Passion 4 Travel

Galapagos - Black Turtle Cove

Golden Ray in lagoon waters of Black Turtle Cove Located on the second-largest island in the archipelago of Isla Santa Cruz is the picturesque Black Turtle Cove, Blue Footed Booby performing courtship ritual mangrove fringed lagoons providing nurseries for a large number of animals. We could only negotiate this by panga but on our way into the lagoons we witnessed a Blue-Footed Booby feeding frenzy where there were literally hundreds of boobies diving for fish and other prey, the sort of scene that you would only see on something that David Attenborough had done! Even the guide said it was unusual to see one of these kinds of sights and he's been doing this for some 19 years. It was very peaceful cruising through the lagoons and we got to see plenty of sea turtles (even one couple trying to mate), a large school of golden rays and baby sharks.

Male Magnificent Frigatebird - differentiated from the Male Great Frigatebird by the colour of the feathers on the back. Females & young of both species are similar but there are clues to differentiate the two also. In the afternoon we continued onto North Seymour, which is home to abundant animal life including swallow-tailed gulls, magnificent frigate birds, great frigate birds and blue-footed boobies. This is where alot of the aforementioned birds nest and we were able to walk within a metre of sitting birds. We watched a couple of male blue-footed boobies performing their courtship ritual to females without success. Blue Footed Booby, very comic seabirds of the gannet family One was particularly persistent and the pair came within our circle to do their performance. Even then the female was having nothing of it and eventually flew off - we all pitied the male as he had made a great effort. Some of the male frigatebirds were desperately trying to attract females and had their red throat pouches extended. Turtle at Black Turtle Cove There were a small number of land iguanas on the island. They don't naturally occur here but were bought from Baltra (also known as South Seymour) as part of an experiment. During WWII when Baltra was used as an airbase (why there is an airport there today) all the naturally occurring iguanas were killed out and the population has been re-established from the thriving iguana population on North Seymour. A few are kept on the island today in case of any disasters at the airport wiping out the population again.