IG1--Patty's Site

Change of assignment, again. Now, Scott, Aline, and I are working on sensors. Aline is doing marine sensors, I'm doing land sensors, and Scott is investigating different power sources.
a.)

Sensors

Well, as of friday, I am working on Tourism with Aline Thomas. THe category of tourism, as defined by our team, covers diving, tourist sites, and the ideal village (are rather the ideal tourist site, as we really won't have any permanent residents on any of our five islands). It covers:
a.) how to provide for visitors b.) how to deal with human products (trash, food, waste, pollution, etc.) c.) how to minimize the impact on the wildlife and natural environment d.) how to keep the tourists happy (and, I suppose, this also keeps the government happy)

Team stuff

There was a monday meeting, even though it was a holiday. Basically consisted of checking in with the research we've been doing so far, some html-

Tourism

So far, I think this will require mostly research on Tower. I'll see if I can get info on it from the person who's been researching it so far(Keron?), at the meeting. I think.....well, tourism levels are much too high for the size of the island. However, they're still not as high as some of the other, non-IG1 islands so...maybe our problem isn't that big. :\
I really need more info still-- will continue on this during the week. I decided to start by looking at tourist sites. And.......there are a lot of tourist websites (but not a lot of tourist sites). One of the best websites I found, possibly, is GalaHost, mostly because they link to so much other info on tourism. Also, from "Ecuador Virtual" (the bouncy orange dot under tourism in the sidebar), I found that the Bay of Darwin, (Bahia de Darwin) is possibly the main site on Genovesa (Tower)-- and Genovesa is the only one of our islands that has actual tourist sites. A translation of the description found on "Ecuador Virtual" goes as follows:

Esta bahía se ubica al sur de la isla. La bahía tiene una pequeña playa plana de arena blanca y pequeñas piedrecillas. El lecho marino cercano a la playa es poco profundo y contiene mucha vida acuática, ideal para hacer buceo. Dentro de esta playa encontramos una pequeña colonia de lobos marinos muy amistosos, al igual de gaviotas de cola bifurcada, piqueros patas rojas y enmascarados, iguanas marinas, y dentro del mar peces loro, cirujanos entre otros.

The bay is located at the south end of the island, and has a small, flat beach with white sand and small pebbles. The marine ridge near the beach is not rather shallow and contains much acuatic life, making it ideal for diving. Within this beach we can find a small colony of sea wolves, which are very friendly; and also seagulls with split tails and red feet and beaks, marine iguanas. Within the bay you can find lorofish, among others.

Well, my translation is possibly not that accurate/precise. But-- it's useful in explaining what exactly a tourist site consists of. Also, Aline found a paper on tourism theory, which can be found here.

Yeah! The website actually updated that time, instead of me saving to the folder, and the old website Not Going Away! Pity I only got the page to update now that I'm taking it apart to put stuff on different pages.... So anyway:

Stuff

The minutes from monday dissapeared when my battery ran out right after the meeting. bleagh. and I hadn't saved them either.... and since I couldn't make friday's meeting-- well, I have no minutes to put up today.
While this is sad, most of monday's meeting was the group trying to go over everything we'd gone over before, and then, it was us trying to reorganize--again. We also redefined the A as the website, and the diff. parts of the website as checkpoints. and friday.......maybe someone else took minutes friday

Wolf

Well, I found the stuff I was missing for Wolf. I actually haven't been able to find a topographic map of wolf, although I've managed to find topographic maps of several of the other islands.

Tourism

I'm slightly impressed at some tourist groups. For example, Andes & Amazon

Aaaaaaand.........here's Wolf!
(courtesy of http://www.geo.cornell.edu)

Wolf, apparently, doesn't really have any tourism. Or........much of anything else. Being far away from everything except Darwin, it's mostly an offshoot of it. The center on Darwin covers Wolf as well. The two islands have about equal problems with fishing. Both islands have some of the best diving sites...

Wolf Island, preliminary general info:

www.tripadvisor.com describes it as:
Only inhabited by sea birds, this isolated island features quiet waters in its bay (formed by the island’s caldera), which makes it a great place for underwater diving and snorkeling.
Which leaves it completely uninhabited by humans, barren of most land animals, and--like Darwin-- completely restricted. from wikipedia.org:
Wolf (Wenman) This island was named after the German geologist Theodor Wolf. It has an area of 1.3 km2 and a maximum altitude of 253 metres. Here fur seals, frigates, masqued and red footed boobies, marine iguanas, sharks, whales, dolphins and swallow-tailed gulls can be seen.

So--

Mostly went through the links on the mission website. I've found that I really need to know more general info before I actually try to solve the problems.....since any specific research will be built on the basics.

So I think I'll work on getting that this week.

Goals:

--To get an idea on how the galapagos works, politics/lifestype -wise.

--To get an idea about what it's problems and merits are, ecology-wise -- this will help establish what to solve, what to preserve, and what can be considered superfluous, in terms of any changes we might want to make.