May Day, Mayday

In 2001, when I first came to the Galapagos, there were two flights each day. My baseline was, therefore, 14 flights per week. But island old-timers reminisce about the two-flights-per-week-good-old-days. When I flew in today, I was on one of five flights to the Galapagos Islands; there are now 35 flights each week.

Organized tourism began in the islands in 1969 with a few small hotels and boats. In the early 1980s fewer than 15,000 tourists visited Galapagos. Ten years later, tourism had grown to about 50,000 visitors. Ten years more and this number doubled. In 2006, more than 120,000 tourists visited the archipelago. In less than 30 years, the number of organized tourists to Galapagos has gone from 0 to 120,000. Tourism has major impacts on island ecology, including the introduction of non-native species, the encouragement of growth of the islands' population (as employees are needed for the tourist industry), and the growth in consumption and waste. Most of the members of the Galapagos community have too brief a history in the islands (as I do) to see the changes. A brief history coupled with some very big changes make Galapagos the perfect stomping ground for shifting baselines. More to come...