Española Island
Our trip around the Galápagos Islands began yesterday on Baltra Island, but the real adventure to see the wild life of this archipelago commenced today on Española Island. It was a very good start with an island full of animals; marine iguanas were resting on the lava rocks, blue footed boobies were doing the ritual breeding dance, and we cannot forget the Galápagos albatross that had just arrived from their migratory cruise of the South Pacific, finally starting their courtship dancing behavior on this island.
In the afternoon, we visited a different place. It was on the other side of Española Island, a peaceful bay called Gardner Bay with a turquoise water color that invited us to swim right beside a white coralline beach.
We offer different options in the afternoon, and all chose different activities like the glass bottom boat, shallow water and deep water snorkeling. But for some of us, we decided to enjoy just the beach, watching and resting in front the sea lion colony found there.
At the snorkel spot we saw many different species of parrot fish. They are one of the most efficient creatures who build the white beaches we have in Galápagos. The amount of sand that they produce by eating chunks of white coral is amazing. The truth is that they eat coral like a sheep in a meadow. Then, they spew out what they have eaten in the form of a cloud of sand. It is unbelievable that a single parrot fish can produce more than two tons of sand per year. If we are thinking of only one fish, that doesn’t mean much, but if we think of the many parrot fish over thousands of years, it means tons of sand that are accumulated by wave action on shore which formed the amazing white coralline beach where we were walking this afternoon on Gardner Bay.
Our trip around the Galápagos Islands began yesterday on Baltra Island, but the real adventure to see the wild life of this archipelago commenced today on Española Island. It was a very good start with an island full of animals; marine iguanas were resting on the lava rocks, blue footed boobies were doing the ritual breeding dance, and we cannot forget the Galápagos albatross that had just arrived from their migratory cruise of the South Pacific, finally starting their courtship dancing behavior on this island.
In the afternoon, we visited a different place. It was on the other side of Española Island, a peaceful bay called Gardner Bay with a turquoise water color that invited us to swim right beside a white coralline beach.
We offer different options in the afternoon, and all chose different activities like the glass bottom boat, shallow water and deep water snorkeling. But for some of us, we decided to enjoy just the beach, watching and resting in front the sea lion colony found there.
At the snorkel spot we saw many different species of parrot fish. They are one of the most efficient creatures who build the white beaches we have in Galápagos. The amount of sand that they produce by eating chunks of white coral is amazing. The truth is that they eat coral like a sheep in a meadow. Then, they spew out what they have eaten in the form of a cloud of sand. It is unbelievable that a single parrot fish can produce more than two tons of sand per year. If we are thinking of only one fish, that doesn’t mean much, but if we think of the many parrot fish over thousands of years, it means tons of sand that are accumulated by wave action on shore which formed the amazing white coralline beach where we were walking this afternoon on Gardner Bay.
