It is always difficult to stand by and watch injured or starving animals suffer in a natural environment. Like most other wildlife parks, the Galapagos National Park has a strict policy of non-interference except when trying to save critically endangered animals and plants from extinction (as is the case with all the remaining giant tortoise species)
On one of our walks, we watched a starving Galápagos sea lion pup struggle to find shade. You could see his ribs as he dragged himself to the shade. Most likely, it’s mother never made it back from one of her feeding trips.
On another isolated beach, a beautiful Nazca boobie sat alone on a rock with a broken wing—a death sentence for a marine bird. Nazcas are the largest boobies on the islands. With a wingspan of 1.5 meters, they can dive from 25 meters above the ocean to catch fish. Entering the water from that height at the wrong angle is enough to break their necks or, in this case, a wing. A broken neck would have been a more merciful death. It is heart-wrenching to walk away from these animals.
On a lighter note, while visiting Puerto Moreno on San Cristobal Island, we noticed that sea lions had hauled out on almost every boat—large and small—in the harbor. Some boat owners, fed up, had strung barbed wire on their gunwales to discourage the sea lions. Abandoned boats were completely overtaken by the pinnipeds, much like the boat slips at San Francisco’s Pier 39.
As our pangas pulled up to our boat, we noticed that a juvenile had found a suitable resting spot under our back stairs. Sacked out, he could have cared less that we were making a commotion all around him as we got back on the boat. Convinced that once the boat engines started up, he would jump off, we left him alone to snooze and headed into lunch.
Afterwards, when we began to move, we realized that the sea lion was still sound asleep. The staff and Eduardo were content to let him stay, even though it meant that he would be far out to sea and away from his family group, once he did jump ship, reducing his chances of survival. Or more, it didn’t concern them that the engine props could injure him as he’d have to jump in right next to them. “Life is life and death is death”, was their sentiment.
Of course, that didn’t fly with us. We convinced the crew to slow the engines and get the sea lion off the boat. It’s one thing to leave an animal to die of natural causes. Still, it is entirely different not to intervene to save a life when human activity caused the threat to life in the first place, and the injury or death is preventable.
It did take some serious coaxing from Eduardo, in the shape of a broom, to convince the sea lion to jump ship. Maybe he smelled the fish we had for lunch. In the end, I think Eduardo weighed the pros and cons and didn’t want to deal with 10 unhappy, scolding women. We would have made his life miserable, no doubt.
