Strongly contrasted with the meagerness of the land fauna is the redundant aquatic fauna of that portion of the gulf washing the shores of Seriland. Tiburon island is named from the sharks, said by some explorers to have been seen by thousands along its coasts; these voracious feeders find ample food in literal shoals and swarms of smaller fishes; a not inconsiderable number of whales have survived the early fisheries (one, estimated at 80 feet in length, was stranded in Rada Ballena about 1887); while schools of porpoises play about Boca Infierno and elsewhere, making easy prey of slower swimmers caught in the tide-rips and gale-swept breakers. Proportionately abundant and varied is the crustacean life; littoral mollusks cling to the ledges exposed along all the rocky coast stretches, and the entire beach from Punta Antigualla to Punta Ygnacio is banded by a practically continuous bank of wave-cast molluscan shells, the shell-drift being often yards in width and many inches in depth. Common crabs abound in many of the coves, and a large lobster-like crab frequently comes up from deeper bights and bottoms; oysters attach themselves to rocks and to the roots of shrubby trees skirting protected bays like Rada Ballena, while clams are numerous in all broad mud-flats, such as those of Laguna la Cruz; and the pearl oyster was fished for centuries toward Punta Tepopa, until the ferocity of the Seri put an end to the industry. Especially abundant and large are the green turtles on which the Seri chiefly subsist, leaving the shells scattered along the shore and about rancherias in hundreds; while two land tortoises (_Gopherus agassizii_ and _Cinosternum sonorense_) range about the margins of the lagoons, and one of these is alleged to enter the water freely. The abundance of water-fowl is commensurate with that of the submarine life. The pelican leads the avifauna in prominence if not in actual numbers, breeding on Isla Tassne (Pelican island), and periodically patrolling the whole of Bahia Kunkaak and El Infiernillo in lines and platoons of military regularity; gulls are always in sight, and the cormorant is common; while different ducks haunt several of the islets, and the shores are promenaded by curlews, snipes, and other waders. There is a corresponding wealth of plankton, which at low spring tide with offshore gale covers acres of shallow littoral with squirming or inert but always slimy life, the substratum for that of higher order; and jellyfish and echinoids are cast up by nearly every wave, while at night the surf rolls up the smooth strands in shimmering lines of phosphorescent light. On the whole, the aquatic life teems in tropic luxuriance and more than ordinary littoral variety; for the waters of the gulf are warmed by radiation and conduction from its sun-parched basin, while the concentrated tides distribute and stimulate the species and keep the vital streams astir. LOCAL FEATURES