Feb. 13 Day 23
We left at 8:30 for our Nature Cruise. Gary’s wife, Donna, we are told, has much information for us. Sue began sharing with us the minute we pulled away from the doc, giving us information about how the bay was formed, about tectonic plates, magma, volcanic rock and fault lines in the area. It was more than I could understand. The Sea of Cortez is 5 million years old and yet it is the youngest of all seas. They have frequent tremors here. As she is telling all of this suddenly she sees some birds and changes her subject to birds in the area, blue heron, pelicans, blue footed buboes, frigate bird, oyster catchers and on and on. She made it all quite interesting. Some of the rocks sticking out of the water were white as snow. We learned this is bird poo and it is collected for fertilizer. We each had binoculars so that we could help spot birds, fish or mammals. We fairly quickly saw some sea lions so she began to tell about them. The mother sea lion feed her new born pup for 4 days non-stop and then the male takes over the feeding of the baby. When they are cold they lie on their back in the water and point their fins straight up in order to draw in warmth from the sun. She is able to spot sea lions by the “sticks” or fins sticking out of the water. The porpoise is very shy and will not come near people but the dolphin is very playful and loves to have fun with the boat. We did see them a couple of times and the captain was able to engage them and get them to run with the boat…first in the bow and then they went to the back of the boat and jumped the waves. It was so much fun to watch them. She and the deckhands would call them to get them started chasing and we just had a great time watching them and taking pictures. The dolphin is a small whale. The young nurse for 18 months and stay with mom for 6 to 8 years. She names them with a “tone” and calls them that way. Dolphins eat between 5 and 20% of their weight daily. They live to be 40 and can hold their breath for 15 minutes but they really don’t like to. They can swim at 25 MPH. On our way back to the dock Donna began talking about the geology in the area again. There are several cactus that grow on the rocks. It is very windy today and she wanted to take us to see the fault line but it was just too windy to get to it. It was a great cruise and very interesting. We walked around the area where the marina is and saw some interesting landscaping at a hotel there. Large bushes and trees have been trimmed to resemble animals and other figures.