Biology Reference
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missing was the echo of the whale song from the bottom of the deep
ocean. Since we were in shallow water next to an island, we must have
received the sound directly from the whale, without an echo. When
submerged, too, our ears may not be very e‹cient at hearing sounds.
In any case, we were delighted to have solved that particular mystery.
We later learned that the Revillagigedo Islands are the winter home for
a large number of humpbacks, a little-known fact, mainly because of the
islands' remoteness. The Hawaiian Islands, and in particular Maui, are
of course famous as a wintering ground for humpbacks, where they come
after feeding on the swarms of krill and herring in the seas around Alaska.
Cetacean researchers have recently observed a few individual whales both
in Hawaii and at the Revillagigedo Islands—an indication that at least
some migration is taking place between the two wintering locations.
We saw a number of humpbacks during our days at Socorro, but be-
cause our primary objective was to collect fish we made only one un-
successful attempt to swim with one. Still, it was exciting to know that
while we dived, they too were diving in the waters nearby.
SOCORRO SHARKS
Now that our first night dive in the allegedly “shark-infested waters”
was behind us, we felt much more comfortable about collecting, ei-
ther day or night. Making steady progress, within a few days we had
a good population in the holding tank on
El Navegante,
and we could
now focus on other activities.
I had been taking pictures of some of the unusual fishes and inver-
tebrates found on these islands. One day Chuck Nicklin and I were
out in the inflatable Zodiac, and I rolled over the side into the water
with my camera. Upon righting myself, through the cloud of bubbles
I saw a small Galápagos shark coming straight at me at high speed. I
raised my camera just in time to hit it on the nose. The commotion
I'd made falling into the water must have excited the shark; we decided
that it would be wiser for us to slip quietly in rather than with our
usual backward roll and splash.
Chuck, who was shooting with an underwater sixteen-millimeter
movie camera, wanted to get some shark footage, so we decided to
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