Los Islotes & Espiritu Santo Island
A group of eight bottle-nose dolphins made their way under the bow as we approached Los Islotes this morning. The dolphins took advantage of the powerful cushion of water our ship the National Geographic Sea Bird produced while navigating towards these wonderful islets where we were hoping to observe, and snorkel with, California sea lions.
After our ship dropped the anchor we set up the platform for snorkeling and played amongst the most acrobatic of all the pinnipeds, the sea lions. Los Islotes is known world-wide for the “tameness” of these animals. The light was bright and the ocean very calm, so visibility into the water allowed spectacular views of the sea lions playing and wandering around us. Other sea creatures were seen as well, like sea urchins, schools of different fish species, crabs, sea stars, and so on. Above the surface of the water, while doing Zodiac boat cruises, our teams found, either flying and gliding, or just perched on the steep cliffs, dozens of blue-footed boobies, brown boobies, brown pelicans, yellow-footed gulls and others. The scenery was very enjoyable, especially for the dramatic aspect of the rock structures, of volcanic origin, that were carved after thousands of years of weathering and erosion. While on these thoughts, unexpectedly a young sea lion jumped up over one of the Zodiac boats, and posed for us!
After our time with the sea lions was over we navigated along the eastern side of the island called Espiritu Santo, our afternoon’s destination, in order to undertake some measurements of the Minimum Oxygen Zone as part of a project developed by the partnership between the National Geographic Society and Lindblad Expeditions.
For the afternoon activities we disembarked in a beautiful harbor locally known as Ensenada Grande on Espiritu Santo Island. The water of this bay is shallow and emerald-colored, and it is surrounded by an impressive pink-colored amphitheater made of volcanic tuff. Here there was more snorkeling and kayaking, but our guests and naturalists also walked to reach either the eastern, high side of the island, or wandered to find the wonders of life on this ever-green island. Some inhabitants were seen: dozens of land birds of different species, butterflies, lizards, the endemic antelope ground squirrel and, to our delight, three chuckwallas, iguana-allied lizards that live on the rocky foothills. One small chuckwalla allowed us to get close and we captured the details of its scales with our cameras.
With this, our remarkable journey among the grey whales came to a glorious end.
