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Isla de la Plata
I spent last week on Isla de la Plata, aka The Poor Man's Galapagos.The island is roughly 30 miles offshore from Puerto Lopez and is part of Parque Nacional Machalilla which means there are fewer tourists (as only certain boats with certain guides are allowed to visit), and a LOT of unique marine life to observe!
I was so happy getting in that boat the day we left as I had been anticipating getting out on the ocean for the last couple of weeks.For the most part, the ocean is really calm in Puerto Lopez making it super easy to see fish jump, turtles breach for air, and birds dive for food.Seeing all this from shore makes you just want to hop on a boat and get out there to see everything up close.The whole boat ride to the island was full of excitement as new birds started to appear in the air all around us, and all kinds of crazy fish were showing off as we passed by in the boat.I almost @#*% when I saw my first flying fish breach the surface and fly at least 70 m. across the water behind the boat.It was incredible!
We certainly weren't 'roughing it' (which honestly I was a tad bit disappointed about at first) as there is a big house for people who work for the park to stay in, with a kitchen and legitimate toilets.There is no running water, though we brought plenty of bottled water, fruits, vegetables, pasta, and rice to live on for the week.We shared the living quarters with a group of guys from the states (most from Oregon and California) who are part of a non-profit organization called Island Conservation.They have been on the island for the last month and will be there through February killing ferrel cats.The cats are a recently introduced species that were becoming a problem for the sea bird populations that nest there.As an attempt to eradicate them, Island Conservation was brought in.As of now there are an expected 10 cats left on the whole island, needless to say those boys cleaned up pretty well.Though killing cats is not my idea of a good time and quite frankly I think it's a little morbid, it was exciting to witness a (seemingly) successful invasive species eradication where only the target species was eliminated. It is rarely that 'easy' and safe for the other animals. So now my friends at Equilibrio Azul think guys from Oregon are total weird-o's as they seem to get a thrill out of trapping and killing small animals.I just shook my head and smiled and couldn't help but think to myself, "hmmm, maybe they're not so off the mark" ;-)
Needless to say, we were in good company on the island, though we had different work schedules for the most part and only conversed briefly while wandering upon one another on the trails around the island, or back at the house around dinner time.I was able to snatch some killer pictures from one of the guys named Rory.Be sure to check em out as they are a good account of the plant and animal life on the island!
As far as work went, we seemed to be a lot busier on the island compared to our daily duties in Puerto Lopez.By day we set out nets to capture and mark Green Sea Turtles (I got some awesome snorkel time in while doing this), walked the trails on the island to get data on all of the major colonies of resident sea birds, and went diving two days in a row to scout sites for Antonella's coral project.By night we monitored the beach for turtles coming to nest.The resident Green Sea Turtle population at the island is decently healthy and there are quite a few nests on the beach next to the house, so I got a lot of practice at the whole routine of data collection with the turtles.They are literally everywhere in the bay in front of the house and they swam with us while snorkeling and diving-curious little creatures those turtles!
As for the birds…there are three species of Piquero's/Booby's, and two species of Frigate Birds that nest on Isla de la Plata.We walked all the trails and did a good amount of off-road exploring to get familiar with the island and all of its bird populations.The Booby's are so silly, they just sit in the middle of the trail and look at you with their cocked head and funny little faces.Once in a while one will squak at you and flap its wings in an attempt to protect its young, but all in all they are completely harmless and would be lucky to hurt a fly, which it just so happens, is why they are so endangered ;-)
So yeah, the Blue-Footed Booby's are just plain neat looking, the Red-Footed Booby's and Nazca Booby's on the other hand are really beautiful.The Nazca or Masked Booby's are very abundant on the island, they are a bit bigger and a little more skittish than the Blue-Footed Booby's though we still were within 3 meters of most of them while doing the censuses.Unfortunately, there are only about 30 Red-Footed Booby's on the island. They are the only species of Booby that nests in trees so we did the bird census with binoculars though we were able to get within about 30 meters of their nesting site.Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any pictures of them and really wish I would have because they are so unique.They have grayish-cream or white plumage, a blue beak, and bright red feet.Mica and I had good luck the day we did the Red-Footed Booby census as we watched a coupled pair courting and then mate, (awesome!), and got to see one of the babies cuddling with its parent (super cute!).
Speaking of reproductive behaviors.. it was my last night on the island and as usual, we were watching the AMAZING colors in the sky over the ocean and in the water from our balcony as the sun was setting.The ocean was super calm, like a swimming pool, and you could see every movement the turtles in the bay were making.Fabian and I were sitting there watching a few of the turtles and they seemed to be spending an unusual amount of time on the surface and were doing funny things like keeping their fins in the air for a few seconds at a time. We did what any good observer would do and grabbed our binoculars to see what was going on with these turtles.Something must have been in the air (or water) as we watched at least four pairs of turtles do their thing.We think that one male might have been responsible for more than one of our observances-busy night for those turtles it turned out to be!Actually, lots of animals seemed to be busy on that island working to keep their gene pools alive.On the trail we observed lizards and skinks, a species of fly similar to our vicious Horse flies, smaller birds, some kind of cool-looking bee, and dragonflies mating like crazy.Good times for us nerdy/quirky biologists!
Other adventures included watching a HUGE school of dolphins play like crazy in the ocean in front of the house.They were having a hay day for about 3 hours feeding on what we hypothesized to be a school of Yellowfin tuna.All the birds from the island were out there causing havoc with them as well-feeding frenzy!We think they were your typical Pacific Bottlenose dolphins.Oh man, could they jump!There is never a dull moment with the Cetaceans, that's for sure.One morning I saw a fin breach and thought I had seen an Orca but was confused because what I saw was more grey than black.I knew it wasn't a dolphin because it was much slower and there was only a single individual.After watching the bay for about 10 minutes the animal finally began to breach again.We decided it must have been a Pilot Whale just passing by as it was pretty small, grey, and had a small dorsal fin.
Overall, it was a wonderful week and I look forward to going back.And though I didn't really want to come back to Puerto Lopez, getting to eat ice cream whenever I want and shower in fresh water made the whole adjustment much easier! I will be returning to the island in a couple of short weeks to begin our big dive project and will be pretty busy in PL until then, so there really isn't any time to be sad about not getting to spend more time watching turtles and dolphins play in the ocean from my balcony. Something else to look forward to…CARNIVAL starts this weekend and lasts until Tuesday. The town is supposed to (at least) double in size for the four day fiesta.So, yippee for religion and giving all of South America an excuse to party for four days straight before everyone has to be all strict for lent!
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