Celebrate Diversity: Under the Sea in the Galapagos

In trying to write about my time in the Galapagos, I find myself at a loss for adequate words to describe what I have seen.  Both land and sea are teeming with so much life...  it's remarkable.  Since I have already shared a few of my favorite terrestiral creatures, this post is dedicated just to the diversity of life underwater. 

Before I begin, I just want to apologize for the quality of the pictures in this post.  My water camera takes terrible photos. After a dive, I usually only save about 10% of the pictures, since the rest are unrecognizable.

Fortunately, I discovered that I can upload low resolution video, like those from my cheap diving camera. So rather than struggling to describe some of my favorite underwater moments, I can show them to you

The better images came from the dive company whose guides use a camera and housing on each dive. On my to-do list this year, is to buy a nice underwater camera. So hopefully in the coming years, the images should be a lot better!

But, let's get back to the good stuff, shall we?

To start off with, I have spent 4 days diving in the Galapagos, diving a few of the more famous sites: Santa Fe, Floreana, Daphne Minor, North Seymour and Gordon Rocks.  I have never been around so many fish.  Especially when I was diving at Champion wall, near Floreana Island, at times there were so many fish around me, that I got a bit disoriented for a moment.  It was hard to tell which way was up.

 

Once the shock and awe of the sheer abundance of life wore off, and I looked more carefully at the fish, the first thing I noticed is how much the fish here resemble fish is the Carribean.  In some cases, the fish look like a mix between two different Carribean species.

 These Razor Surgeonfish are the best example.  They clearly have the typical surgeonfish shape, as well as the spine on thier cordal peduncle, but they look like a cross with a porkfish, having the typical white, black and yellow patterns on the head and tail.

Another familiar face here, was the Angelfish.  In the Carribean, we saw a lot of Queen and Grey Angelfish, but here, I saw my first King Angelfish!  Your Majesty....

 

These lobster look quite the same as their Carribean relatives: colorful, and without the classic large front claws like Maine lobster.

 

These lovely fish are called Moorish Idols.  They are slightly bigger than my hand.

One major difference here, is in the sea stars.  In all my dives previous to here, I have never seen a sea star.   Here, sea stars are everywhere.  You generally see between 50-100 in a dive.

There is some slight variation in their colors, but for the most part, they look as though they have been crocheted!

You probably can't tell from those pictures, but they are all huge!  larger than a dinner plate!

 

There are a couple other species of stars, too.  This one looks like it is a dessert!

And this one looks like a sugar decoration on a birthday cake!  But really, it's about 8" across....

One of my tried and true favorite friends in the ocean is still the sea turtle.  No surprise there, I'm sure.  I have already written a lot about their land activities, but here is just a quick shot of their marine life.  Even though they weigh hundreds of pounds, they move gracefully through the water.  Between snorkeling and diving, I have probably seen about 60 sea turtles here, all of which were Pacfic Green. The largest was maybe 3 1/2 feet across, but most are between 2-3 feet long.  They spend most of their time relaxing on the sea floor, munching on tender sea weeds.

Rays have been an interesting part of my time underwater here.  All together, I have seen 5 different species of ray.  Rays remain one of my favorite under water creatures.  They swim so smoothly through the water as if flying.  We came upon a few small stingrays, like these one whose bodies are about 18" long.

One of the crowning moments, however, were these two enormous Marbled rays.  I saw them on two different dives, and each time was so struck by their size--they are the size of a poker table.   Because they are round, they propel themselves through the water by sending a series of ripples through the edge of their fins.

 And don't worry, though it may look like I'm touching this ray, I would NEVER dare.  I'm really about 3 feet away on a rock.

Another memorable moment was this lovely school of spotted eagle rays, the largest of whom was probably about 4' long.  We saw them from a distance of about 30 feet (10 meters), but they still took my breath away.

I did have some luck with dolphins. Although to this day, I still have not been in the water any closer than maybe 40 feet, I did have a few close enounters on this trip. The first was when I went diving. Just as we arrived at our dive site, the captain spotted a pod of dolphins, so we circled around for a little while, watching them play with our wake.

The second close encounter was one night on the boat, when I couldn't sleep.  I was laying in my bed with the window open when I heard a series of about 8 blows.  A small pod of dolphins had surfaced around our boat.  It was too dark to see much, but I heard them a few more times that night.

But of course, no underwater excursion to the Galapagos would be complete without a sighting of our misunderstood fishie friends: sharks. I have had wonderful luck in that area here, having seen about 20 Hammerheads, 20 Galapagos Sharks, and 18 White Tips. Most have been 1.5 to 2 meters long, and all have been calm and relaxed, passing us by without a second thought. In fact, if I were to note any reaction to human presence, it was avoidance. Because of that, most of my interactions were fleeting, but I savored every second of them.

One of about 20 hammerheads I saw diving at Gordon Rocks.

A group of 6 young white tips we roused from thier cozy nap under a rocky overhang.

Another unexpected bucket list item was filled just yesterday.  As we dove along the sloping decline of Daphne Menor, one of the divers caught sight of a faint shadow, about 30 feet away.  Swimming closer, we were all overjoyed by what we saw.

We ran into this Manta Ray 3 more times that dive, each time getting a better and better view.  At one point, we were right above him, close enough to touch.  Absolutely remarkable dive.

While there have been many amazing underwater animals, Sea Lions are definitely at the top of the list of underwater memories.  The young ones are just so playful...  it's hard not to fall in love with them.  They are so graceful and powerful, swimming quickly through the water with what looks like little effort.  For the most part the adults notice you, give you a look as if to say, don't mess with my baby, but keep on their way, but the young sea lions twirl and twist, dive and bob, and richochet of rocks like a pinball game. 

Even when swimming my hardest I couldn't keep up with their acrobatics, and was instead left winded.

Overall, my time underwater has been incredibly fulfilling.  Around every corner there is something new to see.  I saw so much life, so much diversity, it was incredibly rejuvinating.  So often when diving, I see reefs on the decline, garbage, fading fish populations, but it is good to know there are still some places that are havens.  Diving may be an expensive hobby, but I have to say that this trip has felt well worth every penny.

From Nesting to Liberacion

I have already explained how we go about checking on the nests that have been protected, and have shown you a bit of what happens if the nests are not viable, or not yet ready to hatch.  In this post, I hope to explain to you the process used at Vida Milenaria (the organization run by Papa Tortuga) and what happens to the hatchlings once they have hatched.  And by the way, here we are.  Me, and my new good friend, Fernando Manzano, Papa Tortuga himself.

Come to think of it, I think you ought to see the folks working on the VM project.  Here are most of the field workers and camp-based staff: the folks responsible for physically moving and maintaining nests, as well as the people who receive and educate the visitors, as well at the Manzano family to the right.

Here are he forbears of the VM project.  From left to right: Ermenio, Fernando, Vincent, Changa, and Chico. 

Here are Jorge (left) and Nue (right) two of the younger members of the team along with Kilo, one of the original members of the team.  They are the workhorses that get a lot of the behind-the-scenes work done.

 Here is a mixture of staff (Amanda in the royal blue T, Kilo to her left, and to his left Jorge) and volunteers (Cesar, Michelle, Sandi,and myself).

 Here is Fernando with some of his biggest supporters--the bulk of the TTPP--husband and wife team Laura and Scott, Sandra and Lazaro.

 I am sure that there are still even more people that I have not mentioned here.  This project takes a lot of work, and will need even more in the future as the turtle population continues to recover. 
but I digress....

I am glad to report that more often than not, we have experienced a lot of success.  In just the 10 days I have been here, I myself have witnessed the release of over 2,500 turtles.  And this is the low end of the season!  Looking at thier records, it appears as though VM workers have helped with about 600 Lora nests this season (they nest between April and June, hatching about 45 days later).  Each nest contains anywhere from 30-100 eggs.  The idea is pretty straightforward: protect the eggs from anything that might want to eat them: dogs, coyotes, crabs, birds of prey, but especially, humans.  How they achieve this goal depends on a lot of possible factors.  The largest factor is that there is a small window after an egg has been laid when it can safely be moved to a new location without harming it.  If the workers wait too long, a drastic change in temperature and moisture can kill the eggs before they even have the chance to develop.  Here are the possible methods used by VM workers a nest has been laid, from the easiest and most straightforward, to the most delicate. 

1. Best possible scenario: The turtle has laid her nest in a safe area, with few human inhabitants, boat traffic or other dangers.  In this case, the workers protect the nest with the wire mesh, mark it, and note its location in their records along with the nesting date in order to check on it later.  
2. Scenario 2: The nest was successfully laid, but in a dangeous area.  In this case, the workers (who patrol the beaches continually all day since some species of turtle nest in the day and others at night) carefully dig up the nest, and transport the eggs to a safer area, where they rebury the eggs, cover it with wire mesh, bury and mark it in their records.
3. Scenario 3:  During the high nesting season, so many nests are laid, that the workers often can't keep up with the process.  If option 2 is unavailable, sometimes they have to take one of the three possible options when moving a nest:

• Put multiple nests (deposited on the same day) next to one another so that they can be covered by the same wire mesh, and be checked or collected at the same time.  The only possible draw back is that even if turtles make their nests on the same day, there's no guarantee that their eggs will hatch on the exact same day.  You run the risk of losing any that might hatch earlier than expected.
• Once, a nest was even relocated the Fernando's yard!  It is far from ideal, but the nest was laid in a high traffic area, and there wasn't time to move it before it would harm the eggs to be moved.
• Laslty, some nests end up being reared in boxes.  This quick solution allows the workers to protect the nest in enough time, without having to go far away to re-bury it.  Each box is carefully stored in a cooler, and labeled with their date.

Once the eggs have had enough time to develop, the wokrers return to check on the nests in nature, as you saw me do last week.  Here, for example, are some very healthy eggs that are due to hatch in a few days, with the hatchlings ready to be let out into the world a few days after that.  

 

This little guy is one of the ones being raised in a box in Fernando's home.  We checked on his batch, and they were doing quite well.  They should be ready to be released in a several days.  As you can see he is still developing.

These little guys are a few days older now.  They have mostly all broken out of their eggs, but still need a couple more days to fully develop and be ready to meet the world.

 

In comparison to the nests we checked on last week, I went with my friend Ermenio earlier this week to check on a few nests.  Here 6 nests, that had been laid on the same day, were but one next to the other, and they were due to hatch today.  What good luck!  All six nests were healthy, and we collected about 800 hatchlings to bring back to camp!

This photo of hatchlings that were just born this morning.  Below it, is how they look 1-2 days later when they have fully matured, and are ready to be released.

This is where the fun really starts!  We get to share the excitement with visitors!  El Liberacion!  Every day loads of visitors line up outside our gates for thier chance to release a little Lora into the sea.  They receive a general orientation on the organization, it's history, and they work being done to protect marine turtltes. 

Then we bring them all down to the ocean, where they each get a little guy like this!  On the count of three, we carefully place them on the beach, and watch them make their way to the ocean.

It's a pretty amazing process really.  It's hard to imagine a time when there were almost no turtle nests.  But now, thanks to the work of Fernando and his crew, the future is looking much more bright for the Lora.   Despite all the hard work by the VM crew, there is still a lot of danger for the Lora, and other marine species of turtle.  As it is, even with their best effort, Fernando explained to me that for every 1,000 that are released, probably only about 300 return to nest here.  It is up to us to help try to increase that number.  Increased awareness of our environmental impact and responsible consumerism can help, as well as helping prevent avaidable disasters like the more recent oil spill in the gulf.  But I digress again.  That's another topic for another day.  But if you feel so moved, here is the link to the Tecolutla Turtle Preservation Project, an organization supporting Fernando and his crew's efforts.  Any donation would be very welcome.  But I'll leave you on a happy note.  Gorgeous images of nature at her best...