Tag archives for chile
Salas y Gómez Expedition: To Motu Motira Hiva
Posted by erinhirota on March 4, 2011 For days, we’ve dived around Salas y Gómez and stood on deck, staring at its rocky, surf-swept contours. Much as we wanted to explore it above the waterline, a landing looked reckless, if not impossible. Michel Garcia had done it before, years ago, and thought it could be done again. He found a way. The…
Salas y Gómez Expedition: How to Tag a Shark
Posted by erinhirota on March 3, 2011 Colleagues and marine biologists Alan Friedlander and Jim Beets of the University of Hawaii have brought satellite tags to track the wanderings of Salas y Gómez’s Galapagos sharks. Before they can tag them, they have to catch them, a days-long undertaking that requires teamwork, experience, patience, chum, quick reflexes–and a little luck. (Kids, don’t try…
Salas y Gómez: The Need for Protection
Posted by erinhirota on March 2, 2011 The Salas y Gómez expedition team awoke this morning to find a commercial fishing boat with lines in the water in sight of the Chilean Navy’s patrol ship–no more than a mile or two from the island and well within the marine park’s no-take zone. Chilean sailors boarded the boat and found illegally caught yellowfin…
Salas y Gómez Expedition: Sharks, Stars, and Empanadas
Posted by erinhirota on February 28, 2011 From a Chilean Navy ship just off the remote Salas y Gómez Island in the South Pacific, marine ecologist and National Geographic Fellow Enric Sala reports that the sharks are becoming less timid as they grow accustomed to multiple visits daily from expedition team divers. The expedition crew gathers for empanadas, a Chilean Navy tradition…
Salas y Gómez Expedition: Dropcams Scan the Depths
Posted by erinhirota on February 27, 2011 Eric Berkenpas with National Geographic’s Remote Imaging team has brought along three dropcams–glass spheres with lights and video cameras inside designed to descend to the bottom, film, and return to the surface. Their purpose on this trip–to record deep-water creatures and environments near Salas y Gómez. I spoke with Eric about how the cameras work,…
Salas y Gómez Expedition: The Sunken Cathedral
Posted by erinhirota on February 26, 2011 The team continues to explore at Salas y Gómez, including diving at a spectacular site south of the island where the reef evokes a gothic cathedral. Lobsters and coral abound, but big sharks and other large fish are less prevalent than expected–suggesting something may have happened here to reduce their numbers. Waves crashing against rocks…
Salas y Gómez: Tiny Speck of Land in a Vast Ocean
Posted by erinhirota on February 25, 2011 After a 20-hour crossing, we arrive at the tiny, rocky speck of land that is Salas y Gómez Island. We drop cameras in transparent spheres to probe the depths, don masks, tanks and fins for our first dive into the waters of Chile’s remote and spectacular new marine park. Salas y Gómez Island By Enric…
One Man Down, We Set Out for Salas y Gómez
Posted by erinhirota on February 24, 2011 Aboard the Chilean Navy vessel Comandante Toro, the expedition team sets out from Easter Island for the storied Salas y Gómez Island. Before departing, we lose legendary underwater cameraman Manu San Félix to–of all things–a broken toe! Manu resting his broken toe By Enric Sala Today is an exciting and sad day. Our underwater cameraman,…
A Rapa Nui Welcome
Posted by erinhirota on February 24, 2011 Alex Muñoz Wilson, Executive Director of Oceana in Chile, discusses the encouraging meetings he and National Geographic Fellow Enric Sala have had with Rapa Nui officials at the outset of the expedition, as well as the extraordinary work they’re doing with the Chilean Navy. Chilean Navy vessel Comandante Toro By Alex Muñoz Wilson Yesterday we…
Easter Island: Where Are the Fish?
Posted by erinhirota on February 22, 2011 Marine ecologist and National Geographic Fellow Enric Sala reports that during his initial dives at Easter Island, he saw some of the healthiest coral communities anywhere, but practically no fish. Corals fluorish beneath the clear blue water off Easter Island, but the team saw no lobsters and no large fish on Enric Sala’s first day…
Expedition Near Easter Island, Chile
Posted by erinhirota on February 20, 2011 National Geographic and Oceana scientists, in collaboration with the Chilean Navy, are traveling to their next expedition location–the remote Salas y Gómez Island, some 200 miles (about 323 km) east of Easter Island, Chile, where they will discover what lies beneath these largely unexplored waters. Their backs to the sea, enormous figures called moai carved…
Chile Creates Large Marine Reserve at Sala y Gómez Island
Posted by Ford Cochran on October 6, 2010 Today, the Chilean government announced the creation of a large marine reserve around tiny and remote Sala y Gómez island in the Pacific ocean. The Waitt Foundation, Oceana, and National Geographic mounted a March 2010 expedition to document marine diversity in waters surrounding the island. The government’s move represents a more than 100-fold increase in…
Posted by By Hans-Dieter Sues The oldest known birds, classified in the genus Archaeopteryx, lived near the end of the Jurassic Period (145.5 to 150.8 million years ago). Although Archaeopteryx has a fully developed plumage its skeleton still retains many features of its dinosaurian precursors, one of which is jaws with teeth. With the exception of some…
Sala y Gómez clears protection hurdle
Posted by Ford Cochran on August 17, 2010 A Chilean Senate committee unanimously recommends making waters surrounding the remote Sala y Gómez island a marine protected area. By Ford Cochran The waters off Sala y Gómez–a tiny Pacific island about 250 miles east of Easter Island–have come one step closer to becoming a marine protected area with the unanimous endorsement of Chile’s Senate…
Posted by Dr. Who take note: If Vincent van Gogh could’ve hung about longer in 2010, he might have discovered an unexpected affinity for really big telescopes. At least, this new picture of the nebulous region around the star R Coronae Australis certainly invokes the famed Impressionist’s “Starry Night” on a truly cosmic scale. —Picture courtesy ESO…
Take a drop of seawater and look at it under the microscope, and you’ll see some pretty amazing stuff: That tiny splash of the vast ocean is brimming with plants, baby animals, bacteria—a veritable cornucopia of life. Now take a “drop” of the night sky, maybe a section of that seeming void about the size…
NG Weekend: Smuggled Sarcophagus Saga
Posted by Ford Cochran on March 12, 2010 This week on National Geographic Weekend radio, host Boyd Matson speaks with guests about a smuggled Egyptian sarcophagus, Peru’s Nasca Lines, D.C.’s Environmental Film Festival, snakes versus dinosaurs, wallabies and crop circles, Shanghai, bird coloration, earthquakes in Chile, drunken bats, flightless birds, and poop pollution. Hour 1 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs…
Today the European Southern Observatory in Chile released a stunning new picture of NGC 1788, a ghostly little nebula in the Orion constellation. For backyard astronomers, the object can be spotted just a wee bit away from the bright stars in the Hunter’s belt. —Image courtesy ESO This “hidden gem” is what’s known as a…
More than seven hundred people were killed and two million have been displaced by the magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile yesterday, according to news reports. (See Chile earthquake pictures.) “We face a catastrophe of such unthinkable magnitude that it will require a giant effort” for Chile to recover, President Michelle Bachelet told a news…
A tsunami generated by an 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile struck Hawaii Saturday, but an official with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) said the island chain “dodged a bullet” after smaller-than-expected waves were reported, CNN said. The PTWC lifted all tsunami warnings, watches, or advisories. “The first waves of the tsunami were recorded on The Big…
An 8.8 magnitude earthquake was registered 22 miles underground off the coast of Chile early this morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reports. One of the strongest earthquakes on record, the temblor has triggered tsunami advisories across the Pacific Ocean, including Japan and California. This map put out by NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center shows the location (the…
“Pleistocene Park” emerges from Patagonia’s rescued grasslands
Posted by Stuart Pimm on January 23, 2010 Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm reports from Patagonia near the tip of South America on how dedicated colleagues are re-wilding former sheep ranches. Their vision is to create a Yosemite-size national park that protects temperate grasslands for indigenous animals and plants. Culpeo fox photograph by Stuart L. Pimm By Stuart L. Pimm Special contributor to NatGeo News Watch Patagonia,…
—Picture courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech Yesterday NASA successfully hurtled another telescope into the heavens: the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Judging from the plethora of news coverage, WISE has quite a few people pretty excited. After all, NASA has only a handful of operational space telescopes up there right now … roughly 15 by my count…
—Image courtesy ESO Going supernova is arguably the most popular way for a star to die. But stars like our sun actually end not with a bang, but a whimper [nods to T.S. Eliot]. These mid-size stars don’t explode at the end of their lives, they swell, releasing shells of gas as they blossom into…
Photos by Cristobal Briceño of WCS Chile Guanacos, wild relatives of llamas, have only one natural predator, the puma — or so scientists believed. But now researchers have documented a second predator of the South American ungulate: the culpeo, a fox that coexists with the puma and the guanaco throughout most of the guanaco’s range.…
