Fernandina Island
Today we visited the western and youngest side of the islands. Fernandina is a baby island whose age is between 60.000 to 300.000 years. In the morning the sea turtles were popping up their heads and the sea lions were playing. The penguins were preening and cormorants were nesting on the rocks with lava cactus growing next to them. Quite a landscape!
The Galapagos Islands have often been called a “laboratory of evolution”. The flightless cormorants we saw nesting are a good example showing that evolution doesn’t mean “progress”, but rather it is a change, over a period of time. As a result of isolation, oceanic islands can have species which, though related to mainland forms, have evolved in ways different from their mainland relatives. This is a key factor in island evolution. In these islands the flightless cormorant an environment without land predators and with plenty of food. So, natural selection favored those cormorants that didn’t waste too much energy on flying and they lost the ability to fly. The keel of the breastbone is much reduced. Interestingly they still stretch their wings out and dry them after swimming.
Fernandina has the largest marine iguanas in the Galapagos. These four marine iguanas (nicknamed: Paul, John, Ringo and George) assumed a commonly observed posture, their “elevated basking” posture, in which the marine iguanas faces the sun and raises the front half of its body. Orienting towards the sun reduces the body area exposed to radiant heat. The picture could be the front cover for a CD on a Galapagos version of a Beatles collection.
Today a Bryde’s whale arrived in time for lunch and performed at the bow of the ship. Later, as we crossed the Equator, King Neptune came on board for the initiation. Iguana blood was offered, a fish was kissed and everyone was baptized with an oceanic creature’s name.
What a wonderful afternoon we had observing the columnar dikes and other geological formations along the coast of the northern most volcano on Isabela Island, Ecuador Volcano. The boobies were in a feeding freezing. They are the “kamikaze of the Galapagos”, feeding on sardine sushi!
Today we visited the western and youngest side of the islands. Fernandina is a baby island whose age is between 60.000 to 300.000 years. In the morning the sea turtles were popping up their heads and the sea lions were playing. The penguins were preening and cormorants were nesting on the rocks with lava cactus growing next to them. Quite a landscape!
The Galapagos Islands have often been called a “laboratory of evolution”. The flightless cormorants we saw nesting are a good example showing that evolution doesn’t mean “progress”, but rather it is a change, over a period of time. As a result of isolation, oceanic islands can have species which, though related to mainland forms, have evolved in ways different from their mainland relatives. This is a key factor in island evolution. In these islands the flightless cormorant an environment without land predators and with plenty of food. So, natural selection favored those cormorants that didn’t waste too much energy on flying and they lost the ability to fly. The keel of the breastbone is much reduced. Interestingly they still stretch their wings out and dry them after swimming.
Fernandina has the largest marine iguanas in the Galapagos. These four marine iguanas (nicknamed: Paul, John, Ringo and George) assumed a commonly observed posture, their “elevated basking” posture, in which the marine iguanas faces the sun and raises the front half of its body. Orienting towards the sun reduces the body area exposed to radiant heat. The picture could be the front cover for a CD on a Galapagos version of a Beatles collection.
Today a Bryde’s whale arrived in time for lunch and performed at the bow of the ship. Later, as we crossed the Equator, King Neptune came on board for the initiation. Iguana blood was offered, a fish was kissed and everyone was baptized with an oceanic creature’s name.
What a wonderful afternoon we had observing the columnar dikes and other geological formations along the coast of the northern most volcano on Isabela Island, Ecuador Volcano. The boobies were in a feeding freezing. They are the “kamikaze of the Galapagos”, feeding on sardine sushi!
