Pinzón Island was first named after two captains that were accomanying Columbus on his voyage to discover the New World. These were the Pinzón brothers, who captained the Pinta and the Niña ships.
Pinzón is one of the smaller islands at the centre of the Galapagos group. To this day, it remains one of the most unfrequented islands, noted for its low and spiky vegetation, as well as its vast number of rocks. What it lacks in width, it makes up for in height, providing one of the highest summits at the Galapagos. This leads to what is called the garúa, a heavy mist that occurs on the higher islands during the dry season. This enables epiphytes to exists (plants that grow on other plants, deriving moisture and nutrients from the air), including ferns and bromeliads — even on Opuntia cacti.
Wildlife of Pinzón
Despite its remote and barren existence, animals thrive on Pinzón. Of note, there are Darwin’s finches, Galápagos doves, vermilion flycatchers, Galápagos snakes, and its own species of lava lizard and giant tortoise.
As with other islands, introduced species have caused significant destruction. The little fire ant has been a significant problem as have black rats. Black rats plagued the island for over 100 years, essentially cutting off all natural recruitment into the tortoise population.
Humans were equal to the destruction too. Whaler nearly drove the population to extinction. Later scientific collecting expeditions continued the decimation of the population. This included The California Academy of Sciences collected some 80 tortoises off Pinzón in 1905. During World War II two airplanes out of the US Base at Baltra crashed on Pinzón and the remains of these aircraft can still be found today.
