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GalapagosQuest is an interactive expedition developed by Classroom Connect that will take a team of scientists and explorers on a journey of discovery through the extraordinary Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. Follow along here for daily reports on their quest.
GalapagosQuest: Lethal Charm
March 3, 1999 By Dan Buettner (Classroom Connect) -- From a distance, the beach in Gardner Bay, on the Galapagos' southern-most island, looks like it could be any one of a number of American beaches. The long white strip of sand is littered with hundreds of overweight sun-bathers and their kids. Some frolic in the water, others snuggle with their mates, while others just snooze and catch rays. It's a scene you might witness on a hot day in Santa Monica, Atlantic City or Fort Lauderdale. Difference is, none of the unshapely bodies here are human. It was 1 a.m. before we hauled anchor on the Samba last night and began the nine-hour journey from Santa Cruz to Gardner Bay on Espanola island. Our deadline for transmitting reports to the United States is 11 p.m. But we discovered that when the sea rocks our boat, it's nearly impossible to keep our satellite dish locked on the satellite. It took two hours to beam up our signal.
Once at sea, the Quest team retired to their bunks below deck. That only lasted a few hours though. The equatorial night was so hot and humid that by 3 a.m., the team had crawled back out of the hole and collapsed on deck. There, we slept under a blazing full moon with cooling breezes blowing off the Pacific Ocean. By 10 a.m. we had dropped anchor in Gardner Bay. After a breakfast of corn flakes and kiwi fruit, we boarded a small dingy ("panga"} and motored into shore. The sun bathers on the beach turned out to be Galapagos sea lions -- a subspecies of the California sea lions -- all warming up in the morning sun.
Determined to observe these lumbering beasts on my own terms, I took a long walk along the coast, past some lava boulders, to a spot where 21 sea lions had staked out a patch of sand. I walked up to within 10 feet of a sleeping bull and sat down. Nothing happened. I crept closer, to within five feet. Nothing. Finally, I nudged up until I sat less than three feet in front of the bull. He opened his eye and flung up his head. Startled, I leaped back. For a long moment, we stared at each other. Bull sea lions have been known to bite intruders. Since their mouths are so full of bacteria, the bite almost always infects the surrounding flesh and takes a long time to heal. Moreover, this animal must have weighed 500 pounds -- it was like confronting an angry Sumu wrestler. But this bull wasn't in the mood to attack. This sea lion's face looked amazingly like a dog's face. He had a long snout, whispy whiskers, and a cute, rounded, forehead that made me want pet him. Unlike a dog, he had tiny ears set far back on his head and looking like chewed cigar butts. But what most caught my attention were his eyes, which were big and brown and regarded me with supreme indifference. He plopped his head down into the sand and resumed his nap. He couldn't care less about me or that I had stopped by to visit him. I began to feel mildly insulted. I'm so used to animals running, flying or swimming away from me that it startled me to have an animal just ignore me. For all he knows, I could be an animal catcher from the zoo. If he isn't careful, he could end up spending the rest of his life balancing a beach ball on his nose for 5-year-olds. The presence of people in the Galapagos is but a blink of an eye in the island's 5-million-year history. But in the brief 300 years that we humans have occupied the Galapagos, we've managed to cause the extinction of eight of the 14 mammal species here. Another three are endangered. Part of the sea lion's charm is that they haven't learned to fear humans. Is this a good thing, or could their charm spell their doom? Flippers Up! Dan RELATED STORIES: Galapagos volcano eruption forces evacuation of giant tortoises RELATED SITES: Classroom Connect
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