Rites of courtship in Gorgona.

• Author: Sanchez, Angela
• Position: Humpback whales off Colombia's Pacific coast - Tale of Two Islands

Each year in the tropical waters around this Colombian island, humpback whales compete for mates with a magnificent show of acrobatics and songs

It is said that Francisco Pizarro named the island Gorgona when he passed along the Colombian coast on his way to Peru in 1527. The mythological Gorgon - the sisters of the snake-filled hair whose appearance could turn a person to stone - is apparently what the otherwise fearless explorer had in mind after some of his men succumbed to bites from the island's venomous snakes.

Today, this island - its name doubly charged with mythology and history - is protected as a national park by the Colombian government, a veritable "living laboratory" of flora and fauna. Located just thirty-five miles off the Pacific coast of Colombia, near the small port of Guapi in the department of Cauca, Gorgona is a mountainous, tropical island with a total area of barely fifteen miles. It is part of a small group of volcanic islands, remnants of an ancient mountain range that extended from the northern Darien region to the west coast of present-day Ecuador. Just to the southwest of Gorgona are Gorgonilla and three more island outcroppings, of which the largest is called the Widower.

Pizarro also encountered Gorgona's first human inhabitants, the Cuna; within the century, however, other visitors to the island would find it unoccupied, and through the centuries Gorgona, perhaps living up to its name, became the refuge of buccaneers and seamen, and then in 1959, a penal colony.

Gorgona is covered with humid forest, and diverse species of tropical animals have long made their home there; yet over time the recorded species have changed, given the fragility of the island ecosystem. The first mention of the island's fauna is from the Spanish chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon. Although he remarked on turkeys, pheasants, jungle cats, and birds, he didn't mention the white-faced monkey - perhaps the most characteristic mammal species found on the island today. And, although the monkeys were observed a century later by other European explorers, all other species that Cieza de Leon mentioned - except for the snakes - no longer exist there.

Today Gorgona is home to twelve species of bats, one of which is a vampire, varieties of sloth, and two species of rodent. Besides marine birds such as pelicans, which nest in the national park, and frigate birds, there are nineteen migratory species, including varieties of eagle, hummingbird...