Guayaquil | The Boat | Food | Wildlife Gallery

Gallery of Galapagos Island Wildlife

Penguins

The Galapagos Penguin is the third smallest penguin in the world.

Lizards

Here are some smaller lizards, up close and personal.

Marine Iguanas

They clump together near the sea. The only sea-going lizard in the world, the're not real pretty, as you can tell. Marine algae pretty much makes up their whole diet. Great hands though.

Land Iguanas

Big, lazy, herbiverous but colorful. Enemies are mostly dogs, cats and humans. That last bunch considers them a delicacy.

Flightless Cormorants

They've lost the use of their wings, but take the time to dry them anyway.

Giant Tortoise

Here's what the tourists come to see. Old, craggy, and somewhat inept at mating (that's two males on the top there), these guys wow you with their size. Oldsters like Lonesome George (not shown, he's bashful) can get to be over 150 years old.

The bottom photo shows a tortoise during a tropical rain shower. The Irregularities in the shell are indicative of age; this one's estimated to be over 100 years old.

All photos © 2002 by James Martin. All rights reserved.


Besides wildlife, there's plenty of inanimate life out there as well. Below is a picture of "brain coral." This particular brain has a noticable hole in it. Scientists have taken a core sample and have determined that this particular clump has taken over 350 years to get as big as it is.

Click on any of the photos on this page to open a new window with the picture enlarged. Click anywhere on the screen to close the window.

A note on the photographs appearing on this page.

All were taken with an Olympus 2000Z digital camera in jpeg mode. The zoom lens, equivalent to a 100 mm zoom on a 35 mm camera, is quite adequate for most wildlife photos on the Galapagos. These animals don't run from most folks, so if you're patient, you ought to be able to get close enough for a decent picture. The lizards were all photographed in macro mode, the camera being about six inches away from the subject at the time the photo was taken.

Photographer's Bio

James Martin is an archaeologist, photographer, writer, and web developer. He has photographed auto racing for 18 years, and his travel photography has appeared in International Travel News, Big World Magazine, and Wandering Italy.

He is webmaster of the CultureLink Fieldwork Project. The project has recorded archaeological sites and petroglyphs on Ometepe Island in Nicaragua for five field seasons.

He invites folks from the San Francisco Bay Area to visit his About.com site on the Bay Area: sanfrancisco.about.com

He also invites comments and questions. Send him an email.


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