Isabela & Fernandina Islands
Today we were navigating along the volcano boulevard. We were surrounded by six different volcanoes, five of them, on one side, belong to Isabela Island with a land mass of over 70 miles long, and on the other side we have the youngest giant volcano in Galápagos, Fernandina Island.
I remember some years ago when I passed through this channel and was so impressed to see one of them erupting. It was one of the most amazing things that I have ever seen in my life; to see the power of nature and see how weak we are in front of it.
We are today over the hot spot in Galápagos. Here is where all the Galapagos Islands were formed some millions of years ago; but here is also where we can see in the easiest manner, evolution on earth. Some birds, like penguins, came from the southern hemisphere, then changed and evolved here to adapt to this hot environment. But a cormorant also came from the mainland, arrived to these islands, changed their behavior and transformed, generation over generation, into a flightless bird. It is nowadays known as the Galápagos flightless cormorant.
If you are connected to nature you can read it, and may predict the changes year by year. We can tell the planet is warming up and some species are trying to adapt to this change, including humans.
In the morning we had a brief glimpse of pilot whales, followed by a boat ride along the coast of Isabela Island which included bottle-nosed dolphins and ocean sunfish. In the afternoon we had the opportunity to walk on one of the most active islands in Galápagos, Fernandina Island. We walked along the sea shore of this island where we saw a giant colony of marine iguanas, but also we had the opportunity to explore the intertidal zone where we saw invertebrates and fish that were trapped temporarily by the low tide in pools.
We all came back on board with great memories about these young, giant volcanoes.
Today we were navigating along the volcano boulevard. We were surrounded by six different volcanoes, five of them, on one side, belong to Isabela Island with a land mass of over 70 miles long, and on the other side we have the youngest giant volcano in Galápagos, Fernandina Island.
I remember some years ago when I passed through this channel and was so impressed to see one of them erupting. It was one of the most amazing things that I have ever seen in my life; to see the power of nature and see how weak we are in front of it.
We are today over the hot spot in Galápagos. Here is where all the Galapagos Islands were formed some millions of years ago; but here is also where we can see in the easiest manner, evolution on earth. Some birds, like penguins, came from the southern hemisphere, then changed and evolved here to adapt to this hot environment. But a cormorant also came from the mainland, arrived to these islands, changed their behavior and transformed, generation over generation, into a flightless bird. It is nowadays known as the Galápagos flightless cormorant.
If you are connected to nature you can read it, and may predict the changes year by year. We can tell the planet is warming up and some species are trying to adapt to this change, including humans.
In the morning we had a brief glimpse of pilot whales, followed by a boat ride along the coast of Isabela Island which included bottle-nosed dolphins and ocean sunfish. In the afternoon we had the opportunity to walk on one of the most active islands in Galápagos, Fernandina Island. We walked along the sea shore of this island where we saw a giant colony of marine iguanas, but also we had the opportunity to explore the intertidal zone where we saw invertebrates and fish that were trapped temporarily by the low tide in pools.
We all came back on board with great memories about these young, giant volcanoes.
