Isla San Francisco
This has been a long day! I do not mean tedious or difficult, certainly not! It is just hard to believe that it has only been one day. It started with a gorgeous sunrise soon followed by dolphins, whales, birds crashing into the sea in pursuit of fish, and the fish themselves in pursuit of tiny crustaceans in the plankton bloom. Every drop of water was alive! At one point I arrived at the bow just in time to hear a collective cheer and then a pleasant group sigh. I rushed to the railing only to see the last bits of a gigantic splash. “Oh well.” I thought, but then Jack Swenson announced, “Keep your cameras focused where he went down, they often breach more than once.” And it did, again and again! Not just one humpback whale, two humpback whales. O.K., sometimes they seemed a bit tired and just threw their heads up, back, all out of the water or laid on their backs and splashed their huge pectoral fins back and forth, but it was all quite amazing. Later, or was it before, maybe both… we had a huge school of common dolphins. I mean huge! It was like being in a different place or different time where there were no cities or fishing fleets, just an abundance, an exuberance of diverse life. Spotting was so easy, the waves were mere ripples pushed along by gentle breaths of air, and there was so much to see here. Blows to the port, devil rays to the starboard, marlin, dolphin and more blows in front of us – and it is still hours until lunch!
In the afternoon we anchored in front of a lovely white beach, a broad crescent, a smile across the face of Isla San Francisco. So what do we do in such a fine bay with a sandy beach and some great cliffs? Hmm, that’s a hard one, how about swimming, snorkeling, kayaking, hiking and later, dinner ashore and a bonfire? And that is just what we did. In the water, beneath the surface, there was a wilderness of tumbled, squared off boulders, perfect shelter for a myriad of fish and other creatures. The rocks were covered with small, semicircular brown algae known as sea turtle’s skirt to the Seri Indians, as well as the occasional coral heads and every coral head sheltered a small family of surprisingly red hawkfish. On the algae there were the relatively large and definitely recalcitrant fanged blennies and everywhere else there were the pugnacious Cortez damselfish, some even trying to drive me away from their private patch of garden. The full list of creatures is huge: flower urchins, hundreds of sergeant majors, distant bicolor parrotfish, glowering crown-of-thorns sea stars, skirt flapping orangesided triggerfish, and rainbow wrasses, lively darts of color, all this to name just a few. Perhaps my favorite of the day was the balloonfish pictured here. No skulking and hiding for this puffer. No only does it have an impressive array of outward facing spines when it puffs up, its flesh is also toxic. This fish is an observer, perhaps even a philosopher as it cruises along watching the dramas, the tragedies, the comedies. It even watches me and what, I wonder, does it think about that?
This has been a long day! I do not mean tedious or difficult, certainly not! It is just hard to believe that it has only been one day. It started with a gorgeous sunrise soon followed by dolphins, whales, birds crashing into the sea in pursuit of fish, and the fish themselves in pursuit of tiny crustaceans in the plankton bloom. Every drop of water was alive! At one point I arrived at the bow just in time to hear a collective cheer and then a pleasant group sigh. I rushed to the railing only to see the last bits of a gigantic splash. “Oh well.” I thought, but then Jack Swenson announced, “Keep your cameras focused where he went down, they often breach more than once.” And it did, again and again! Not just one humpback whale, two humpback whales. O.K., sometimes they seemed a bit tired and just threw their heads up, back, all out of the water or laid on their backs and splashed their huge pectoral fins back and forth, but it was all quite amazing. Later, or was it before, maybe both… we had a huge school of common dolphins. I mean huge! It was like being in a different place or different time where there were no cities or fishing fleets, just an abundance, an exuberance of diverse life. Spotting was so easy, the waves were mere ripples pushed along by gentle breaths of air, and there was so much to see here. Blows to the port, devil rays to the starboard, marlin, dolphin and more blows in front of us – and it is still hours until lunch!
In the afternoon we anchored in front of a lovely white beach, a broad crescent, a smile across the face of Isla San Francisco. So what do we do in such a fine bay with a sandy beach and some great cliffs? Hmm, that’s a hard one, how about swimming, snorkeling, kayaking, hiking and later, dinner ashore and a bonfire? And that is just what we did. In the water, beneath the surface, there was a wilderness of tumbled, squared off boulders, perfect shelter for a myriad of fish and other creatures. The rocks were covered with small, semicircular brown algae known as sea turtle’s skirt to the Seri Indians, as well as the occasional coral heads and every coral head sheltered a small family of surprisingly red hawkfish. On the algae there were the relatively large and definitely recalcitrant fanged blennies and everywhere else there were the pugnacious Cortez damselfish, some even trying to drive me away from their private patch of garden. The full list of creatures is huge: flower urchins, hundreds of sergeant majors, distant bicolor parrotfish, glowering crown-of-thorns sea stars, skirt flapping orangesided triggerfish, and rainbow wrasses, lively darts of color, all this to name just a few. Perhaps my favorite of the day was the balloonfish pictured here. No skulking and hiding for this puffer. No only does it have an impressive array of outward facing spines when it puffs up, its flesh is also toxic. This fish is an observer, perhaps even a philosopher as it cruises along watching the dramas, the tragedies, the comedies. It even watches me and what, I wonder, does it think about that?
