The never-ending sea, a canvas for a small archipelago of islands off the coast of Ecuador. The Galapagos Islands, a string of rocky outcroppings in an expansive ocean, known by their name for the unique tortoise species that inhabit their arid terrain. The island chain is the closest place to the biblical Eden, an utterly surreal and magical space where you can clearly see the steps of evolution before your very eyes and the impact humans have on the natural environment. The Galapagos Islands are composed of 13 large islands and 6 smaller islands that dot the equatorial waters of the Pacific and can only be visited with a permit and guide. On these isles, various endemic plants and animals interact in an ecosystem unlike any other in the world.
Growing up in Los Angeles, my interactions with nature were limited and predetermined, with spaces either being natural or urban. I had never been to a place where these two boundaries intermixed as much as on my trip to the Galapagos as a part of the Stanford Sophomore College program with the goal to immerse Stanford sophomores in the conservation, and fascinating ecological systems present within the Galapagos isles. I traveled with a cohort of thirteen other students for a week and a half through the Galapagos Islands, hopping from island to island on a yacht, La Pinta. On an afternoon, looking closely at the La Pinta, a young man looks over the railing as the yacht pulls out into the open ocean. He has no idea what to expect on this journey but is excited to enter one of the last "untouched" wild spaces on Earth.
It is 4:30 pm, minutes before sunset. My feet sway back and forth as the yacht pushes the rough Cromwell waters to the side. Tiny grey spots begin to appear right above the wake. A biblical scene as Storm petrels, seemingly walking on water, plucking at the churned-up wake for tasty morsels to fill their empty stomachs. They follow the yacht for hours, creating this acrobatic spectacle as they lay their feet on the water's surface, then spiral up and repeat. A group of ten made me think of the Cirque du Soleil and the trapeze event that makes humans defy gravity. As the yacht begins to slow, I see an island in the distance. Even after the tireless research, I had conducted on the Galapagos islands two weeks earlier with my Sophomore College cohort, I still subconsciously expected a tropical paradise. The combination of an island chain in the pacific on the equator screamed tropical in my subconscious, but oh, is that far from the truth. As the yacht comes to a stop, I board the pangas, small motorized boats, to reach the shore.
The flowing air rushed past my nose; so fast I could only recognize two scents. The smell of rubber and seawater. On the panga shooting through the pacific equatorial swells with the sound of the motor and boat hitting the waves, a rhymical hollow banging as the panga falls from the peaks and into the troughs of the waves, drowning out all other sounds. Sitting at the boat's bow, sea spray flows into my face like the water I used to spray at my brother when growing up. Only this time, it is the water from the Pacific Ocean, and back then, it was water from a garden hose. Seawater, with its distinctive smell, a combination of salt and all the microorganisms present, permeates the immediate air. But as I went to brush the saltwater off my face, I am greeted with another smell. The smell of rubber from touching and holding onto the panga as we jumped through the waves. Two smells that had two completely different
connotations and memories within my head. Rubber, such an "unnatural" smell, is associated with humans and environmental harm. Seawater a scent I associate with freedom and vastness. Both of these unique scents blended to form a scent that stuck with me through my time at the Galapagos, and it was not until later in the trip that I realized what that scent meant to me and my experience within the Galapagos.
This scent slowly fades as the panga docks up along the shore. What lay in front of my eyes was incredible. A mass of land littered with rocks, so smooth they seemed artificial. Along the coast, however, jagged igneous rock protruded erratically, giving a picture of the violent and powerful tectonic action within the area and the role of this tectonic movement in creating the Galapagos. Small green and red shrubbery poked out the rocks, pushing their way through to get to the sunlight. They would fight against the rocks as if it were a battlefield, their only goal to find the light. These plants, like many other plants within the Galapagos, had very thick and narrow leaves, an adaptive behavior of plants that do not receive a significant amount of rainfall, I thought as I examined the plants. Such a weird piece of information that popped into my head, which I remembered from my time in my Introduction to Ecology course, where I began to fully understand my passion for nature and its wonder of evolution. As I continued to
search the surroundings, cacti littered the landscape, towering over everything else, the
island's forest.
I begin to walk to my left; a creature that stuck out like a sore thumb against the black lava rock, a female sea lion with a light tan hide, has been drying for some time already. She grunts and barks at us as we walk by, so close that she would not have to move much if she wanted to touch us with her flipper. At the signs of her barking, I begin surveying rocks ahead of us. I begin to identify more and more sea lions basking out in the setting sun. Now, the time is closer to 5:30 pm, and the sun has begun to set.
The angle of light grows larger, light waves start to scatter, giving the sunset its warm oranges and reds. The change in lighting makes the sea lions stand out even more as I continue to walk around the island. These sea lions are like golden nuggets nestling within the dark lava rock covering the island. A bull in the distance barks out; its seemingly unnecessary loud volume breaks up the peace that has settled near the dock and causes a cacophony of various noises to arise. The squawking of birds fills the air and overpowers every other sound. I spot frigates, swallow-tailed gulls, storm petrels, blue-footed boobies, and albatrosses. Four of these species are endemic to the Galapagos islands, with the exception being the storm petrels. I am what you may call a bird enthusiast. I have a deep interest and amazement regarding the closest ancestors to dinosaurs, the birds.
Albatrosses, also known as the Boeing birds for their enormous wingspans, nestle in the rocks along the path. They dance in a rhythmic beat, their attention entirely focused on their mate. Albatross take turns looking over their chicks, one positioned at the nest while the other takes to the skies to hunt. For such a large bird to take flight, it is a spectacle and lends validity to the name of the Boeing birds. They begin by waddling to the edge of the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. They pause and then run to the cliff's edge, their massive wings flapping by their side. Then they take a leap of faith and jump right off the cliff edge, betting on their enormous billowing wings to capture the updraft from the cliff, which then carries them straight into the air where they could remain for thousands of miles. A smaller bird streaked into view as I watched the albatross fly off. A grey and white streak flashed by, instantly drawing my attention, but I lost sight of it just as fast as I had noticed it. I began to look around at what I had missed before with my focus tied to the large birds flying above.
There are flashes of white, slate grey, and red throughout the lava rocks. The squawking of two birds catches my attention as they squawk back and forth at each other. Either in a heated argument or an exchange of love. The swallow-tailed gull is an endemic species to the Galapagos Islands and the only gull in the world to fly out over the sea in the dead of night to hunt. These birds mate for life, and as I sit there watching them communicate back and forth, I begin to imagine the first time they met. Both with a white underbelly and slate grey wings. Their bright red feet are a stark contrast to the crushed-up lava rock. A red ring outlines both their eyes as they circle each other. But why? I begin to ask myself, why are they so red? The gull's pelagic journeys over the vast ocean during the pitch-black sky are to scour the sea surface for purple flying squid. A delicacy of the Swallow-tailed gull and the key reason for the bird's bright red coloring. These squids have a specific carotenoid within their bodies that give them their purple color, which, when eaten, cause Swallow-tailed gulls to produce these vibrant red colorations.
My fascination with the Swallow-tailed gull began to fester inside of me. It became obsessive, analyzing flight patterns, behavior, conservation efforts, and anything that would allow me to better grasp this unique bird. The Swallow-tailed gull was the first bird that had impacted me so profoundly, partly due to the extensive research I had conducted before traveling to the Galapagos. I, however, think the most significant factor is what I felt when I saw these birds, a mixture of curiosity and knowledge gleamed in their eyes when you made eye contact, instantly making me question the knowledge hierarchy between humans and birds. All of the conservation research I conducted on this trip was in relation to this bird. As the trip continued, the Swallow-tailed gull became my emotional representation of the Galapagos and its "pristineness." This "pristineness" is a description I did not begin to question until the yacht pulled into Academy Bay, the docking port of Puerto Ayora. The turquoise blue waters give way to numerous boats littering the shallow water. What lay in front of me completely shocked me. The town of Puerto Ayora stood out like a sore thumb against what my mind had seen and formulated for the past few days. I asked myself, "How could there be such a large human presence in the Galapagos? It is not right."
Puerto Ayora is the largest town within the Galapagos, with a population of twelve thousand people, and also is the home to the headquarters of the Galapagos National Park and the Charles Darwin Research Station. As we disembarked from the pangas onto the wooden dock, countless eyes turned to look. People all around the dock looked to see what new tourists had just landed on their dock. As well as the eyes of the bright sunset-colored crabs as they fled from our thundering footsteps. As I walked up the steps to exit the dock, I was shocked. In front of me, there were lines and lines of buildings that stretched along the bay. The stores were all either selling Galapagos tourist goods and trinkets or were advertising tours to discover the pristine, untouched nature of the Galapagos. At that moment, a spike of anger hit me as I looked at the seemingly contradictory signs and thought in my head, "how can you say untouched when your store is touching it right now?" We were let loose for 30 minutes to wander throughout the town, to experience not just the ecological systems present within the Galapagos but also the human experience within the islands. As I walked up and down these crisscrossed streets, I continued to see the boutique shops, fine dining experiences, bars, and tourist shops. As my frustration grew, I decided to go back to the dock to observe the families of crabs scurrying along the lava rock. When I arrived, there were an absurd amount of crabs, in the ballpark of 45, all on one lava rock formation. As I sat there watching them scurry back and forth along the black lava rock, I began to compare individual crabs to people I know. The tiny black crabs were my cousin's recent baby, the slightly large black one, my younger cousin, a freshman in high school, the larger black one with red spots reminded me of my brother, and finally, the fully mature sunset-colored crabs correlated with my parents. Seeing the development of a species and the evolutionary factors that made the species grow in such a way was incredibly fascinating. The younger crabs are darker colors to help blend into the black lava rock, but as they get older and become more capable of independent survival, their color brightens to the sunset colors the Galapagos crabs are known for. As I observe the scurrying crabs, the seeds of an idea begin to sprout. Why was I, the person that just got mad from seeing the human impact on the Galapagos, starting to relate these crustaceans with humans? If anything, I should be relating these crabs to anything else but humans, but here I was, thinking I saw a relationship in these crabs similar to the one I see at home.
This seed of questioning and feeling of doubt about humans' place within nature is what formed my most significant takeaway from the trip to the Galapagos. It was not seeing and interacting with so many unique animals and plants but this question of humans and their role within nature that changed my perspective of the wild. Growing up in Los Angeles, nature spaces are difficult to find. I had such a stark differentiation between what is wild and urban. It was not until my numerous experiences within the Galapagos that I realized how interconnected humans and nature are. One of the professors on the trip, Nicole Ardoin, mentioned the notion of a social-ecological system, where people should look at ecosystems not as a place devoid of humans but as a system composed of both human social interactions as well as natural interactions. As I wrestled with this idea of a social-ecological system, I began to further appreciate the residents of the Galapagos islands, not just the animals and plants but also the humans.
I began to wonder if I was the only person to have such an epiphany. So, I reached out to one of my close friends Joddy in hopes of seeing her perspective on the Galapagos trip and, specifically, the interaction between humans and animals. In our discussion, I realized that it is not just me questioning humans' interaction with nature, but Joddy also was intrigued by the interaction between humans and nature, so much so that her work during the trip focused on obesity rates within the Galapagian human population. She particularly mentioned how the restriction in available arable land causes the Galapagos to import almost the entirety of its food, which must not perish on the long boat ride over. This need to be well preserved eliminates many fresh foods and incentivizes starchy foods that could maintain their quality over time. This, in turn, led to an increased obesity rate due to the surplus of starchy food. In addition, Joddy pointed out that if we focus solely on the natural world, the improvements we can make towards the conservation and protection of species are limited. She further states that we need to consider both human and natural problems and work to find effective methods to mitigate both, which would lead to greater conservation and social change throughout
the world.
"Two smells that had two completely different connotations and memories within my head. Rubber, such an "unnatural"; smell associated with humans and environmental harm. Seawater, a scent I associate with freedom and vastness." A moment that I will never forget, drifting through the Pacific waves, smelling the rubber of panga and seawater spray. At this moment, one of the main seeds that changed my perspective of nature and humans forever was planted, and I gained a new outlook on environmental problems and who/what our solutions need to include in this fight to save the planet.