Tag archives for South America
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National Geographic Explorer, Enric Sala will spend the next month exploring the Desventuradas Islands off the coast of Chile. He will lead the Pristine Seas Project, which aims to find, survey and help protect the last wild places in the ocean.
Sala, a marine ecologist, is dedicated to finding ways to reduce human impacts on sea life. Between February 8th and March 7th, he will look for ways to preserve one of the last pristine environments left in South America.
During the trip, the team will use a submarine that has 360-degree vision and spherical glass drop cameras to film depth up to 4,000 meters (2.5 miles)!
Posted by We are back on the road again in South America. Our first stop is Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. The town was full of excitement and so were we. Our first night we went to soccer game or, as they call it, futbol. It was a rivalry game so it was extra crazy. There were people in the stadium lighting off fireworks and chanting anthems. The crowd was filled with black and yellow bumble bee jerseys and red, white and blue jerseys. They were the most energetic fans I had ever seen.
On February 27, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off of the shore of Chile, which is on the western side of South America. The quake damaged buildings, bridges, and power lines. It also caused tsunamis that battered Chile’s coast and even reached as far away as Hawaii.
This quake was stronger than the one that occurred in Haiti in January. It was even strong enough to change the Earth’s axis and shorten the length of a day by 1.26 millionths of a second.
Find out more about the Chile earthquake on National Geographic News.
Read about the January earthquake in Haiti on News Bites.
Learn more about earthquakes on nationalgeographic.com.
Photograph by Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images
