The Polaris is back to the youngest island, Fernandina. The beauty of the island is the same as ever, black basalt on a blue deep ocean. However, a few things have changed.
There are four new nests of flightless cormorants, a pair of American oystercatchers were courting on the beach, and we saw, for the first time, a dozen common terns flying above the heads of a group of twenty brown pelicans in a feeding frenzy.
We are in the middle of the cool and dry season. But this is also the windy season. Today we experienced a strong southern wind blowing at 25 knots. There were whitecaps on the seas; they looked like little mountains crowned with snow. We navigated during the morning towards the wind, so the breeze felt even stronger. Against the wind and against the currents we crossed the Equator line and headed to Fernandina, where we anchored in one of the few shallow areas on this otherwise deep Galapagos platform.
