Sailing through the Chilean fjords from Punta Arenas to Concepción, the crew onboard the historic tall ship Oosterschelde spotted a rare creature. “We were extremely fortunate to see a blue whale, the largest animal that’s ever existed on Planet Earth,” says Stewart McPherson, founder of the Darwin200 project. “It was truly inspiring. Everyone was left speechless.” Not only one of the world’s wildlife wonders, the sighting of a blue whale, a species listed as Endangered on the IUCN’s Red List, was also a reminder of the Darwin200 project’s mission to help undo the harm humans have caused to the natural world and to conserve species and habitats for the future.

The initiative was put together by co-founder and Project Manager McPherson, an English naturalist, author, and TV presenter, who previously worked on the BBC series Britain’s Treasure Islands, and it has the support of Jane Goodall, Sylvia Earle and Charles Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter Sarah Darwin. Its mission is to explore how the natural world has changed in the two centuries since Darwin’s adventures and to work on practical solutions to the biodiversity crisis and other conservation issues. The Oosterschelde set off from Plymouth, on England’s south coast, on August 15, 2023, marking the beginning of an epic two-year voyage. Plymouth is the same port Charles Darwin set sail from nearly two centuries before on HMS Beagle, his journey and findings helping mark him out as the world’s most renowned naturalist.

Right around now, the Oosterschelde should be somewhere among the 170 South Pacific islands in the Kingdom of Tonga. The ship is following Darwin’s global journey, covering more than 40,000 nautical miles, taking in Canary Islands and locations around South America, including Brazil and Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands, Pacific islands, including Tahiti and Fiji, then New Zealand and Australia. The team will call in at every major port where the young scientist stopped between 1831 and 1836, exploring many of the planet’s most remarkable wildlife locations, including the Galápagos Islands, a crucial area for Darwin. Due to time and costs, the ship won’t sail across the Indian Ocean, as Darwin did, but will instead journey back below South America to South Georgia, then on to South Africa and back, via the Azores, to Falmouth, England on July 25, 2025.