Galapagos: Galapagos Underwater

Roughly 20% of the fishes in the waters around the Galapagos are endemic, meaning they can be found nowhere else. By Galapagos standards the waters are absolutely cosmopolitan, even if that number is fantastically high by the standards of most ecosystems.

Enter the waters here, and you are overwhelmed with snappers, parrot fish, sergeant majors, and star fish. Today, while snorkeling off the coast of Isabella, we met an astonishing number of creatures. Within 30 seconds of entering the water, I was greeted by the first spectacular sighting of the day – a shark. In our tellings of the story, the shark has grown to be well over 50 feet. However, it was probably about 6 feet – a white tip shark. The hammerheads have proven to be less cooperative.

About one minute and several dozen brightly colored fish after the shark swam off, a pacific green sea turtle swam into view. These endemic sea turtles are nesting at the moment, so they wait close to shore for night to come. When it does, they haul themselves up past the high tide mark and bury their eggs in the soft sand, leaving tracks that look suspiciously like truck tires. They are amazing creatures, and quite common on these islands. Already a number of my travel partners have grown bored of them. I haven't.

Later, I feel a tugging at my flippers. Malcolm, an English traveler who used to work for the Saudi royal family, point at a bunch of Galapagos penguins. They slowly approached, apparently curious about what they were seeing in their normally human free waters. After investigating for a bit, they must have decided that I was nothing of interest, and disappeared into the ocean.

This was followed by a Galapagos sea lion, an endemic species closely related to the California sea lion. They are entirely tame here. At one point, I was walking along the beach, looking at the sea when Maru, a girl with my group, pushed my chest to make me stop walking. I was about to trip over a sea lion that was walking past. The sea lion was nonplussed – it simply looked up at me, barked at me, and kept moving.

After that came a flightless cormorant. Cormorants here have lost the ability to fly. They still sun their wings, but for no apparent purpose. The wings that they have left are little more than stubs. Out of water they are awkward looking creatures, stumbling about on the rocks and getting into shouting matches with blue footed boobies like drunks on binge. Moving about the underwater rocks like mercury, searching for food hidden in the crevices, they possess a grace under water that that is utter lacking on land.

In 1998, the waters surrounding the islands were declared a marine reserve, and is protected under both Ecuadoran and international law. Despite these protections, and genuine enforcement efforts, these waters remain under siege. Poaching continues, with long lines and nets drowning countless numbers of birds, turtles and sea lions. The damage done to reefs and other underwater habitats is difficult to quantify, as is the economic damage done to people who try to support themselves sustainably on these islands. (Including the many local fishermen who play by the rules.)

Not every snorkel trip has been that eventful. Sometimes the water is murky, sometimes there is just nothing there. This isn't an aquarium, but, at least for the time being, this is one of the best places to experience some of the best underwater wildlife viewing this world has to offer.