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Witness History

The Galapagos sea cucumber dispute

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A boom in demand for sea cucumbers in Asia in the 1990s set off a confrontation between fishermen and conservationists in the waters off the Galapagos islands, where the protein-rich sea creature was found in abundance. The high price being paid for the sea cucumbers led to a gold rush on the South American archipelago, a chain of 21 islands home to many unique wild-life species. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to a Galapagos fisherman and a British conservationist, who found themselves on opposite sides of the dispute.

(Photo credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

0:06.8

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

0:11.8

telly we share what we've been watching

0:14.0

Cladie Aide.

0:16.0

Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

0:19.0

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

0:24.9

searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Mike Lanchin, real life stories told by the people who were there.

0:47.0

Today we're going to hear from the Galapagos Islands, the internationally protected South American archipelago,

0:54.6

renowned for its amazing diversity of wildlife.

0:58.2

Back in the 1990s, the islands were the scene of a bitter and at times violent dispute between fishermen and conservationists.

1:07.0

I've been speaking to two men who are on opposing sides of that confrontation.

1:16.6

It sounds trite to say it but it was just a fabulous place to work and the best times were the feeling that I'd get from being alone on an uninhabited island.

1:27.0

I agree that there are pristine areas where we need to look carefully at whether

1:35.3

fishing is destroying the ecosystem or not but we fishermen need to catch fish

1:40.5

that's what we do that's how we make a living. Located some 900

1:46.0

kilometers off the coast of Ecuador in South America, the Galapagos

1:50.0

archipelago is made up of a chain of 21 largely uninhabited islands.

1:55.0

They were discovered in 1535 and 300 years later the legendary British

2:00.9

naturalist Charles Darwin first set foot on its rugged volcanic terrain.

2:06.4

In the morning of the 17th, we landed on Chatham Island, which like the others rises with

2:12.2

a tame and rounded outline,

...

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