- The DARWIN200 Project is retracing English naturalist Charles Darwin’s 19th-century voyage, stopping at 32 ports around the globe by 2025.
- The sailing ship’s crew is composed of 200 young people who work in environmental conservation around the world, taking turns aboard the vessel to learn about projects in the places where they moor.
- Mongabay visited the ship as it passed through Rio de Janeiro together with Sarah Darwin, Charles Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter.
As you read this, a sailing ship is retracing the path of the voyage taken by English naturalist Charles Darwin in the 19th century — the very voyage that led to Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species by natural selection. The journey is part of the DARWIN200 project, which sailed from England in August 2023 and will stop at 32 ports encompassing all continents by 2025.
The expedition aims to help educate 200 young researchers and communicate the importance of environmental conservation to different audiences. Throughout the program, about five students from different countries (the Darwin200 Leaders) board the ship at each of the ports where it docks. Over a weeklong period, the leaders learn about conservation projects being carried out in the region with the aim that they apply the knowledge in their home countries.
People in other parts of the world are also following the voyage’s activities via a weekly interactive video class called The World’s Most Exciting Classroom, which shows where the ship is docked, presents local conservation challenges, interviews researchers and shows experiments and quizzes to entertain children and teenagers. Basic education-level students also participate in the transmission when they ask questions to specialists about global environmental problems.
The circumnavigation is also making it possible to develop studies such as one to catalog bird species — 200 had already been recorded by November 2023 — and another measuring the volume of microplastics found in the ocean.
Darwin in Brazil
After leaving England, the DARWIN200 expedition passed through Spain and Cabo Verde, crossed the Atlantic to three Brazilian ports (Fernando de Noronha, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro), headed on to Uruguay, then Argentina, and arrived in Chile in February 2024. From there, it will continue on the Pacific Ocean to Australia. The 50-meter-long (164-foot-long) wooden ship, named the Oosterschelde, was built in 1917 and is up to the task.
In November 2023, the Oosterschelde moored in downtown Rio de Janeiro next to the Museum of Tomorrow Mongabay’s reporters accompanied the privileged crew’s activities, which included Darwin Leaders and Charles Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter, botanist Sarah Darwin.
During our conversations, Darwin mentions some notes made by her great-great-grandfather when he was in Brazil: “Darwin observed that Brazil’s biodiversity was greater than the United Kingdom’s. Then he asked, ‘Why is there such a broad diversity of species?’ This was a seed for the ideas about natural selection that he developed over the following 20 years.”
Sarah Darwin, one of the people funding the DARWIN200 project, tells of how much Charles Darwin had admired the Brazilian landscape, noting the “elegance of the herbs, the beauty of the flowers, the mixture of silence and sounds.” She says that “during his last day in the Atlantic Rainforest, he walked through the forest to take in its beauty and record the things he saw in his memory. He knew he would not return and that these wonders could be destroyed.”
Aboard the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin navigated around the world for five years, beginning in 1832 when he was 22 years old. The experience expanded his repertoire of other forms of life and biodiversity, helped develop his theory of evolution and the writing of The Origin of Species in 1859. The voyage now retracing his path also promises to be fruitful, as it inspires change, allows for the exchange of experiences and mobilizes the 200 Darwin Leaders into action.
Researcher involvement
The Darwin Leaders taking part in the expedition are required to generate video and written conservation materials to release on their social media and other channels. Sarah says she believes this channel for information is vital: “Young people are full of energy, focus and wisdom. We are experiencing a series of crises, and scientists still have trouble communicating well. We need to learn from this generation, recognize its passion for nature and learn how to communicate with the general public.”
Darwin Leader Nicolás Marín Benítez is a smiley 24-year-old Argentine putting his skills as photographer, journalist and filmmaker to work as an expert in today’s communication channels. With more than 200,000 followers on Instagram, he is a National Geographic Explorer working with orcas in the United States. Benítez has followed the comings and goings of Darwin Leaders all over the world, including when they were in Rio de Janeiro’s Cagarras Islands.
Nico, as he is known, is also commemorating his recent receipt of a 2023 Environmental Photographer of the Year award: “I feel like a historical explorer that traveled the world looking for new things. This inspires me to be a 21st-century Darwin,” he says, laughing. “Our challenge is to put complex information into simple words using photography to catch people’s attention, using science to explain phenomena and using activism so we aren’t just spectators. It is vital to blend these forms of knowledge to understand a problem, to communicate and take action.”
In Rio de Janeiro, he recorded Chilean Darwin Leader Camila Calderón Quirgas’ experience with the Ilhas do Rio Project, which studies fish and sea turtles in the Cagarras Islands, a conservation unit that is suffering from urban pollution, the invasion of sun coral (Tubastraea spp.) and overfishing.
Quirgas is a 31-year-old veterinarian earning her master’s in oceanography, the author of children’s books on marine life, co-founder of a mammalogy study group, a National Geographic Explorer and TEDx lecturer. “To be in Brazil, in the Atlantic Ocean, living with people from all [these] cultures, to communicate in a different language — this is all new to me.”
In Chile, Quirgas works with sei whales (Balaenoptera borealis) in the region where she was born, 600 kilometers (370 miles) south of Santiago. She explains that these animals are at risk of extinction and are living in a degraded ecosystem with industrial pollution. “The place where I work isn’t a protected marine environment, so it’s important for me to get to know how Brazilian conservation units work, so I can pressure our authorities to do the same. We need public policies that generate immediate results and others that work on the long-term, like education. This is the only way we will feel the effects. The time to act is now, not later.”
She speaks with Mongabay reporters as the ship shakes its way toward Cagarras, crossing rough waters after days of agitated surf in the company of the Ilhas do Rio and ICMBio teams. “A stingray just jumped!” she cries out, surprised, as she gazes at the turquoise sea. Beneath the water, we can see some of the 300 green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) catalogued over the last three years by Ilhas do Rio. The project monitors the animals’ behavior in the region before they migrate to reproduce.
Quirgas has never seen sea turtles in their natural habitat and is inspired by her discoveries, as re the other Darwin Leaders onboard in Rio de Janeiro. These include an Indian man who works with a howler-monkey reintroduction project, a Venezuelan woman who works with golden lion tamarins, a French woman who closely follows a research initiative on dolphins and a woman from Holland who learns about Atlantic Rainforest reforestation.
From Bahia to Cabo Verde
Born 37 years ago among the sea turtles at the Projeto Tamar Foundation founded by her parents in 1982, Nina Marcovaldi was also chosen to be a Darwin Leader. A journalist specialized in making documentaries, she has visited conservation projects on the other side of the Atlantic in Cabo Verde, where she learned how their sea turtles are cared for, about the history of exploitation and the community’s relationship with the species.
Marcovaldi tells how the experience has enriched her knowledge about a different turtle habitat through the conversations she held with local biologists, fishermen, women and children. “You need to understand the local community if you want to do conservation work. You have to respect their ancestors and their traditions, give a voice to those who are not normally heard and practice science with a caring and loving outlook.”
According to Marcovaldi, while the older people living in Cabo Verde told her that they eat turtle eggs, the young people said it is a crime to do so — evidence of a large cultural shift over a short time period. “To improve the things we need to change, we must have courage, responsibility, time and everybody’s participation. If we take care of the people, they will take care of the turtles,” she says.
Nico Benítez loves these exchanges between people: “It’s very important to make connections with different histories because they bring us closer together, shorten distances and give opportunities. They are like energy reserves that keep the world turning for conservation!”
The journey for conservation must continue, as Sarah Darwin states: “We don’t have to look back in time to coexist with nature; we have to look into the future and live in a different, sustainable way. Nature must be a priority when we make all our decisions.”
Banner image: The DARWIN200 Project is being carried out aboard the 19th-century sailing ship Oosterschelde. Image courtesy of DARWIN200/press.
This story was reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and first published here on our Brazil site on Feb. 19, 2024.