When Charles Darwin was a young man, he made a 5 year journey as ship’s Naturalist on the Beagle. During that journey, ideas that he had read about in books – biological and geological evolution – came to life. An earthquake on the western coast of South America, which raised the land near a village many feet in just a moment, awakened his mind to the possibility that the firmament of earth wasn’t quite that firm. The towering Andes inspired his thoughts about life, for if mountains can be pushed up from the surface of the earth slowly over time, then the earth must be very old.
It was his time on the Galapagos islands, and the biological treasures that returned from those islands on the Beagle, for which Darwin is most remembered. However, for many years these islands have been continually threatened by our presence. So popular, for their beauty and their history, the islands attract tourists and conferences. All that human presence has damaged the fragile, once self-contained ecosystems. Sad to say that even physicists have conferences there. Stop it.
This past week, an event called the “Great Turtle Race” was kicked off on the internet to bring awareness to the increasingly endangered Leatherback Turtle. These turtles, nesting in Costa Rica and now returning to the Galapagos, are being tracked and their locations shown on the internet to bring attention to their extraordinary endurance and dwindling numbers. Have a look:
