Floreana Island
The Galápagos Islands are the most pristine equatorial archipelago of the world. We have conserved over 95% of our total biodiversity and part of it is due to the fact that humans didn’t colonize the islands until the late 1800’s. The environment was very hostile to human purposes.
After the discovery of the Islands in 1535, we had visitors that exploited the islands as much as possible. Whaling became a very lucrative activity, as well as hunting fur seals and of course the giant tortoise’s meat. English and Spanish came to the islands and named them. That’s the reason why many of our islands have three or more names: The Spanish, the English and later the Ecuadorian name. Today’s island is known as Charles, Santa Maria or Floreana Island.
We started our day by disembarking at Punta Cormorant, a place where we can’t find any cormorants! The place was named “Cormorant” after a ship that sank close to this point. We did find some other birds: Great Blue herons, Black necked Stilts, Great Egrets, Darwin finches, Galápagos flycatchers and almost at the end of the visit a beautiful pink bird landed in the middle of a brackish water lagoon: a Greater Flamingo! To complete or bird list we went in our Zodiacs to look for the elusive Floreana Mockingbird. Less than 200 individuals of this species survive in a little islet close to Floreana Island.
Snorkeling was a highlight! The cold waters of Humboldt Current are still around the islands situated at the southern side of the archipelago. We swam with playful Galápagos sea lions and Galápagos sharks, endemic fish as the Dusky chubs and tropical fish like the King Angel fish. Finally we saw some white tip reef sharks.
In the afternoon we disembarked on the Post Office Bay. We continued with a tradition that dates from 1792; when Captain James Colnett came to study the probabilities of establishing a whaling harbor in the archipelago. The harbor was never set but instead we had the oldest post system in the Pacific. A wooden barrel that kept the news from the English whalers until somebody could take them to their destination. We contributed to this story by leaving post cards and taking some to their journey's end.
Floreana is a mixture of nature and human history. Today a population of 130 people lives here trying to restore the island and to learn to live in balance with wildlife. If we can make it here…there is hope for the rest of the places in the world!
