The balmy temperature is the first symptom of a new cycle of the El Nino weather phenomenon that periodically pronounces a sentence of starvation on the archipelago's marine iguanas.
Unusually warm for this time of year, the waters of the Pacific signal hard times for the reptilian inhabitants of Ecuador's iconic Galapagos Islands.
Last month, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced "El Nino conditions are present and are expected to gradually strengthen" as the year progresses. He cited two previous particularly harsh El Nino events: One in 1982 and another in 1997 that bleached corals and wreaked havoc on the islands' animal life -- also tortoises, penguins, cormorants and sea lions.And "according to the forecasts, this could be El Nino matching those in magnitude," said Rueda.
Galapagos species are able to survive cyclical changes in the local climate. But if variations occur too often or are too extreme, species can struggle to recover a balance between births and deaths. According to Rueda, there are about 450,000 iguanas on the islands. Their numbers, say the IUCN, can drop by 90 percent after a strong El Nino event.Marine iguanas can dive up to 12 meters deep and stay under water for an hour, but they "cannot swim long distances in the open sea to look for food" made scarce by algae die-offs, said Washington Tapia, director of the NGO Galapagos Conservancy.
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