Marine Iguana (endemic)
Puerto Egas, Santiago | Galapagos
This large set comes with a warning, as there are twenty photos in it! I normally post no more than five shots of any species we see when we travel, but this iguana is special as it’s the world’s only sea-going lizard. There are seven races, or subspecies, that vary in both size and colour from island to island – the largest on northern Isabela, which grow up to 1.3m in length; the smallest on Genovesa, which are half that size; and the most brightly coloured on Espanola. They are largely black or dark grey, although the males acquire a red or red-green tinge during the mating season. It’s cold-blooded so must warm up in the sun, which quite frankly it seems to spend most of the day doing. Despite the numbers seen it was actually quite difficult to find them with their eyes open, let alone doing something interesting like feeding. However, from the hundreds of shots I took of them, I’ve selected twenty in order to give a good picture of what we saw. Essentially this number of photos have been posted for my own records, but at the same time I’ve tried to make them as varied as possible so that they are interesting. I appreciate that with all the photos being posted to Flickr that this is a large set to go through, but if you find the first few interesting I would recommend looking at the others, not for the photography, but for the fact that this is such a unique reptile.
Marine Iguana (endemic)
Puerto Egas, Santiago | Galapagos
This large set comes with a warning, as there are twenty photos in it! I normally post no more than five shots of any species we see when we travel, but this iguana is special as it’s the world’s only sea-going lizard. There are seven races, or subspecies, that vary in both size and colour from island to island – the largest on northern Isabela, which grow up to 1.3m in length; the smallest on Genovesa, which are half that size; and the most brightly coloured on Espanola. They are largely black or dark grey, although the males acquire a red or red-green tinge during the mating season. It’s cold-blooded so must warm up in the sun, which quite frankly it seems to spend most of the day doing. Despite the numbers seen it was actually quite difficult to find them with their eyes open, let alone doing something interesting like feeding. However, from the hundreds of shots I took of them, I’ve selected twenty in order to give a good picture of what we saw. Essentially this number of photos have been posted for my own records, but at the same time I’ve tried to make them as varied as possible so that they are interesting. I appreciate that with all the photos being posted to Flickr that this is a large set to go through, but if you find the first few interesting I would recommend looking at the others, not for the photography, but for the fact that this is such a unique reptile.