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This chapter explores two delightfully unique, flightless seabirds: the Galápagos cormorant, one of the world’s most unusual organisms, and the Galápagos penguin, the only penguin to swim in the Northern Hemisphere. Three themes stand out: first, in pre-settlement Galápagos, neither species suffered great disadvantage because of flightlessness. Having no terrestrial predators allowed both species to nest on land near water’s edge, to specialize in diving for prey in the rich, cool Cromwell upwelling, and to prosper during over a million years of flightless life in Galápagos. Second, from very different evolutionary origins, the two seabirds evolved a fascinating evolutionary convergence in the archipelago—not their flightlessness per se, because penguins were already flightless when they arrived. Instead, there are striking similarities in their uniquely opportunistic mating practices, including the cormorant’s very unusual facultative polyandry. Third, does the older flightless specialist, the penguin, have the advantage when El Niño causes food supply to falter, or does the advantage go to the cormorant, the seabird specifically retooled by evolution for conditions in Galápagos? Forty years of census data show that penguins react slightly more quickly to ENSO and with more population flux, but that both species show impressive reproductive resilience.

Entering beneath the water surface produces a radical change in perceptual challenges. The eye is no longer able to focus adequately and, with increasing depth, light levels decrease and the spectral properties of ambient light narrows with the result that visual resolution decreases rapidly and colour cues are lost. Diving to depth is rapid which means that perceptual challenges change constantly. This results in a paucity of visual information and olfaction and hearing cannot be used to complement this loss. Amphibious foragers must rely upon minimal cues and very specialized foraging behaviours; some ducks may forage for sessile prey using touch sensitivity in the bill, cormorants use a technique in which they trigger an escape response from a fish which they catch at very short range, while penguins and auks may rely upon minimal cues from photophores on fish and random encounters with prey.

While HEW and USDA pondered these appellate court decisions, we turned our attention to several more local DDT problems. From a New York Times article (May 3, 1970), we learned that the Olin Chemical Corporation was manufacturing about 20% of the nation’s DDT in buildings owned by the federal government and leased to Olin on the site of the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama. A DDT-contaminated effluent from this plant was leaking into the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge at concentrations known to inhibit reproduction of birds and fish. The refuge also served as a drinking water supply for the city of Decatur, implying a human health hazard as well. Downriver fisherman were also eating their catch, thus concentrating DDT to higher levels as well. In October 1969, the federal Water Quality Administration had recommended a stricter pollution control standard for the Olin plant. Olin said it could not meet that standard, and the Army then overruled the Water Quality Administration’s recommendation. So on June 5, 1970, EDF, along with the National Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation, sued in Federal District Court against Olin, the Department of the Army, and the Corps of Engineers seeking to stop the DDT-contaminated discharge. The complaint was written by EDF’s new attorney, Edward Lee Rogers. I supplied the scientific support, which was easy, since it was similar, although steadily expanding, to the Wisconsin hearings and the USDA and HEW cases. Only three days later Olin threw in the towel! On June 8 Olin decided to close its DDT plant and no longer make DDT. DDT apparently was not worth defending. They said they had reached that decision shortly before our case was filed. True or not, it was a quick and easy victory. We needed it. We had won by winning. Even as the legal briefs went back and forth between EDF, USDA, HEW, and the appeals court, another DDT battle was brewing in California. For years scientists had been puzzled by the extremely high levels of DDT contamination along the coast of Southern California compared with other marine environments.