The Esmeraldas River is a river in northwestern

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ' ...

that flows into the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the conti ...

at the city of Esmeraldas. Among its tributaries is the

Guayllabamba River The Guayllabamba is a river that originates in the east of Pichincha in northern Ecuador and flows into the Esmeraldas River The Esmeraldas River is a river in northwestern Ecuador that flows into the Pacific Ocean at the city of Esmeraldas. ...

which drains

Quito Quito (; qu, Kitu), formally San Francisco de Quito, is the capital and largest city of Ecuador, with an estimated population of 2.8 million in its urban area. It is also the capital of the province of Pichincha. Quito is located in a valley on ...

Charles Marie de la Condamine Charles Marie de La Condamine (28 January 1701 – 4 February 1774) was a French explorer, geographer, and mathematician. He spent ten years in territory which is now Ecuador, measuring the length of a degree of latitude at the equator and p ...

sailed up it and then climbed the Andes Mountains when on the Ecuadorian Expedition that left France in May 1735. The mouth of the river has extensive stands of mangroves, part of the

Esmeraldas–Pacific Colombia mangroves The Esmeraldas-Pacific Colombia mangroves (NT1409) is an ecoregion of mangrove forests along the Pacific coast of Colombia and Ecuador. It is threatened by human population growth, leading to over-exploitation for wood and clearance for farming a ...

ecoregion.

Fauna

Fish

* The Green Terror Cichlid'' Andinoacara rivulatus'' ( Günther, 1860) * ''

Andinoacara blombergi ''Andinoacara blombergi'', is a species of fish in the family Cichlidae in the order Perciformes Perciformes (), also called the Percomorpha or Acanthopteri, is an order or superorder of ray-finned fish. If considered a single order, they ...

'' Wijkmark, S. O. Kullander & Barriga S., 2012Wijkmark, N., Kullander, S.O. & Barriga S., R.E. (2012)
''Andinoacara blombergi'', a new species from the río Esmeraldas basin in Ecuador and a review of ''A. rivulatus'' (Teleostei: Cichlidae).
''Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters, 23 (2): 117-137.''

References

Rivers of Ecuador {{Ecuador-river-stub