The Charles Darwin Research Center sits atop a long hill climbing up from Puerto Ayora, on the big island of Santa Cruz. Part of the Charles Darwin Foundation established in 1959 – the lone international research and advisory institution dedicated to exclusively studying the Galapagos – the CDRS is both an archive of historical scientific study and site of various laboratories engaged in today’s most cutting-edge research in the islands. Many of the world’s most-expert Galapganian scientists either have worked here or still do and we’ve walked up the hill to visit with one, marine biologist Alex Hearn … who we find with his hands in a tank, coddling one of the darlings of local marine life, the sea cucumber.
Sitting on a second-story deck overlooking the blue ocean that is his backyard we talk about the impacts of over fishing here. Some highlights:
“You know the Galapagos has a history of over-exploitation that goes way back to the whalers of the sixteenth century. Ever since we’ve had successive waves of boom-bust fisheries. The latest being the sea cucumber which started in the early Nineties as a result of the resource collapsing on the continent followed by a sizable migration of fishers who had already successively depleted the sea cucumber along the coast of Ecuador moving to the islands and hammering the resource here. At the time it was unregulated and there was no way of stopping it because there was no Marine Reserve. By the time the Marine Reserve was created a lot of the damage had already been done. Sometimes we forget that the Marine Reserve management system inherited a lobster resource which had already collapsed in the Eighties, and a sea cucumber resource that had already been heavily fished for ten years .…”
“In terms of coastal fishing, the number of local fishermen — who are the only ones legally allowed to fish here — has nearly tripled during the Nineties, from about 400 to over 1,000. Fishing around the coast has increased dramatically and we haven’t been very successful in managing it. In part because it’s a group with a lot of political power as well as the perception of an immediate need. Since 1998 this local management system has failed to take into account the sustainability of both lobster and sea cucumber. The result is that both are suffering, badly ….”
“When you’re at university or when you’re studying a particular species biologically you’re focused on the species. When you’re looking at the fisheries, the actual biology of the species is the least important thing really, your job becomes more about managing people. Getting them, first of all, to trust that our advice is first and foremost because we are scientists and is focused on sustainability. Our motivation is not about eliminating or prohibiting fishermen. There is a big lack of trust here, partly due to the fact that we’re both a science and conservation organization and carry a fair amount of political power as well. As a result we vote on the system as a conservation sector but we also provide the technical advice, which may sometimes seen as a little bit suspect. Some locals, fishermen, will say ‘You’re providing the advice just to justify your position.’ It can get very complex. It’s about building trust and showing them that the long-term impacts of over fishing and are very difficult to prove but that we still need to make changes now ….”
“Working in Galapagos is like a rollercoaster. There are times when it’s immensely frustrating and there are times when it’s just paradise. To tell the truth, for me, as a young scientist coming to Galapagos straight out of university, to be able to develop lines of research, to be able to publish, to be able to take the research from the sea to the government and follow that entire process is something you really don’t get in many other places. On a personal level I am eternally grateful for Galapagos. Besides, Galapagos also gave me a wife and a baby. So what can I say?”
While in the Galapagos filming we ran into an American writer living in Puerto Ayora, the big town on the island of Santa Cruz, researching a book about exactly the same subject of our film – the current state of affairs across the archipelago.
I was particularly curious about her reportage on Darwin’s initial reaction to the islands that will forever be linked with his theory of evolution.
Like other biographers of Darwin – who first visited in 1835 as a curious but inexperienced 26-year-old, born the same day as Abraham Lincoln – she labels his role as evolutionary mystery solver “one of the greatest myths of the history of science.” Citing a study by Harvard professor and MacArthur Foundation “genius” Frank Sulloway, the book details how little Darwin actually took away from the Galapagos after his five-week visit. He had “no eureka flashes of enlightenment,” she writes, “it would take decades before his final theory transcended his religious beliefs and his enduring doubts.”
In his book “Voyage of the Beagle” Darwin referenced the Galapagos sparingly; in his “On the Origin of Species,” published twenty years later, he never mentioned the finches – mistakenly thought by many to be the linchpin of his evolutionary theory – and which are named for him.
It took those twenty years between publications for the significance of the Galapagos to sink in on Darwin. For two decades he wrestled with the history of creationism and its relevance to species diversity. In the end, he came down on the right side of the argument (unless of course you are among those who continue to believe the planet is only 6,000 years old and that life as we know it was created in six days). That his name and theory are so inextricably linked with both evolution and the Galapagos is something Darwin could have never predicted. Nor could he have predicted the clash of economics and the environment, which so wrack the place today.
Often by the time the mainstream media runs big stories about an environmental battle it’s often too late. I’ve seen it up-close dozens of times during the past couple decades and have reported so many David-versus-Goliath stories – usually positing good-hearted indigenous peoples and international environmental groups against greedy, monolithic utility companies and strong-arming government agents – that the stories have almost become fill-in-the-blanks. (Just change the name of the indigenous tribe, the utility company and the country and the story – and outcome – are usually very similar.)
Yet despite ominous recent headlines in the Wall Street Journal (“Galapagos Under Siege”), the Times (“Can Darwin’s Lab Survive Success?”) and UK’s Independent (“Tourism, Over-Population and Overfishing Have Become the Blight of the Galapagos”), I happen to believe that the Ecuadorian archipelago will survive (even if more and more of its endemic creatures may not) and flourish. In some respects, as the standard bearer for the planet’s evolutionary history, it simply must. As Alex Hearn, a marine biologist with the Charles Darwin Research Center on Santa Cruz Island told us about the Galapagos future, “if we can’t get it right here, where can we?” A microcosm of the planet’s wildlife, if the Galapagos loses its wildness it will feel like the end is near for the rest of our wild places.
Given my interest in man’s relationship with the sea, it was hard not to go to the Galapagos for a first-hand look at exactly how we are impacting this once truly special place. Spurred by comments by the Ecuadorian president (“the Galapagos are at great risk”) and UNESCO, which first declared the Galapagos a world heritage site and has now put it on an “in danger” list, we took video cameras and digital recorders and came back with a story not so much about the incredible biodiversity of its wildlife but about how man is wrestling with his presence there.
The film we’ve made – “What Would Darwin Think?” – is nearly complete; in advance of that I wanted to share some of the stories, photos and videos brought back from several weeks of conversations and poking around.
According to a recent report by the Darwin Foundation, “Galápagos at Risk” the islands’ crisis does not just stem from an unprecedented rise in tourism, but also from a change in the marketplace. “Early tourism in the Galápagos was characterized by nature-loving tourists,” the report said, seeking “to learn about Darwin and see the amazing species that helped him to develop his theory of evolution.” It noted that these guests were “easily accommodated by smaller, locally owned tour operators.”
But, the study continued, the market expanded to include “eco-tourists,” who also like to visit places like Machu Picchu, the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, Easter Island and the Great Barrier Reef. These tourists are “often more selective in terms of required comfort and is better served by multinational tour operators,” the report said.
A consequence has been that local owners cannot compete with the foreign-run companies doing business in the Galápagos. Of the $418 million generated by tourism annually, only $63 million is estimated to enter the local economy. And of the 80 tourism boats allowed to operate in the Galápagos, only about 40 percent are locally owned.
“We have to think about the people and not just the plants and animals, or it will all collapse,” the report concluded.
As the world raised a small hullabaloo last week in honor of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday it made me think long and hard about how the natural world has changed since his birth. I wonder what Darwin would make of these wild places that are now so linked with his name, his image, his writings? The timing is fortuitous too, because we are just finishing a new film about the Galapagos, specifically focused on man’s impact on the islands, and we’re calling it “What Would Darwin Think?”
Last May we spent several weeks in and around the bigger of the Galapagos islands, talking with locals and expatriate environmentalists about the relationship between its fragile ecosystem and a boom in mankind trodding its shorelines. Our goal was not to show (once again) how wondrous the wildlife is there but to show how man’s footprint is changing the place. And fast. The recently elected president of Ecuador has declared the Galapagos “endangered,” which takes most by surprise since only three percent of the island state is even accessible to man.
It’s not tourists exactly who are impacting Darwin’s laboratory, but all those who have arrived from mainland Ecuador to cash in on the tourist boom. They come, many of them with pick-up trucks, dogs, cats and kids, hoping to participate in the boom and hopefully get rich. Reality of course is that few get rich; in fact many can’t find jobs. On the big island of Santa Cruz there are today more than 25,000 residents; a decade ago there were 1,500. The pressure on the island is great; we watched a cargo boat arrive and spend three full days offloading all the good’s necessary to support the island for a single week.
The impact on the Galapagos wildlife is far-reaching. Unemployed fishermen often feel they have no option but to fish illegally, or to participate in the illegal sea cucumber and shark finning businesses (which are run by mafia-like organizations on the mainland). Others, tired of the crowds in Santa Cruz, are packing up and moving – with their dogs and cats – to some of the smaller, outer islands, where endemic species of reptile and bird will soon be made extinct thanks to their new neighbors.
In recent months I’ve been to a few wild places that are changing in part due to tourist booms: the Peninsula of Antarctica, the island of South Georgia and the Galapagos. All are suffering in similar fashion; each is wrestling on its own with how to control man’s increased visitations. It will be interesting to watch as they each fashion slightly different rules and regulations. I’ll remind you when our film – “What Would Darwin Think?” – is out; there will certainly be clues in it to the Galapagos’ future and plenty of pondering about Darwin’s 21st century take on the place.
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