Tourist Yacht Sinks
Tourist Yacht Sinks.
On July 2nd, the motor yacht Spondylus contrived to sink in Darwin Bay on Genovesa in the north of the islands. She had 15 passengers and eight crew aboard at the time and they are all safe, and as far as we know there were no injuries. There is likewise no indication of bad weather or any other factors contributing to the sinking. We have no information on how it happened, though there is a shallow spot at the entrance to the bay and if you are careless, you can hit it. Genovesa is very much an ‘island of birds’ with tens of thousands of red-footed boobies and even larger numbers of Galapagos and Madeiran storm petrels. There are also frigate birds, tropic birds, lava and swallow-tailed gulls and Galapagos shearwaters. There is bound to be some pollution from the accident mainly diesel oil, and this may affect some bird species as well as marine iguanas which may be the species most at risk. The National park has sent a team up to Genovesa to assess the damage.
Spondylus is the generic name of a bivalve mollusc found on the coast of Ecuador, it is also known as the spiny or thorny oyster.