from the west...: the marine side of the Galápagos

We started our Galápagos adventure on San Cristóbal Island where our naturalist guides met us at the airport and took us to our floating home, the Flamingo 1 (run by EcoVentura - a great company). Our itinerary included seven islands--San Cristóbal, Española, Floreana, Santa Cruz, Bartolomé, South Plazas, and North Seymour. The boat moved from island to island mainly at night so we didn’t spend a lot of our daylight hours doing long transits. Most days we had four excursions--two land- and two sea-based (snorkeling, kayaking, or panga ride). In between our outings we had delicious snacks and meals, all of which the kitchen staff adapted to my needs. The entire staff was fantastic! Our boat had nineteen guests on board and two naturalists. The small group size was great, particularly when we were hiking on the islands. Most of the time the two groups would travel in opposite directions so the expeditions didn’t feel crowded at all. All of our land and sea activities involved our two pangas (small inflatables). Pete and I have both done a lot of work in inflatables so to say that we were thoroughly impressed by our panga drivers is saying something. They were awesome!

the Flamingo 1 - our floating home

one of our fabulous panga drivers, orlando

Our first expedition was a snorkel near Playa Carola on San Cristóbal. They gave us 5 mm wetsuits to wear...and we never wore them again. The water temperature in December is usually in the mid-70s fahrenheit so a wetsuit is quite nice if you are going to be in the water for awhile. Because of El Niño, however, the water temperature was in the mid-80s! While this was quite nice for our snorkeling expeditions, it can be bad for many of the marine critters in the Galápagos. The warm water is brought to the Galápagos by the Panamanian Current from the north. In a non-El Niño year, the Galápagos is bathed in cold, nutrient-rich water coming from the Humboldt Current to the south. Without that cold, nutrient-rich water, there isn’t as much food for whales, seabirds, fish, penguins, sea lions, or iguanas so their populations decline substantially during El Niño. Interestingly enough, however, the land critters do really well during El Niño because it rains a lot so they have access to abundant food resources. The reverse is also true; La Niña events (cold and dry) bring weather that is bad for land critters but good for marine critters. The water temperature had not been warm for very long before we arrived, so we got to see a lot of marine life during our trip.

One of the options for our trip was to focus on underwater Galápagos a do a dive charter. We considered it but didn't want to miss out on the land excursions. We were really happy with our choice...we loved our snorkeling time and we stayed a couple extra days on San Cristóbal so we could do a day of diving.

The marine habitat was a bit of a surprise to us. The substrate looked very similar to our temperate marine habitats here in California...rocky reef covered in crustose coralline algae, lots of solitary cup corals, but very few hard coral colonies. I expected a lot more coral since the Galápagos are near the equator, firmly in the coral reef zone. The fish, on the other hand, were exactly what we expected--brightly colored reef fish with species common to us from southern Baja and French Polynesia. It felt very much like a temperate-tropical mash-up.

cup corals on coralline encrusted rocks

anemones

There were four big highlights for us: 1. Seeing a marine iguana chomping on algae underwater (one of Pete’s travel goals) 2. Getting buzzed by a Galápagos penguin! 3. Swimming through a huge school of salemas. 4. Dropping off the panga into a turbulent patch of water FILLED with fish of all shapes, colors, and sizes. (5. I got to see a hammerhead in the distance on our dive...Pete missed it.)

Our marine iguana sighting was a last ditch effort to cross off Pete’s #1 travel goal. We had seen marine iguanas in the water during our trip, but we never saw one eating underwater. After we got off the boat, we did a hike on San Cristóbal that ultimately led us to a beach. We walked along the beach and saw that there were marine iguanas swimming around. Of course we hadn’t brought our snorkeling gear with us so we made a beeline back to our hotel to get our gear. When we got back to the beach there were fewer iguanas in the water so time was of the essence. We also quickly realized that we would have a hard time seeing the little iguana heads if we were both in the water, so we decided to divide and conquer. Pete went into the water to look underwater and I stayed on the beach to sight them from land. If I saw one on the surface, I would point him in the right direction and he would swim to the spot. Even with the somewhat murky conditions, it worked beautifully! I directed him to one, he found it, and the iguana stayed there long enough for me to swim out and watch. It was so cool! They grip the rock underwater with their long claws and then just chomp, chomp, chomp the algae off the rocks. Their teeth have evolved a crazy shape to make the scraping really efficient. When they are done, they let go of the rock, float to the surface, and swim along with water surface using their big tail as a paddle.

swimming marine iguana

serious claws for gripping rocks

algae-eating adapted teeth

We got buzzed by a penguin near the end of our snorkel off Bartolomé Island. The best part--both Pete and I saw it! (There are currently two things I have seen on our travels that I failed to show Pete and I will hear about those things until the end of time.) Seeing a penguin “flying” underwater is a pretty cool sight. We later saw the penguin on land, posing very nicely for us.

posing for us after checking us out in the water

The salemas, a small, schooling fish, were really fun. We saw big schools twice during our trip. The first was during a snorkel. The school was near the bottom and a bit too deep for me to reach. Pete was able to get there and swam through the school. It was fun to watch from the surface because the school parted like the Red Sea to let him through and immediately closed behind him. One of our naturalists took my camera down with him and took a video as he was swimming through - so neat! Our second encounter was during one of our SCUBA dives so i had a chance to swim through. The bubbles from SCUBA were a bit disruptive, but it was pretty surreal (and disorientating!) to be surrounded by thousands of 5-6 inch fish.

school of salemas

pete going into the school

school reforming around pete and adrian

pete emerging and the salemas closing in behind him

adrian swimming through the school of salemas

Many of our snorkels were done in areas where the current would slowly take you from one place to another. In a few of these places, we started at the point of an island where currents and waves met, making for very choppy water. These turbulent areas often concentrate food in a small area...a fish buffet of sorts. For us this meant a fantastically diverse, high density cluster of fish that could not have cared less about our presence. It felt like being in a fishbowl!