Galapagos Day 4: James island

 

Note: I have typed up a really cool Galapagos history/geology talk we were given the previous night and it’s at the bottom of this post!

This morning we woke up for breakfast and then took a panga ride and a quick tour of “sombrero chino island.” It was a very hot morning but it looked like outer space.

The sombrero chino

Not a bad place for morning coffee 

Still looking the coolest

Blue footed booby

Looking at YOU!

Chilling

Marine iguana meditating on life

This isn’t weird it’s how marine iguanas hang out

Don’t judge the iguanas!

Then we went snorkeling and saw a giant tortoise and swam with a school of fish and Sylvia even saw a teeny Galapagos penguin in the water but he moved too fast and no one else saw. 

We had a siesta and Martin was annoyed that Sylvia passed him in The Dark Forest, the book they are reading at the same time. Boo hoo! The cruise also folded our towel like this:

Then we did a “hike” (flat) on James island—our first time on a black sand beach because it’s all ash!

Fur seal— different than sea lions but actually still technically a sea lion

Seals playing in “Darwin’s toilet”

Martin’s hobbit feet and Sylvia’s normal feet!

Then we finished the day with drinks at the bar. Saw a huge full moon!

Brain freeze

Then our ship crossed the equator at 830 so everyone went up to the captains deck to mark the occasion. Or as Martin dryly put it “wow, I’ve always wanted this picture.”

Okay now for the promised geology!

Last night, Bolo gave us an incredible mini lecture on the history of the Galapagos, which have only been inhabited for 200 years. 

And the Galapagos geologically are only about 4 million years old (the planet is 4.5 billion years old). Which means that any life that is here didn’t start here—it had to come from somewhere else. 

He talked about the volcanoes of the Galapagos, which are shield volcanoes (like in Hawaii).  Their volcanic activity is not so dangerous, especially not relative to the stratovolcanoes we are more familiar with (Rainier?). In the Galapagos there are also parasitic cone volcanos, which are little offshoots of the main volcano, stealing its magma and only active for a few days.

In the Quito highlands, they have stratovolcanoes which are very dangerous and can form lahars—the magma composition is the difference.

Then he talked to us about the plates that make up the earths crust. The plates move 3-5 inches a year, which doesn’t sound like much, but is 7x the rate your fingernails grow. And in a million years they actually move 3 miles—hence how we got here from Pangea, etc.

In the Pacific Ocean, the Galapagos are on a large plate called the Nazca plate (there’s a bird here called the Nazca boobies). The Nazca plate is constantly going under the South American continental plate, and that motion is responsible for the growing of the Andes—to this day! It’s what keeps the volcanoes of the Andes active. The Andes didn’t exist before 10 million years ago, when all of this started.

Convection in magma keeps happening and moving plates around. In some places in the plate, a hot spot forms where magma can push through—in the ocean, this can form an island! That island stays connected to the plate underneath, or as Bolo put it, the island hitched a ride on the plate. Those islands then move with the plate—past the hot spot of magma that made them!

Showing how new islands keep being formed over existing hot spots

So although the current Galapagos are no more than 4 million years old, there IS evidence of sunken islands in the Galapagos chain from 14-29 million years ago, and with DNA evidence we know that the arrival of some species to the archipelago happened in previous islands. 

Otherwise how can you explain a 7-8 million year old creature (iguana) on a 4 million year old island? Iguanas came from previous island that is already sunk and they used the new islands as a stepping stone