Isabela and Fernandina Islands
My day was made even before breakfast today! At 6:30 a.m. the bridge spotted a huge pod of common dolphins about 2 miles north of our course along the northern shore of Isabela Island. The Captain changed our route and as we motored towards the dolphins, a whale spouted in the distance. I made a ship-wide announcement over the P.A. for those of our guests who were still in bed, and they hurried on deck. We had a fabulous dolphin show! Common dolphins are extremely acrobatic and there were several hundred of them churning up the water off our bow. It was difficult to estimate the number of animals in the group, as it always is difficult to do with groups of marine mammals. But scientists generally suggest that you multiply the number of dolphins at the surface by 3 or 4 to find the total in a pod. That is not easy to do either… so we left today’s count at “several hundred.”
The whales we saw spouting, and there were at least two of them, were probably Bryde’s or tropical whales; unfortunately we did not get a good look at them. But we did have an excellent view of a 10 foot manta ray that dove off our port bow and later we spied two mola mola (pelagic sunfish) to starboard. The best sighting of the morning however was a small pod of rare Cuvier’s beaked whales. They surfaced very close to the bow. We could easily notice their odd brown color and the slight melon head. An incredibly good view of this poorly known whale.
Following a hearty breakfast, as we crossed the equator line, the ship was boarded by mean and ugly pirates and a hairy King Neptune. All “Pollywogs” were baptised; luckily we escaped without anyone having to walk the plank. Since Neptune was appeased, our luck continued into the afternoon…
The snorkelers had an incredible outing. Everyone saw sea turtles (or even a dozen of them!) and some found iguanas grazing on algae in the rocky, underwater pastures. The afternoon walk along the rippled black shores of Punta Espinoza was equally magical. We found a few feeding penguins, one or two penguins posing on shore, a cormorant chasing fish in a shallow tide pool (and an octopus escaping him) and others at their seaweed-pile nests, huge iguanas slowly swimming and others peacefully grazing on exposed algae, oyster catchers with brilliant red legs poking into sea urchins for a meal, a hawk perched in a mangrove tree (and then on the Park Monument), sea turtles surfacing with a puff of air – the list of sights goes on and on.
If you asked each naturalist and each of our guests what was their personal highlight of the day, I am certain there would be an extremely long and varied list. Today was an AWESOME day!
My day was made even before breakfast today! At 6:30 a.m. the bridge spotted a huge pod of common dolphins about 2 miles north of our course along the northern shore of Isabela Island. The Captain changed our route and as we motored towards the dolphins, a whale spouted in the distance. I made a ship-wide announcement over the P.A. for those of our guests who were still in bed, and they hurried on deck. We had a fabulous dolphin show! Common dolphins are extremely acrobatic and there were several hundred of them churning up the water off our bow. It was difficult to estimate the number of animals in the group, as it always is difficult to do with groups of marine mammals. But scientists generally suggest that you multiply the number of dolphins at the surface by 3 or 4 to find the total in a pod. That is not easy to do either… so we left today’s count at “several hundred.”
The whales we saw spouting, and there were at least two of them, were probably Bryde’s or tropical whales; unfortunately we did not get a good look at them. But we did have an excellent view of a 10 foot manta ray that dove off our port bow and later we spied two mola mola (pelagic sunfish) to starboard. The best sighting of the morning however was a small pod of rare Cuvier’s beaked whales. They surfaced very close to the bow. We could easily notice their odd brown color and the slight melon head. An incredibly good view of this poorly known whale.
Following a hearty breakfast, as we crossed the equator line, the ship was boarded by mean and ugly pirates and a hairy King Neptune. All “Pollywogs” were baptised; luckily we escaped without anyone having to walk the plank. Since Neptune was appeased, our luck continued into the afternoon…
The snorkelers had an incredible outing. Everyone saw sea turtles (or even a dozen of them!) and some found iguanas grazing on algae in the rocky, underwater pastures. The afternoon walk along the rippled black shores of Punta Espinoza was equally magical. We found a few feeding penguins, one or two penguins posing on shore, a cormorant chasing fish in a shallow tide pool (and an octopus escaping him) and others at their seaweed-pile nests, huge iguanas slowly swimming and others peacefully grazing on exposed algae, oyster catchers with brilliant red legs poking into sea urchins for a meal, a hawk perched in a mangrove tree (and then on the Park Monument), sea turtles surfacing with a puff of air – the list of sights goes on and on.
If you asked each naturalist and each of our guests what was their personal highlight of the day, I am certain there would be an extremely long and varied list. Today was an AWESOME day!
