Fernandina Island
Every week is special in the Galapagos Islands and every day brings a new experience here in paradise.
Today we visited two different islands, Isabela and Fernandina, which are the two youngest islands in the archipelago. Both are less than a million years old, so it is a great area to admire first-stage shield volcanoes. These surrounded us all day, with views of spectacular fresh lava flows and other volcanic features. This is one of the most active oceanic volcanic areas in the world, rivaled only by Hawaii: the last eruption here was in 1998, on Cerro Azul, the southernmost volcano of Isabela.
Not only is the landscape in this area unique, but the cool upwellings of the Cromwell Current make it a great area when it comes to marine life sightings. Today we saw a record number of Mola mola (oceanic sun fish), green Pacific sea turtles, blue footed boobies, penguins, marine iguanas. We visited a place that we call Marine Iguana City, where thousands of these unique creatures were grazing, resting and fighting.
We also saw the two flightless endemic birds in Galapagos: the penguin and the flightless cormorant. Populations of both these unique birds are very small, but today we had the opportunity to observe them in their nesting area: in this picture we can see a female flightless cormorant on the nest, guarding her two week-old chicks. We could not believe our eyes as less than 10ft away from us the mother regurgitated a whole fish for her chick, which swallowed a big piece all at once. The Galapagos cormorant is the only cormorant in the world that is flightless, their wings are reduced to straggly stubs, and to move out of the water they hop around like penguins from rock to rock. The day had a spectacular ending, as from the Polaris we spent about an hour watching a Bryde’s whale and her calf feeding: first rolling on one side to take large mouthfuls of the plankton-rich water, then surfacing for a breath. All this on a backdrop of fire and volcanoes, as the sun set over another spectacular day on Fernandina.
Every week is special in the Galapagos Islands and every day brings a new experience here in paradise.
Today we visited two different islands, Isabela and Fernandina, which are the two youngest islands in the archipelago. Both are less than a million years old, so it is a great area to admire first-stage shield volcanoes. These surrounded us all day, with views of spectacular fresh lava flows and other volcanic features. This is one of the most active oceanic volcanic areas in the world, rivaled only by Hawaii: the last eruption here was in 1998, on Cerro Azul, the southernmost volcano of Isabela.
Not only is the landscape in this area unique, but the cool upwellings of the Cromwell Current make it a great area when it comes to marine life sightings. Today we saw a record number of Mola mola (oceanic sun fish), green Pacific sea turtles, blue footed boobies, penguins, marine iguanas. We visited a place that we call Marine Iguana City, where thousands of these unique creatures were grazing, resting and fighting.
We also saw the two flightless endemic birds in Galapagos: the penguin and the flightless cormorant. Populations of both these unique birds are very small, but today we had the opportunity to observe them in their nesting area: in this picture we can see a female flightless cormorant on the nest, guarding her two week-old chicks. We could not believe our eyes as less than 10ft away from us the mother regurgitated a whole fish for her chick, which swallowed a big piece all at once. The Galapagos cormorant is the only cormorant in the world that is flightless, their wings are reduced to straggly stubs, and to move out of the water they hop around like penguins from rock to rock. The day had a spectacular ending, as from the Polaris we spent about an hour watching a Bryde’s whale and her calf feeding: first rolling on one side to take large mouthfuls of the plankton-rich water, then surfacing for a breath. All this on a backdrop of fire and volcanoes, as the sun set over another spectacular day on Fernandina.
