by Mireya Mayor
With no mouse lemurs and not much else to do, I checked the gear and realized that something else was missing. I turned to Angelo and asked, “What’s the smallest scale we have?” No answer, just a blank stare. That told me everything. The guides had also left behind the small scientific scale we’d need to weigh a mouse lemur—if we ever found one. With only large scales, I wouldn’t be able to confirm that this new primate species was the world’s smallest of the small. Usually calm and level headed, I now lost my cool. “There are just too many screw-ups on this trip! You guys can’t just wait until we are in the field to tell me these things. You pack for every trip with great attention to detail, and yet here we’ve come out specifically for mouse lemurs, and you don’t bring traps or scales!” The team looked at me in shock. Until now, they had only known Mireya the bubbly cheerleader. They had just met Mireya the fiery Cuban.
I stormed off angrily to my tent, already feeling guilty for yelling. Fact is, it was my fault. I should have double-checked the gear. I would apologize to the team for losing my temper, but the heat in the tropics was getting to me and first I had to cool off. I headed to the stream and sat underneath the water-fall, hoping to wash away these problems. But even a luxurious, tropical waterfall didn’t help. I still felt terrible.
Not helping matters, the photographer was supposed to have arrived a day ago but hadn’t yet. There was, of course, no way to communicate from here, and I was beginning to wonder if he was coming at all. The film crew had little else to film than streams of water. It reminded me of the line in the King Kong movie, “You know what it’s like to try and make a film in the rainy season: months gone, money wasted, and nothing to show for it.” I could relate.
Then, as if descending from the heavens, I heard, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume? Do you know where a guy can get a beer around here?” A soaking-wet Mark Thiessen, the National Geographic photographer I was waiting for, had finally arrived. With him was Conservation International president and my friend, Russ Mittermeier. Russ had supported my research since my first expedition to Madagascar. I was thrilled he’d come. If we were ever able to prove our new species, it was my plan to name it after him.
Russ had barely said hello when I noticed something moving in his eye. It was a leech. Removing it, I said, “Welcome to our camp. You wanted to see a leech?” Russ took it, rolled it into a little ball, and flicked it away. Not very conservation minded, I joked, but leeches aren’t particularly endangered.
Now there was only one thing I wanted to know: How many traps had they brought? Tearing through their boxes, I spotted the shiny metal. Five traps. Better than nothing. I had counted on having a lot more than five but was relieved to have any at all. Now we just had to put out some bananas, set the traps up, and cross our fingers that a mouse lemur would go for one.
By candlelight, Russ and I talked about the importance of properly documenting this new species. A new species would attract the world’s attention and was key to getting extra protection for the area. He said, “I think that with President Ravalomanana, who is really excited about conservation and seems to get it, there is real opportunity to turn the tide here and develop a whole new approach.” With that, the rain finally stopped. I took it as a good omen. Perhaps more than traps, Russ had brought luck. We finished our Malagasy dinner of rice and beans and went looking for eye shine. Because mouse lemurs are so quiet, we rely on the reflection of their eyes in the flashlights to find them. Like house cats, they have tape-tum lucium, a reflective layer over their eyes that causes them to appear to glow in the dark.
Under the forest canopy the only light that shone at first was from our headlamps and flashlights. Then, suddenly, glowing coals stared back at us. A mouse lemur! From about 18 feet up in the tree it looked right at us, holding perfectly still. Unfortunately, it was on the other side of a leech-infested swamp.
The coolest part was that this experience was an absolute first—the sighting of a new lemur species in the wild (by scientific observers, anyway). I was pretty confident that we had a good chance of catching the little guy in the tree. Since the rain had stopped, it seemed to me it might be hungry for some yummy banana. We set the trap right beneath its tree. Soon the adrenaline started wearing off, and we began to feel the leeches biting us. Yeah, the “painless” ones.
In the morning, Russ and I eagerly revisited the swamp, praying that our mouse lemur had found its way into the trap. The trap was closed! Russ’s eyes shone with childlike excitement. Slowly, I peeked in. Fruit flies, damn it. The trap had caught nothing but fruit flies. But discouraging as it was to find another empty trap, we had to keep trying. I restocked the traps and crossed my fingers that the next morning our luck would change. Now I felt like the child, pouting.
We had only one more night to catch a mouse lemur. It was time we tried our own special brand of Malagasy magic.
The Malagasy team began singing a traditional folk song to call on the mouse lemurs. Loosely translated, the lyrics went, “Tomorrow we’re going to find lots of mouse lemurs…there will be two in every trap.” Around the campfire, we clapped and sang on into another rainy evening, and with heavy lids and heart I slipped into my tent and fell asleep.
During the night it cleared up, and my team, still feeling bad about all the forgotten equipment, headed out to look.
In my sleep, I thought I heard Angelo call, “Mireya, we saw a mouse lemur over there and are keeping a light on it. Hurry!” What a great dream. Then my tent started shaking. It was Angelo! I couldn’t get out of my tent fast enough; Angelo had already taken off into the trees. Half asleep in the darkness, I yelled, “Angelo! Where are you?” I followed the team’s faint voices just the other side of the forest. There, just a few feet above the ground on a branch, were those burning coals.
The guys and I began pulling back the trees surrounding the mouse lemur, essentially isolating the tree it sat on. This could be our last opportunity to capture this little lemur, and we were leaving nothing to chance.
We were going to try to catch it by hand.
I stood motionless as Laude, the tallest guy on the team, moved in. Even in the darkness I could see his hand shaking. Everyone held his breath. Slowly, we pulled the branch down toward Laude, and with one swift motion his large hand shot up and engulfed the lemur.
“He got it!” I fell to my knees and raised my arms to the heavens, saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Laude and the other team members smiled from ear to ear. My anger completely forgotten, we high-fived and hugged. I then went over and gently took the lemur. He was beautiful. His huge eyes were incredibly wide and alert, and his tiny hand gripped my finger.
My little King Kong was at long last in my palm.
It was too late to begin taking blood and measurements; we would have to wait until morning. That night I would be sharing a tent with a mouse lemur. I hoped he didn’t mind the mess.
The next part of the story will be news even to my producer. When I parted with the film crew that night, I placed the mouse lemur in a little mesh sack. Lying in my tent staring at the little guy, curiosity got the better of me. Who could resist that little face? I carefully took him out of the bag and held him close. But with a sudden jump the mouse lemur was loose in my tent, and for the next few hours I couldn’t find him. What the hell was I going to tell the film crew?!
I looked in my sleeping bag, inside my backpack, and through every square inch of the tent, but he was nowhere to be seen. I worried that I might squash him if I didn’t sit still. Morning came, and Brian stood at the opening of my tent asking if I was ready. “I’ll be right out,” I whispered. Then out of the corner of my eye I spotted my boots. I always keep them inside for fear of scorpions. They were the one place I hadn’t searched. Nestled into the toe of my boot was the world’s smallest primate. Thankfully, I hadn’t tried to put them on before looking.
That morning we would turn our little beauty into the most photographed and documented mouse lemur in history (we weighed him
using a scale we’d bought earlier in one of the markets in Sambava). And advance science in the process.
Finding the tiny, two-ounce creature was only the beginning. Our search was over, but my mission was not. Now that I had proof positive of this mouse lemur’s existence, I had to take steps to make sure it continued to exist. That meant a journey from the jungle to the corridors of political power.
I managed to secure a meeting with the prime minister of Madagascar. I sat in the lobby of Madagascar’s equivalent of the White House nervously looking at my watch. The butterflies in my stomach were doing somersaults. Finally, the door to his office opened, and out came a gentle-looking man wearing a gray suit. When I walked into his office, I noticed wild-life pictures on the walls and National Geographic magazines and conservation books on the coffee table. Those were good signs.
I introduced myself and told him about our discovery. I sounded like a giddy girl. I showed him photographs of the new species and a map indicating where it was found. He was engaged, responsive, and nearly as excited as I was. I raised the possibility of creating a national park in the area, and to my great surprise, he answered, “We can do it.” At first he said it in French, and I wondered if I’d understood him correctly. So he repeated it in English and added, “We’ll get the process started.” I was blown away. Obviously, the process is a lengthy one, so sensing the urgency of the situation, he said, “What do you need us to do tomorrow?” I couldn’t believe my ears!
Governments don’t usually see urgency. Even a span of months might be too late for this forest. If we acted quickly, the new primate would help save the home of thousands of endangered animals. Later, the government pledged to triple the nation’s total protected area to 6 million hectares (14.8 million acres).
This tiny little animal became a huge ambassador for all wild things in Madagascar. And in a twist on the old story, a virtual Fay Wray had saved King Kong.
Nine
Sharks, Squid Ink, and a Frying Pan
FEBRUARY 8, 2003: Full of adrenaline, I jumped in, hoping for the best while also thinking about the worst. But the sharks were on their best behavior. That is to say, they didn’t eat me. In reality, humans are not the preferred prey item of the great white shark. I realize, too, that sharks get a bad rap from the media and movies, but as dozens of these huge creatures, no smaller than pickup trucks, with razor-sharp teeth as long as my pinky finger, circled around me, all rationale went out the window.
By the time I was offered a staff position at National Geographic as a wildlife correspondent, I had broken in several pairs of boots and become quite good with a machete. As much as I loved my primates, I was excited to get my feet wet working with other animals. As it turned out, my feet along with the rest of my body would get very wet. I had just finished a project in Congo and was sitting in my office at NG headquarters, when I was handed a film proposal that began with the lines, “Thirty years ago waters boiled and turned red with blood. One man lost his life, another barely escaped.” I probably should have quit reading, but I went on. “Then it grew quiet. For three decades, the crystal waters of Guadalupe Island have been peaceful, and despite constant surveillance, rarely since then have Great White sharks patrolled the shores.” It sounded like a bad sci-fi thriller, but I didn’t know any better than to be intrigued. I suddenly noticed the title, “Killers: Up Close! With an Explorer in the Water.” Good God, did they mean me? I was really hoping they didn’t.
They meant me.
I would soon have to swim surrounded by man-(and, I have to assume, woman-) eating sharks. Yes, my next three National Geographic assignments were offshore.
After a quick detour to Seattle to check out some other sharks that were behaving oddly, the film crew and I would be heading to Guadalupe Island, Mexico, to dive with 1,800-pound great whites. I couldn’t help but think of all the times I’d go to the beach as a little girl only to find that it had been closed due to sharks migrating along the coast. This is a common occurrence in South Florida, and growing up as part of the Jaws generation, I had the utmost respect for, if not outright fear of, what lurked in the deep waters.
We would be filming the sharks of Guadalupe because of the inordinately high aggression they’d recently been displaying, reportedly attacking local fishermen and because they were coming in closer to shore. I wouldn’t tell my mom. The third assignment involved a large, tentacled sea creature with a razor-sharp beak, referred to as “devil of the deep,” and thought to be a man-killer. I wouldn’t tell my mom about that, either.
Despite the potential dangers hyped in the film proposal, I had no trouble agreeing to the projects. I’d always loved the ocean and had logged many hours underwater studying the colorful fish, mind-blowing anemones, and magnificent—not to mention increasingly rare—coral reefs on the ocean floor. As Her Royal Deepness Sylvia Earle, the famed oceanographer, has often reminded me, approximately 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by ocean, and we have a very limited understanding of it. Instead of Earth, “Ocean” would be a more appropriate name for our planet.
So off to Planet Ocean I went. Joining me on this underwater adventure would be extreme underwater cameraman Bob Cranston. Tall, lean, and sporting glasses, Bob looks more like an accountant than an underwater adventurer. But the man is fearless and, with thousands of dives under his belt, he’s seen just about everything below the ocean surface. The one thing he wished he had not seen was the body of his idol, Al Schneppershoff. Bob’s longtime friend was the guy eaten alive by a great white shark off Guadalupe Island, our destination.
In 1973, Al was hunting tuna and planning to become the next champion of the popular sport. But the hunter had become the hunted. He was killed exactly 30 years to the day we’d be diving in the very same waters. It was clear from talking to Bob that he was haunted by memories and frustrated by the decades-long disappearance of these “demons.” He had never been free of the past. Now, for reasons unknown, the sharks were back here in full force. Bob wanted to find out why.
Before heading to Mexico to film the great whites, we would first dive into the frigid waters of Seattle, where four decades ago six-gill sharks had suddenly started hunting at night in shallow waters. Until then, they had remained unseen, in depths where humans could not venture. With small, fluorescent green eyes and black pupils, six-gills (most sharks have five gills) can grow to a length of 18 feet. Usually slow and sluggish, they are capable of bursts of high speed when chasing prey. These carnivorous predators feed mostly on cephalo-pods, crustaceans, fish, rays, and some marine mammals. They are unchanged from the Jurassic period, when their ancestors prowled the murky bottoms of the seas. Before 1966, the year they began emerging from the depths, no adult six-gill had ever in recorded history been seen by humans. What could be causing these feared predators to change their habits after millions of years? Bob and I hatched a scheme to find out whether their hunting preferences had adapted over the past four decades. Until now they had been thought unreceptive to the kind of bait that attracts more commonly seen sharks like great whites. Our plan was to chum the waters (with the same kind of bait) where the creatures were known to swim. It was kind of like giving broccoli to kids who would eat it only if they were starving. If they took the bait, we would have proof that they indeed had moved closer to shore in search of food. What forces were sending these giant animals to forage in the shallows? Was it this same impetus that explained the great white’s recent behavior? The propensity of six-gills to emerge only at night, unlike great whites, had given humans little opportunity for contact. No one knew what the result of such an encounter might be.
We would be diving at night, when the six-gills undertake their vertical migration up to the shallower waters. The water was freezing despite my dry suit. Diving in a dry suit, which allows for better insulation, is completely different from diving in a light wet suit, as it affects buoyancy. I’m a warm-weather Florida girl who learned to dive wearing nothing more than a two-piece bathing
suit and fins, so even in a warm dry suit I was very cold. My lips turned purple, but that wasn’t the scary part: I had never before gone on a night dive.
For those of you who have never been diving, the depths of the ocean feel like another planet. In this case, I would descend into one where someone had turned off the lights. With giant underwater lamps, we made our way slowly down. In the black depths the six-gill shark was a successful recluse. Our visibility was extremely poor, and we could barely make out the sharks swimming only dozens of feet in front of us. Suddenly, I lost my bearings and didn’t know if I was going up or down; the little light particles in the water glowing from our lamps made me dizzy. I became badly disoriented. Fortunately, Bob’s assistant, an experienced safety diver, was nearby, and I was able to signal him that something was wrong. Slowly, he helped me make my way back to shore. Solving the mystery of the six-gill sharks would have to await another day. Disheartened that I’d had such a poor dive, I was happy to think that great whites made their living during the day and lived in warmer waters.
There is no question but that the sight of a great white shark sends most people into a panic. At first mention of this project, I, too, feared the jaws of these supreme predators. But as a scientist I know what I didn’t know as a little girl. Great whites are shrouded in myth, unfairly portrayed as villains and man-eating monsters. Jaws did a terrible disservice to great whites; in actuality, the film was based not on the habits of great whites but on the aggressive and unpredictable behavior of bull sharks. A combination of popular movies and media stories about shark attacks created a universal fear of these toothy eating machines. What I didn’t know as a little girl was that the dangers posed by sharks to humans are way overstated. Globally, sharks kill only about ten people each year. Very rarely do great whites attack humans. You’re at least ten times more likely to die under the clumsy feet of ordinary cows, which fatally trample about 100 people a year in the U.S. alone.