Galapagos Syndrome: Self diagnosis, treatment, and planning for a recurrence

This is nominally a talk about preliminary observations of facilitative interactions among reef fishes in the Galapagos Islands. We went to San Cristobal and Santa Cruz Islands, as well as smaller adjacent islets, in July 2017 to investigate the extent to which group foraging was present in the reef fish communities there. Ultimately, the goal is to place that foraging in the context of other observations we’ve made at locations around the world, including the Great Barrier Reef, Mauritius, Bonaire, the Red Sea, the Florida Keys, Honduras, Mexico, and Baja California. But that is only part of the tale and part of the talk. Barely three days into an extraordinary trip, while diving in the cove on San Cristobal where Darwin first made landfall in the islands on September 17th, 1835, we were struck by the overwhelming realization that we had lost our minds; we had Galapagos Syndrome.

Speaker: James Lindholm, CSU Monterey Bay