Google Street View Lets You Explore the Galapagos Islands

In 1835, Charles Darwin took a historic journey to explore the Galapagos Islands and its flora and fauna, eventually leading to his discovery of how evolution works. Now you can explore the Galapagos Islands from the comfort of your laptop, thanks to Google Street View Trekker.

Google has turned the images and video it collected on its own journey to the famous Islands in May of this year into a special Street View collection, full of videos of giant Ttortoises, blue-footed boobies, Galapagos sea lions, and frigatebirds, along with panoramas of the plants, animals, and beautiful vistas on the Pacific Ocean archipelago.

There are also lava tubes, ocean shores, and the Charles Darwin Research Station to explore in Street View style.

Google isn't just doing this to give you a virtual vacation to a far-off exotic place. It's part of the Mountain View giant's celebration of the 178^th anniversary of Darwin's historic trip, in collaboration with the Directorate of the Galapagos National Park and the Charles Darwin Foundation. Besides raising awareness of the wildlife on the Galapagos Islands, Google says the footage is helping provide materials for research of the islands, including research on animal migration patterns, conservation, the impact of tourism on the islands' environment.

The Charles Darwin Foundation, for its part, has used the imagery to get the public involved in identifying plants and animals while they're navigating through the striking Street View imagery. That project takes the form of "Darwin for a Day," a web app that gets you exploring the islands, documenting plants and animals in "observations," which are shared with the Foundation (and the iNaturalist community - the platform on which the app runs). Those observations could contribute to research on the islands as well.

In May, Google's Street View team spent 10 days exploring the Galapagos Islands - boating, diving, and hiking around in the heat and humidity of the Pacific - and spent that time exploring 10 different locations. By the Street View team's account, "We walked past giant tortoises and blue-footed boobies, navigated through steep trails and lava fields, and picked our way down the crater of an active volcano called Sierra Negra."

You can check out all that Street View's Galapagos trip has to offer here.