Absolutely Galápagos

by David Fletcher

  Anyway, the reminder worked, and Brian made it to breakfast, and after this he made it onto a panga, and both pangas then set off for Flying Saucer Island. It wasn’t far from where the Beluga was anchored, but it took some time to get there. And this was because Darwin wanted his charges to observe whatever wildlife was about – either under the water or on the rocky coast of Santiago. This wasn’t difficult. The water was crystal clear – and revealed a number of fish and a number of rays – and the coastline was bereft of cover and provided the Nature-seekers with their second view of a Galápagos hawk and their first ever view of a Galápagos penguin!

  Now, the vast majority of the world’s penguins are found in either the southern continents or in sub-Antarctic waters. Only these Galápagos penguins live permanently in the tropics. And the reason that they are here is that their ancestors probably followed the cold Humboldt Current north, until they happened upon the Galápagos archipelago with its bountiful supply of food, and decided there and then not to make the long return trip to the frozen south. Of course, this wasn’t to say that they didn’t have to adapt – and they have adapted. For example, these small upright birds have now evolved the ‘flimsiest’ plumage (shortest feathers) of any penguin, and this allows them to tolerate water temperatures far above those in the southern oceans. Furthermore, they no longer nest on bare ground in order to use the warmth of the sun in the incubation of their eggs, but instead they employ deep, shady crevices in which their eggs will be protected from the intensity of the sun.

  So, once these sorts of adjustments had been made, being a Galápagos penguin must have been like being a penguin on permanent holiday – on a bunch of islands on the equator. Only, of course, it wasn’t quite that simple. The reality is that these little chaps are very exposed to the effects of an El Niño in their relatively newly adopted home, and it is reckoned that each time an El Niño occurs, their population crashes by anything up to 65 or even 75%. Which is why there were possibly more than 10,000 of these birds in the past, but now, there are no more than 2,000 – although they are pretty good breeders and, in theory, they will be well able to recover their numbers relatively quickly. The fact remains, however, that Galápagos penguins are very rare birds – as well as being the only penguins that are found in the northern hemisphere.

  This last northern hemisphere fact was announced by Darwin as the Nature-seekers were making the most of their first view of this delightful flightless bird. At which point Brian could not resist challenging this assertion by reminding Darwin that there was another population of penguins exclusively endemic to the northern hemisphere and residing in London. Darwin looked perplexed to say the least, and Brian was then obliged to prompt his memory by recounting how this population had first come about – in the seventeenth century and during the reign of Charles II. That was when, he explained, the posh penguin, Tarquin, having got the better of the passive penguin, Mannequin, and then the mute penguin, Harlequin, made his move on the orange-selling penguin, Nellguin – and the rest was history.

  Well, Darwin, quite understandably, asked Rick, who was sitting beside him, whether Brian had possibly hit his head or whether he was simply inebriated. Rick, to his credit, said it was neither, but just a sad manifestation of poor English humour being aired in an inappropriate situation and at an inappropriate time, and that if they all ignored it, it would probably go away and they could all return to the proper business of this morning’s expedition. Which is what all those in the panga proceeded to do, and the panga was soon heading off for a wet landing on Chapeau Chinois Island and Nellguin penguins were never mentioned again.

  What were mentioned, when the wet landing had been completed, were lava gulls. These were not fanciful birds, fashioned from lava and dreamt up by Darwin in response to Brian’s Nellguin penguins, but real sooty-grey birds – which are even rarer than Galápagos penguins. As Darwin explained in some detail on the oven sands of the landing beach, there are thought to be no more than 400 pairs of these gulls in the world, and they all live in the Galápagos archipelago. The good news was that they appear fairly resilient in the face of the human colonisation of their habitat, and as natural scavengers they have even adapted well to human settlements, where they are often seen perched around harbours or lurking next to fishing boats. Indeed, the attraction of easy pickings in places such as Puerto Ayora was probably why Brian failed to catch sight of any of them during his walk on this island. Or, there again, it could have been because they blend in perfectly with the lava on which they often stand – and Chinese Hat, in close up, was just one ruddy great heap of lava. Spotting a lava gull against a vista of lava rubble would, Brian thought, be just about as difficult as turning Chinese Hat into ‘Chinese Airstrip and Military Base Number Forty-Three’, albeit rather more welcome.

  Well, the walk on Chinese Hat, which ran along the coast from the beach, did have its points of interest – such as mini lava tunnels, ‘lava on lava’, the odd sea lion pup and the odd marine iguana – but it was a fairly barren environment, and Brian did find his interest wandering – right up until it was firmly apprehended by the topic of iguana penises…

  Inexplicably, Brian had remained entirely ignorant of this intriguing aspect of iguana anatomy for the whole of his life, and it was only now, when Darwin had embarked on an impromptu lecture on the intromittent organ of a nearby marine iguana, that this ignorance would be breached. And to start with, it was breached by Brian learning what an intromittent organ was, which was, of course, the ‘copulatory organ’ of a male animal, otherwise known as a penis – or, if one is talking about an iguana, as a hemipenis. And that is what Brian was finding so fascinating – and so revealing about the iguana intromittent organ: that these creatures have two of them! Well, before Darwin was able to elaborate on why any animal might need or want two penises, Brian’s mind was already racing. Was it just a case of carrying a spare – in readiness for that very rare occasion on which the first one didn’t work? Or maybe it’s like the way they went about bombing in the Second World War: send out a pathfinder and, when the target has been located, let in the second guy to deliver the payload. Or, there again, maybe it’s just as simple as being set up and ready to deal with either a left-handed or a right-handed screw (thread)…

  Well, he was well wide of the mark. And the truth was both a little more bizarre and indeed a little more gripping – literally. Because what he learnt was that all lizards and snakes have these hemipenes, and that in the case of lizards they are hidden away below the tail, ready to be evaginated (i.e. turned inside out) whenever the need arises. And when the need and the hemipenes do arise, not only does the love potion get conveyed down an external groove in whichever hemipenis is used, but the hemipenis will have first been secured into the right place by the spikes or hooks that it has at its end! Furthermore, it will not only be the right place but also the right partner, because these spikes and hooks will not be in random positions but instead they will be arranged in rosettes, so that a ‘reproductive isolation’ is achieved through a ‘lock and key’ mechanism. And in plain English that means that different, species-specific arrangements of barbs and grappling hooks mean that individuals of one species can only ever mate with individuals of that same species – and hybridisation is prevented.

  Brian was captivated by these revelations, and had he been less captivated he might have asked Darwin to clear up one or two of the queries these revelations raised. For example, how did those marine iguanas overcome the lock and key mechanism in their mating with land iguanas back on South Plaza? Or, of more interest to Brian, how did the male iguanas go about choosing which hemipenis to use – or did they have a choice? And inevitably, did the lady iguanas get anything out of sex other than a very sore feeling where they didn’t want it and maybe even a desperate need for some tweezers after the sex act was concluded?

  Then there were Darwin’s closing remarks about the ‘copulatory equipment’ of tortoises and
turtles, which apparently comes in the singular, so to speak, but also comes in prodigious proportions. Indeed, it has been reported that many owners of these retiring reptiles have been absolutely flabbergasted by the size of their pet’s equipment – and rather unnerved by its appearance. It seems that it looks less like a regular penis and more like a bagful of their internal organs or, in some cases, like an out-of-control, grow-it-yourself, purple Triffid. So God knows what the donger of a Galápagos giant tortoise looks like – or whether the lady giant tortoises, if they had a choice, might just vote for a hemipenis instead – just as long as it didn’t come with skewers and crampons attached.

  Brian found himself standing by himself – pondering – as Darwin and the rest of the Nature-seekers moved off along the trail. And even when he caught them up and tried to take in the ambience of Chinese Hat, he was still distracted by an awful lot of pondering. In the first place there were still all those unanswered questions. And in the second place there was the fact that his own species clearly didn’t know how lucky it was – to have such uncomplicated and such ‘proportionate’ equipment – and the females of his species didn’t know how exceptionally lucky they were in having to cope with what could only be called very smooth operators – who, even in the absence of any tread, couldn’t resort to a spare…

  Anyway, the walk on Chinese Hat eventually came to an end, and it was time to return to the Beluga, and then, before lunch, time to go for a snorkel, this time off that rocky Santiago coast. This proved unexceptional but quite interesting, and much of the interest was provided in the form of the presence of pipefish. These chaps look a little like stretched-out seahorses. They have the same seahorse sort of snout and their bodies are long, thin and snakelike. Brian looked them up in a reference book when he got back on board, and was not surprised to find that they have neither penises nor hemipenes, but that instead they go about the procreation bit by the female pipefish first transferring her eggs through an ovipositor into a brood pouch on the male. After this they both rise through the water and he bends into an S shape, fertilises the eggs and then sinks back down through the water column. Oh, and he, like his seahorse relatives, then assumes most of the parenting duties. Which all sounds a lot less fun than the mechanics of human procreation but possibly a lot less painful than those of iguana procreation.

  Fortunately, lunch finally provided a successful full stop to Brian’s thoughts on impregnation techniques and their required apparatus, and instead he considered how well he was being fed – and how poor Shelly was in the arena of submarine spatial awareness. This was not, of course, a critique of her ability to be spatially aware of thumping great submarines, which Brian suspected was no worse and no better than the rest of the group. But it was an objective assessment of her ability, while snorkelling with the rest of this group, not to barge into them with increasing regularity. And avoiding them was really easy. All one had to do, while swimming along gently, was to look around at the fish and other marine life, and also to look around at one’s fellow snorkelers to establish where they were. That way, one avoided them. But not so Shelly. She seemed to find it impossible not to crash into them from behind or to barge into them amidships. And then not even to offer any sort of apology, but instead just to carry on as though no collision had occurred, seemingly intent only on singling out her next crash-for-splash victim. Well, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but it was rather irritating – and Brian doubted she’d ever make it as a lady pipefish. He did, however, think she’d make it ashore. Because, over lunch, the Beluga had been sailing up the east coast of Santiago, and it was now anchored off a place called Sullivan Bay. And on the mainland behind Sullivan Bay was an apparently unmissable sight that none of the Nature-seekers and neither of the Americans would possibly want to miss. Even though it was inanimate and non-procreative…

  Others were keen not to miss it as well. There were three other boats anchored here – between the beach of Sullivan Bay and a truly dramatic-looking islet called Bartolomé – and they all, no doubt, had aboard them, people who were keen to get ashore. Accordingly, Darwin soon had his team members installed into the Beluga’s two pangas, and the pangas made for the shore – and for the promised inanimate (ground-level) spectacle.

  Within minutes, the whole team was there – and standing on the spectacle. Because what they had all come to see was a large black lava flow, created by a volcanic eruption in 1889, and one that looked to all intents and purposes as though it had been created only yesterday – and by a team of a thousand talented artists. It was, after all, not just black and shiny but it was also presented in a mosaic of swirly, ridged or ‘ropey’ formations that were truly amazing. The official name for this sort of ‘ropey’ lava is pahoehoe, a Hawaiian term derived from the Hawaiian for ‘paddle’ (probably because of the swirly shapes and not because it was very good for making paddles with). Anyway, it was well worth the trip to shore, and it represented for Brian and, he suspected, for the rest of the group, the most impressive display of lava that they had ever seen – or had ever walked on.

  It even had a few extra features. To start with, there were a number of deep and potentially dangerous crevices within the lava, ready and waiting to catch the unwary. Then there were a couple of ‘moulds’, formed, Darwin told them, from when the lava flow had overwhelmed what were apparently some examples of a shrub called Maytenus octogona – and which, thereafter, thought Brian, had been reduced to what might be called some examples of This-Maytenus-is-a-complete-gonna. And then there were a few specimens of something called Brachycereus nesioticus, or, more simply, lava cactus, a pioneer plant that is able to establish itself on barren lava flows – and to cause Brian to have yet another puerile thought, this one not about any more ‘gonna’ nonsense, but about… procreative equipment again. And this was because of their appearance – which is of a cluster of upright spiky phalluses that could possibly turn the head of even the most frigid of iguanas. Incidentally, Brian made the mistake of relaying this last thought to Sandra, whose reaction was to check whether her husband had been protecting his head against the sun and then to suggest to him that he should waste no time at all in getting his head under water.

  This last piece of advice wasn’t, of course, as vituperative as it might sound, and merely recognised that the Nature-seekers and their American companions were back on the beach and, as promised, there would now be an opportunity for some off-the-beach snorkelling. Brian therefore took Sandra’s advice, and his head was soon under water, along with quite a few other heads (off those other boats), and this abundance of heads didn’t make for the best snorkelling possible. Nevertheless, he did clock a few more fish, and when he returned to the beach, he was treated to the sight of the forty-something Darwin once again performing his favourite party piece: his amazing standing backflip – which, just a couple of hours later, would almost be his undoing…

  This was when the group had just sat down to their dinner back on the Beluga, whereupon the door leading out of the dining room slid open and Darwin appeared – looking anything but his normal ‘Darwin cool’. In fact, he looked incredibly pale – and, as became apparent, he had every reason to. This was because, as well as doing backflips on the beach, Darwin also did them off the very top of the Beluga and into the sea – by first climbing onto the awning that covered the boat’s top deck. Indeed, he had performed one of these gymnastic impossibilities only minutes before his appearance – not to impress anybody, as no one was around, but just as the quickest way to secure a much needed refreshing swim. Unfortunately, as he explained to the diners in a slightly shaky voice, on this occasion he had secured not a refreshing swim but instead a sudden, very intimate encounter with a shark. In fact, he had nearly landed on it. And this wasn’t a harmless reef shark or even a fairly harmless hammerhead shark, but a ‘big shark’. Darwin couldn’t be more specific than this as he had spent very little time studying it, but just the shortest time he could getting
himself away from it and out of the water – and then checking that he still had a full set of limbs. Later on, he would volunteer that it could have been a great white or an oceanic whitetip, neither of which species is renowned for its affection for man. But right now, all he could confirm was that it was very large – and that it was the first such shark he had ever encountered at the end of his backflip-into-the-water routine. Oh, and that he had already decided that on this particular evening he would not be bothering with another swim.

  Well, this rather unexpected incident was going to be a hard act to follow. But Brian thought he would give it a try, by, over dinner, offering his table companions a little of his home-grown wisdom – and despite Sandra’s vain attempts to distract him. And she did want to distract him, because he had embarked on that aspect of his home-grown wisdom that concerned ‘cultural appropriation’. Now, this is supposedly all about people finding offence in other people ‘appropriating’ elements of their own culture, especially if those doing the ‘appropriating’ are members of what had once been a dominant culture and the elements ‘appropriated’ are those of a culture that has been dominated in the past. All this Brian explained to his table companions in some detail, and then he went on to describe a couple of examples of this egregious behaviour, choosing the incendiary act of English university students wearing Mexican sombreros handed out as a promotion for an English Mexican restaurant and the thoughtless adoption of yoga by a Canadian exponent of this discipline in order to improve the fitness of a bunch of disabled students at a Canadian university.