Isla Espiritu Santo
The wind-painted azure sea seeped into aquamarine shallows beneath our Zodiacs. We stepped ashore on a sandy beachfront at the head of Bahia Ballena on Isla Espiritu Santo. Behind a winding margin of mangroves we coursed through a salt-influenced flat abutting the desert heart of the island. Up on the canyon walls dark rings of cap rock protruded from ochre tuff. Through a zonation of ecosystems we encountered hearty organisms that have evolved unique adaptations for survival each in its specific wavelength of habitat.
Caspian terns dive-bombed the turquoise shallows as piratical frigatebirds shadowed them above. Tidal-tough red mangroves walked on prop roots in water near salty-leaved black mangroves, creating a wall of vegetative buffering, productivity, and nurturance at the shoreline. Pickleweed, iodine bush and sweet mangrove thrived just beyond in salty flats. Here, a large land crab startled us and reared its claws up in defense as we innocently passed.
A red-tailed hawk soared over the high arroyo slopes. Turkey vultures rocked on burgeoning thermals. Lizards, racer snakes, stinkbugs, hummingbirds and verdins were observed in and among the cactus and desert flora. Prolific flowering and green drought-deciduous plants daubed the dun desert with colors of precipitation.
Beneath a wall of ash flow adorned with fig trees seemingly painted on, we entered the undersea world of the Sea of Cortez, where cold eastern boundary currents meet warm Panamic waters to stir a unique broth of life. Crown-of-thorns sea stars snacked on coral polyps whitening the reef convolutions. Flashily colored fish flitted about. Snorkelers amused themselves at the expense of a poor damselfish while learning of its behavior. We noticed this territorial vertebrate carrying a small slate pencil sea urchin some distance away and dropping it. In the name of science, we picked the urchin up and returned it to the damsel’s territory. The fish swam around and immediately plucked the echinoderm up in its mouth and carried it off once again. We learned how damselfish cultivate particular algae and defend these farms from intruders. No matter how often we re-placed the sputnik-like urchin, the fish cleared it away.
A funnel shaped mesh net towed behind a Zodiac collected samples from the water column. Snug back aboard in the ship’s lounge we encountered the micro-menagerie under our video microscope. A visiting expert marine microbiologist guided us through the plankton-eat-plankton world that exists in a drop of water. Ctenophores, algal cell chains, carnivorous arrow worms, copepods and fish larva went about their mini-business before our enlarged eyes.
Within the rich seas, sandy shallows, mangroves, saltflats, and desert of this one bay in one island in one sea in one planet, there is an abundance of life to be discovered. An appreciation of the lives of other life-forms great and small brings fuel to the hearth of our imagination.
The wind-painted azure sea seeped into aquamarine shallows beneath our Zodiacs. We stepped ashore on a sandy beachfront at the head of Bahia Ballena on Isla Espiritu Santo. Behind a winding margin of mangroves we coursed through a salt-influenced flat abutting the desert heart of the island. Up on the canyon walls dark rings of cap rock protruded from ochre tuff. Through a zonation of ecosystems we encountered hearty organisms that have evolved unique adaptations for survival each in its specific wavelength of habitat.
Caspian terns dive-bombed the turquoise shallows as piratical frigatebirds shadowed them above. Tidal-tough red mangroves walked on prop roots in water near salty-leaved black mangroves, creating a wall of vegetative buffering, productivity, and nurturance at the shoreline. Pickleweed, iodine bush and sweet mangrove thrived just beyond in salty flats. Here, a large land crab startled us and reared its claws up in defense as we innocently passed.
A red-tailed hawk soared over the high arroyo slopes. Turkey vultures rocked on burgeoning thermals. Lizards, racer snakes, stinkbugs, hummingbirds and verdins were observed in and among the cactus and desert flora. Prolific flowering and green drought-deciduous plants daubed the dun desert with colors of precipitation.
Beneath a wall of ash flow adorned with fig trees seemingly painted on, we entered the undersea world of the Sea of Cortez, where cold eastern boundary currents meet warm Panamic waters to stir a unique broth of life. Crown-of-thorns sea stars snacked on coral polyps whitening the reef convolutions. Flashily colored fish flitted about. Snorkelers amused themselves at the expense of a poor damselfish while learning of its behavior. We noticed this territorial vertebrate carrying a small slate pencil sea urchin some distance away and dropping it. In the name of science, we picked the urchin up and returned it to the damsel’s territory. The fish swam around and immediately plucked the echinoderm up in its mouth and carried it off once again. We learned how damselfish cultivate particular algae and defend these farms from intruders. No matter how often we re-placed the sputnik-like urchin, the fish cleared it away.
A funnel shaped mesh net towed behind a Zodiac collected samples from the water column. Snug back aboard in the ship’s lounge we encountered the micro-menagerie under our video microscope. A visiting expert marine microbiologist guided us through the plankton-eat-plankton world that exists in a drop of water. Ctenophores, algal cell chains, carnivorous arrow worms, copepods and fish larva went about their mini-business before our enlarged eyes.
Within the rich seas, sandy shallows, mangroves, saltflats, and desert of this one bay in one island in one sea in one planet, there is an abundance of life to be discovered. An appreciation of the lives of other life-forms great and small brings fuel to the hearth of our imagination.
