Equator from the Air episode 3 – Pacific: Continuing his equatorial journey, Gordon Buchanan crosses the Pacific. This rich source of life is under pressure from rising temperatures, pollution and overfishing.
In the Galapagos Islands, Gordon sees how drones are helping protect baby hammerhead sharks, and the iconic giant tortoise. On the other side of the Pacific, an aerial view sheds light on world’s richest marine habitats, and Gordon joins the search for clues about the future of our coral reefs in a mysterious tropical lake.
Equator from the Air episode 3 – Pacific
Galapagos Islands
The Galápagos Islands, part of the Republic of Ecuador, are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed on either side of the equator in the Pacific Ocean surrounding the centre of the Western Hemisphere, 906 km (563 mi) west of continental Ecuador. The islands are known for their large number of endemic species and were studied by Charles Darwin during the second voyage of HMS Beagle. His observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection.
The Galápagos Islands and their surrounding waters form the Galápagos Province of Ecuador, the Galápagos National Park, and the Galápagos Marine Reserve. The principal language on the islands is Spanish. The islands have a population of slightly over 25,000.
The first recorded visit to the islands happened by chance in 1535, when Fray Tomás de Berlanga, the Bishop of Panamá, was surprised with this undiscovered land during a voyage to Peru to arbitrate in a dispute between Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro. De Berlanga eventually returned to the Spanish Empire and described the conditions of the islands and the animals that inhabited them. The group of islands was shown and named in Abraham Ortelius’s atlas published in 1570. The first crude map of the islands was made in 1684 by the buccaneer Ambrose Cowley, who named the individual islands after some of his fellow pirates or after British royalty and noblemen.
