The Galapagos

Boobies and more boobies, I don’t know what more there is to say, the Galapagos are an incredible place for anyone, especially a pseudo-scientist. It was kind of like being in an open zoo, or wild animal park: the animals are numerous and docile, not being afraid of humans because of their evolution in the absence of predators.

I went with a couple of great Peace Corps friends, it was great to have a week in Ecuador but free from normal life. We spent the week staying at a hostal, taking day trips to the volcano, around the island, and out on the water to snorkel. I left them once for a day to go on a dive, but the snorkeling was easily just as good. It was amazing to see the marine life, it was kind of a mix of California and tropical (as I guess it should be); there were wrasses and sheephead from California and surgeonfish, butterfly fish, and angelfish from the tropics. I didn’t get to see hammerhead sharks, but there were tons of turtles, rays, and sea lions; we also saw dozens of white tipped reef sharks in tide pools.

The islands struck me as real meaning of tranquilo; on the mainland I often find that people are fairly easygoing but are still often impatient, whereas here people really walked the walk. We were on Isla Isabella, admittedly one of the less touristed and more local islands, but people drove slowly down the few roads in the town, something I rarely see elsewhere in the country.

Most of the commentary I read and hear about the Galapagos surround the environmental impact of tourism, but I found relations between the community and the marine and land reserve to be more relevant (although this is likely due to the fact that I was there in the off season and not on the main island or a tour boat). The land reserve, as in the National Park, was the first National Park in Ecuador, and is of course the source of the Darwin legend. However, being an island ecosystem makes it extremely susceptible to invasive species, and the island is ravaged by goats, cows, and pigs, in addition to several exotic plants, among others guava. I believe that goat control has been conducted on a fairly large scale, but it seems to have caused community problems (they like hunting), and more animals remain of which the park is not removing. The guava, on the other hand, is extremely invasive, and not only does it seem out of the reach of the park’s management, but they don’t seem too involved in education. Every month to the islands arrive dozens of foreign volunteers set on saving the environment by feeding lettuce to captive tortoises; I can think of a few manual labor tasks that would serve them better.

The marine reserve is a different kind of story, it is only a recent addition, only 10-15 years. Locals are allowed artisanal catch, and big boats from outside are banned, but this seems to be frequently subverted and / or bribed. Theoretically, a marine reserve should improve the fish stocks, thus benefitting the few fishermen that are permitted. It’s a sad refrain for me that everywhere I go around the world, land or sea, people say that there aren’t big animals like there used to be.