Jetgala - MAR-MAY 2023

64 S Alex Hearn, Mission Blue co-Champion for the Galápagos Islands Hope Spot and Professor of Marine Biology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, records shark sightings during a dive in the waters of the Galápagos Islands. the impacts of these protections. Last year, Earle embarked on a two-week multi-institutional expedition across the Hope Spot in a bid to assess the marine ecosystem in the area and identify both challenges and opportunities for future conservation efforts. A large part of the expedition, according to a report, was devoted to “revealing the hidden and forgotten diversity beneath the waves to provide a baseline value of ecosystem health that can be tracked by future surveys”. With the aid of advanced technology, including environmental DNA (eDNA) and underwater video systems, the team uncovered vital population data for seahorses and endemic slipper lobsters- animals that have not been extensively studied. Using eDNA, the traces of animal DNA that remains in the water column – which would have remained unnoticed – are isolated and analysed. New Discoveries This discovery led Diana Pazmiño of the Galápagos Science Center, who inferred that since most of the sequences they gathered do not match any public database, that “not many things have been sequenced from the Galápagos, or there are things new to science that we have not identified yet”. The work of Mission Blue in marine exploration and protection in the Galápagos Islands, with continuing support from Rolex through its Perpetual Planet Initiative, aims at expanding the global network of Hope Spots