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Through normal eyes
I HAVE AN ADMISSION TO MAKE. I've just been to the Galapagos Islands - for the very first time.
I can guess what you're thinking. How can anyone work in wildlife and conservation for nearly a quarter of a century, yet net never set foot (or dip fin) in the world's greatest living laboratory? How can a biologist ignore the place that inspired Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection? It almost amounts to professional negligence.
In my defence, I'd always had a niggling feeling that I may have left it too late. I feared that the best Galapagos experience may have been and gone and that I should have visited a decade or two ago, before so many serious conservation problems began to take their toll.
The human population has grown dramatically and hordes of introduced species such as goats, pigs, rats, cats, dogs and even fire ants have been creating havoc among the native wildlife.
But now that I have been, I'm well and truly smitten. I went as part of the Festival of Wildlife (an annual series of talks, masterclasses and workshops held in some of the world's finest wildlife locations - the next is in Ranthambhore, India) and I can't stop talking about it.
I mingled with blue-footed boobies, magnificent frigatebirds, giant tortoises and sallylightfoot crabs - all of which have about as much fear of people as does a piece of kelp - and in just a few days saw nearly everything I had hoped to see.
Everything, that is, above the surface. Because this is where I have to make another confession. I didn't go diving.
I can hear more shouts of professional negligence. I know Galapagos has been voted the world's number one dive destination, but it wasn't that sort of trip. I went walking and snorkelling, instead.
I've snorkelled more times in the past year than ever before, with everything from whales and whale sharks to manta rays and manatees, and in the Galapagos was fortunate enough to snorkel with sea lions, sea turtles, penguins and marine iguanas. I even paddled with a few dozen whitetip reef sharks. OK, it wasn't the same as diving with the hammerheads around Darwin's Arch or doing a drift dive at Isla Sin Nombre - but I make no apology for loving it just the same.
I've also been convincing myself that there was a hidden advantage in spending more time on dry land than under water, for a change. I was able to see Galapagos through "normal eyes" rather than "diver's eyes". And what my normal eyes saw was a remarkable cluster of islands surrounded by water - not a nutrient-rich sea dotted with land. The marine environment is the lifeblood of the archipelago and yet, in most people's minds, it comes a distant second.
In fact, the terrestrial wildlife here was being studied and protected decades before the marine wildlife was given anything like the same care and attention.
So, even now that the Galapagos Marine Reserve is second only in size to the Great Barrier Reef National Park, some of the most pressing conservation issues are under the ocean waves.
In the early 1990s, for example, the lucrative Asian markets for sea cucumbers and shark fins reached the islands. There was a sudden influx of immigrants from the mainland, more fishing boats, and illegal fishing activities were rife.
Since then, millions of sea cucumbers have been killed (their eggs, larvae and juveniles provide an important source of food for everything from fish to crustaceans and the adults perform a function similar to earthworms as nutrient recyclers - so the impact could be huge).
Thousands of sharks have been killed, too. Fifteen years ago you could see 2-300 in a single dive at some sites. Nowadays 20 or 30 is considered very lucky.
Conservationists are now working with local fishermen to find solutions. But, as always, making progress in water is so much harder than on dry land.
Anyone can see the impact of 100,000 introduced goats on endemic vegetation, or imagine the effect of tens of thousands of tourists tramping past nesting boobies, but it takes a population crash or even an extinction to make people appreciate what goes on under water.
If only everyone could see the world through diver's eyes.
Zoologist, conservationist, writer and broadcaster Mark Carwardine writes each month in DIVER. Visit his website, www.markcarwardine.com
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