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GalapagosQuest is an interactive expedition developed by Classroom Connect that will take a team of scientists and explorers on a journey of discovery through the extraordinary Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. Follow along here for daily reports on their quest.
Galapagos Quest: Flames in the Ocean
March 2, 1999 By John Fox (Classroom Connect) -- Imagine this scene: you're sailing out in the middle of the Pacific in the dead of night. In the distance you see bright orange flames out there in the middle of nowhere. What could it be? Is it a ship on fire? The closer you get the clearer it becomes that the sea itself is on fire! Huge plumes of smoke and showers of spark and flame shoot into the sky like Fourth of July fireworks. Something is exploding out of the sea. It's an island. You're witnessing the birth of the Galapagos Islands from the bottom of the sea! Of course, to have really seen this happen, you would have to have been around three to five million years ago. That's when most geologists think the Galapagos first appeared. You see, the Galapagos Islands are really the tips of enormous volcanoes poking above the ocean surface. One jagged rock near here, called Roca Redonda, is actually the tip of a huge mountain twelve miles across at its base and nine miles high, measured from the ocean floor. That's about three miles higher than Mt. Everest. In fact, if you cleared away all the water around the Galapagos, you'd be surrounded by a mountain range far taller than anything found on the Earth's surface.
You may recall that I was the team archaeologist on AfricaQuest. The truth is, as an archaeologist, I'm usually only interested in digging through rocks when there's some chance of finding human bones or some other ancient treasure. Unfortunately, there's not much archaeology here in the Galapagos, so for a change, I'm going to take a hard look at the rocks themselves. We've only been here a few days and I've already crawled through lava tubes. Lava tubes were formed when intensely hot lava poured out of a nearby volcano and cooled as it flowed along, like wax running down a candle. We did some team building over the weekend. We hiked over the slopes of extinct volcanoes and peered into craters that are now freshwater lakes. Yesterday, we even snorkeled where fish lay their eggs in the crevices of ancient lava beds. Everywhere you turn you see the impact of millions of years of volcanic eruptions. Even the houses and the streets of Galapagos villages are built out of volcanic rock.
The formation of the Galapagos can be traced to fiery "hot spots" below the Earth's crust, fixed places deep in the Earth where intense heat melts the Earth's mantle and gives rise to volcanoes. Over millions of years, 2,000¡F molten rock oozed out of these cracks and formed a string of volcanic islands, known as an archipelago. For the next four weeks, I'm going to take you to some local hot spots and show you just how 'cool' volcanoes really are. We'll climb to the rims of active volcanoes where the air is filled with the stench of volcanic gasses. We'll learn about what happens when a volcano erupts and what it's like to experience it first-hand. We'll look at the way the unique animals and plants of the Galapagos owe their existence and survival to these 'islands of fire.' Tomorrow, following yesterday's "Set the Course" vote, we're off to Gardner Bay on Espanola Island to check out the sea lions that live among the rocks there. And, you never know. Maybe while poking around in some pile of rocks or exploring some remote crater, I'll stumble upon a lost pirate treasure! Argh! Rock on! John RELATED STORIES: Galapagos volcano eruption forces evacuation of giant tortoises RELATED SITES: Classroom Connect
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