangers to dispose of it as they can eat the baby iguanas. They also told us about the feral goat problem - goats are an invasive species and they ate alot of the food that the tortoises would eat. They were able to solve it by tagging a goat with a GPS tracker and having it find the herd. Then they would follow the tracker and shoot all of the goats except for the one that was tagged. It took them a long time to rid the island of the goats (2-3 years) but it’s had a huge impact on helping the tortoises breed in the wild/naturally. After the hike, we went for a quick swim in the bay before heading back to the ship for lunch. When got back to the cabin before lunch, we found this little guy.
After lunch, we had a kayaking expedition to Tagus Cove flowed by a snorkel and a hike in the afternoon. The kayak was on tandem kayaks and we did all three together (with Sara sitting on Tom’s lap). Tons of pelicans on this trip - one dove right in front of our kayak and came up without enough time for us to stop and we bumped him. We ended up seeing quite a few animals on this trip - sea lions, penguins, and tons of crabs. This cove was where ships often stopped over and it was customary to write the name of your ship/year up on the rocks when you came through (it is low illegal). One of these boats was called the Tropic Bird and it came through in 1954. It was a disney ship (if you zoom in closely, you can see mickey mouse ears under the name) and they were the first ones to see the aftermath of the uprising of Urbina Bay (where we took the hike in the morning).
The highlight of the kaying trip was the manta rays. We saw them poking their heads out of the water as the feed and I was able to get a tiny glimpse of them in a video I took by holding my GoPro under water from the kayak.
After the kayak, things got really interesting. There was a snorkel planned after the kayak and Tom decided to go while Sara and Angela went paddleboarding. On the way to the kayaking site, we say the manta rays again and I was one of the first ones off the boat and got an amazing video of the manta ray swimming into and then under me. I think this moment was the highlight of my trip to the Galapagos.
It’s hard to grasp how big these rays were, but thankfully my swimming buddy was right behind me and got a similar video to mine, but with me in it (for scale).
After that, we swam around a bit in a dense soup of plankton and small fish - which allowed for some amazing fish. I found a very interesting sea star - yellow with black spikes. I had seen it earlier in the trip, but I had a hard time getting a picture in focus. It’s called a Chocolate Starfish - maybe because the little black spikes look like chocolate kisses(?). I also saw some very colorful shellfish (almost neon) in addition to sea turtles and some very large puffer fish.
I’m working on choosing where to swim to get good light on the subject I’m filming. I think I did a pretty good job with this Sea Turtle.
Some of my best viewing of penguins was on this trip - they would swim right into me with how focused they were on getting food.
And another one…
This was my first time seeing puffer fish in the Galapagos - and they were huge, bigger than a basketball. There were probably a dozen of them hanging out together (I think they are solitary animals, but maybe this was just a good place to feed or safe from predators). I love how quickly their little fins move to propel their giant bodies.
The sea lions were also all over eating fish and one of them was particularly playful and we spent some time swimming together after he realized I could dive below the surface.
We saw an octopus as well with an open wound on one arm - likely due to a fish bite. He seemed pretty content despite the injury and I was able to get some good pics/videos of him up close. I asked the naturalist and these types of wounds are common and heal quickly - even if an entire tenticle is removed, it will grow back.
These guys are really hard to spot - I took this video starting at the surface and diving down to where he was to show how well they blend in.
After swimming we headed back to the boat and took a quick diversion to take another look at the Manta rays since a couple of folks didn’t get to see them earlier. In the middle of the diversion, Joan spotted a blow from a whale and it was quickly identified to be orcas. We raced off to see them, calling back to the boat to let them know and send other zodiacs. On the way out to see them we saw some jumping rays, which apparently they do for three reasons - mating display, to dislodge parasites, and sometimes to escape predators. Since orcas were in the water, it could have been all three. The jumping was very predictable, same spot and in an almost timed succession - which made for a cool video.
We made it to the area where we spotted the orca blowing, and we were not disappointed. A group of juveniles and a male popped up about 50 feet away and one of the juveniles became interested in our boat. We saw him swimming right under the boat and he came up for air no more than 2 feet from us. We could have touched him. It was a quite spectacular/rewarding diversion…
We watched them for a while longer and saw them come up several more times. I didn’t totally understand the pod behaviors, but it looked like the one male was in charge of herding/watching the calves while the females went off hunting. You can see both in this video, the male has the larger more pronounced fin and you generally saw him come up at the same time as the young ones. The females seemed to pop up on their own, but never super far from the rest of the pod - maybe 150-200 feet.
We ended up spending the rest of the evening chasing them and I missed the hike. As we were coming back from snorkeling, I didn’t have my DSLR with me (all I had was my GoPro) but I got full use of it with the all of the action around it. I finally ran out of battery just before we decided to head back to the boat - so perfect timing! Reminder to myself to look into getting a longer lasting gopro battery (hopefully they make them…)
While Tom was off chasing Orcas, Angela and Sara went on the hike, in Tagus Cove. It was about 120 steps to the top, where a beautiful saltwater lake was a lovely place to watch the sunset. Sara was a great hiker, running up the steps to the top. On the way back down, we stopped to see the oldest gradfitti in Tagus Bay - carved in 1836. Turns out, all the activity did Sara in and she fell asleep during the daily recap…
I took this picture on the morning hike and didn’t know where else to put it. I’ve decided it was my lucky spider… :)