Floreana Island
While having breakfast, the Polaris naturalists debated our chances of seeing dolphins this week. Some of us estimate that this happens 50% of the time, some claim we have a 25% probability, some think we sight them about every two weeks. A little girl sparked this discussion when she asked us what her chances were of seeing dolphins on this voyage. Apparently, seeing dolphins is one of her life dreams. While we discussed numbers and possibilities, an announcement was made “bottled-nose dolphins bow-riding the Polaris.” How timely, how great, and what a coincidence!
So that is the way we started the day, and later on we played with sea lions in the water and walked along a brackish lagoon where greater flamingos were feeding. After observing these typical tropical pink birds, we returned to the landing beach to discover a Galapagos penguin swimming among the Galapagos sea lions! The ancestors of the former came from the south, and the ancestors of the later from the north. Both species now live together on the equator in this wonderful archipelago where attempting to work out percentages and statistic about sightings is somewhat useless. We are better off when we leave it all to chance. Why not after all, as these islands serve as a great laboratory of evolution, and chance has played a major role in evolution.
While having breakfast, the Polaris naturalists debated our chances of seeing dolphins this week. Some of us estimate that this happens 50% of the time, some claim we have a 25% probability, some think we sight them about every two weeks. A little girl sparked this discussion when she asked us what her chances were of seeing dolphins on this voyage. Apparently, seeing dolphins is one of her life dreams. While we discussed numbers and possibilities, an announcement was made “bottled-nose dolphins bow-riding the Polaris.” How timely, how great, and what a coincidence!
So that is the way we started the day, and later on we played with sea lions in the water and walked along a brackish lagoon where greater flamingos were feeding. After observing these typical tropical pink birds, we returned to the landing beach to discover a Galapagos penguin swimming among the Galapagos sea lions! The ancestors of the former came from the south, and the ancestors of the later from the north. Both species now live together on the equator in this wonderful archipelago where attempting to work out percentages and statistic about sightings is somewhat useless. We are better off when we leave it all to chance. Why not after all, as these islands serve as a great laboratory of evolution, and chance has played a major role in evolution.
