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Quito - A diesel leak from a tourist ship polluted a 100-metre stretch along a beach in the island of Santa Cruz in Ecuador’s Pacific archipelago of the Galapagos, officials said. Members of the crew of the Evolution ship were cooperating with environmental protection authorities to clean up the fuel spill, officials said Wednesday. To read more…
QUITO – The Peruvian training ship Mollendo caused no environmental damage to the Galapagos coast where it ran aground over the weekend with 300 people aboard and carrying some 200 tanks of bunker fuel, Ecuadorian maritime officials said.
The maneuvers required to tug the ship free caused no environmental damage, though the vessel was transporting fuel banned by archipelago authorities, Puerto Ayora harbormaster Washington Tamayo told Efe.
The ship was unable to anchor Saturday afternoon where it should have because of a mechanical failure that forced it to keep going forward, Tamayo said.
That maneuver left the training ship in such a position that waves constantly struck its stern.
Galapagos National Park divers with cameras verified that neither the hull nor the propeller blades caused any damage, so the decision was taken to tow it to Puerto Ayora, the capital of Santa Cruz Island, with the help of three other vessels, Tamayo said.
“It was done in a secure way with never any danger of spilling waste water or fuel,” Tamayo said, adding that the Peruvian ship used bunker fuel, which is heavier than diesel, a mixture of gas-oil and crude residues that ships are not allowed to use in the Galapagos Islands.
“We didn’t know it was running on that kind of fuel,” Tamayo said.
ENVIRONMENT: Galápagos Islands in Search of Clean Energy
By Stephen Leahy*
TORONTO, Feb 29 (Tierramérica) - Ecuador has taken the first step towards ending the oil dependence of its Galápagos Islands, in the eastern Pacific Ocean, with the official opening of a 10.8 million dollar wind energy facility on the island of San Cristóbal.
Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa toured the facility as part of a celebration of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the Galápagos, and proposed to declare the islands fossil fuel free by 2015.
Located 1,000 kilometres off the coast of Ecuador, the archipelago comprises 17 small and 13 large islands that are home to 30,000 people and visited by more than 120,000 tourists each year.
Nearly everything is imported from the mainland, including vast quantities of diesel fuel for energy and transport. In 2001, a tanker ship struck a reef off the coast of San Cristóbal, one of the main islands, spilling 150,000 gallons of fuel into the ocean.
Galapagos Islands, Ecuador - Galapagos National Park officials say that the volcano, La Cumbre, began spewing lava, gas and smoke on uninhabited Fernandina Island on Saturday after four years of inactivity.
The park said in a statement the eruption is not a threat to people living on nearby Isabela Island, but it says lava flowing to the sea is likely to affect marine and terrestrial iguanas, sea lions and other fauna.
Scientists say Fernandina is the island with the most volcanic activity in the archipelago. La Cumbre last erupted in May 2005.
Source: The Huffington Post
April 1, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador - The roughly 90 hectare wildfire that struck the Cerro Verde highlands on the island of Isabela was reportedly contained over the weekend.
Unfortunately, another fire has broken out on the island of San Cristobal. The roughly four hectare fire is said to have been accidentally started by people burning trash, but high temperatures and drought conditions have helped the fire to spread. No details on injuries or environmental damages were provided.
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