A huge 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit central Chile, killing at least 78 people, and triggering a tsunami which has already hit the Juan Fernandez Islands and put Easter Island and the rest of the pacific on alert. From BBC News.

President Michelle Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe"
[...]
Tsunami warnings have been issued for Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, Central America and Pacific island nations.
[...]
She said a "wave of large proportion" had affected the Juan Fernandez island group, reaching halfway into one inhabited area. Two aid ships are reported to be on their way.

Ms Bachelet said that "high tidal waves" could also reach Easter Island soon.

And from MSNBC.com

Reuters reported that a tsunami caused by the quake caused "serious damage" to Chile's sparsely populated Juan Fernández Islands. Citing local police, CNN reported that the islands had been hit by a 40-meter (131 foot) wave.

The BBC Last Chance To See "Radio" page has been updated again to include the full radio episode "The Sultan Of Juan Fernandez". This episode features Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine in their search for the Juan Fernandez Fur Seal. The site indicates that the final episode to be released will be "A Man-Eating, Evil-Smelling Dragon", in March 2009.

The radio series episode guide in David Haddock's "The Story of Last Chance To See" has been updated with the link to all the episodes released so far.

NOTE: This material is only available to UK users due to copyright restrictions.

Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine are not visiting the Juan Fernandez islands for the upcoming TV series, so I thought I'd take a quick tour of the area in Google Earth, and share it with you using their new "Record a Tour" feature.

First, make sure you have the latest version 5 of Google Earth, then download this Tour of Juan Fernandez KMZ file which should open automatically. Expand the new folder using the "+" icons, and click the "Tour" option to run the recorded sequence. The picture at the left shows you where you need to be clicking.

Google Earth should now "take control" and fly you around the world, down to the Juan Fernandez Islands, around "Alejandro Selkirk Island", then across the ocean to "Robinson Crusoe Island", around the airstrip, and finally down to a small town on the island. The sequence was all recorded in real-time using the the fabulous "3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator". Using this device it really is remarkably easy to explore the world, smoothly and intuitively, as you'll shortly see. The SpaceNavigator is also available at Amazon.co.uk.

The ARKive video of the Juan Fernandez Fur Seals we featured the other day came from the fabulous new "Google Ocean" layer under ARKive:Endangered Ocean Species and is located on Robinson Crusoe Island.

This is just a first experiment with the "Record a Tour" feature. I hope to do some more soon with a bit more content.

Courtesy of www.arkive.org, here's a video of some Juan Fernandez Fur Seals doing their thing.

The team are not visiting the Juan Fernandez islands for the filming of the new TV series. As Producer Tim Green explains, there's a relatively healthy population of about 10,000 animals now. While talking about the original trip with Douglas Adams he says...

when the little plane finally put the intrepid explorers down on the island, the fur seals were virtually lolling on the runway. We decided that a repetition of this event hardly constituted an adventure for our modern day animal hunters, so we sidelined the fur seal.

Stephen Fry has revealed on his Twitter feed what the probable running order may be for the Last Chance To See TV series.

With some of the animals probably already extinct (Northern White Rhino, Yangtze Dolphin), and others doing rather well (10,000 Juan Fernandez Fur Seals), the choice of locations for the TV series was something that the team thought long and hard about, including what new animals to introduce to the series. The Where In The World? section of this page has more on this decision process.

Here is the possible running order according to Stephen's Tweet, with the probable animals added by me...

1) Amazon (Amazonian Manatee etc)
2) Africa (Mountain Gorillas, Rhinos, Chimpanzees etc)
3) Madagascar (Aye-Aye Lemurs, Rodrigues Fruitbats etc)
4) New Zealand (Kakapo Parrots, possibly whales etc)
5) Indonesia (Komodo Dragons etc)
6) Bay of Cortes, Mexico (More whales? Not quite sure yet)