Galapagos Trip 2023 -- Day 5 -- Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island (part 1)

It was a relatively short trip from Cerro Dragon on the northwest side of Santa Cruz Island to our destination for day 5, the city of Puerto Ayoro on the southern coast.  The ship weighed anchor about 2 am and arrived in Academy Bay off of Puerto Ayoro at about 6 am.  

Our destination in the morning was the Charles Darwin Research Station.  Following lunch at the Finch Bay Hotel, we went to the highlands of Santa Cruz Island in the interior to look for giant tortoises.

Santa Cruz Island with Day 5 gps track

Puerto Ayoro.  Puerto Ayoro is the largest town in Galapagos.   I have seen widely different numbers for the population, but it is in the 15,000 range.  It is not the capital, but it is the economic center of Galapagos and it has the best developed infrastructure (banks, hotels, many stores, hospital).  Although there is a little fishing and some agriculture, 80% of Galapaguenos are employed in services related to tourism.  Important for our visit, the Charles Darwin Research Station and the headquarters of the Galapagos National Park Service are located there.  

We loaded onto the pangas and made our way through the many large and small boats anchored in the bay to the city's passenger dock.  At the end of the dock was a nice park with a children's playground and benches under the trees.

Dock area at Puerto Ayoro.  The park is at the end of the dock.  The church is the building with the green roof on the left. (photo from Lonely Planet)

However, we did have to be careful not to trip over the sea lions. 

One of many sea lions on the passenger dock at Puerto Ayoro.  At least this one was not up on one of the benches like some of his buddies.

When we made it to the street there were several full size busses waiting to take us to the Charles Darwin Research Station.  Below is a view across the street as we waited in line to board the buses (which were just out of view). 

This is the street next to the dock in Puerto Ayoro  Bicycles and scooters are on the left, white pickup trucks (taxis) are in the street in the center, and the building with the green roof is the Iglesia de San Francisco Catholic Church and school. It was 9 am, with very few people on the street.  When we left here at 6 pm the area was really coming to life.

Although there were some cars in town, it appeared many people used bicycles or scooters.  The exception were the many white pickup trucks, which were actually also taxis.  They could provide transportation to multiple locations around town, to the highlands, or all the way to the ferry for Baltra airport (a little over an hour away).  Most of the area along the waterfront was tourist-oriented, but I did see the church across the street that dates to 1968.

After a very short ride, the bus dropped us off at the end of a long drive that leads into Charles Darwin Research Station.

Puerto Ayoro with our gps track. Bus drop off point is next to the white loop in the center. 

The first thing we encountered was the city cemetery immediately to the left behind a low wall.  

City Cemetery

It was somewhat reminiscent of cemeteries in New Orleans.  We also noticed the many red flowers--hibiscus, I think.  We saw them many places around town and the hotel at lunch used them extensively to decorate their buffet tables.  I was worried at first when I saw the hotel staff throwing them away after lunch, but then realized they were everywhere.

We next came to the entrance to the Galapagos National Park Headquarters.

Entrance to the Galapagos National Park Headquarters

The Galapagos National Park was formed in 1959 and includes 97% of the land in the archipelago, essentially all of the land in the islands that was not privately owned at the time of its formation.  It is the Park Service that is  responsible for providing rangers and guides to oversee and enhance the experience of visitors to the islands,

In addition to the National Park (the protected area on land) is the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR).  It protects the sea around the islands.  Originally created in 1998, GMR includes all of the waters within the archipelago and all the waters extending 40 nautical miles around the islands.  This restricted area is not completely successful in protecting the many protected species  Some illegal fishing still occurs.  There are also enormous fishing fleets that have been known to sit just outside the 40 mile boundary.   In cooperation with Columbia, Costa Rica, and Panama, a large area of marine protection was added in 2022 to provide protection for marine mammals, turtles, and some sharks that migrate between Galapagos and the area near Costa Rica and Panama.  I don't know if the GMR Headquarters is here, but suspect it might be.

Just before entering the Research Station was a manzanillo tree, so called Apple of Death, which was a virtual geocache.

Manzanillo Tree and virtual geocache

Charles Darwin Research Station.  Finally we were to the Charles Darwin Research Station. 

Charles Darwin Research Station (By TriiipleThreat - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7708966)

The Research Station is owned and operated by the Charles Darwin Foundation.  There are currently over 200 scientists and volunteers involved with multiple research and conservation projects.  Much of the work is designed to learn more about how to manage the unique flora and fauna of the region.

Captive Breeding Program.  The most well known of the station's projects is a captive breeding program for giant tortoises.  This rearing and repatriation of giant tortoises began at the Charles Darwin Research Station in 1965 and is one of longest running and most successful programs of the Charles Darwin Foundation.

Fausto Llerenena Tortoise Breeding Center.  I am not sure of the significance of the year 1999, since the center was inaugurated in 1965. 

The Fausto Llernea Tortoise Center is one of two tortoise breeding centers in the Galapagos.  The other is the Arnaldo Tupiza Tortoise Center on Isabela Island, inaugurated in 1995,   A third station was established on San Cristobal Island in 2004, but apparently at least the captive breeding activity there is no longer necessary and has been discontinued. 

The Galpagos Tortoises needed help.  The Galapagos Tortoise species  is subdivided into 15 subspecies.  Each of these subspecies evolved due to their isolation from the other populations either because they were on an island or because even though on a larger island that contained other subspecies they were isolated because they could not cross lava fields.  Each subspecies developed characteristics depending on their environment.  Species on Isabela (5 subspecies) and Santa Cruz,  have domed shells, subspecies on Pinta, Pinzon, Floreana, and Espanola have saddleback shells, while species on Santiago and San Cristobal are somewhere in between.  More on this later.

Location of currently recognized Galapagos tortoise subspecies.  Islands with surviving subspecies aree shaded.   (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Galapagos_tortoise_distribution_map.svg)

When the National Park was established in 1959, only 11 of the original populations of tortoises remained and these were endangered or on the brink of extinction. 

What happened to the tortoises?  Tortoises can survive for as much as a year without food or water.  Early sailors such as pirates and whalers filled their holds with live tortoises.  These animals were a convenient source of fresh meat during a long voyage.  However, this practice devastated the tortoise population.  Later introduction of non-native animals to the islands such as rats, goats, and pigs, destroyed tortoise eggs and/or habitat and further reduced tortoise populations.  Due to these and other practices, tortoise numbers had declined from over 250,000 in the 1600's to a low of about 15,000 in the 1970's. 

Start of the captive breeding program.  The story of the initiation of the breeding and rearing program for Giant tortoises is quite interesting and is described here.  It  began in response to the condition of the population on Pinzon Island, where fewer than 200 old adults were found.  All of the hatchlings had apparently been killed by introduced black rats for perhaps more than a century!  Only the extreme longevity of the tortoises had kept the species alive, but the species was sure to die off without help.

Even worse was the situation on Espanola Island, where there were only two males and 12 females,.   They were so dispersed that they were not mating in the wild.  These 14 remaining tortoises plus another Espanola male found at the San Diego Zoo.were brought to the Charles Darwin Research Station in 1974.  By 2008 they had produced over 1400 progeny that have been released back onto Espanola Island where they are reproducing naturally.

What is the captive breeding program?  Adult tortoises are kept at the research station. Any eggs they produce are collected and the hatched young are raised in captivity until they reach a size with a much better chance of survival (usually three to five years).  Tortoise mortality in the wild is highest over the first couple of years, often due to lack of food or water as well as tortoise hatchlings being easy prey for predators. Once a tortoise reaches five years old, it is more likely to survive to maturity.

There were multiple displays explaining the breeding program.

By far the much more interesting thing was to see the tortoise enclosures.  I have forgotten what the guide told us about their ages, but it is easy to get the general idea.

The youngest hatchlings are very small.

Enclosure for the smallest tortoises.  The screens are closed at night to keep out any rats or other predators.

but they were scampering all around their enclosure.

Lots of little tortoises crawling around

The smallest tortoises reminded me so much of the baby turtles in the Box Turtle Recovery Project we worked on at LLELA several years ago.  They also used to crowd together in and under their water container.. 

tortoises crowding together in their water container

I am not sure of the age, but there were also lots of somewhat larger tortoises.

Very young tortoises, but significantly bigger than the hatchlings

These little guys moved around quite quickly

 

I was amazed at how these very tiny tortoises still look like and move about just like the 100+ year old adults, just in miniature.

One of the young tortoises

Adult domed tortoises.  The adults had a much larger area where they could roam, but the chain link fence made photography difficult.

Some of the many adult tortoises

This is a research center, not a zoo, so there were not signs noting the subspecies within each of the various enclosures.  However, these were obviously some of those with domed shells, i.e. from an island with at least access to low lying vegetation.

Adult tortoises hanging out by the pool

Adult tortoises in the pool

At least somewhere at the Center is a domed tortoise that was found in 2019 on Isabela Island, but genetic analysis only published in 2022 shows she is related to the presumed extinct Fernandina subspecies, hence her name "Fernanda".  There is now hope that this extinct species can be resurrected if a mate can be found.

Saddleback tortoises.  I was particularly excited to see some of the saddleback tortoises.

A saddleback tortoise

The Galapagos Islands were originally discovered in 1535 when the currents drove a ship going from Panama to Peru off course.  The islands were given the name Galapagos from the Spanish word for turtle.  saddle.  [Correction added after original posting:  The name Galapagos refers to the tortoises, but comes from the word for "saddle", not turtle.].  However, multiple places talked about how the shells resembled saddles that the Spanish of the time used for horses.  That always totally confused me until I saw a picture of a saddleback tortoise in one of the before dinner talks earlier in the week.  Now I have seen some in person!

Saddleback tortoisees developed on arid islands where there was less vegetation on the ground, but there might be some higher above.  The shape of the shell around the neck allows the tortoise to raise its head and neck much higher than would be possible for a domed tortoise.

These may be the tortoises discovered in 2015 on  Isabela Island with genes from other subspecies (https://theconversation.com/how-we-rediscovered-extinct-giant-tortoises-in-the-galapagos-islands-and-how-to-save-them-52073)

I have no way of knowing since they were not labelled, but one group of saddlebacks looked like some of those discovered on Isabela Island in 2015 that have ancestors from the supposedly extinct Floreana and Pinta subspecies.

Another saddleback that seemed to be in an enclosure by itself.

Giant Tortoise Restoration Successes.  There have been many tremendous tortoise restoration success stories since the captive breeding program began in 1965.  Here is a small subset of those successes:

• As of the end of 2017, more than 7,000 juvenile tortoises had been returned to their island of origin – including Espanola, Isabela, Pinzon, San Cristobal, Santa Cruz, and Santiago.
• The first tortoises repatriated to Espanola Island reached sexual maturity and began nesting in the early 1990s. The population has been increasing naturally on the island since that time. With that progress, the decision was made in 2020 to end the captive breeding program for Espanola tortoises. 
• Black rats, introduced to Pinzon Island in the late 1800s, were eradicated in 2012. Natural recruitment of juvenile tortoises into the wild population has since begun.  In 2014, tortoise hatchlings were observed on the island for the first time in a century. 
• In 2015, 32 adult tortoises were transferred from Wolf Volcano on Isabela Island to the Fausto Llerena Tortoise Center on Santa Cruz; Nineteen of these were identified through genetic analysis to have partial Floreana tortoise ancestry.  A breeding program aimed at restoring tortoises to Floreana was launched in 2017 with twenty tortoises with partial Floreana ancestry.
  

Pinta Island Tortoises. Despite all of these miraculous restoration success stories there is at least one notable failure, the extinction of the Pinta Island subspecies.

Pinta Island, an island of about 23 square miles at the northern edge of the archipelago, was often the first island encountered by arriving ships and the last island for leaving ships.  Hence it experienced unusually large numbers of mariners taking tortoises for food.  It was thought that the Pinta tortoises were already extinct by the early part of the 20th century.  

Although the island was in pristine condition, the lack of tortoises meant there was no food source for passing ships.  Therefore some fishermen released three goats onto the island in 1959.  Their hope was the goats would reproduce and provide a source of fresh meat at this location so far from their home port.  Did those goat ever reproduce!   By 1970 there were an estimated 40,000 goats on the island.  The goats had devastated the vegetation and had essentially eliminated any good tortoise habitat left.

Something totally unexpected.  In 1971 a Hungarian biologist studying snails on Pinta Island saw a tortoise.  All of the tortoises on the island were supposed to have been extinct for decades and even if they did exist, there was essentially no food left due to the goats.  Park rangers recovered this lone tortoise in 1972 and moved him to the Tortoise Center on Santa Cruz for his protection.  

A frantic search for a female companion, both on Pinta and at zoos across the world began.  The tortoise, as the apparent  last of his species, soon became a celebrity and was known as Lonesome George.

Lonesome George at Santa Cruz Tortoise Breeding Center in 2008  (By Arturo de Frias Marques - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29385064)

Lonesome George.  Lonesome George spent the next 40 years of his life at the Santa Cruz Tortoise Breeding Center.  No other Pinta tortoise was ever found during his lifetime.  No viable eggs were ever produced after mating with several female tortoises of species thought to be close to the Pinta tortoise.  Lonesome George died of natural causes in 2012 at the age of approximately 100, the last of the Pinta tortoises.

After his death, Lonesome George's body was sent to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City to be preserved by their taxidermist.  After the taxidermy process, which took about a year, he was put on display at the American Museum of Natural History.  Finally, in 2017, he was returned to the Santa Cruz Tortoise Breeding Center, where he is on display in a specially designed climate controlled exhibit building

Lonesome George in the climate controlled exhibit room

The exhibit building where George is housed was interesting.  Everyone first of all had to go into an airlock of sorts and wait for several minutes.  This is supposedly to remove as much water vapor as possible. We then entered the air-conditioned room where George is housed.  It is one of the very few air-conditioned spaces in Galapagos.  When exiting we went through yet another airlock room before finally exiting to the outside.

 

Lonesome George looks remarkably life like

But Wait!  This may not be the end of Pinta Tortoises after all!  A female tortoise whose genome is 16% Pinta subspecies was found on Isabela Island in 2020.  Hope remains that more tortoises with Pinta tortoise ancestors may yet be found.

In the meantime,work is progressing to bring Pinta Island back to a condition suitable for tortoises to thrive.  The eradication of the goats was completed in 2006. In 2010, 39 adult sterilized tortoises were released onto the island in hopes they would rebuild tortoise trails and reshape the vegetation. It is not easy for tortoises to make their way through thick brush.  At last report, they have expanded their range, are impacting the vegetation, and are maintaining open trails.

Mockingbirds.  Once outside of Lonesome George's exhibit, we proceeded along the raised boardwalk..  There happened to be a cactus with a bird nest approximately at eye level directly next to the boardwalk.  We never saw anything in the nest, although there could have been something there.

Bird nest next to the walk

While the Frog was taking the above picture, the mockingbird looked up and seemed to take offense at the camera pointing at him.  The Frog captured just one more picture (below), this time of the bird coming directly towards the camera.

 

This bird apparently does not like paparazzi.

The bird landed on the Frog's head and began to aggressively attack the top of his hat.

We wrote in an earlier post about Rabida Island of how Galapagos mockingbirds can be quite aggressive, but this was over the top insane.

 

The bird was pecking very hard with his beak, although fortunately there was enough padding in the hat that it did not hurt the Frog's head.

 

It went on and on with the bird continuing to be very aggressive. These still pictures don't do justice to how aggressive this bird was behaving.

 

By this point everyone was watching, thinking the bird would fly away, but he just kept going.  

 

Finally the guide shooed the bird away and all was well.  Fortunately the Frog was not hurt nor was his longtime Tilley hat worse for wear. 

Well, that was interesting and perhaps a fitting end to our visit to the Charles Darwin Research Station..  At this point we had finished the guided part of the tour.  We were now on our own to explore more of the Research Station or begin the walk back to the passenger dock where the pangas would pick us up to take us to lunch.  We squeezed a few more adventures in before lunch, but those are the subject of the next post.