chasing gombessa

The Untold Story

Chapter III

Part Time Explorers

         Now how did I, your humble traveller, webmaster, and correspondent come to be an eyewitness and even a gung ho participant in the coelacanth story? For that we must return for the moment to the mid 1980's...

          After fifteen minutes of howling, the air raid siren subsided. This meant that the polar bear with the number 44 spray-painted on its side, the same animal that ten minutes ago ambled by the porch of our Beluga Motel, had left Main St and was now wandering back into the scrubby taiga fringing the town.

Northern Ligths over Churchill, Manitoba

          The year was 1984. Father George Ruggieri, Director of the New York Aquarium, had allowed me to accompany the aquarium's Beluga Whale capture team to Churchill, Manitoba, where pods of Belugas feed at the mouth of the Churchill River. The white whale, its head capped by a bulbous melon and its jaws cracked in a permanent smile, was fast becoming my favorite animal. It held the promise of an unconditional friend. But I knew more about cameras than whales. I would photograph while the rest of the team collected.

Belugas at the mouth of the Churchill River

          We rode in aluminum outboards beside the racing whales whose pumping flukes threw out wakes alongside our own. Our boats guided the calves into shore, while Cree Indians in wet suits--former hunters of the white whale-- jumped from their outboards with lassos. Once roped, the seven foot young were gently soothed in the shallows. The aquarium team readied customized stretchers with flipper holes to carry them to thirty foot outboard powered canoes, in which they were ferried to a holding tank, a fifteen foot wide, three foot deep, canvas bassinet beside the motel.

A Beluga is transfered to a canoe

          Four whales were caught. The young Belugas are gray, turning white only in their second or third year. They look and act more like dolphins than whales. New York Aquarium staff took blood samples for analysis. Unhealthy animals would be released in a couple of days, to be replaced by new catches. When the time came the whales would be put back in their stretchers, suspended in wooden cases for the charter flight to New York. They would soon ride vampire-like in their caskets waiting for Coney Island water to bring them back to life.

          The whale captures were a well known summer ritual in Churchill. Native Americans who do the catching also run the Beluga Motel. Capture permits are required, and breeding programs are in place at the aquariums that receive them. Native Americans and Inuit are still allowed to hunt the whales for food. But few do so. Whale meat had been great for sled dog teams. But snowmobiles have long since replaced the dog-sleds--an almost unique irony of modernization that has spared an entire species from human predators.

Two of the Belugas back at New York Aquarium

          Each year, aquariums that planned to be catching the following year, sent observers. In addition to the New York Aquarium and Mystic Aquarium, both of which were capturing in '84, there were observers from the National Aquarium in Washington D.C., and the John G. Shed Aquarium in Chicago.

          The challenge, the technology and the logistics of capture expeditions, tweaked my interest. One evening, when the whales were cozily puffing in their tank, I asked the group a fatal question. What would be the most difficult animal to capture for an aquarium, the greatest challenge, the most scientifically interesting? "Oh, the coelacanth, of course," said Bill Flynn , then a curator at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. "But it would be very difficult. Several expeditions have tried. They have all failed. I know a way, but I won't tell you, unless you let me come on your expedition."

          My expedition? He must have seen something in my expression, for he was only half joking. Everyone agreed, catching a coelacanth would be a major accomplishment. I knew what the fish was, vaguely. The famous discovery of the living fossil with leg-like fins and a big ugly smile, was stashed somewhere in "general knowledge." Didn't they live somewhere around Africa? Helen, one of the other aquarium volunteers joked with me about it over the next few days.

          But the notion of such an undertaking slipped to the back of my mind. This was institutional stuff. Far too much for me to take on. I later thought of suggesting it to Peter Gimbel, who had made "Blue Water, White Death", the film of his search for great white sharks. Gimbel had also brought the safe up from the Andrea Doria--the same safe that was now sitting in the shark tank at New York Aquarium, waiting to be opened. I composed a letter to him, but never got around to writing it. My life was too busy with other pursuits, particulary the creation of mobile personal robots through my company ComRo Inc.

          Exactly one year later, the summer of '85, the coelacanth was the farthest thing from my mind. I was in a predicament. The sun had set. I slithered down a slippery wet rock face in the gathering dusk of the Andes mountains in Ecuador. Then I tripped. My canvas camera pod cushioned the fall with a crunch of Leicas. The porters had raced on ahead with Charles, my climbing partner. They knew where they wanted to make camp. I didn't. Now it was dark.

          My flashlight was in my pack, but my pack was with the porters. Great! At this altitude I hadn't been able to carry it more than fifty feet without stopping, gasping for oxygen. But stopping was out. The porters were eager to reach the campsite before dark. So the porters had my pack, and here I was, exhausted, wet, encumbered with climbing gear and cameras in the dark. I pulled a Bic lighter out of a soggy pocket. It worked. In flicks of light, punctuated by burning sensations on the end of my thumb, I groped my way down the gully, wondering about the strange desires that had landed me on this Explorers Club expedition, scrounging lava samples from a killer volcano.

Sangay Volcano. Arrow indicates site of our base camp. (Photo: Ecuadorian Geologic Survey)

Sangay Volcano in perpetual eruption

          The hike across the mountain ridges to the base of the volcano had been little more than a death march for me. Neither adequately conditioned nor properly acclimatized, I struggled in the thin air through boot-sucking mud, up and down the ridges, trying to keep up with the porters, the guide, and Charles, fellow Explorers Club member, for whom the ordeal was a triumph in the survival of the fittest. They had one particularly insidious practice which they visited on me again and again. If I lagged too far behind they would wait for me, lolling about on some hillock, until utterly exhausted from the extra push I arrived at their feet, when at that very second they would move on again, leaving me not a moment's pause. The excuse for this breakneck pace was that the porters--barrel-chested walking human lungs-- wished to reach certain resting places each night, and the guide, a store manager, needed to maintain a quick pace so that he could be back at his sporting boutique in Quito the following Monday.

The group waits for me, a porter carrys my gear.

Endless ridges and streams on the way to Sangay volcano

It was for such purposes that I could feel my left ventricle enlarging, my chest full and heavy. But I grew stronger, and Charles, who traded bonds for a living, at 35, eight years younger, a boyish, winsome, occasionally charming cross in both appearance and behavior between Teddy Roosevelt (though we were unarmed, he had a hunter's knee-jerk reflex to the appearance of small game on the trail aiming his arm like a rifle) and Papa Hemingway (occasionally I would catch him shadow boxing out of the corner of my eye, punching the air with hooks and jabs) became more tolerant.

Charles and the base camp at Sangay

The author prepares a dinner of boiled pasta

          Three days later, above the snow line, high on the slopes of Sangay, Charles and I approached a rock chute on the eastern flank. With a thunderous roar, the erupting volcano belched again, blasting molten shrapnel, lava bombs and blocks of rock the size of small cars from an active vent. The new-born rocks crashed down the chute in front of us.

We approach the falling lava chute

          We studied the pattern and frequency of explosive spasms. I tightened the strap of my climbing helmet. The slope was littered with chunks stalled in their descent by soft scree. Most of these were irregularly shaped because the round ones careened on down below us. We took cover behind a Volkswagen "Bug"-sized boulder at the edge of the chute.

          Then we saw "our rock," an angular, football-sized projectile, ricocheting down the chute to a whacking impact only a hundred yards away. Tectonically speaking, it would be a perfect sample. The rock was guaranteed fresh, hot from the mantle of the Nasca plate.

          Before the ensuing spasm, I rushed into the chute. As I scrambled over the grooved ravines, I quickly lost sight of my quarry, lost it against the gray and black of the slope amidst the fall of ash and snow. Charles yelled directions like an artillery officer. The cinders underfoot reminded me of a track event. I was doing the hundred yard dash on a crinkled asteroid. When I reached our rock, snow- flakes were sizzling off the sides. It was too hot to pick up.

          There wasn't a second to lose. I cradled the rock in the "T" of my climbing axe and began dragging it back toward the rim of the chute. Charles called a warning. A new blast from the crater was impacting far up the chute. Forget about the altitude and the heat of the rock. I picked it up, searing the Gortex shell of my climbing gloves, and ran like hell.

Lava samples would inspire my long quest for the living coelacanth

         When I got out of the chute, Charles and I took pictures of each other unfurling the Explorers Club Flag against the bleak landscape. We looked like low budget astronauts running out of air. I stuffed the rock in a back pouch. We called it simply the "Hot Rock." It warmed me on our descent to camp. The porters touched the rock, amazed to feel the warmth in this slimy, cold, depressing place. Charles and I were on a high curbed only by a small plastic plaque near the campsite, embossed with the names of three climbers killed by flying volcanic bombs nine years before.

          I was a new man on the way out. My physical condition was improving. The fact that my feet were numb from "trench-foot" brought on by the constant dampness, only made walking less painful. Charles was now behind me. Hobbled by acute tendonitis of the knee joints, he'd had to give up his pack and limp out with the aid of a stick, expressing worries that now he might look like "a wimp" in the photos I took from time to time. I considered waiting for him to catch up, then moving on abruptly. But I couldn't do it.

          The "Hot rock" had been a conquest of sorts. It gave me a taste for excitement of collecting exotic samples. Of course, that brought the coelacanth, hidden deep off of Africa, back to mind. My place on this climbing expedition was largely accidental. Once I had listed "volcanos" as an interest on an Explorers Club questionnaire, having made a film of one more than ten years earlier. Certainly I was no expert on the subject. My team mates, Charles and Michael, (we joined Michael for an attempted ascent of Cotopaxi later in the trip) who were planning climbs in Ecuador had called on me because there were only two names under "Volcanos." The other was Dr. Haroun Tazieff, who happened to be one of the world's foremost volcanologists. But he lived in France. I found that with only a few calls to museums and universities, I had set up the entire collecting program for the trip, gaining it Explorers Club Flag carrying status in the bargain. So now, why not the coelacanth? To bring back a live coelacanth for all the world to see. That would be some feat. The Explorers Club, I realized, would be the perfect institution to take on such an awe-inspiring project. I would present this idea to a few of the members.

The author unfurls an Explorers Club Flag by the lava chute on Sangay Volcano in 1985. (Photo C.W.)

          The Explorers Club, with its headquarters on East 70th Street in New York City, was established in 1904 by a group of cultural and business leaders who liked the idea of exploration, and had probably put a few miles under their belts as well. The E.C. soon absorbed the membership of the Arctic Club, backer of Peary's North Pole Expeditions, and Peary himself became one of the first E.C. presidents.

          The Explorers Club invited returning explorers and scientists to address its members informally. In time, the E.C. would join the National Geographic Society in becoming America's answer to England's Royal Geographical Society, the hallowed grounds of the great age of Victorian exploration, whose ranks included the likes of Burton, Speke, Baker, and Livingstone.

          Victorian exploration was often raw discovery. To find the source of a river, to be first somewhere was usually justification in itself. Pure exploration was, after all, geographically significant. At the turn of the century, the poles, the ocean depths, and a few of the highest mountains still awaited "firsts." But after the poles had been reached in the 1910's, the highest mountains in the 50's, and the ocean trenches in the '50's and '60's most of the earth's blank spots had been explored. Now exploration firsts would look towards space. Serious earthbound expeditions called for a new venue, a scientific program to add purpose.

       The Explorers Club encouraged this development through its tradition of awarding copies of its flag to be carried on scientific expeditions. Many of the scientist-explorers of our era have carried the E.C. Flag worldwide. One of the most famous was Roy Chapman Andrews, who led three dinosaur collecting expeditions to Mongolia's Gobi Desert in the 1920's, resulting in the discovery of the first dinosaur eggs. Other E.C. flags have since been around the moon, to the Titanic, to the depths of the ocean trenches, and to the most remote jungle and desert regions of the planet.

          The Explorers Club, with about three thousand members worldwide, had become a networking center for explorers, a launch pad for expeditions, and a showcase for the films, slide shows and scientific reports brought back from around and above the world. The E.C. had also established chapters throughout the states and in a handful of foreign countries. I had been a student traveller and film-maker in the early sixties. The venerable institution naturally caught my interest.

          When I became a member in '69, based on a conservation film I had made in Africa, the Explorers Club was an easy mix of real and imagined explorer enthusiasts. At 26, I was one of the youngest. One of the oldest, Carl von Hoffman, had accompanied Teddy Roosevelt to the Amazon Basin on his Rio Negro expedition in 1913. I went to meetings and presentations but soon drifted away from the rather staid atmosphere of the clubhouse to work again as an independent film-maker.

          In 1973, the director of the E.C. helped me gain access to the Icelandic island of Heimaey during the volcanic eruption there. The documentary, "Season Of Fire," still making the rounds of cable TV, was the result. That film led to my being contacted for the Ecuador expedition in '85, after more than a ten year lapse from E.C. activities.

          The Explorers Club that I became reacquainted with in '85 was a different place. Virtually all the colorful old- time eccentrics were gone. Women had been admitted, and for a time the word Club had been dropped from the name as too elitist. Middle-aged figures of the Club's hierarchy in the early '70's had risen through the peaks of power, and were now in the last throes of influence with an ambitious new Yuppie clique of club politicians snapping at their heels. The E.C. was being modernized and "squared" out.

          I took a new fix on what was going on. Major projects, like Robert Ballard's discovery and exploration of the Titanic, still carried the Explorers Club Flag. But these projects originated elsewhere, applying for the flag as a secondary consideration. It seemed to me as if the E.C.-sponsored expeditions originating locally from the New York club house were degenerating into a series of gratuitous first ascents of unknown mountains and quickie adventure outings during lulls in the business cycle.

          The Ecuador trip showed me that the Explorers Club's New York core group could generate expeditions that exploited meaningful gaps in scientific field research. Our assets and abilities to operate in exotic locales could be used to generate projects and assist scientists where institutional funding might be hard to come by. In my mind, "The Hot Rock" expedition would be the prototype for the coelacanth project. But I had to generate some interest. To most of the clubhouse gang "coelacanth" was little more than a hard to pronounce Greek word. Charles was non responsive.

          "How would you like to catch the 'Creature From The Black Lagoon,' and bring it back alive?" I was leaving a message on Michael's answering machine, making the coelacanth project sound alluring with a reference to my favorite fifties science fiction B movie. I knew Michael, had a yen for the exotic. He was an ardent collector of Antarctic exploration memorabilia and had a knee-jerk reflex for anything that sounded interesting or grand. Michael took the bait instantly. That was easier than I thought.

          Twice married, twice divorced, Michael , 42, fellow member of the Explorers Club, was a creature of manic ambition, both in and out of the Club. His slicked- black, thinning hair capped a pasty white moon face, riveted in place by two darting brown eyes. He was by birth of noble Hungarian descent, of this he made no secret, and by trade a venture capitalist, a fact that took longer than the first to emerge in conversation.

          Michael had a sharp mind for which every stimulus, human or otherwise, offered the elements of a deal to be negotiated. He was normally so wound up that his braked energy expressed itself intermittently in sudden flinchings of his right eye. On the phone, his favorite expression was "let me run," as if some perpetual business awaited him elsewhere--never ending tasks requiring his time and attention the instant he turned his mind from you--always a few seconds ago.

          Yet I had a liking for Michael, for aside from his anxieties, he had charm in abundance, which coupled with an ecumenical curiosity, a dazzling mastery of foreign languages, and an astounding, if not sometimes gratuitous, ability to network people, stood me in his awe. After all, I was one of the people Michael had networked. He had invited me to join the Ecuador expedition with his lady friend of the time and Charles, though they did not accompany us to Sangay. I owed Michael a role in the new project and I needed him to help get things moving at the E.C.

          Neither Michael nor I were full time "explorers." Today that term is best reserved for oil prospectors, aquanauts and astronauts. To satisfy an inventor's urge, I had gone from film-making into robotics. I had designed and built ComRo I, the world's first commercially available computerized domestic robot, which was marketed in the Neiman Marcus catalog as the "His/Her" gift for 1981. Now in '85, for two years I'd been working on the prototype of a security robot. It was to be the next stage, the breakout product, in the development of my small robotics company, ComRo Inc. The test robot was already patrolling my office, steering through obstacles, announcing "Intruder" and sounding my belt beeper every time I moved. But, in spite of the brief trips to Manitoba and Ecuador, the R&D effort had been so intense that I was burned out. And now after five heady years, the robotics investment market was contracting as well. I needed a break; something to take my mind off robotics for a spell, so I could come back fresh.

          Catching a coelacanth sounded exciting. But what was I getting myself into? Sure I had kept a salt water aquarium in my apartment for almost twenty years and knew something about keeping reef fish alive. Yes, I had surrounded myself with snakes and lizards--often to the exclusion of people--since early teenage. Yes, I had filmed wildlife in Africa during college years and knew animals up close and personal. Yes, travel was my favorite avocation. But so what? I was not professionally a fish person, whatever that might be, nor a biologist. What skills--or even what right--did I have to pursue a rare fish half way round the world? Well, I had been a philosophy major at Yale, which was a grand preparation for nothing--or perhaps, because for nothing, for everything. I was used to penetrating new areas and finding the interesting niches. Nor could I class myself as a casual dilettante. For I knew that once I got into something, I clung on like Crazy Glue, absorbing the essence of the thing into my gray matter. Besides, in this case, I would simply be an organizer-participant, leaving the professional aspects to others. It would be fascinating to work with and learn from the pros in aquarium and ichthyological circles. No, lack of a "proper" scientific background would not rule this idea out. The fool was in the making.

          "The capture of a live coelacanth would be the scientific coup of the century!" exclaimed Father George Ruggieri, S.J., PH.D. at the New York Aquarium. George was a Jesuit priest, a marine biology Ph.D., and a member of more boards, committees, advisory councils, and task forces than you could flap a fin at. He had been director of the New York Aquarium since 1976. At 61, George exuded experience, charm, and a wonderful sense of empathy. He was the kind of man people wanted to do things for. I felt that attraction. George had spent years fund raising for the aquarium, an effort that was now paying off in an impressive modernization program. I wanted to return the favor of the beluga whale trip by offering him collaboration in the possible coelacanth project. George had been a member of the Explorers Club, and was a man I felt I could work with even though we were only the slightest of acquaintances. Besides, I knew George was interested in the coelacanth. He had said as much in a lecture on marine life he gave at the E.C. following the whale capture.

          Involving George made practical sense as well. The Aquarium, though in Brooklyn, was relatively nearby the E.C. World Headquarters in Manhattan which made coordinating fairly simple. If involved, the aquarium could also supply scientific and technical personal as well as facilities for transporting and maintaining the fish in captivity. I imagined George might be skeptical of our capabilities, but then he would have his own to fall back on.

          From the start, as an astute politician of the aquarium world, George was very concerned about secrecy. If it got out that the New York Aquarium was interested in the coelacanth, other aquariums might also get in on the act. The priority of a coelacanth capture might be lost. He was particularly concerned about Steinhart Aquarium in California and the J.G. Shed Aquarium in Chicago.

          Steinhart's director, John McKosker, had led the two expeditions in the mid 70's, which, although unsuccessful in catching a coelacanth, resulted in an important published monograph on the fish. McKosker might want to return to the Comoros if he heard New York Aquarium was getting involved.

          Coincidentally, Shed Aquarium had a "stringer," a Chicagoan, Dr.Barnett, actually living in the Comoros. This man, George told us, had sent two dead frozen specimens to Shed. Now he might be planning a live capture, establishing some kind of holding pen by the shore. I began the practice of not even mentioning the coelacanth by name in correspondence with George's office, calling it only "the fish."

          Father George offered to provide us with all the literature he had on "the fish" in his own library. But the extent of this literature turned out to be one excerpt from a piece in the "Society for the Protection of Old Fishes" (SPOOF) newsletter, which claimed a coelacanth fossil had recently been found in a lake in Oregon. In terms of research, we were definitely on our own.
We needed to round out the Explorers Club part of the team. Michael suggested David Wilkinson, a fellow Explorers Club member who had brought South American cling fish back to the Aquarium a few years before. David had a university background in marine biology, but he had turned his career to finance when he came to America from England several years earlier. Carefully spoken and conservative, he would provide a good check to our sometimes overly zealous planning.

          David was interested. He immediately undertook a review of the existing scientific literature database on the coelacanth, compiling a list of publications. Ironically, the most informative was John Mccosker's monograph on the coelacanth, which grew out of the Steinhardt expeditions. We were quickly coming up to speed on the coelacanth.

          By now our respective roles were falling into place as well. David would be scientific coordinator, based on his background. Michael, with his frenzied socializing, was a given for "political liaison." Contacts were his specialty. I was overall coordinator by virtue of having conceived the project, and "technical specialist," in view of my work in robotics. Despite the fact that as a grade schooler, I could never catch a softball on the fly in left field and subsequently dreaded all things athletic, I had been granted an amazing dexterity with the tips of my fingers and a natural grasp of mechanisms. In short I could fix almost any kind of small scale mechanical appliance. Aside from model building and robotics, this ability had up until now only served to put me on the call list of friends trying to hook up answering machines and VCR's,--or putting together toys for their kids. Now I could hook things up "in the field" whatever that might lead to.

          By the early summer of '86, we felt the information we were collecting justified a reconnaissance trip to the Comoros. We wanted to see firsthand if our project was feasible. But two questions still needed investigation. First, why had the highly professional Steinhart Aquarium expeditions been unsuccessful? And second, what exactly were the Comoros from a political and cultural standpoint? Could we operate there at all?

          The question about Steinhart was our first priority. We needed details not found in the monograph. Father George gave David Wilkinson the name of a contact- Dave Powell- at the Monterey Aquarium in Carmel California who had been on the Steinhart Expeditions. In August, David would be in position to combine a business trip in California with a swing by Monterey for a meeting. We would hold off our reconnaissance trip until after that meeting. He might learn something that would prove our project entirely impracticable.

          Wilkinson had to put his questions carefully for it was far too early for our project to become known in the aquarium world. He learned that the McKosker group had operated on the premise that three or four coelacanths are caught per year off Grand Comoro island during the monsoon months of December, January, and February. The group stayed in the Comoros five to seven weeks each trip. As an incentive to the local fishermen in this Muslim country, the expedition offered a free trip to Mecca for any fisherman who caught a coelacanth and kept it alive. There was massive cooperation. Every fisherman on Grand Comoro was on the job. The team was 90% confident of a catch. The monsoon, by a freak of nature, never came. No coelacanths were caught. In their assessment, it was simply bad luck.

          McKosker team members which included famed aquanaut and oceans activist, Sylvia Earle, dived down 200 feet, investigating aquifer fed freshwater caves on the assumption that these were the preferred habitat of the coelacanth. None were seen. Two dead coelacanth catches were on ice in a local government freezer when they arrived. They brought these back to the states. What about traps? Traps would be hard to use in the current, David was told. Besides, from the little that could be judged about its feeding behavior, the coelacanth would not bite on immobile bait.

          After the Steinhart expeditions, about 1980, team member and underwater cinematographer Al Giddings rigged a boat for another capture-film making expedition to the Comoros. Unfortunately he ran out of funds for the return trip. As for John McKosker, he was not that eager to return now. His efforts were presently in shark collecting and exhibition.

          Wilkinson felt we should hold off the reconnaissance trip until the monsoon period. We might witness a capture. We would then have one year to raise money for the main expedition. After I heard the McKosker news, my feeling was that our project should plan to cover three monsoon seasons in the Comoros--to allow for bad luck with the weather.

          In the meantime, we had an odd bit of news from Father George. A Japanese group was sending telexes to aquariums around the world saying they had a coelacanth video tape for sale. In the late 70's, Peter Scoones, a cameraman for David Attenborough's "Life on Earth" television series, had succeeded in filming a dying coelacanth caught by fishermen, then released in the shallows. The dramatic footage--apparently the first of its kind--shows the animal swimming free as if in slow motion. And now a new tape of a living coelacanth? What was this about?

          Michael was researching the Comoros--an Arabic name roughly translated as "the islands of the moon". He used a family connection with Vernon Walters, then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. But Ambassador Walters had more pressing concerns. Little information was forthcoming.

          I designed a T-shirt depicting a coelacanth swimming through a Greek Omega, as if to say "Coelacanths Forever." Above the Omega sign were the words "Channel Angler," "Channel" for the Mozambique Channel, and "Angler" for the fishing that would presumably be involved in catching a coelacanth. "Channel Angler" became the code name for our project during the secret planning stages. (On the dinofish.com website, in the Recent History, Jago section, Hans Fricke is wearing one of these t-shirts many years and twists and turns later!))

The Channel Angler logo designed by the author

           Our small reconnaissance expedition would carry Explorers Club Flag #145 and letters of introduction from both John C. Bruno, the President of the Explorers Club, and Father George Ruggieri, Director of New York Aquarium.

          In August one more personality fell in with our covey of conspirators. I went bass fishing in Ontario with a fanatically gung-ho sportfisherman, Peter Stevens. I'd never seen anyone go after fish with such dedication. Peter fished for salmon in British Columbia in the spring, and for lake trout, pickerel, large and smallmouth bass in Ontario in the summer. He never got "skunked," always seemed to catch one even as I gave up trying. What's more he insisted on using artificial bait for bass--doing it the hard way. Just the man, I thought, to scope out Comoran fishing techniques for flaws we could improve upon when we went back to capture. I invited Peter to participate. He chewed it over for about ten seconds before swallowing the hook.

          Michael was looking at a November date for the reconnaissance trip. That would suit Peter Stevens as well. My time was flexible. Wilkinson couldn't go then, but, according to Michael, reluctantly approved our plan. Other than collecting volcanic samples from the immense Karthala crater on Grand Comoro, little science was planned for this trip. It would be a logistical survey of what it would take to capture and return a coelacanth to the U.S. Michael went ahead with Apex bookings for November 20th through December 7th. In this near-arbitrary fashion, we locked into dates that by coincidence would prove among the luckiest in the history of coelacanth searches to date. But what was the story on the Comoros?