Into the Night: Tales of Nocturnal Wildlife Expeditions

3. Undersea at Night in Darwin’s Galapagos

41 thRee Undersea at Night in Darwin’s galapagos Christina Allen We descend into the sea as a group, shivering and holding hands and looking at each other like deer in headlights. It occurs to me, as I’m sure it occurs to each of the group members: Why on earth are we doing this? I think that we have finally gone too far. I wonder, When did we cross the line separating daring from stupidity? When the headlines come out, our effort will be seen for what it is: “Divers bait feeding sharks with their own bodies at night.” I feel like a worm on a hook and can feel hungry eyes on me from the dark. It’s spring 1999, and I’ve joined an educational expedition to the Galapagos Islands 600 miles off the west coast of Ecuador. A few days earlier, on the main island of San Cristobal in the archipelago, I stumbled off the plane with my group, dazed and sweaty after a long trip, into a tiny, disorganized, and nearly empty airport. Our team, the GalapagosQuest team, is a motley crew, ranging in age and experience from a hip young computer geek to a Ph.D. anthropologist, a classroom teacher, a wry gray-haired veteran of the film industry, DOI: 10.5876/9781607322702:c03 Christina Allen 42 and me, a biologist. Hard to imagine we will soon be the best of friends. Our mission is to get our heads around the complex environmental issues surrounding the Galapagos and make a statement about how the islands have fared since Darwin’s visit in 1835. But we are far from alone in this endeavor. About 1 million schoolkids all over the world are directing our every move. By voting on our website from their classrooms, they decide where we go and what we do each day. As we explore the exotic and unique ecosystems that inspired Darwin, we are like a traveling news team. Our base is the Samba, a small boat that will take us around the sea and to the islands on a rigorous schedule of interviewing locals, collecting visuals, and writing. Every night, usually around 2:00 a.m., we upload our pieces to the Internet via satellite. Each morning, we rise puffy-eyed and confused like nocturnal creatures forced to come out into the glaring sunlight. Our day has barely begun, but students have already bombarded us with hundreds of questions. 3.1. Galapagos Islands Undersea at Night in Darwin’s galapagos 43 Lights in the Darkness On our first night out, I finish my reports at about 10:00 p.m. and walk out onto the front deck of the Samba as it rocks gently back and forth, tethered on its anchor. Heavy fog has settled over the water, and it’s so dark that all divisions between water, air, and land blur into an inky black soup. Bleary-eyed and stiff from writing, I rub my eyes and peer into dark space. Without my dominant sense of sight, my other senses come alive. I feel my way along the wet metal railing, tasting and smelling the salty breeze as the pulse of the water lapping against the boat fills my head with a hypnotic rhythm. Even the self-defining envelope of my skin seems to disappear in the warm wet air. I feel expansive, surreal, and at one with the night. As my eyes adjust to the dark, I notice tiny blue-green flickers of light at the edge of my vision. At first I think I’ve been staring at the computer screen too long, but the longer I look, the more the darkness below sparks to life. Every time I try to focus, to chase down a particular spot, it disappears. Soon my eyes tire from the strain and lose focus. It is only then that the whole scene reveals itself. Suddenly I see shape and movement and realize that I am standing above a gigantic wriggling mass of glowing, darting living things. As a scientist, I have been trained to be skeptical, but as I watch the water, my mind relaxes and accepts what I am seeing. I see that the seething mass below me is an enormous school of fish, milling about under and around the boat. The school is lit up with such clarity and definition that I start to see different shapes...