The second full day of our expedition in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez proved to be a memorable one; it started earlier than usual as many of us brave souls landed on San Esteban Island well before sunrise. San Esteban Island is located in the Gulf’s midriff region and pretty much in the middle between the mainland and the peninsula of Baja California, in the perfect place to watch the sun rising over the ocean. We climbed up a small elevation behind the beach and chose a cardón cactus or century plant to add a dramatic silhouette to the fiery-orange sky and a sense of place to our pictures. And to make it an even more memorable experience, our hotel department regaled us with a delicious breakfast on the beach! Later we continued our explorations on the island while hiking the desert arroyo and looking for two of the more charismatic reptiles endemic to San Esteban Is., the pinto chuckwalla and the spiny-tailed iguana; our search was successful and several individuals of both species got their picture taken more times than a super-model.
In the meanwhile, naturalist Mike Greenfelder and I went scuba diving in order to document the underwater world of San Esteban; the water today was murky and cold, the way it should be in this region of strong upwellings and high productivity. The low water temperature is perfect for numerous kinds of sea weeds and it was possible to see great examples of major taxonomic levels growing on top of a single rock there, than in entire land environments; I mean more highly diverse examples of the diversity of life in the same reef here than, let’s say, the several hundreds of thousands of insect species found in the Amazon.
The National Geographic Sea Bird sailed a short distance to the northwest and anchored off the small Rasa Island, famous because of the abundance of Hermann’s gulls and elegant terns. In fact, it is considered to be the place where 90-95% of the world’s populations of both species nest! We explored its shores with our DIBs and marveled at the beauty and exuberance of life concentrated in such a small area, putting an end to a truly wonderful day in the Sea of Cortez.
