2017-02-13 Seafaring South

Monday was a travel day on board the Shogun. We had 350 miles to navigate and at 10-12 miles per hour it would take a while. While the captain and crew worked behind the scenes, keeping the boat moving and the passengers fed, we all kept busy processing collected information and preparing for our next stop.

Since we had several well qualified scientific experts on board, we used the “down time” to have talks given concerning what we’d seen and what we should expect to see next. Tom Oberbauer was especially helpful in preparing us for our upcoming stops. He brought his experience at many other Eastern Pacific islands and he’d researched each of the islands we planned to visit. The information he shared was very helpful for all of us to plan our activities when we went ashore. Other contributors to these preparations were Jon Rebman (plants), Jorge Montejo and Amy McAndrews (birds), Jim Berrian and Ida Naughton (bugs), Diane Alps (marine mammals), and Vince Scheidt (reptiles).

The bird team was hard at work whether on land or sea. As long as the sun allowed, the vigil was maintained. Birds were scarce this day, and those we saw were mostly distant and not worthy of image capture. The seas were smooth, and the company was quite agreeable.

The islands of the Archipiélago de Revillagigedo, the objects of this expedition, were within striking distance now. By tomorrow morning we would arrive at the first of these islands: Isla San Benedicto.

Images below: