In 2017, we embarked on a two-month scientific expedition to Ascension Island in collaboration with the Ascension Island Conservation Department, the British Antarctic Survey, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and the Blue Marine Foundation. Our National Geographic Pristine Seas team has seen the beauty and importance of this region firsthand.
#North of ascension island full#
Photo by Paul Colley, courtesy of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birdsīut below the surface there is a world that Darwin and Hooker never saw, a massive ocean ecosystem with green turtles that come to nest on Ascension’s beaches, sharks, tuna, and deep seamounts full of life found nowhere else. By the late 1870s, the highest point of the island had become a tropical cloud forest made of introduced species-a new world to replace a lost one. From 1847 to 1850, ships brought plants from botanical gardens the Americas and Africa to Ascension Island. In 1843, botanist and explorer Joseph Hooker developed a plan-encouraged by Darwin himself-to replant Ascension with trees. When Charles Darwin visited the island in 1836, he found a treeless world that had been devoid of anything larger than grass for introduced sheep and goats.
The island is the top of an ancient volcano that broke through the ocean’s surface a million years ago. Photo by Jack Kirby, National Geographic Pristine SeasĪscension Island is an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom in the middle of the Atlantic, between Brazil and West Africa. Once established, the marine protected area (MPA) will bring the highest level of protection to this region’s exceptional biodiversity by prohibiting commercial fishing and extractive industries. At 440,000 square kilometers, the new fully protected reserve will be by far the largest in the Atlantic Ocean (roughly the size of the state of California). On August 24 the council of Ascension Island, a UK Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic, announced its support for the designation of a giant marine reserve around Ascension Island. This weekend marked a major milestone for the ocean. By: Enric Sala, Explorer-in-Residence and Leader of National Geographic Pristine Seas
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