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"Ash heaps of the Pacific" the Galapagos have been called. I prefer to think of them as the mountain tops of lost Atlantis — the Enchanted Isles. We came to anchor at Tagus Cove and immediately were in small boats, exploration bound.
"Lizard, sir," sang out the launchman.
Four feet long, black, disdainful, stupid looking and incredibly repulsive was one of the giant marine iguanas. That he was a throw-back to prehistoric monsterdom was indisputable. One had but to magnify him several hundred times to have a veritable iguanadon. It likewise seemed incredible that these indolent looking reptiles could move with such rapidity as to make their capture difficult, but this was true. We got only two that morning. My film record of these unearthly earthlings I prize highly.
The rocks swarmed with the most brilliantly colored purple and red crabs imaginable. They had no fear of us and we captured many.
Here it was, at Tagus Cove, that
the submarine battle for existence was again horribly apparent. We started fishing. When we saw a disturbance in the water we headed for it, thinking we had sighted a school of fish. Everywhere overhead, were birds of all kinds diving into the swarming thousands of their marine victims.
When we arrived we did not find merely a school of fish but a vast ocean slaughter house. A school of tiny red fish, about the size of sardines were feeding on smaller fry. The birds took what the red hunters did not. Presently slightly larger fish arrived to feed on the smaller ones. Still larger ones came to the grisly feast. We counted fifteen different kinds and sizes, the greater preying on the lesser. On the edges were sharks, craven and cowardly cautious, waiting to attack and devour only the victims which were wounded too badly to fight or to escape. True sea jackals and hyenas!
Here it was that we landed the movie camera by means of a breeches-buoy arrangement on a shore where the seas swept so violently as to indicate total destruction to the launch if we got too close. This provided opportunity for filming with truly novel camera angles. We made this difficult landing because we got a glimpse of thousands upon thousands of the repulsive iguanas sunning themselves on the rocks. The venture well repaid any risk involved. These strange lizards were, literally, three deep. And unafraid! I was able to get motion pictures of them in all their activities: feeding, sleeping, carrying their young and, apparently, merely existing, waiting for Lord knows what — death, perhaps.
This was at Tagus Cove, Albemarle and San Fernandino Island. The Humboldt Current, cold from the Antarctic, wound its tortuous way among these massive rocks, bringing with it thousands of seals and sea lions, and strange penguins. It is conceivable that the seals could with ease swim the three thousand miles (Continued on page 129)
fiy Permission of William Beebe
SEINING FOR THE SECRETS OF THE SEA
Eighty-one