This is a great sentence: "The more we all thought about it, the more we wanted to focus on water" -- as if everyone started off without any clear idea what the agenda should be.

I understand Mary Pearl's point, that the availability of "freshwater" (presumably she intentionally writes it as one word) is an issue of the highest priority.  One wonders just how a cruise around the Galapagos is supposed to help the discussion directly.

Ideally, since the Galapagos are associated with wildlife of very special kinds, and of course with Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution and the family relationship of all living things, it would be nice to think that the preservation of biodiversity is a value that they will be moved to meditate on.  Myself, I consider that to be the most fundamental of environmental values.

The juvenile sea lion in the photo, full of sand, is darling.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

"Freshwater" as an adjective is venerable and well-known.  As a noun, I had never seen it before.  It does not appear in my Webster's Ninth New Collegiate.  Not that I have any problem with it.  The online Merriam-Webster definition of it as a noun adds, "especially as a resource"; that suggests that it is something of a technical term, written conventionally that way by scientists and other experts.  And that is fine.  Scientists have been doing all sorts of odd things to words and languages in order to fashion for themselves a practical vocabulary, which is after all a principal tool of their activities.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!