Long lazy days at sea, even a gentle sapphire-hued sea like the tropical Atlantic, make every new landfall a precious experience. The oceanic islands of the Atlantic, Gough, Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena, Ascension and Cape Verde are fascinating, delightful places in their own right, but we appreciate them all the more for having approached them, one by one, through journeys measured in days, with a visceral understanding of their isolation.
And it is this isolation, the feature that, paradoxically, unites these tiny mountaintops lost among the waves, which is their most unique and valuable quality. The people who make their homes here well understand this. They call themselves islanders or family or ‘saints’, cling to their rocky shores despite raging storms and devastating volcanic eruptions, live the way they choose to live, leaving the wider world to its own fate.
Nesting on the towering cliffs, scuttling over the boulders or drifting in the currents of the sea, a wonderful variety of animals and plants make their homes here as well. Survivors of arduous crossings from Africa or the Americas, many have lived here long enough to change, adapting to their new niches, evolving into endemic species found nowhere else in the world. The pretty little yellow fish in this picture is an Ascension goby (Priolepis ascensionis) and its red companion an axillary cardinalfish (Apogon axillaries), both known only from St. Helena and Ascension.
Many precious species like these have been lost but many still remain for us to delight in and wonder over. Like the islands that shelter them they are the rarest of gems, treasures to be admired greatly, shared happily and protected zealously.
