The Galapagos Islands are like a biological ark in the eastern Pacific Ocean. There are giant tortoises and swimming iguanas and numerous creatures found nowhere else. It's one of the world's most protected places. But scientists have discovered that dozens of exotic species have invaded the Galapagos — underwater. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports on this unexpected finding.
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Marine biologist James Carlton remembers when he first got to thinking that the Galapagos Islands may not be as pristine as people thought.
JAMES CARLTON: On my first visit to the Galapagos, I collected some samples from a boat bottom.
JOYCE: Barnacles, sponges and other hitchhikers. That was 1987. Carlton didn't know if those creatures he found were native or not, so four years ago, he and a team of scientists decided to return and take a closer look.
CARLTON: We didn't know quite what to expect.
JOYCE: What they did know was that on land there were lots of invasive species, species that are not native to the islands. But in the surrounding ocean, scientists only knew of five invaders; everything else presumably was native. When Carlton's team looked underwater, however, they found a horde of invaders.