The government of Ecuador has moved to protect the fish-rich waters off the country\u2019s coast that help to support endangered galapagos penguins, according to a release from the University of Washington. <\/p>\n
The country\u2019s president has issued a decree that prohibits fishing, drilling or mining in key sections of the waters that surround the Galapagos archipelago. In all, a third of the waters surrounding the islands are to become \u201cno take\u201d areas where nothing can be extracted.<\/p>\n
The archipelago lies about 600 miles off the coast of South America and boasts a rare assortment and diversity of species that evolved there. Ecuadorean law already protects about 97 percent of the land that makes up the islands, but only about 1 percent of Galapagos waters were \u201cno take\u201d areas before the decree was issued.<\/p>\n
Top image:\u00a0Galapagos penguin. (Credit: Dee Boersma)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The government of Ecuador has moved to protect the fish-rich waters off the country\u2019s coast that help to support endangered galapagos penguins, according to a release from the University of Washington. The country\u2019s president has issued a decree that prohibits fishing, drilling or mining in key sections of the waters that surround the Galapagos archipelago. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":25212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,44],"tags":[103,347,294,206],"class_list":["post-25216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-oceans-coasts","tag-news-2","tag-oceans-coasts","tag-penguins","tag-university-of-washington"],"remote_post_permalink":false,"remote_post_featured_image":false,"yoast_head":"\n