Baltra

Today we went to Baltra Island, also known as South Seymour Island. The island is most well known for harbouring the airport that serves Santa Cruz Island. It was regular flights to and from the mainland, and also hosts land iguanas, tribulus, and finches, of course!

 

Baltra also had an invasive house cat and black rat population that was successfully eradicated about 13 years ago.

It also served as a military base, and so there are abandoned military structures on the island.

 

This island is similar to North Seymour in that the terrain are large, red volcanic boulders, or areas consisting of vegetation and swathes of a fine, red dirt. The green vegetation, during the current dry spell, is fairly sparse, with patches of palos verde and acacia, as well as opuntia.

 

Also like North Seymour, it felt as though this is what Mars would be like once we get there!

 

We spent all day there but had a successful day collecting samples and data!