Gadling

Fernando Ortiz grew up on mainland Ecuador and has lived in the Galapagos the past twenty years. His career path has led him from tour guide to dive guide and eventually dive company manager. Along the route he decided that talking to tourists about conservation was not enough, so he made the leap to fulltime environmentalist. Today he runs Conservation International's office in Puerto Ayora. We talk on the town's main dock, Zodiac's whipping back and forth behind us overloaded with tourists, bags of cement, cases of water and beer, two-by-fours and cement blocks, frozen chickens and everything else needed to run a community of 40,000 on an island separated from the mainland by six hundred miles.

"I have realized a few things in the last few years regarding how best to preserve the Galapagos, primarily that it doesn't matter how good your technical arguments or human arguments are, it's not about that. It's mostly, and unfortunately, all about economics and politics.

"I try not to be critical to tourism as an economy. In fact, if we analyze it in one way, tourism is probably the best way in which nature can pay in cash for its survival. If I were to go back to the islands as I saw them for the first time, nineteen years ago, I would probably find the same biologic, ecologic and evolutionary processes still happening, the same blue-footed boobies still nesting on the same trails. The same for the sea lions and penguins. Tourism has actually been well controlled, despite its growth. It's the indirect impacts of tourism that we need to control.

It would be wrong on its face to say that tourism is the biggest problem facing the Galapagos today. Simultaneously, it is accurate to say that the growth in tourism in the one-of-a-kind archipelago is the primary reason the islands are "in danger." Those are not my words, but UNESCO's, in 2007 ... the same year Ecuador's new president claimed the islands were at "great risk" and signed a decree making their protection a national priority. You get the sense that just defining the exact problem facing the Galapagos, for both locals and outsiders, is tricky.

With ninety seven percent of the islands off-limits and under national park protection – small, guided tours limited to 60 designated sites – the system that introduces tourists to the nineteen Galapagos islands has long been regarded a model of eco-tourism. But the success of that model is what puts them at such risk today: In 1991 there were 41,000 visitors, this year there will be close to 200,000; during that same period human population has risen from a few thousand to 40,000. Those are a lot of combined footsteps – as well as ship and plane traffic -- for such a fragile eco-system (the so-called "Mona Lisa of biodiversity").

The sudden arrival of so many people from so many parts of the world introduces parasites which threaten both flora and fauna; permanent residents arrive desirous of re-creating their mainland lifestyles, including cars, dogs and cats, and air conditioning; tour operators are pushing to expand their offerings to include sport fishing and skydiving. The Ecuadorian government has tried, with limited success, to limit migration and is considering raising the national park fee paid by every tourist from $100 to $135, an attempt to slow the numbers.

While in the Galapagos filming we ran into an American writer living in Puerto Ayora, the big town on the island of Santa Cruz, researching a book about exactly the same subject of our film – the current state of affairs across the archipelago.

Carol Ann Bassett's book is just out, published by National Geographic, fittingly titled "Galapagos at the Crossroads: Pirates, Biologists, Tourists and Creationists Battle for Darwin's Cradle of Evolution," and it's a fantastic tutorial for anyone curious about the natural and human health of the island state today.

I was particularly curious about her reportage on Darwin's initial reaction to the islands that will forever be linked with his theory of evolution.

Like other biographers of Darwin – who first visited in 1835 as a curious but inexperienced 26-year-old, born the same day as Abraham Lincoln – she labels his role as evolutionary mystery solver as "one of the greatest myths of the history of science." Citing a study by Harvard professor and MacArthur Foundation "genius" Frank Sulloway, the book details how little Darwin actually took away from the Galapagos after his five-week visit. He had "no eureka flashes of enlightenment," she writes, "it would take decades before his final theory transcended his religious beliefs and his enduring doubts."

We sailed into Kodiak on a somewhat rarified day for this part of the world, one filled with sunshine rather than rain. The weekend just past had been its annual Crab Fest, an event dampened by typical summer weather: horizontal rain and temperatures just above freezing. But on a big, blue, sun-shiny day you'd be hard-pressed to imagine a more beautiful place, the entirety of Kodiak Island and the snowcapped mountains that rim it wrapped beneath an indigo blue sky.

Ironically, the place it reminded me of most of was Kamchatka, where we'd been a week before. Both are spectacular lands of active volcanoes and hot, spurting geysers. The seas that surround both are the same steel-blue, the volcanic mountain ranges similarly tall and foreboding, with fishing boats moving in and out of the bays. Both regions share physical turmoil as well as beauty, visited frequently by earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunami waves. Rain is a constant for both (Kamchatka, 110 inches a year, Kodiak, 68).

Though separated by one thousand miles of Bering Sea they started out with similar human roots as well. The very first Russian colony in North America was founded in 1784 at Three Saints Bay on southeastern Kodiak Island and until 1804 it was the center of Russian activity in Alaska. Russians are responsible for the name "Alaska," derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning "the mainland" or more literally, "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed."

Gallery: Kamchatka

Birthplace of the Winds, 10 Years After

During the past decade I've been to Dutch Harbor on the island of Unalaska – one of America's last frontiers, potentially the planet's next Singapore, home base for the loved-and-hated "Deadliest Catch" - seven times. Much has changed during the years, for me and for the place.

I first came this far west with close friends (Barry Tessman, Sean Farrell and Scott McGuire), three years later with French filmmakers (led by French television and political star Nicolas Hulot) and most recently as a visiting lecturer. I've arrived by ferry, small fishing boat, big fishing boat, small plane, helicopter and cruise ship; I've also kayaked along Unalaska's rugged shores and climbed a handful of its volcanic peaks.

Dutch Harbor is annually the nation's number one or two fishing port (trading off with Gloucester and followed closely by Kodiak). When I first came there was barely a bridge in town; today the town's center has gravitated to a couple strip centers across from the airport. Its most famous bar and brawling center – the Elbow Room – is long closed. Yet its future looks oddly bright, and not because of the success of the Discovery Channel show, but because of the Arctic Ocean's disappearing ice. As the Arctic's ice lessens each year – some suggest it will be gone for good in another ten years – it makes the Northwest passage a much more commercially viable shipping route from Europe, Africa and the U.S. cutting thousands of miles off each trip, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and gallons of diesel. The main port west of Canada? Dutch Harbor. There are many who believe the towns biggest boom is on the horizon.

Just around the corner from Petropavlovsk, ten miles by land or sea, located across Avachinskaya Bay on a small peninsula called Krasheninnikova sits Russia's largest nuclear submarine base. It is off limits to outsiders and a shell of what it was during the Soviet Union's heyday. Today – judging by a simple Google map search – there are just a half-dozen active nuclear subs sitting at its docks. Worrying to those who pay attention to such things are the shadows on the far edge of the docks on the same map, indicating somewhere between a dozen and twenty subs piled up next to each other. They are said to be at varying degrees of decommissioning.

For decades the submarine station and a couple nearby support bases provided good jobs for locals and drew many Russians and Ukrainians to live in this easternmost outpost. They are also the reason that until the end of the Cold War Kamchatka was off-limits to the rest of the world. Even today, twenty years later, Russia continues to maintain a heavy military presence here.

The operation of nuclear-powered submarines generates considerable amounts of nuclear waste. Liquid and solid radioactive wastes need to be removed from submarines and stored. In addition, periodically the submarine needs to be refueled, thus spent fuel needs to be removed from the submarine and also stored. Decommissioning a nuclear submarine generates these streams of waste and in addition, the refueled reactor compartment must be dealt with.

This land of volcanoes and earthquakes -- the western frontier of the literary "Ring of Fire" -- is still a month away from true spring. Dirty, crusted snow lies beneath the leafless trees and in the gutters along Petropavlovsk's main streets, which already look pretty grim, lined as they are by Soviet-era buildings. The only hints of color in town are the red-and-yellow hot dog-beer-and-coffee stands across from Lenin Square and the colorfully painted walls of a local gym. Otherwise, from the bottle-strewn banks of the fishing harbor to the top of the hills looking out over Avachinskaya Bay, the operative description of this city at the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula is ... grey.

Long a place shrouded in secrecy, Kamchatka was until recently known to Westerners only as a closed military region or as a name on the Risk board. We are at the very edge of the Russian Far East, a region known locally as "the back of the beyond." The seven hundred and fifty mile long peninsula is lined by a pair of mountain ranges – the Sredenny (Central) and Vostochny (Eastern) – and from the air looks like a big fish. The Kamchatka River fills the trough between the two ranges. Encircling the city are snow-capped volcanoes, nearly 300 dot the peninsula, a tenth still active. When I ask the first people I meet -- two young journalism students, Victoria and Ivan – if they remember the last eruption they smile, wracking their memories.

"I think it was like two weeks ago," says Victoria. "But they happen so often, it's hard to be sure. And earthquakes, too. But we are used to them. Why do you think the buildings are so ... solid?"

For the past couple nights I've dreamed about being attacked by giant calamari; not the fried variety, but the long, gelatinous species, which wrap me up in big squid rings and push me into the sea. Which I'm sure has everything to do with spending the day in Hakodate, on the big island of Hokkaido, Japan's squid capital.

The streets leading to the morning market are heavy with restaurants, each featuring an illustration of a squid on its awning, billboard or even in neon. At open-air shops, tanks of still swimming squid are surrounded by trays of squid on ice, squid wrapped tight in plastic, dried squid, hammered squid, all cut, sliced and diced. Souvenir shops feature plastic squids, squid pens, even drinking cups made from ... squid. You won't be surprised that squid have been a staple here for thousands of years.

(The biggest squid ever caught? Twenty-four feet long. The largest invertebrate on the planet, they are thought to grow to as long as sixty feet but because they live at such great depths have never been studied in the wild.)

My question for these shopkeepers and restaurant owners, of course, is: Are they at risk of taking too many squid from the sea? Long thought beyond risk of being over fished – they don't live long anyway, are a very prolific species and fluctuate naturally – the reason they seem to be safe will surprise you.

My first glimpse of Tsukiji fish market's big, daily tuna auction is surreal: A thousand frozen blue fin tuna – weighing between one and two hundred pounds each – laid out in symmetrical rows on a concrete floor. That first look through a scratched plastic peephole, blurring the edges of the scene, makes it evermore otherworldly.

A pair of cavernous auction rooms sit at the far back of the market. Entry to each is through eight big yellow canvas roll-down doors, each bay representing a different company. Beginning around three a.m. the big fish are laid out; an hour later buyers or their representatives – from restaurants, supermarkets and vendors within the market – arrive to begin their daily inspection. This being Japan it is all very prompt: At 5:30 the first side of the room is auctioned, at 6 the second side. By 6:15, 6:20 at the latest, tuna are being dragged out and loaded onto carts to be sent all around Tsukiji, Tokyo and cities beyond, some destined for as far away as China.

Tuna are the biggest business in the world's biggest fish market. Japanese love their blue fin and pay dearly. The biggest and best sell for $50,000, $80,000, occasionally more than $100,000. For a single fish. Last night we visited a high-end sushi joint in the chi-chi neighborhood of Ginza, which had split the cost of this year's traditional "first" tuna with another restaurant, on January 8th – for a 129 kilos (261 pounds) tuna they paid more than $104,000. For the next several days' lines stretched around the block for a taste.