Isla San Pedro Martir

We finally made it out to San Pedro Martir! After having a couple of horribly windy days we finally get a calm smooth water day. My presentation was on San Pedro Martir so I was excited to get out to the island that I had been learning so much about.

At the dock (8:00am) at the water temperature was 69.5 degrees Fahrenheit. There was only 2 trawlers to be seen in the bay however there were quite a few interesting birds just off the boat ramp such as a snowy egret and magnificent frigate birds.

To get out to San Pedro Martir you have to pass between Isla Alcatraz and Turner Island heading south west. As you head out we reached a ridge of a underwater mountain where the depth was 124 ft and then the depth from there gets much deeper as you keep heading out.

Around 9:10 we saw a whale from the baleen family which we thought was either a fin whale or a Bryde's Whale. The whale was surfacing at 10 minute intervals and was moving quite quickly so we did not get a good chance to observe it but it was still so amazing to be able to see a whale at all. The depth was 400ft when we saw the whale. ( San Pedro Martir off in the distance)

As we moved closer to San Pedro Martir we saw around 100 individuals of long-nose common dolphins. This group of about 100 individuals was interesting because they were very spread out which we haven't seen before. The depth here was 680 ft.

We finally make it to the island and the water here is a frigid 64 degrees. We were greeted by the sea lions :



San Pedro Martir is extremely important to nesting seabirds which include Red-billed Tropicbirds, blue-footed boobies, and brown pelicans. . The island is unique in that it has no sandy beaches but instead is covered in steep rhyolite and basement rock cliffs.The birds however have been negatively affected by invasive rats that were introduced to the island by guano miners in the late 1880's. Luckily, there is a eradication program planned to go through next week which the class is going to help out with. This eradication has been 5-8 years in the planning so it is very exciting. As we circled the island I got a tutoral on the spanish translation of many ocean organisms:

whale - ballena
sea cuccumber - pepino de mar
fish - pescado
dolphin - delfin
sea lion - lobo marino
lobster - langosta
octopus - pulpo
crab - cangrejo
clam - almeja
eel - anguila
sea turtle - canguama
sea urchin - erizo
shark - tiburon

As we passed the south west point we went out into the San Pedro Martir Trench to try to see Sperm Whales which are known to pass through this trench. As we waited to see if the whales were here we had Kevin's presentation on trenches in the gulf. He told us that the San Pedro Martir trench is 3,000 feet deep. At the bottom of this trench lies some of the newest land in the world as it extrudes from a crack in the earth's surface. Most of the trenches in the gulf are narrow however still very deep. One of the deepest trenches in the gulf is the Guaymas tench at 6,000 ft which is in the southern gulf .

After awhile we gave up on seeing the whales since we had already seen one in the morning and decided that we didn't want to waste anymore time when we could be snorkeling so we headed back to San Pedro Martir to snorkel.

This snorkel session was by far the best so far. I saw my first green sea turtle and the sea lions were amazing to swim with.

We headed back around the island after our session and waved goodbye to the brown and blue-footed boobies of the island. This was by far my favorite trip.