The week of the iguanas

With our two small boats already scraping bottom 40 yards off the sharp, rocky shoreline, we–like Christopher Columbus and his landing crew–had to disembark and wade ashore to our first Bahamas island landing.

Columbus’ famous 1492 landing was at San Salvador, a minor island in the Bahamas chain. Our landing early in May was 200 miles to the west of San Salvador, on Andros, the biggest of the Bahamian islands–100 by 40 miles–and much of it still unexplored 512 years after Columbus’ voyage of discovery.

“We” were a 14-member Shedd Aquarium team arriving to catch Andros iguanas, an endangered lizard species. Most of the group were Shedd employees, but four of us were tourists who paid $1,800 for the privilege of taking part in the 10-day, 9-night expedition.

The appeal of the trip was the opportunity to be a part of an effort to save an endangered species by helping scientists struggling to understand its life cycles.

We shipped out on the Shedd’s utilitarian 80-foot Coral Reef II, the only ocean-going research vessel in the world owned and operated by an aquarium. Anchored in deep Bahamian waters, the Coral Reef was our home base at night as we traveled by small motorboats by day to desert islands along Andros’ eastern shores for capture-and-release work.

Where we went, there were no beaches, just sharp, rocky terrain covered with thickets of small pines, palms and choking undergrowth. With no tourist or local markets of any sort to visit during our voyage, the souvenirs we took home were proudly won battle scars rather than T-shirts, funny hats and seashells.

We sported assorted scrapes and bruises (from falling on the rocky terrain in pursuit of darting lizards), sunburns, rashes, sprains and pain (from abuse of long-dormant muscles).

“I hope these don’t heal up until I get home,” said Nancy McCarthy, a fellow passenger, late in our week on Andros. She was running her fingers over long scratches on her forearm left by the raking rear-leg claws of a captured lizard she was holding.

“I want to prove to the boys that I was in the middle of the action,” said McCarthy, a 46-year-old Grayslake housewife who had left her husband and teenage sons at home to join the trip.

The expedition, offered once a year, might not be everybody’s ideal vacation. Over the 10 days, you share cramped quarters with strangers on a small vessel, spending more than a week of 12-hour days laboring in the hot sun.

“My eco-slaves” is how Chuck Knapp jokingly referred to us paying customers and Shedd staffers from various departments at the aquarium who had won highly coveted spots working on the expedition.

Knapp, 34, who grew up in suburban Lisle, spends nearly half of every year in the most isolated parts of the Bahamas, tracking and observing endangered iguana species, mostly by himself.

A part-time conservationist at the Shedd, Knapp, in line to get his PhD in biology from the University of Florida next year, already is one of the world’s foremost iguana experts.

The largest lizards in the New World (some species reach six feet in length), most iguana species are endangered.

Since 1996, Knapp has been working to avert the extinction of the iguana species Cyclura cychlura cychluracq that is unique to Andros, the sparsely populated western island in the Bahamas chain.

An estimated 3,500 Andros iguanas live in southern Andros, which is largely unexplored and empty of humans.

Hunters and stray domestic dogs, cats and pigs from human settlements killed off iguanas in populated areas in north Andros. Now such settlements are creeping into Andros’ southern wilderness areas. Knapp is rushing to learn the basic life cycles and territorial needs of wild Andros iguanas to help the government create effective protected wilderness reserves for the lizards.

“If you know their life history,” said Knapp, “you can write the conservation program and terms of management for them.”

Much of the year his work is solitary as he tracks and observes the iguanas.

“It’s crucial to get this extra help,” said Knapp of the Shedd’s bringing paying volunteers to the Bahamas once a year to assist him in capturing animals for tagging, measurement, blood samples and to outfit selected lizards with radio tracking transmitters.

“We didn’t design the trip to make money. We did it to get help and to get some of the work costs back. I based the idea on the sorts of things Earthwatch does to bring in the public to help in its projects,” he said, alluding to the national organization that links up paying volunteers with worthy environmental causes.

The Shedd doesn’t keep Andros iguanas for display in Chicago. It does have Marley and Eleanor, a pair of breeding Cayman Island iguanas, the most endangered species of all. Part of an international captive breeding program trying to rescue the species, Marley and Eleanor will be the stars of a new permanent exhibit opening at the Shedd this fall.

Like most of those joining Knapp’s 2004 Andros iguana capture, I flew into Miami on a Friday afternoon to board the Coral Reef at its riverside berth in downtown Miami. That night, the paying passengers and Shedd crew dined together in Miami’s South Beach to get acquainted. It was the last meal we had to pay for ourselves until our return to Miami 10 days later.

We spent Friday night on the boat in the marina, two persons assigned to each of its cramped, but comfortable, air-conditioned cabins.

Saturday morning we embarked on a 24-hour voyage to Andros. Normally a trip over smooth seas, ours was rocky. A prescription motion-sickness patch seemed to save me from my propensity for seasickness.

Early Sunday morning we were eating breakfast in calm waters off Andros. Afterwards, Knapp had us board two motorboats with catching and measuring paraphernalia, ferrying us to a capture site, where we waded the last few feet to Andros’ rocky shore.

Splitting us into teams of five, Knapp lectured us on capture techniques. Team members were to spread about 30 feet apart and begin sweeping through the scrawny forestand underbrush.

If we spotted an iguana, we were to shout “Iguana!” The spotter was not to take his eyes off the beast. Those equipped with fishermen’s dip nets on the end of eight-foot poles closed in, while the rest of us herded the animal toward a net.

The iguanas are amazingly quick, he warned, so even when they are successfully netted, other team members had to leap to take hold of them before they could slip free.

He cautioned us to take care with each step, as the rocky terrain, resembling coral and just as sharp, was full of fissures and holes that can painfully trip you up.

“And look out for this,” he said, pointing to a shrubby clump of small, oblong leaves whose pointy ends drooped toward the ground.

“It’s the poisonwood tree, and it’s everywhere. It causes a rash just like poison ivy.”

Thus instructed, we began our first excursion into the bush.

Fifteen minutes later somebody in my party yelled “Iguana!”

The shout shot my adrenaline up, and I wheeled and started rushing through the brush toward the spotter, poisonwood leaves slapping me in the face.

In my 60th year and more generously proportioned than I’ve ever been in my life, I was the oldest and slowest member of the group.

By the time I’d caught up with the others, who failed to net the beast, I gripped a handy branch while catching my breath. Someone pointed out I was hanging on to a poisonwood branch.

We caught only three animals the first day, but as the week drew on, we became increasingly adept in our skills and teamwork.

Slow and cautious as I was about my footing, I had my eyes on the ground so much that I found more iguana scat–poop that Knapp likes to examine for food content–than anyone else. I was dubbed “Scat Man.”

Even when we cornered iguanas, the underbrush often was so thick and the lizard’s skin colors so seamlessly blended with the greens and browns of the landscape that I had trouble spotting them.

Still, I found ways to make myself useful. Once caught, we put the lizards in bags, which I often volunteered to carry out of the woods back to the shoreline base camp we established each day.

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After lunch, which we brought with us in coolers from the Coral Reef, I often sat and entered data into record-keeping books as Knapp weighed, measured and examined the morning captures.

The animals, with an assigned number painted on their side with office white-out so that Knapp can easily identify them during observation visits the rest of the year, are then taken back to their capture site and released.

We usually worked until sundown and were dog-tired as our motorboats sped several miles back from our work sites to the mother ship, each of us eager for a turn in one of the Coral Reef’s three showers, always amply supplied with hot water.

Each of us pulled galley duty twice during the trip, assigned to setting the tables and cleaning them off for the Coral Reef’s estimable chef, Charles Julian.

Julian and co-captains John Rothchild and Lou Roth are the Coral Reef’s only crew, spending nearly half of each year at sea on the vessel.

The rest of the time the Shedd leases the craft and crew to collection and research teams from other public aquariums, government agencies and universities.

Rothchild, Roth and Julian have spent so much time together at sea that they have come to share a similarly wry, crafty sense of humor that keeps Coral Reef dinners, served family-style on two long tables, rollicking with laughter.

As the trip wore on, Knapp was pleased with the dozens of lizards we were catching.

“My large sample sizes of these animals are the result of these expeditions with all this manpower. I don’t know how much of this work would get done without the Shedd’s help,” Knapp said.

The Bahamian government is interested in creating a protected wilderness for Andros iguanas. Knapp, who should complete his study after next year, will then have data to guide the government in laying out boundaries covering an area substantial enough to sustain iguana populations.

Toward the end of our sojourn on Andros, I still had not had the triumphant pleasure of yelling “Iguana!” That changed as the group sat down for lunch on the second to last day of hunting. Excusing myself to wander down the shoreline, looking for the backside of a palm tree for relief, I spotted a huge one.

I was so startled, I couldn’t think of what to yell.

“Hey! I’ve got one here,” I loudly croaked. My companions, sitting and eating 50 yards away, turned toward me with puzzled looks, probably wondering if I’d located more scat.

“There’s one right here!” I yelled again, still trying to retrieve the magic word from my memory. By the time the rest of them figured out I was looking at an iguana, it had wandered so far that we lost him.

The last day of hunting, however, I spotted two lizards, each time managing to yell “Iguana!” in a timely manner. We caught one, a large, fine looking male never before captured, and I felt a bit vindicated.

The next day, Saturday, the Coral Reef turned and started the 24-hour run back to Miami, getting us there in time for early Sunday evening flights home.

I went home with only a few minor scrapes, bruises and bug bites. Unlike many on the expedition who suffered rashes, I apparently was immune to poisonwood.

Of the four paying passengers on the expedition, only one knew much about iguanas before the trip. John Bendon, a delightfully eccentric 55-year-old British artist, has joined every one of Knapp’s expeditions and is prominent in iguana conservation circles.

Matt Vomerding, 29, a Chicago software engineer, and I came for the chance to learn a little about the conservation effort. Nancy McCarthy, the suburban housewife, knew little about iguanas but fell in love with lizards in general when her two sons brought one home as a pet, leaving her to read up on how to take care of it.

“One Sunday,” McCarthy said, “my husband and I saw a picture of Knapp holding an iguana in the Tribune’s travel section and read that this was a scientific research expedition where passengers actually participate in the work.

“My husband thought it was perfect for me and told me to jump at the chance.

“How else could you get to do something like this? I have no science background, but this was learning new things. It wasn’t like extreme adventure, which I wouldn’t be too interested in. I’d rather do the little things.”

In fact, she could barely contain her enthusiasm the entire week, sacrificing her hands and knees to the rocky ground as she repeatedly pounced on freshly netted iguanas, earning her the nickname “Pouncing Queen.”

When a Chicago television news crew appeared on the ship midweek to film the expedition for two days for a ratings “sweeps week” newscast, McCarthy quickly became their focus.

The first day, the young, fit cameraman, burdened with heavy camera and battery packs, overheated and collapsed in the sun as he chased after her. The second day, as he peered through the camera eyepiece while closing in on a capture, he stepped into a deeply jagged hole in the rock, sending him home with a badly bloodied leg.

Despite the long, hot, bone-aching days of work, I agreed with the others that I felt more relaxed and renewed going home than I do from most vacation trips. That probably was due to the satisfaction we felt in taking part in a useful venture in a beautiful, pristine wilderness, seeing things few other people will ever see.

McCarthy was the first of Knapp’s “eco-slaves” to see a truly rare sight, an Andros iguana nest.

Because Andros has no soil or sand to speak of, Knapp found that the island’s iguanas must seek out the clay-like mounds built from plant detritus gathered by termites. The females dig holes in the mounds to deposit eggs, then stand guard while they incubate.

Early in our expedition, Knapp took McCarthy with him to check out a mound that he thought a female iguana had claimed. Sure enough, the concerned mother rushed from the shade and took a protective stance atop the mound as Knapp approached.

“Chuck said only about a dozen people in the world up to that moment had ever seen this behavior before,” said McCarthy, still thrilled days later.

“I’m just a Grayslake housewife, so how cool is that?”

IF YOU GO

SHEDD TRIPS

The Shedd will be looking for volunteers for its 2005 iguana expedition, currently planned for the end of April or early May. Shedd officials said the cost should remain at $1,800 to $2,000, air fare not included. Participants must have a doctor’s clearance for the moderate physical exertion the trip requires. Early each autumn, the Shedd also takes paying volunteers who are qualified scuba divers aboard the Coral Reef II for a week of helping to collect Caribbean fish specimens for display, but the 2004 expedition is already fully booked. For details on future expeditions, call 312-692-3191 or check the Shedd’s Web site at www.sheddaquarium.org.

OTHER TRIPS

Many cultural institutions offer educational vacations, most of them more sedate and less taxing physically than the Shedd expeditions. They include trips to special-interest destinations led by world-class scholar/lecturers. It can be expensive, but the tours provide a unique way to broaden and deepen one’s knowledge and appreciation for some of the great manmade and natural wonders of the world. The tours usually take care of all the travel planning for participants, offering the best in local transportation and accommodations. The following, a sampling of what some Chicago institutions offer, is not meant to be complete, but is offered merely as a guide for what sorts of trips are available. (Costs are usually per-person, double occupancy.)

The Field Museum offers cruises in passenger boats to ancient archeological digs along the Nile River (Egyptian Odyssey, $4,825, plus air fare) and to ancient Near Eastern and European ports, with voyages from Cairo to Crete (Crossroads of Empires, 16 days, $8,990 plus air fare), or from Crete to Venice to Nice (Mediterranean Under Sail, $6,990 plus air fare). It also offers natural history lecture tours and safaris to destinations such as Tanzania and the Pantanal Region in Argentina, and cultural lecture tours in Papua New Guinea, Russia, China, Peru, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Call 800-811-7244 or visit the Web site at www.fmnh.org/membership/field(underscore )museum(underscore)tours.htm or e-mail the museum travel office at [email protected].

The Chicago Botanic Garden offers members tours with its plant experts both in the U.S. and abroad, usually limited to 25 participants who are capable of walking considerable distances. The tours are designed to foster appreciation of horticulture, gardening, conservation and culture with visits to public and private garden venues not available to most travelers. Typical was a seven-day tour of America’s Northwest, including Seattle and Portland, last spring, costing $2,495 plus air fare. The Garden is offering a guided tour Oct. 15-29 of the flora of China, beginning in Beijing’s Forbidden City complex, the Summer Palace and newly renovated Beijing Botanical Garden. It continues to the Great Wall, terra cotta figures and tombs in Xian, and the Grand Canal in Suzhou, ending in Shanghai. The cost of $5,580 covers all land transportation, First-Class hotels, some meals. Call 847-835-8375 or e-mail [email protected].

The Museum of Contemporary Art is offering a three-day, two-night trip Oct. 8 through 10 to the opening of the 54th annual Carnegie International art exhibition at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. Tour includes hotel, meals and tickets to the opening-night party and an artists party, and optional tours of Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home, and of the Andy Warhol Museum. No announced price as yet, but the trip is open only to MCA donor/members at the level of $1,500 or more. Call Lisa Johnson at 312-397-4044.

The Art Institute of Chicago offers numerous guided travel opportunities around Europe, Asia and the Americas. They include 20-day land and river-cruise tours of the great art of China, starting at $5,395 (plus air fare); 14-day tours of the Mediterranean settings of many of Shakespeare’s plays, aboard a small luxury passenger ship, starting at $8,495 (plus air fare); and a 14-day voyage aboard the luxury three-masted sailing ship Sea Cloud II to examine the art of the Baltic, from St. Petersburg to Copenhagen, with stops in Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Poland, starting at $6,950 (plus air fare). The museum offers similarly luxurious art-based excursions in Japan, France, Sicily, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Holland and Belgium, Great Britain, and in the U.S. and Canada. Call 312-443-3917.

Lincoln Park Zoo took two two-week guided tours through wildlife sanctuaries in Botswana in southern Africa earlier this year and is planning at least one return tour there in late 2005 or early 2006. The projected cost is $6,500 to $7,000, which includes air fare, hotels, local transfers, meals and game drives. To get on the mailing list, call 312-742-7235, or check the zoo Web site at www.lpzoo.org.

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The Oriental Institute Travel Program has two upcoming trips later this year, one to ancient ruins in Egypt, and another to great collections of Near Eastern artifacts in European museums, including the Louvre in Paris and the Pergamon and Charlottenburg Palace Museums in Berlin. Both trips will be led by members of the institute’s renowned faculty. Dates and prices are not yet complete. For information, call 773-702-9513 or e-mail [email protected].

— W.M.