I had scanned a large, plant-filled enclosure several times before locating him: a 70-something-year-old tortoise named Lonesome George. The tortoise weighs 88 kilograms (nearly 200 pounds), but he was barely visible beyond several bushes, and his head and legs were tucked neatly within his shell.

An adult Galápagos tortoise lumbers within a semiprotected space at a breeding facility on San Cristobal Island.

Bryn Nelson

Like a stubborn child who refuses to leave his room, George is not the most sociable tortoise in the world. But he’s by far the most famous, and I was happy to spot him—or at least his shell. That’s because George is the last known member of his species, sometimes called the Pinta tortoise.

A special place

George lives in the Galápagos Islands, a group of 19 islands in the Pacific Ocean about 600 miles (a little less than 1,000 km) west of Ecuador. The islands are famous for their unique plants and animals. For example, many of the islands’ lizards, iguanas, tortoises, sea lions, seabirds, land birds called finches, and even a type of penguin, have been found nowhere else in the world.

Recent reports, however, suggest that many species in the Galápagos are in trouble. Scientists blame the growing problem on too much tourism, too many people moving to the islands, and the introduction of foreign plants and animals that are crowding out or killing native species.

Based on satellite photographs taken by NASA, this image shows the major islands in the Galápagos.

Wikipedia/NASA

But researchers and volunteers are working hard to save threatened animals such as the tortoises. Using a range of strategies, from radio collar–wearing goats to analyses of old tortoise bones, they are making a difference—and showing that a shy survivor named George may not be so alone after all.

The rarest creature

Before humans first arrived in the Galápagos Islands in the 1500s, 15 or more closely related tortoise species may have lived there. Twelve of those species still inhabit the islands, but two are extinct. Lonesome George is the last known member of the third.

A Galápagos tortoise shares a morning bath with a white-cheeked pintail in a duckweed-covered pool in Santa Cruz Island’s highlands.

Bryn Nelson

Scientists found George living alone on an island in the Galápagos called Pinta Island in the early 1970s. Because he is the last remaining Pinta tortoise that scientists know about, the Guinness Book of World Records has called him the “rarest living creature.”

I recently took a weeklong voyage through the Galápagos aboard a motor-powered yacht named the Letty. Aboard the boat, I met wildlife photographer Tui De Roy, who told me that several tortoise species were in even worse shape when she was a girl.

De Roy moved to the Galápagos Islands when she was 2 and lived there for more than 35 years. Now a resident of New Zealand, she helps oversee the Charles Darwin Foundation.

The foundation operates the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island in the Galápagos. Scientists at the station advise the Ecuadorian government on how best to protect the Galápagos Islands.

By some estimates, De Roy says, up to 500,000 tortoises were killed for food or taken away as pets in the centuries before concerned people began protecting them. By the time preservation efforts began, perhaps only one-tenth of the original population remained.

Laws now protect the tortoises from hunting, but the lure of money still drives some people to kill the tortoises and sell their meat. Galápagos tortoises also face new dangers from animals that didn’t originally live on the islands, including goats.

Pesky goats

Over the past few centuries, fishers, pirates, sailors, and settlers brought goats to the Galápagos as a reliable food source. Unfortunately for tortoises, goats like the same types of grasses, fruits and leaves as tortoises do, and the goats are faster movers.

As the goats multiply, they beat tortoises to prime grazing spots. And they trample other favorite tortoise foods, like young prickly pear cacti.

As they stomp around, the hoofed animals can also squash sandy areas near the shoreline where tortoises build their nests. Over time, huge herds of goats can turn leafy forests into barren grassland.

This mural on the island of San Cristobal reads, “These introduced vertebrate animals are a menace in the Galápagos.” Pictured are a rat, cat, dog, pig, and goat—among the most destructive newcomers in the Galápagos Islands.

Bryn Nelson

Researchers have used helicopters, dogs, and even other goats to track down the goat invaders. The tracker goats wear radio collars that allow scientists and hunters to follow them as they mingle with wild goats. The researchers also put bright paint on the tracker goats, so hunters know to leave them alone but to nab their wild companions.

Goats be gone

The antigoat campaign has been paying off. Last year, researchers removed the last of an estimated 75,000 to 125,000 wild goats from the northern part of Isabela Island, which boasts more tortoise species than any other island in the Galápagos.

The victory built upon earlier successes on several other islands. On an island named Española, thousands of goats were removed in the 1970s, De Roy says. By then, the island’s native tortoise population had dwindled to 12 adult females and 2 males.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, researchers evacuated those few surviving tortoises to the Charles Darwin Research Station some 60 miles away. There, they set up an emergency-breeding program.

This male tortoise was once kept illegally as a pet. Now, he stretches out at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island.

Bryn Nelson

A third male tortoise from Española, named Macho, was already living at the San Diego Zoo. Scientists later brought him to the research station to help restore the island population. The descendants of Española have now helped resettle more than 1,400 tortoises on their goatfree native soil.

“Española is one of the most beautiful stories” of tortoise success, says Gisella Caccone, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University.

A stunning find

Earlier this year, Caccone and her colleagues announced another stunning discovery: Lonesome George may not be alone after all.

The discovery began with a routine study of the genetic material known as DNA. Every animal’s DNA is different, but researchers can look for common patterns among members of the same species that distinguish them from other species. A crow’s DNA, for example, looks significantly different from a hawk’s DNA, even though both creatures are birds.

First, Caccone’s team extracted a sample of DNA from George’s blood. The researchers also took DNA from the bones of long-dead Pinta tortoises that had been stashed away in museums for decades. By looking at samples of both living and dead specimens, the scientists came up with a profile of a typical Pinta’s DNA.

Next, the team compared the Pinta DNA with DNA from tortoises living on neighboring Isabela Island. They already knew the Isabela population had a mixed heritage, and they wanted to know more about where the ancestors of the Isabela tortoises had come from.

Their results surprised them. One young Isabela male tortoise, the scientists learned, shared half of George’s DNA. Caccone says that this discovery suggests that the youngster’s mom was likely born on Isabela Island. But his dad, like George, originally lived on Pinta Island, about 50 miles away.

No one knows how the tortoise father made the trip to Isabela. It’s possible that he and others rode to their new home with sailors or settlers, or on strong ocean currents. Unlike sea turtles, tortoises live only on land. Even so, tortoises have been known to survive for long periods in the ocean, whether floating by themselves or clinging to mats of vegetation. Some researchers, in fact, believe the first tortoises to arrive in the Galápagos Islands did so by floating westward from the mainland.

Either way, the new find has researchers hoping they’ll be able to identify more Pinta tortoises now living on Isabela—or at least tortoises that are partly descended from Lonesome George’s extended family. If they can find both males and females with Pinta DNA, scientists will start a new breeding program to pass on as much of that unique DNA to tortoise hatchlings as possible. If they’re really lucky, their breeding program may help the Pinta species survive. George, who seems completely uninterested in reproducing, would be off the hook.

These tortoise hatchlings are a few years old. Here, they seek shelter from the heat at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island in the Galápagos. Researchers have bred these hatchlings in captivity and will release them into the wild

Bryn Nelson

Caccone’s group has done more than revive the hope of rescuing Pinta Island tortoises from the brink of extinction. Two years ago, the team also discovered a previously unknown species of tortoise on Santa Cruz Island, where most people in the Galápagos Islands live. The isolated population of about 100 tortoises still doesn’t have a formal name.

“The Galápagos can yield an incredible amount of new surprises,” Caccone says. “Think what you can find when you really study well the other islands.”

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Mother penguins and their chicks, as seen in the movie March of the Penguins.

Jérôme Maison. © 2005 Bonne Pioche Productions/Alliance de Production Cinématographique

“For some, this is not acceptable,” says narrator Morgan Freeman, describing the chicks’ reactions. “But it is nonnegotiable.”

In another scene, a penguin mother stands over her dead chick and wails at the sky. “The loss is unbearable,” Freeman explains.

In yet another scene, Freeman describes typical penguin behavior. “They’re not that different from us, really,” he says. “They pout. They bellow. They strut. And occasionally, they engage in contact sports.”

Such statements have drawn criticism from some biologists who say it’s wrong to attribute human feelings to animals. Penguin researcher Dee Boersma, however, says that this kind of anthropomorphism is a good thing.

“I think these movies are a wonderful opportunity to engage children and adults in the wonders of nature instead of the wonders of shoot-’em-ups,” Boersma says. She’s a conservation biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Hard life

Inspiring people to care about penguins is important, Boersma says, because life isn’t getting any easier for the quirky-looking birds.

Penguins live on land, on ice, and in the oceans of the southern hemisphere, but global climate warming is shrinking their habitats (see “Shrinking Glaciers“). Oil slicks and other types of pollution are making them sick. More and more often, fishermen are catching penguins in their nets by mistake. And over-fishing is making it harder for the animals to find fish to eat.

Emperor penguins travel long distances each year to reach their breeding grounds.

Jérôme Maison. © 2005 Bonne Pioche Productions/Alliance de Production Cinématographique

Penguins are especially sensitive to changes in the environment because they travel long distances during their lives, but can’t fly. Environmental damage along any part of their routes can have harmful effects.

The Emperor penguins featured in March of the Penguins, for instance, walk and slide on their tummies over ice for 70 miles each year to meet at the same breeding grounds. Similarly, Magellanic penguins, which live in South America, sometimes travel more than 2,000 round-trip miles between Argentina and Brazil.

Penguins gather in huge groups when they breed, which makes it easy for scientists to see if populations are declining.

Penguins gather in large groups when they breed.

Jérôme Maison. © 2005 Bonne Pioche Productions/Alliance de Production Cinématographique

“We’re interested in using penguins as sentinels of the environment,” Boersma says. In other words, if penguins show signs of distress, that’s a sign that the environment is experiencing stress, too.

Cool birds

Boersma has been studying Magellanic penguins in the Patagonia region of Argentina for 22 years. Every year, she spends September through March at a protected reserve called Punta Tombo, which borders the Atlantic Ocean. About 200,000 breeding pairs of penguins live there.

“It’s a megalopolis of penguins,” Boersma says. “It’s like New York City.”

Biologist Dee Boersma poses with a host of penguins.

Courtesy of Dee Boersma

Even so, she says, there are 20 percent fewer penguins living at Punta Tombo now than when she started working there in 1987.

Boersma has big goals when it comes to penguin research. She wants to learn everything there is to know about penguins. To that end, she and her colleagues tag birds every year and track their migration routes with satellite technology.

The researchers also visit nests and count how many penguins return from year to year. They spend hours observing the animals every day, trying to figure out how penguins choose their mates, why they make certain noises, how oil spills affect populations, and how Punta Tombo’s 70,000 yearly human visitors affect the behavior of the birds and their ability to reproduce successfully.

“What’s mostly driving us,” Boersma says, “is to make sure penguins are going to be here for future generations.”

Penguin personalities

Studying penguins is as entertaining as it is interesting, Boersma says. “I don’t know anyone who won’t say they like penguins,” she says. “They are fun to watch. They’re comical. They walk upright. What’s not to like?”

Now that she has known some of the penguins at Punta Tombo for more than 2 decades, she has grown to appreciate their personalities. “Some are nervous,” she says. “Some are placid.”

One of her favorites is a 21-year-old male who makes a grunting “hmmph” sound every time the researchers pick him up to weigh and measure him.

Emperor penguin chicks.

Jérôme Maison. © 2005 Bonne Pioche Productions/Alliance de Production Cinématographique

I never realized how amazing penguins are until I saw March of the Penguins. The birds go to incredible lengths, I learned, to find food for themselves and their babies. In the Antarctic, they withstand brutal snowstorms and frigid temperatures, and they go for months without food, all for the sake of their chicks.

The film also gave me an appreciation for how cute baby penguins are. Afterwards, all I wanted to do was to adopt a group of the adorable puffballs and protect them from winds, cold weather, and hungry predators.

On second thought, though, that would probably be a bad idea. People may have something in common with penguins, but penguins would probably be too noisy and wild to make good roommates. My cat, by the way, agrees.

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“Whales have that effect on people,” Palumbi adds. He’s a biology professor at Stanford University.

Steve Palumbi is a marine biologist at Stanford University who studies whales.

Stanford University

It might be their gargantuan size, their beautiful and haunting songs, which can travel underwater for thousands of miles, or the fact that they’ve been on Earth for a long, long time. Then again, whale awe might come from something beyond words.

“Something about them is just magical,” Palumbi says. “They’re magnificent creatures. They’ve been swimming the seas for 20 million years. It should be no surprise that they’re the masters of the ocean.”

These ocean rulers, however, are in big trouble. Between 1925 and 1975, whale hunting destroyed many of the world’s whale populations. By the time whaling was officially banned in 1986, some species had already become extinct. Others are still struggling to recover.

Meanwhile, countries such as Japan and Norway have found ways to continue hunting whales for their meat and blubber. And they’re trying to get permission from the International Whaling Commission to start whaling again on a large scale in the next 5 years.

Whales face other threats, too. Lots of boat noise can prevent them from communicating with each other. And pollution may be poisoning the fish they eat.

A humpback whale’s tail has distinctive markings.

Captain Budd Christman, NOAA Corps

Despite the admiration that whales inspire, scientists still don’t know many things about them. “Much of what whales do and how they live their lives is still a secret,” Palumbi says.

So, scientists such as Palumbi are working hard to unravel the secret lives of whales. Their goal is to find ways to protect them for generations to come.

Polluted waters

Oceans act like giant conveyer belts, spreading dangerous chemicals such as DDT and dioxins around the world, says Roger Payne. He heads a whale conservation organization called Ocean Alliance.

As toxins move up the food chain, from fish to whales (and people), they get more and more concentrated in muscle and fat tissue, which increases potential health hazards.

An orca (killer whale) takes a peek through a hole in the ice.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Payne’s organization has sent a ship named the Odyssey on a 5-year, worldwide cruise to collect data. Researchers aboard the ship are gathering skin samples from sperm whales, then analyzing the samples for pollutants.

“The first question is: How bad is it?” Payne says. “Until we can answer that, we can’t really get anywhere.”

The voyage’s goal is to create a map of pollution in oceans around the world. This information should reveal something about how our waste is affecting long-lived mammals like whales.

Sample collection is still underway. So far, testing of 30 whale samples has revealed the presence of pollutants in every single one.

If most other samples turn out to be contaminated, the findings could also be a warning to people. Seafood is the main source of animal protein for 70 percent of people on Earth, Payne says. If the seafood we eat is tainted, our health could be at stake, along with that of whales.

Loud noise

Chemicals are not the only kind of pollution in the ocean. Noise is also a major problem, says Christopher Clark. He’s director of Cornell University’s bioacoustics research program.

In his research, Clark uses highly sensitive microphones that were originally developed by the U.S. Navy to track ships. The microphones are so sensitive that Clark calls them “the Hubble telescopes of the sea.” The Hubble Space Telescope is an orbiting instrument that has provided extremely detailed images of the universe.

Now, Clark is using these microphones to pinpoint where whales are, how they move, and what sounds they make.

Humpback whales migrate from near the poles to tropical waters.

R. Wicklund, OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP); University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Whales generate a variety of sounds, sometimes creating long and intricate melodies. No one knows what whale songs mean, but the tunes can be very complex.

Some scientists suggest that whales make such noises to navigate and communicate. They might keep track of each other, tell others where food is available, and find each other to breed. I wonder if they also talk about the weather!

Clark’s research has shown that whales use low-frequency sound waves to communicate with each other across hundreds, even thousands of miles of water. This means that a whale off the coast of Newfoundland, way up in northeastern Canada, can hear its friends in Puerto Rico, 1,600 miles away in the Caribbean.

But there’s a problem. Ships make a lot of noise, and there are lots of ships out there. All of that “acoustic smog,” Clark says, has greatly reduced the ability of whales to hear each other.

Cape Cod Bay on the coast of Massachusetts is a particularly extreme example, Clark says. The bay is a critical habitat for northern right whales, but the noise is persistent and the levels are very high.

If there were this much noise on land, Clark says, a government agency called the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) would order us to wear earplugs or stay away to protect ourselves and keep from going deaf.

Whales might end up leaving their homes or swimming to different depths to avoid loud noises. Such moves could create further problems, a recent study by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution suggests.

The researchers found that whales can get “the bends” in the same way that scuba divers do when they swim too deep, stay down too long, or rise too quickly to the surface (see “The Pressure of Scuba Diving” at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20040623/Feature1.asp ). In this ailment, bubbles of gas in the blood can cause severe pain and even death, both in people and in whales.

Deep food

Protecting whales is especially important because a variety of species depend on them for survival, says Craig Smith. He’s an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and he studies “whale falls.” A whale fall is a dead whale carcass that sinks to the bottom of the ocean.

A gray whale pokes its head above the water.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The body of a 50-ton whale can sustain up to 80 years worth of life, Smith says.

Using deep-sea robotic equipment, including the submersible Alvin (see “Explorer of the Extreme Deep” at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20041110/Feature1.asp ), Smith has discovered a wealth of bizarre creatures that seem to thrive only on whale falls.

The blind zombie worm is one example. These odd worms feed on whalebones and grow into mats that look like fields of tall grass waving in the wind.

“The communities are remarkable,” Smith says. One whale can support 3,400 individual creatures that belong to more than 200 species, including mussels, sharks, clams, and worms.

“It’s among the most species-rich habitats in the deep sea,” he says.

A decline in whale populations would mean a decrease in whale falls. As a result, many specialized species would become extinct. For example, calculations show that, if whale falls went down by 75 percent, about 30 to 40 percent of the species that depend on these falls for survival would die out.

Even reducing whale falls by half would cause 15 percent of dependent species to disappear. That’s troubling, Smith says, because some people argue that killing 50 percent of whales would do no harm.

Hunting ban

Not all the news is bad news. Using information buried in whale DNA, Palumbi’s research has shown that Antarctic minke whales have been thriving for as long as 2 million years. Through ice age after ice age, their numbers have continued to grow steadily. Whaling seems to be the only major threat they face.

The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived on Earth.

Bob Hines, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

However, a complete ban on whaling may be the only way to save the world’s whale populations and all of the species that depend on them, many researchers say. At the same time, countries such as Japan and Norway see the sale of whale blubber as a major source of income.

The best thing scientists can do now, Palumbi says, is to learn as much about whales as they can in order to document the negative effects of whaling. With rapid advances in technology, the opportunities for understanding these marvelous animals seem to be better than ever before.

“Learning about how whales live their lives, how they have lived their lives, and even how they die takes more than just looking at them from the surface,” Palumbi says. “It takes technology—new technology that pushes back the curtain of the ocean.”

Though there’s a lot left to be discovered, new technology and new research is beginning to fill in the gaps in the secret lives of whales.

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