Los Islotes & Isla San Francisco
This morning we cruised around the red rocks of Los Islotes, picturesque islets in the lower Gulf of California. Over countless years, numerous sea birds have frosted them white with guano. Today we found blue-footed boobies, brown boobies, and brown pelicans perching on the rocks, and frigatebirds soaring overhead. The brilliant blue feet of the blue-footed boobies could sometimes be seen as they approached the rocks and put out their ‘landing gear,’ or when they displayed their impossibly large, blue webbed feet to their mate. Brown pelicans dive-bombed schools of fish near the rocks, and many were in bright breeding colors. By far the loudest animals in this neighborhood were not any of the birds, but the California sea lions. A few slept on isolated rocks, while here and there a pup nursed from its mother. Where they were in groups, they barked and growled among themselves. The large male sea lions were very easy to distinguish; they can be triple the size of adult females, and have very large foreheads with a ‘sagittal crest.’ Sadly, we saw a sea lion with fishing line entangled around its neck; it is not that unusual a sight.
After our introduction seeing the sea lions from Zodiacs, we went snorkeling near them. We entered their realm, and the world beneath, of fishes, corals, and jellies. It was peaceful, quiet, and beautiful, with a constant background sound of snapping shrimp – tiny shrimp never seen but often heard in shallow water here. Then, suddenly, a sea lion swam nearby, and even the very skilled swimmers among us felt very clumsy as it swam circles around us! Juveniles played around us, twisting and turning and zipping quickly past, while now and then a large male cruised slowly past in the distance.
Back on board the ship, we started towards the north, and were very excited to find a large group of more than 50 short-finned pilot whales along the way. Most of them were swimming to the south; we put the hydrophone into the water, and eavesdropped on their vocalizations. How wonderful to hear their clicks and high pitched whistles! They are a very social species, but not one that we see often.
We arrived at the beautiful crescent-shaped beach of Half Moon Bay at Isla San Francisco in the late afternoon. The rocks surrounding the broken shell beach were orange-red, the water was a beautiful green, the sky a spotless blue. Snorkelers explored the underwater world once again, while hikers walked along salt flats and learned more about desert adaptations with naturalists. Many other people were perfectly content to relax on the beach, or paddle on a kayak in the quiet, perfect bay.
