June 9, 2004 - Darwin

We are now anchored for the evening not far from the cliffs of despair Darwin, the familiar smell of bird guano permeating the air. Red-footed boobies, frigate birds and red-billed tropicbirds are flying around everywhere, and it seems as if every inch of the island is covered with a nest of some sort. This place is magical.

June 10, 2004 - Darwin

We took some time after the second dive to snorkel with the colony of Galapagos sea lions and fur sea lions in the little inlet by our anchorage. The inlet at Darwin is my favorite place to be in the water with sea lions. There are a lot of them, and the fur sea lions float in the water staring at you head-down with their tail flippers sticking up into the air. Seeing them like that is enough to make me laugh out loud. :) I was approached by the bull when I ventured closer to the shoreline, but he merely stared at me for a moment and then swam off. But he did come extremely close to me -- close enough to make me nervous. In fact, I took a photo of him with my full-frame fisheye lens, and he's filling the frame!

I took a break during the fourth dive of the day and instead sat up on the upper deck to watch the thousands of birds on Darwin. As dusk approached we started seeing frequent frigate bird attacks on red-footed and Nazca boobies. Frigates are kleptoparasitic, and get most of their food by stealing it from other animals. They are so agile in the air that they can take food from the throat of a booby while still in the air! The boobies honk wildly as they are being attacked, but it's clear that they are outmatched in the air. Because frigates will not dive into the ocean, I saw some of the boobies dive straight for water, which seems like an effective defense. I was excited to witness more attacks, but they seemed to die off as the sun dropped below the horizon.

June 11, 2004 - Darwin

We also took half an hour to cruise around Darwin Island in our pangas. The topography of the island is really amazing, with sheer cliffs up to 400' high around virtually the entire island. One side hosts a large, crumbling inlet with a sharp, tall pinnacle jutting out from the middle of the water. I wish I had taken my wide-angle lens