Track us

In another 3 days, we're going on a 21 day passage. We are going from Galapagos to French Polynesia.

This is a website that you can keep track of us on.

https://aus-share.inreach.garmin.com/svgabian

Please don't worry, if for whatever reason this tracker stops working. It is a handheld piece of equipment, and we've only been using it for a short while. We have epirbs registered with MNZ that are our primary emergency comms.

conservation interview

We are anchored in the south of Isla Isabela in Galapagos. Dad and I biked into the national park office to interview one of their staff. His name was George Flowers. We asked George these questions to learn more about conservation efforts in Galapagos.

We found out that 97% of the Galapagos was National park, the other 3% was farmland and town. And for forty nautical miles around each island was marine reserve. 

George told us that the two most endangered species were the Galapagos penguin and the flightless Cormorant. 

Their are 800 pairs of Cormorant and 150 Penguins. The penguins are still in decline thanks to cats but the cormorant are fearing a little better. They are setting up nesting boxes to encourage breeding and shooting feral cats. We were surprised at the lack of traps around the anchorage.

Biodiversity

Splash, thunk!  I raced outside to see what all the noise was about.  As I watched a pelican emerged from under the boat, a bait fish between its beak.  "Penguins," I yelled  in excitement as a small blue shape sped past, then dived at the bait ball below.  Baby black tip sharks kept the bait fish up at the surface while the pelicans and penguins launched in at will.  A mysterious fish would speed in, grab something and get out before we could get a look at it.  I had never seen such a show of biodiversity before in my life!
Thanks to conservation efforts these sights can still be seen today.  But only last week we picked up 50 pieces of plastic from an onshore beach here in Galapagos.  We have then loaded this information onto the website www.kidsagainstplastic.com who are collecting data from around the world.  The group are then going to lobby governments to make changes.  Anyone can collect data and log onto  this site from anywhere.