Life at the station
My working day at the Marine Biology (BIOMAR) lab office begins early (by my standards), at 7:30am. Currently I am working on a restructure of the lobster population database, which holds location and size data for Green, Red and Chinese lobsters from when originally tagged and when recaptured.
I have also been involved in trying to resolve technical issues with a new website. I usually try and pop out for a quick breakfast at the station cafeteria sometime early morning. Lunch is from 12 to 1:30pm and my day usually ends at 5pm. It gets dark just after 6pm, so any wildlife viewing is done at a fair rate of knots!I was hoping to find a map of the station to share, but here instead a brief description:
The CDRS lies a few hundred metres from the National Park Entrance at the east end of Puerto Ayora township. Where the paved road ends, four buildings mark the entrance to the station. The station's shop and garage are on the left, and on the right are buildings housing reception, administration and computing services. The Marine Biology (BIOMAR) Laboratory/Office and the pier is slightly away from the rest of the station down a road on the right and the cafetaria is next door (handy!). The volunteers' accommodation (where I stay) sits about 100 metres from reception and basically overlooks the tortoises' breeding/viewing areas. Other buildings house the botany team and other terrestrial groups and there is a library, which I have yet to check out.
This last week it rained for long periods on most days. Usually I would be happy working inside during adverse weather, but here it somehow feels like you just might be missing out on a
potential wildlife encounter somewhere on your front doorstep. Frigate birds and pelicans are constantly soaring over the office roof. From the balcony you can watch the marine iguanas heading out on, and coming back from, their grazing trips out at sea. A seal often nonchalantly suns itself on the pier and will happily stay there while people work around it. See what I mean when I say, ‘on your front doorstep’....?Field trip
One activity that isn’t affected by rain is diving. Some of the fisheries team headed out on Thursday to collect and replace a number of shark tracking transmitters and a few other members of the BIOMAR team, including myself, tagged along. I was ever so slightly nervous. Last weeks ‘refresher’ dive hadn’t gone totally smoothly as I hadn’t quite got my bouyancy right. I had also been using air too quickly, which I tend to do when I haven’t dived for a while and don’t feel totally relaxed. Needless to say, all went well - although my air did go a little quicker than it should have.
We set off at 6:15am and had soon transferred our gear from our truck to the launch at the pier. A 20 minute boat ride took us to Gordon Rocks on the eastern side Santa Cruz Island.
We quickly suited up and the old transmitter was collected and replaced by two well practiced team members, Alex and Cesar. The rest of the dive was spent exploring. The area is renowned for its schools of Hammerhead sharks and for the odd whale shark passing through. Sharks were seen by some of the group and a couple of seals came to see what was going on.A 2 hour bumpy boat ride took us to our next dive site at Kicker Rock, the basalt remains of a crater; situated just off San Cristbóbal Island. There, another transmitter was replaced and again, we had the rest of the dive to look around. There were many Galápagos sharks in the channel between two towering, precarious looking rock columns. Worryingly, on a previous visit one of the team had heard a number of rocks crashing into the water nearby.
After the dive, a quick lunch stop in a sheltered bay off San Cristóbal was highlighted by the visitation of a group of playful visitors, one cheeky enough to jump up and haul himself deftly up onto the side of the boat on his front flippers, balancing there while grinning (seemingly) at us. On the way back, with less rough seas, I kept a close eye out for waved albatross; the only species of albatross that lives exclusively in the tropics and which many people consider to be endemic to the Galápagos Islands. I may have spotted one from afar, but couldn't be sure. See Waved Albatross fact sheet (pdf) and this from Birdlife for more information.
Below is a flash video of the trip, which is just under 5 minutes long to give you some idea of size.
Conservation Icon
I ended last week’s blog post mentioning a conservation icon. Lonesome George is the last remaining Pinta Island tortoise and has been living at the station since 1972. Until very recently he had shown no interest in 2 females of a similar species that he shares his enclosure with. His species was functionally extinct… that is, until just last month! FOGNZ has this news item and you could have a look at this from the guardian.co.uk website.I mentioned Alex, the fisheries group leader earlier in this week's post. He finished up last Friday after 6 years with the station and is heading off to the U.S. with his wife and daughter. He has been very welcoming and helpful during my first 2 weeks and I wish him well for the future.
I will also take this opportunity to wish my nephew and niece (Jaden and Emma) a very happy birthday. Also a belated happy birthday to Ollie and a big hello to Shelley.
That’s it for this week. Next week I’ll try and give you an idea of what there is to explore in Puerto Ayora township and the surrounding area...
Hasta luego.
Pete
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