Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Galapagos Island (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone, this is Gary, and I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to be taking a brief summer break this week. So I've lined up some episodes from the archives that statistically I know most of you haven't listened to. And if you have heard it, it'll be a good refresher. I'll be back again with new episodes on July 23rd. Located approximately 560 miles or 900 kilometers off the coast of Ecuador lies a chain of islands that are like no other in the world. These islands have been instrumental to our understanding of both biology and geology and remain a place of intense scientific study today.

Starting point is 00:00:34 In addition to scientists, it draws tourists, photographers, and even podcasters from all over the world. Learn more about the Galapagos Islands and what makes them so special on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world.

Starting point is 00:01:13 world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thuline podcast from NPR. There are different lenses that we can look through to understand the Galapagos Islands, and the first of which would be the lens of geology. The Galapagos Islands dates back at least 20 million years. They are the creation of what is known as a hotspot in the Earth's mantle. There are other notable hotspot island chains in the world that you're probably familiar with, including the Hawaiian Islands and the Canary Islands. A hotspot is a plume that comes up from the earth's mantle and comes through the earth's crust to form a volcano. Due to the movement of tectonic plates, this plume will create different islands over time. The metaphor, which is often used, is that of a conveyor belt.

Starting point is 00:02:02 Imagine a conveyor belt that is moving over a stationary object that pops up and punctures it. As the belt moves, there will be a series of holes in the conveyor belt. Those holes would be the equivalent of islands created by a hotspot. There are currently 18 major islands in the Galapagos chain, and the majority of the islands are just south of the equator. The largest island, Ila Isabella, actually crosses the equator, and there are two major islands north of the equator. If you remember back to my previous episode on Darwin's Other Theory, during his trip to the Galapagos, he developed a theory on the development of coral reefs. Basically, as an island is formed by a volcano, a fringe reef will develop around the island. Over a long period of time, the island will submerge, and the reef will become an atoll,

Starting point is 00:02:45 which is basically a coral ring without an island in the middle. Volcanoes in the Galapagos are still active, and there have been eruptions as recently as 2022. The major thing to note about the climate of the Galapagos is that the islands are quite arid. Given its location on the equator, there are really only two seasons. The warmer dry season goes from December to June, and the Garua season, which is a bit cooler, and wetter goes from July through September. The Garua season is due to the Humboldt current bringing up cold water from Antarctica, and this season is known for its fog and drizzle.

Starting point is 00:03:18 As it's near the equator, these seasons aren't as dramatically different as you'll see in other places. Human occupation and discovery of the islands have had a great deal of debate surrounding it. We know that the first Europeans to discover the islands occurred in 1535. It was actually discovered by accident when the Bishop of Panama, Tomas de Berlanga, sailed to Peru to settle a dispute involving the conquistador Francisco Pizarro. When they arrived, they found no humans living on the islands. And this has been the debate for years. Did pre-Columbian humans ever arrive in the Galapagos Islands?

Starting point is 00:03:53 If someone did, it would have had to have been one of two groups, the Incas coming from the east or the Polynesians coming from the west. The Inca's had no seafaring culture. There really is nothing that indicates that they engaged in shipbuilding, let alone the ability to sail into the open ocean. The controversy comes from a 1572 story by a Spanish historian that said that the second leader of the Inca Empire, Topa Inca Yuponqui, had visited the Galapagos. The problem was that there was no evidence to support this story, nor has there ever been any evidence found of a settlement on the island. Likewise, the Polynesians definitely did have a seafaring culture and were the greatest open ocean navigators of the ancient world. However,

Starting point is 00:04:35 none of the islands in the eastern Pacific were ever settled by Polynesians, and there isn't any evidence that they ever arrived in the Galapagos either. In 1952, Norwegians Thor Heyerdahl and Arna Scholesfold conducted an archaeological dig on the island and found an Incan flute and pottery shards. However, they didn't find any human remains or any evidence of any construction. Heardol used this evidence to support his theory that the Pacific was settled via South America, a theory that was later debunked by DNA evidence. A later study went back to the same dig site, re-excavated it, analyzed what was found by Hiredall and used modern dating techniques, and they found that the items were contemporary with the early Spanish.

Starting point is 00:05:16 If pre-Columbian humans did arrive in the Galapagos, they probably just washed up as survivors, and it wasn't a permanent settlement. As for the Europeans who showed up, they really had no interest in the islands initially either. The islands first appeared on maps in 1570, with the name Insula de Los Galapagos, which showed. just means the islands of the tortoises. For the next 200 years, pretty much nothing was done with the islands. There was no obvious resources on the islands, and there wasn't much fresh water to make a settlement. For most of this period, it was used by British pirates who were attacking Spanish ships. It wasn't until 1793 when the British naval officer John Colnett suggested that the islands could be used as a base for whalers in the Pacific. This began the use of the Galapagos by

Starting point is 00:06:01 whalers. Perhaps the biggest thing they did which impacted the island was hunting giant tortoises. They would hunt the tortoises for meat and would often capture them and bring them on board ships. The tortoises could survive for a long time without water, so they could be harvested for fresh meat, well into the middle of a voyage. This dramatically reduced the number of some species of tortoise, and might have actually caused some to go extinct. 1832 was a major year for the Galapagos. It was formerly annexed by the now independent nation of Ecuador. As part of the annexation, Ecuador appointed a governor and sent over a small population to be the first settlers on the island. And they took a page from the Australian playbook and used

Starting point is 00:06:39 convicts in their first batch of settlers. On September 15th, 1835, the HMS Beagle arrived. The Beagle was on an around-the-world surveying mission and stayed in the Galapagos until October 20th. Of course, this voyage was made famous by a 22-year-old naturalist who was on board by the name of Charles Darwin. Darwin documented and popularized many of the endemic species found on the islands, including the giant tortoises, land iguanas, and marine iguanas. However, it was his observations of the finches on each island that spurned his ideas which later found their way into his book, The Origin of Species. Throughout the 19th century, Ecuador tried to bring settlers to the islands, but it was never really successful.

Starting point is 00:07:18 Economic activities that were attempted included fishing, collecting sea salt, and growing cane sugar, but none of them really amounted to anything. However, the people did bring domesticated animals with them that got loose on the islands. These invasive species caused an incredible amount of damage, and many of them can still be found on some islands today. In the early 20th century, Ecuador made several attempts to sell the Galapagos to raise money. Many countries expressed interest, but the biggest suitors were Chile and the United States. The American interest in the islands were primarily as a military base to protect the Panama Canal. Chilean concerns about an American base so close to their territory resulted in them pressuring Ecuador into not selling it to

Starting point is 00:07:58 anyone. In the 1920s and 30s, a small group of European and American settlers came to the islands, enticed by very generous benefits offered by the Ecuadorian government. They were given free land, tax benefits, and hunting rights. This migration established a more permanent population, but the numbers still weren't very big. During World War II, Ecuador allowed the United States to finally build an airbase on Bultra Island, which later became the basis for Seymour Airport, which is one of two airports in the Galapagos today. After repeated attempts to make the Galapagos economically viable, the answer was finally found in 1959 when Ecuador established the Galapagos National Park, which encompassed 97.5% of all the land on the islands.

Starting point is 00:08:41 With the establishment of the National Park, the focus of the Galapagos changed. Economic development gave way to ecological preservation. One of the biggest challenges was the elimination of non-native species. It's believed that there are over 700 non-native plant species, and only 500 native plant species. One major problem has been the elimination of goats. Goats can devastate an environment by eating almost everything, and they can live in large herds.

Starting point is 00:09:08 One method of goat elimination that has been used are called Judas goats. Goats, if left to themselves, will gravitate to join other goats. What they do is select one goat to be the Judas goat, and they put a radio tracker on it, paint its back a bright color, and then let it loose. The goat will then find a herd of goat, and lead the extermination team directly to them. They will then shoot the goats from a helicopter, making sure to avoid the Judas goat.

Starting point is 00:09:33 They then rinse and repeat until all the goats are gone. But it isn't just goats, however. It's dogs, cats, pigs, insects, and a host of other creatures which have taken a foothold in the islands. And there's still a lot of work to be done to remove the remaining invasive species. The year after the establishment of the National Park, formal tourism to the Galapagos began. However, it was quite small. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, a total of 271,238 people visited the Galapagos. The rise in tourism over the last several decades has corresponded with an increase in the

Starting point is 00:10:06 permanent population of the islands. There are now an estimated 25,000 people who live in the Galapagos permanently, and most of them are involved directly or indirectly with the tourism industry. In 1978, the Galapagos Islands were declared the very first UNESCO World Heritage site on Earth. I've had the pleasure of visiting the Galapagos not once, but twice. There's really no other place like it in the world. It's not like going on safari in Africa. The animals aren't big, but they also aren't dangerous, and they're more approachable. Or rather, they aren't afraid of humans, so they might approach you. You can never be guaranteed to see wildlife, but between my two trips, I've seen land iguanas, marine iguanas, sharks, Galapagos penguins, Galapagos hawks,

Starting point is 00:10:48 sea lions, assorted Darwin finches, blue-footed boobies, red-footed boobies, great frigate birds, and more. If you visit, you can either stand a ship, which is the more popular option, or you can take land-based day trips from one of the towns on the islands. Getting to the Galapagos isn't easy, but it's also not impossible. And if you ever get a chance to experience it yourself, I guarantee it will be something that you will never forget. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thomson, and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which

Starting point is 00:11:40 have links in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Galapagos Island (Encore)

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