Full moon affects all fluids on earth: the big oceans, the seas, and the rivers. It seems to affect even the fluids than run through the body of living creatures: the sap inside the trees and the blood in animals.
It affects me. On the full moon I wake up jumping and hyperactive. Today, however, I saw for myself that it also affects some of the most wonderful creatures on earth, the cetaceans.
Early in the morning we found several bottle-nosed dolphins bow riding. Dozens of common dolphins interrupted breakfast with their huge flips out of the water. A pair of unidentified "beaked whales" appeared for several seconds around Punta Vicente Roca. But the ultimate was the pod of bottle-nosed dolphins that played with us in the afternoon, right around our anchorage site in Fernandina Island.
Daniel Sanchez, our underwater camera specialist, spotted them first. He got wonderful footage, and meanwhile he met a great friend: "scar-fin". This was an extremely sociable dolphin that got really close to Daniel and his camera; sometimes too close, to the point of making our naturalist a bit nervous. Daniel and "scar-fin" swam together for a long while, as we later saw it in the footage Daniel showed at recap.
At least one-third of our guests had the chance to not only see the dolphins from above the water, but to join them in the water. People jumped off the Zodiacs, some were all equipped with wet suits and fins, as they had been ready to snorkel anyway. Some, like Cindy and I, just jumped in with our clothes on.
This is one of my best experiences ever in the Galapagos. To look at dolphin's faces while being in their medium, to hear their clicking, to feel their splashes on my back. The full moon and the dolphins, and the whole experience of cetacean and blue waters today, keep me smiling and singing, keep me "alunada".
And…this is a message to the Detroit Academy of Arts and Science students: Hawaii is the only place in the world with more volcanic activity than the special group of islands SHE is visiting.
