We left the central islands of the Galapagos behind us last night, to head north then west into the cool upwelling waters of the western realm of the archipelago. The rich waters of the Cromwell Current bring a load of nutrients to this area, making it a favorite for marine life, and many different species of cetaceans.
We spent the morning exploring the unique environment of Fernandina Island. This is the youngest island of the group, and the flanks of its spectacular shield volcano are carpeted with fresh lava flows and dotted with small parasitic cones. The island is home to our largest subspecies of marine iguana. The shores are covered with large amounts of algae, food to both our marine reptiles, iguanas and green sea turtles. A great treat was in store for those who went snorkeling after the lava walk, as the combination of calm waters and low tide permitted many of our guests to actually observe both these wonderful animals grazing under water – a truly unique sighting!
Zodiac cruises along the shoreline brought us close to a couple of the stranger wonders of this archipelago: two flightless birds; a tiny pioneering penguin, and a flightless cormorant, truly emblematic of oceanic island oddities. Alerted by our officer on watch about a sighting of plumes just behind Polaris, many of our Zodiacs then sped off in that direction and we had close encounters with a couple of Bryde’s whales surfacing among the feeding frenzies of tuna, shearwaters, petrels and pelicans. These large rorquals are common in the tropics, hence often called “tropical whales”, and make up about 85% of whale sightings in Galapagos.
After this exciting morning, we returned to the ship for lunch, and lifted anchor right away to explore the Bolivar Channel, separating Fernandina from Isabela, to search for marine mammals whilst slowly making our way to Urvina Bay, a site on Isabela we were going to explore that afternoon to find land tortoises and iguanas in the wild. Our search was fruitful, as we encountered an enormous pod of bottle-nosed dolphins in a particularly acrobatic mood – so delightful we decided to lower our fleet of Zodiacs once again to get a closer look, and ended up spending over an hour surrounded by these inquisitive animals, who minded not in the least having company on their quest for food.
