Galapagos – From Blue-footed Boobies to Swimming with Sharks (Part 2)

By Margriet Ruurs

This is the second part of Margriet's story of her visit to the Galapagos Islands. Click here for the first part.

Blue-footed Boobie!

We hiked across Mosquera Islet seeing many birds up close, including – to my delight – the Blue-footed Boobie. We had watched documentaries about the Galapagos and were thrilled to see these birds in real life, as well as the bright red Sally Lightfoot Crabs scurrying across the black lava rocks, pelicans, swallowtail gulls, and many others.

Male Frigate Bird

One of the funnest animals was the sea lion. They look exactly like our North American seals, but the ears show that they are sea lions. It is amazing that all animals here have no fear of people. The seals come right at you, follow you like puppies, and want to play. It is the hardest thing not to reach out and pet them.

But this is a National Park and everything is highly protected. You cannot take a rock or a shell or touch anything. And rightly so.

Next we hiked North Seymour Island where the huge Frigate Birds soared overhead and young ones with white heads in perched in trees, looking like bald eagles.

Iguanas live on most islands but they are different species, having adapted to life on each island. Some islands had black iguanas; elsewhere they were yellow or even pink. We also saw the swimming ocean iguanas.

We hiked across Santa Fe and South Plaza islands. Being on a boat allowed us to visit more places but it also had the disadvantage of rocking and bobbing.

However, the biggest thrill for me was being able to swim off the back of the boat. Even after a few excited calls of “Shark!” I couldn’t figure out why it was okay to swim when there were sharks, but I trusted that our guides knew what they were doing.

We snorkeled several times, and it was beyond description to be in the ocean and have a large sea lion coming straight at me like a bullet, only to veer off at the last second. At one point two sea lions swam alongside me on either side. I watched turtles swimming below me, and hundreds and hundreds of colourful fishes like parrot fish.

And sharks. White tip sharks. Pretty cool.

On San Cristobal Island we strolled through the town and it was a bizarre experience to run into two friends from Kelowna!

We visited the Galapagos Interpretation Center. Sweat dripped of our bodies as we just stood still, reading about the violent human history on the islands. The animals really ought to be afraid of humans. They killed over 100,000 turtles and thousands of whales during the mid-1800s to mid-1900s. Nowadays, 97% of the islands is strictly protected as a National Park. All we can do is hope it will always stay this way and that Galapagos’s amazing variety of wildlife, which so well demonstrates its capacity to change and adapt to its natural environment, will be around for generations to come.

Reflecting back on it all, I am very glad to have been able to make this amazing trip and to see these special places on Earth. But it is a very long way to travel, expensive, and a bit overrated. Like ‘Serengeti’ the name ‘Galapagos’ has mysterious allure, but we have visited many places where plants and wildlife have adapted to their environment, and places like Australia’s Great Barrier Reef where we also saw giant tortoises and birds that stayed a foot away from us.

If you can go, do it. But otherwise, savour nature around you anywhere – nature is always incredible and forever adapting.

All photos are Copyright ©Margriet Ruurs

Galapagos – From Blue-footed Boobies to Swimming with Sharks (Part 1)

By Margriet Ruurs

Margriet and Kees Ruurs start their Galapagos adventure.

Galapagos Islands: the very name conjures up images of a mysterious paradise, of unique species of animals that have adapted to their environment in special ways.

I am so glad and grateful that I had a chance to visit these faraway islands, even thought they have now lost some of their magic for me. But the intrigue has been replaced by memories of walking among iguanas and swimming with sharks and sea lions.

When we made the decision to travel to South America, there were two things high on our wish list: Easter Island and the Galapagos. I had read a wonderful, insightful book called Charles and Emma by Deborah Heiligman. This book heightened my wish to see these islands for myself.

We flew from Guayaquil, Ecuador, west across the Pacific and landed on one of the circa 40 Galapagos Islands (did you know there are so many islands here?!): Baltra. The humid heat hit us like a wall.

Tourists can travel to the Galapagos on their own or via a planned trip. But even if you go on your own, you cannot visit the National Park areas without a guide or small tour group. The Galapagos Islands are not only expensive to reach; they are expensive in every way, since all food and drink needs to come from far away.

A guide met us at the airport, expertly whisked our luggage away, and loaded us and about 18 others onto a bus. It was only a 10-minute drive to the boat launch where we climbed aboard a bobbing dinghy. We would repeat this exercise in agility many times in the coming days.

The dinghy brought us to a medium-sized yacht. The MV Coral I had about 14 cabins and a total of 20 guests on board plus a crew of 15, including two naturalists.

That first day we visited the Charles Darwin Station on Santa C,ruz Island. This is where the breeding program for the Galapagos Giant Tortoises takes place. Eggs from all over the islands are hatched here and the little Giant Tortoises (what do you call a little giant tortoise?) are raised until the age of five, when they are released in hopes that they will survive on their own.

We saw several huge, ancient tortoises as well as amazing prickly pear cactus trees that grow into huge trees over 400 years old. Unfortunately, the buildings were not open to the public and we did not see eggs or baby tortoises.

We walked through town and discovered that, like Easter Island, the Galapagos we had imagined was very different from reality. For instance, did you realize that the archipelago consists of nearly 40 islands, four of which are permanently inhabited?

And did you know that over 30,000 people live in Galapagos? I had no idea. The cities of Santa Cruz and San Cristobal have schools, stores, government buildings, and much more. Two airports serve the islands. Since Galapagos was used as a penal colony by Ecuador, most houses had bars and gates as opposed by the much more friendly atmosphere on Easter Island. The heat was incredible.

There is almost no rain on these lava islands. Some are lush and green, but others are a volcanic wasteland. In fact, one early explorer wrote home to describe that he had arrived in what he truly thought was hell!

That first night we slept well in our slightly rocking bunks. However, the next two nights were rough as we crossed open ocean and coped with high swells that rocked the small boat left to right and front to back. Things flew through the cabin, and we ended up sleeping on the outside deck. Most of us didn’t get sea sick, but we rocked for three days afterwards.

(To be continued....)

All photos are Copyright ©Margriet Ruurs

For Margriet's previous blog posts about her visit to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, click here and here.

Lane Anderson Award Winner Is Life-long Giraffe Fan

The winner of the 2016 Lane Anderson award for excellence in Canadian science writing for youth is Anne Innis Dagg, for her book 5 Giraffes, published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside. This is her account of how she came to study giraffe. -CE

By Anne Innis Dagg

When I was three years old, my mother took me on a trip from our home in Toronto to Chicago where we visited the Brookfield Zoo. I was mesmerized by the giraffe! So much so that I decided I would study them in Africa when I grew up.

At the University of Toronto, I enrolled in biology and for four years learned a great deal, but nothing about my favourite animal. When I graduated I wrote to as many sources as I could think of in Africa to see if anyone would like a young woman to come and watch giraffe near them, but with no success. I then decided to do a year of graduate work and try again the following year, in 1956.

This time I was successful! I was able to live on the grounds of a huge cattle farm that had 95 giraffe on its property, coming and going as they wished. By watching them from the tiny second-hand car I had bought, I was able to document what they did each day. The extensive scientific paper I wrote was apparently the first to be published about the behaviour of any wild animal living in Africa.

Since then I have been able to study giraffe in many other ways, such as their gaits, their spotting, and their behaviour in zoos. I have also written books about giraffe and about my adventures with them. In 2018, there should be a movie about my life with this wonderful animal!

For my book 5 Giraffes, of course, I had to choose individuals from a variety of different backgrounds and places. I belong to a group of scientists who are devoted to this animal, which is in danger of extinction, so this was easily done. They gave me lots of possibilities, from which I chose the five – three of the giraffes lived in zoos, one is a dominant male in Kenya, and the last is a female of another race, also in Kenya, who grieved for days when her youngster died.

Then I added other chapters that deal with a variety of ways in which giraffe differ from other animals. For example, their legs are so long that they have unusual gaits. The females are sociable, moving usually in small groups, while the large males are more likely to be solitary. Giraffe have evolved ways to “beat the heat” on hot days and to obtain moisture from leaves where there is no water.

Writing 5 Giraffes was a wonderful chance for me to recall the amazing way in which giraffe have evolved to live in Africa.

Photos courtesy of Anne Innis Dagg.

Investigating Ocean Currents in a Rotating Swimming Pool

By Mirjam Glessmer

Have you ever wondered what happens when you put a 13-m-diameter swimming pool on a merry-go-round? Probably not. But I am here to tell you today about what happens when you do just that, and what you can learn from doing so.

I am part of an international group of scientists, doing research on currents in the ocean (and you can read more about who we are and what you do on our blog: http://skolelab.uib.no/blogg/darelius). Specifically, we are interested in how warm water is transported towards an Antarctic ice shelf. As you can imagine, Antarctica is not the easiest place to travel to and measure the ocean, especially not during winter. There are some observations of warm water reaching the ice shelf and contributing to melting the ice, but it is not known yet under what conditions this happens.

Why a pool?

In order to understand how water behaves in the ocean, we are reproducing real-world features that we suspect have an important influence on the current's behaviour, but in miniature, and inside our water-filled tank. Then we can modify those features and observe which parts of them actually determine how the water flows, and which parts are not as important. In our case, we are changing the miniature coastline of Antarctica to see what makes the current turn and flow into a canyon instead of just going straight ahead.

Why rotation?

We need to rotate the tank to represent the Earth's rotation. This is because the Earth's rotation influences all large-scale movements on Earth, including ocean currents: Moving objects get deflected to their left on the Southern Hemisphere. Below is a short video of the rotating, empty tank, to show you what happens when you roll a ball in the rotating tank: It does not go straight ahead but just curves to the side!

Coriolis from Mirjam Glessmer on Vimeo.

Before Nadine, the scientist shown in the video, climbed into the tank, you saw her walking alongside it. Even though the tank was turning very slowly (only one rotation per 50 seconds), she had to walk quite fast to keep up! This is how fast we need to spin the tank in order to have it rotate at the right speed for the size of our Antarctica.

How does it all work?

There is only one tank of this size -- 13 meter diameter! -- in the world, and it is situated in Grenoble, France. Researchers from all over the world travel to France to do their experiments in this tank for a couple of weeks each. In the gif below, you see the tank rotating: First, you see an office moving past you (yes, there are several floors above the water, including the first one with an office, computers, desks, chairs and all! That's where we are during experiments, rotating with the tank) and then you can see the water below, lit in bright green. 

There is a huge amount of effort and money going into running research facilities like this, and everybody working with the tank needs to be highly specialized in their training.

What do experiments look like?

When there is water in the tank, we need some special tricks to show how the water is actually moving inside the tank. This is done by seeding particles, tiny plastic beads, into the water and lighting them with a laser. Then special cameras take pictures of the particles and using complicated calculations, we can figure out exactly how the currents are moving. Below, you see a gif of one of our experiments: The current starts coming in from the right side of the image, flowing along our model Antarctica, and then some of it turns into the canyon, while most of it just goes straight ahead.

Depending on the shape of our Antarctica, sometimes all the water turns into the canyon, or sometimes all of it goes straight ahead.

What have we learned?

That's a difficult question! We are still in the middle of doing our experiments, and the tricky part with research is that doing the experiments (even though that can be a huge undertaking as you see when you look at what a huge structure our tank is, or what enormous effort it requires to go to Antarctica with a research ship) is only a tiny step in the whole process. Nadine, who you saw in the movie above, is one of several people who will work on the data we are currently gathering for the next four years! But even though we are not finished with our research, there are definitely things we have learned. For example, the length of Antarctica's coast line that the current flows along before the canyon interrupts its flow is very important: The shorter it is, the larger the part of the current that turns into the canyon. How all our individual observations will fit together in a larger picture, however, will still take months and years of work to figure out.

Where can I learn more about this?

If you have any questions, we would love to hear from you! We are hosting an "Ask Me Anything" event on October 18th but you can also leave questions on our Facebook page or directly on our blog.

Award Ceremony at the Ontario Science Centre

By Simon Shapiro

Last month the SWCC (Science Writers and Communicators of Canada) presented me with their 2016 Youth Book Award, for Faster, Higher, Smarter. The book is about people who had brilliant ideas in sport, and explains the science behind those ideas. It is a huge honour to receive the award. It was that much better because the award was presented at the Ontario Science Centre, and a wonderful group of grade 5 and grade 6 students from Grenoble Public School were there.

David McKay of the SWCC presented me with the award. 

Then I had a terrific time with the kids. I talked to them about the wide variety of innovators in the sports field. They were the most attentive audience ever.

 

I told them about the youngest innovator in the book. Thirteen-year-old Ollie Gelfand figured out how to levitate a skateboard while standing on top of it (thanks to Newton and his laws of motion). 

 

I talked about the oldest inventor in the book. Art Myers was a retired farmer who realized that using elastic energy in a flexible fibre glass vaulting pole would work better than a rigid aluminum one.

 They were spellbound hearing about the cyclist, Graeme Obree, who invented two different aerodynamic positions - both so much more effective than the standard one, that the cycling federation banned both of them. 

 They loved hearing about Howard Head, the unathletic engineer who totally transformed both skiing and tennis by inventing radical new skis and rackets. 

After the presentation, Maurice Bitran, the CEO of the Science Centre, moderated a Question and Answer segment. Enough hands went up that we could have been there for a couple of hours.

 
Annick Press generously donated a number of copies of the book to lucky students, so afterwards we had some quick autographs.

 

 Grenoble Public School, in the Flemingdon Park area, serves an immigrant population. Approximately 93% of the students and/or their parents have immigrated to Canada. Over 70 different languages are represented at the school! The school has won the prestigious National Quality Institute's Award of Merit as a Canadian school demonstrating excellence.

I was told that historically over 50% of these kids will go on to earn postgraduate degrees. Based on what I saw, that's easy to believe.

Science Literacy or....What?

By Claire Eamer

Think scientists are scary? How about sitting
down with a few scientists at your local pub?
Not so scary after all, eh? Pint of Science is
one of several organizations making that happen.

A couple of days ago, I found myself in a Twitter conversation with an assortment of science communicators and scientists (sometimes, but not always, the same thing). We were talking about promoting science literacy. Or maybe not - because what do we actually mean by science literacy?

The conversation was sparked by a previous Twitter exchange, summarized in this blog post by the fiercely scientific and communicative Sarah Boon: Is it time to stop using the phrase “science literacy”?

And that, in turn, started with a comment from Canada's new chief science adviser, Dr. Mona Nemer. She expressed concern that too many Canadians still think science is a matter of opinion rather than fact. She added, “I think that we need to develop a better dialog and better ways of exciting the youth about science.”

Imagine getting to play with all those cool science toys
at BC's Science World or Toronto's Ontario Science Centre,
without having to make way for scores of rowdy kids. It can
happen. Check your local science centre for an adults-only
night. And if there isn't one, ask them why not!

Now I spend a lot of time writing about science for kids and talking to kids about science - and most of them, I find, are already excited by science. Kids want to know how things work, where they come from, what they're made of - all the things that scientists want to know. And there are plenty of ways for kids to get involved with science: books, magazines, toys, museums, science centres, natural history clubs, space camps, and school itself.

But adults are another case entirely. I've met adults who are sure they can't understand science - are even afraid of science. And often intelligent, accomplished adults who are thoroughly competent in their own fields. At some point between the curious child and accomplished, competent adult, something has happened to convince them that they can't understand things scientific.

How about a science poetry slam? Or stand-up science comedy?
Watch as science lovers battle to communicate science.
What's on the line? Pride, fame, and eternal glory. And it's all
happening at a Science Slam near you.

They lack - in the most commonly used term - science literacy. That sounds awful, doesn't it? As if they can barely read and write. But, of course, that's not the case. Veteran science writer/broadcaster Jay Ingram suggests dropping the term science literacy entirely. No one's really sure what it means in practical terms, and it sounds like a chore, a duty, another unwelcome obligation in an already busy life.

I'd love to see grown-ups having as much fun with science as kids do. And why not? Imagine digging for real dinosaur bones, helping excavate a genuine archaeological site, peering at tiny critters through a microscope or enormous planets through a telescope. Imagine getting to play with all those gizmos and gadgets in science centres without having to compete with hyperactive eight-year-olds. That would be fun!

And, increasingly, you can do it. Science centres and museums and science communication organizations are recognizing that adults need some science fun too. Remember that Twitter conversation that started this bit of musing? It led to a bouquet of recommendations for organizations that are putting the fun back into science for us grown-ups. Click on the links under the images scattered around this post to learn more.

And - please - if you know of a great science event for grown-ups, add it in the Comments section below. Forget science literacy - let's have fun!

The Elephant Keeper

By Margriet Ruurs

I am happy to share a new book with you that has been long in the making.


In 2014 I was lucky enough to travel to Zambia. There, I visited an elephant orphanage and learned much about how hard people work to help save an endangered species.

Elephants are in danger of illegal poaching. Because there are still countries in the world where people wants trinkets made from ivory, there are still poachers willing to kill these majestic animals.

When a mother elephant is killed, usually for her tusks, her baby elephant is left to die. Without her nursing and nurturing, the infant is not able to care for itself yet. In Zambia, Game Rangers International has trained staff that will rescue and transport the baby elephant.

The staff at Lilayi Elephant Orphanage have developed a milk formula and other pertinent care that gives the orphaned elephant a fighting chance.

Zambezi came to the orphanage at a young age after he was founded nearly drowning in a resort's pool near the Zambezi River in southern Zambia.

Aaron is the caretaker who was offered a job after rescuing Zambezi. To him, elephants had been the enemy that destroys crops in his village. But Aaron learned to care for elephants, to respect and to love them. Now he is a valuable caretaker who spends most of his waking hours with his little charges.

The elephants live in the protected forest and compound near Lusaka, until they are old enough to be released into the wild. They learn to forage and to act as elephants and form new family bonds with other orphaned elephants. They will live out their lives in the protected woods of Kafue National Park.

Find out how you can help - not only buy making sure you never buy anything made from ivory, but also by "adopting" a baby elephant. The $65.- US will pay for the elephant' food, milk, medicine and upkeep. What better gift for a child's birthday or a friend's Christmas gift than a baby elephant! You will receive photos and regular email updates!

http://gamerangersinternational.org/index.php/adopt-an-elephant/

Kids Can Press

978-1-77138-561-9 | Oct 3, 2017

List Price: USD $18.99, CAD $19.99

4-color  8 x 10 48 pages

Grades: 3 To 7 / Ages: 8 to 12

REVIEWS

“A moving and unforgettable true story ...”

— Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review, August 2017

“... Ruurs's narrative builds a strong emotional connection between readers and the subject---this is a tale designed to pull at the heartstrings of readers.”

— School Library Journal, September 2017