2009

The Galapagos National Park will roll out new (and much needed) regulations that will impact boat itineraries, visitor experience, and the length of cruises that can be sold.

The new regulations will allow each boat to operate a 15-day itinerary that does not visit any site more than once. Boats will be able to sell 7-day or 5-day (the minimum) itineraries. As the 7-day itineraries will be different, a two-week itinerary is also possible.

The new model was presented and discussed this past Wednesday (December 9) at a meeting between boat operators and the Galapagos National Park. According to the Park, this will cut visitation at 15 heavily used sites, give equal access to all boats at sites, increase the use of underused sites, enhance the visitor experience, reduce accidents, and reduce the total number of visitors by cutting out shorter itineraries.

The Park intends to implement this next year.

Viruses and other mosquito-born diseases are known threats to the native bird life of the Galapagos. This prompted authorities to introduce spraying on aircraft flying to the islands. Now, there is a new development, the adaptation of a mosquito that can feed on reptiles.

Scientific American reports:

“The most widespread mosquito on the Galápagos Islands appears to have developed a taste for reptile blood. Biologists fear that the newly discovered behavior may leave many of the islands’ rare reptiles at risk for mosquito-borne diseases, such as West Nile virus, that they haven’t adapted to cope with.

A study published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA reports that the black salt marsh mosquito (Aedes taeniorhynchus), which feeds on birds and mammals and is common along the coasts of North and South America, is now also feasting on the blood of marine iguanas and Galápagos tortoises. ”

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Quito - A diesel leak from a tourist ship polluted a 100-metre stretch along a beach in the island of Santa Cruz in Ecuador’s Pacific archipelago of the Galapagos, officials said. Members of the crew of the Evolution ship were cooperating with environmental protection authorities to clean up the fuel spill, officials said Wednesday. To read more…

QUITO – The Peruvian training ship Mollendo caused no environmental damage to the Galapagos coast where it ran aground over the weekend with 300 people aboard and carrying some 200 tanks of bunker fuel, Ecuadorian maritime officials said.

The maneuvers required to tug the ship free caused no environmental damage, though the vessel was transporting fuel banned by archipelago authorities, Puerto Ayora harbormaster Washington Tamayo told Efe.

The ship was unable to anchor Saturday afternoon where it should have because of a mechanical failure that forced it to keep going forward, Tamayo said.

That maneuver left the training ship in such a position that waves constantly struck its stern.

Galapagos National Park divers with cameras verified that neither the hull nor the propeller blades caused any damage, so the decision was taken to tow it to Puerto Ayora, the capital of Santa Cruz Island, with the help of three other vessels, Tamayo said.

“It was done in a secure way with never any danger of spilling waste water or fuel,” Tamayo said, adding that the Peruvian ship used bunker fuel, which is heavier than diesel, a mixture of gas-oil and crude residues that ships are not allowed to use in the Galapagos Islands.

“We didn’t know it was running on that kind of fuel,” Tamayo said.

Read more in Latin American Herald Tribune article…

ENVIRONMENT: Galápagos Islands in Search of Clean Energy
By Stephen Leahy*

TORONTO, Feb 29 (Tierramérica) - Ecuador has taken the first step towards ending the oil dependence of its Galápagos Islands, in the eastern Pacific Ocean, with the official opening of a 10.8 million dollar wind energy facility on the island of San Cristóbal.

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa toured the facility as part of a celebration of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the Galápagos, and proposed to declare the islands fossil fuel free by 2015.

Located 1,000 kilometres off the coast of Ecuador, the archipelago comprises 17 small and 13 large islands that are home to 30,000 people and visited by more than 120,000 tourists each year.

Nearly everything is imported from the mainland, including vast quantities of diesel fuel for energy and transport. In 2001, a tanker ship struck a reef off the coast of San Cristóbal, one of the main islands, spilling 150,000 gallons of fuel into the ocean.

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