| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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Counterpoints in Science Galápagos Adventure
On January 10, 1964, at the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo, I was one of fifty scientists who boarded The Golden Bear, a pretty, 7,000-ton vessel manned by a complement of 240 midshipmen trainees. The ship was headed to Tahiti via the Galápagos Archipelago. We were engaged in an international expedition sponsored by the University of California at Berkeley Extension and the California Academy of Sciences. Our leader was Bob Bowman, an expert on Galápagos birds who has since become an Academy fellow and trustee. Also aboard were experts on climate, volcanoes, insects, barnacles, fish, reptiles, birds, and lichens. We were to arrive at the Galápagos on time for everyone to attend the opening ceremonies of the Charles Darwin Research Center. Our purpose was to extend the studies Darwin had made of the geology, climate, ecology, and the plant and animal species of the islands, which were under threat from the increasing population moving in from the South American mainland. My role was to serve as the expedition’s medical doctor while pursuing research on the evolution of the thyroid gland. I teamed up with Bob Stebbins, a herpetologist from UC Berkeley, who studied the so-called third eye of lizards. Located halfway between the two primary eyes is a tiny organ that under the microscope resembles a miniature eye. Its function, if any, was unknown, but Stebbins suspected that it had something to do with the thyroid. In those days, there were no regular flights or ships to the Galápagos and no tourism. The islands had not much changed since Charles Darwin arrived aboard the Beagle 130 years previously. But now there were more humans, accompanied by their animals both domestic and wild, and all had begun to take a toll on the native fauna. During our ten days at sea, each of us described his or her research for the benefit of the others. After a couple of days, I wrote in my journal, “I now know more about the geology, climate, insects, birds, plants, fish, reptiles and mammals of the Galápagos than I will ever know about San Francisco.” Edgar Martin, a Hungarian-born physician, teased, “So you are keeping a diary, like a true explorer.” Misael Acosta-Solis, director of the Ecuadorian Institute of Natural Sciences, looked at us and grinned. “Two doctors on one expedition! That’s enough to kill us all.” My symposium talk was interrupted by a radiotelephone call for Robert Bowman. He spoke with Alice Kermeen of UC Berkeley, the advance guard already at the new research station by Academy Bay. He told us Kermeen’s report was “not encouraging.” The island’s one landing craft, needed to take our supplies and jeep ashore, was not working. The Ecuadorian Navy, which had agreed to ferry scientists around the islands, had not appeared, and local officials claimed to know nothing about the expedition. A replica of the Beagle, built in the United Kingdom and based at Greenwich, was supposed to show up for the opening ceremonies, but after crossing the Atlantic had been pronounced not seaworthy by New York authorities. Despite these problems, we enjoyed a stirring ride down the center of the archipelago. We passed Fernandina and Sierra Negra, the world’s most active volcano, then Santiago, San Cristóbal, Pinzon, Santa Fe, and finally Santa Cruz and Academy Bay. We spotted the white research station and about 30 houses. Dave Perlman, the San Francisco Chronicle’s science reporter, looking through his binoculars, muttered, “No, it can’t be.... Yes, by God, it is—a Texaco station!” Kermeen, two Ecuadorian navy officers, and the director of the research station came out to the ship in a little iron boat. An Ecuadorian landing craft appeared at the last minute and two rafts were moored in deep water for the supplies. The next morning, scientists, middies, and Ecuadorians from the research station all went to work unloading our cargo onto a big flat landing craft, transferring the load into small boats in shallow water, and finally tendering the cargo onto the research station dock, which consisted of little more than a heap of stones and concrete. The USS Pine Island, a seaplane tender like the one I had served on in the navy, picked up a hundred VIPs at the Baltra airstrip and delivered them to Academy Bay in time for the opening ceremony. The occasion consisted of long speeches delivered in several languages under the broiling tropical sun. Afterward, we retired to our island accommodations. Expedition chef Alfred Roblin and I shared a little pink chalet on the beach with Captain Thomas Barlow of the Royal Navy, great-grandson of Charles Darwin and the guest of honor at the dedication. Barlow personified what used to be thought of as the archetypical Englishman. With his ruddy face, clipped (almost swallowed) speech, and bumbling half-shy manner, he would have been perfect in a bit part from an early Hitchcock movie. Edgar Martin and I set up an infirmary in the research station and in short order were treating scientists and support personnel for fever and dysentery. Stebbins and I started our research by capturing several marine iguanas and lava lizards and injecting them with radioactive iodine at the research station. By the next day, however, there had been no iodine uptake in their thyroids, so we decided to go outside to the lizards rather than bring them into the lab. These cold-blooded critters warm up in sunshine, and we discovered that only when the lizards are at their warmest does the thyroid concentrate iodine. We made some interesting discoveries about reptilian thyroid function. Radioiodine uptake was much higher in males than in females, which is not the case with humans or other mammals. Covering the third eye turned out not to affect thyroid function. Today, it is thought to be a photosensitive receptor that helps to regulate the animal’s biological clock. Under every bush and rock was a scientist—one with plastic bags full of plants, another collecting the torpedo-like reproductive shoot of the mangrove, a third sucking bugs off a screen with a vacuum cleaner. A little group with skiff and scuba masks were swimming around investigating the intertidal fauna. The tidepools crawled with a universe of life: sponges, mollusks, crabs, sea urchins, brittlestars, and multitudes of minnows. An unfamiliar moon rose at night, face turned counter-clockwise 90 degrees, as if declaring, “You’re now standing on the other side of the planet.” Those tropical nights were superb—the half-mile walk to the chalet after dinner was along a crushed-coral path that shone stark white in the moonlight. Its glow was set off by the nonreflecting black of the lava, the warm, moist smell of vegetation, and the spiny silhouette of cactus dark against the bright sky. A pleasant breeze and the foaming rush of surf over the reefs completed the scene. Strangely beautiful, beautifully strange—Las Encantadas! One of the few tourists, visiting on a Tahiti-bound yacht and just back from a hike into the highlands, told me there was a Frenchwoman in the town of Bella Vista, five miles straight up the mountain. Pregnant, about a week from term, she was desperate to see a doctor. With a couple of colleagues for company, I made my ten-mile house call. Dripping sweat through the Scalesia Forest (named after tall trees native only to the Galápagos), we toiled up a steep trail often no more than a foot wide. The sharp rocks, burro droppings, and deep mud underfoot were bordered by ferns and lianas. Mockingbirds, finches, doves, and vermilion flycatchers twittered a couple of feet from our heads. Two and a half hours from the start, well into the uplands, we were in lush vegetation, a very different universe from the cactus and ground scrub of the dry lowlands. A final 300 yards of even oozier slime brought us to the Chastains’ pig farm. I had mixed feelings about this mission. People and pigs are among the greatest threats to the native flora and fauna. Domesticated animals and plants often end up replacing indigenous species. Pigs are voracious eaters of the eggs of tortoises, iguanas, and birds. Yet I could not deny my concern for this young woman. We climbed broken stairs to a ramshackle unpainted frame house teetering on stilts. Inside were three tiny rooms and a couple of pieces of cracked furniture. Claudy, a pretty, wide-eyed, dark-haired woman of 20, sat big-bellied and frightened in a dirty dress but wore nail polish. She was full of questions as I examined her. Was it true, as the Ecuadorian women had told her, that her baby wasn’t big enough? How was she to cut the cord? How could she prevent the umbilical infections that kill many babies here? I did my best to answer her questions and reassure her. We learned she delivered a healthy baby two weeks later. My Galápagos adventure lasted five weeks, the same length of time as Darwin’s stay. Hundreds of scientific papers came out of our expedition’s research, as well as two books edited by Bob Bowman. At least three major findings would come from the research. Allan Cox of Stanford did pioneering studies on continental drift. Plate tectonics theory was not generally accepted at that time, and Cox’s work during the expedition provided crucial new evidence in its support. Bowman discovered a new member of the famous Galápagos finches—the vampire finch, which pecks the backs of much larger seabirds called boobies and drinks their blood. The late Charlie Rick of UC Davis, a world authority on tomatoes, studied the Galápagos’ single species of tomato. He noticed it had two advantageous characteristics. Unlike most other tomatoes, which are so firmly attached that they cannot be mechanically harvested, the fruit was easily broken off from the pedicel. And its skin was rather tough, so that the fruit would not burst if packed and transported. By crossbreeding the Galápagos tomato with other species, Rick created the prototype of the commercial tomatoes now grown worldwide, which are harvested mechanically and transported in bulk over large distances. Chances are that the tomatoes you eat in your salad and pasta have genes from the Galápagos. Sometimes I wonder whether the publicity accompanying our expedition helped open the floodgates to the millions of tourists who now pour onto those fragile shores. Paradoxically, the only hope for the islands’ survival as a sanctuary for its unique flora and fauna is the money Ecuador gets from tourism. Members of our expedition eventually persuaded the Ecuadorian government to declare the Galápagos a national park and to limit immigration. The human population, however, continues to multiply, and not long ago Ecuadorian fishermen trashed the research station when the government reduced their quotas because of overfishing. For decades, I avoided going back to the Galápagos for fear of being disappointed by the changes I would see. Finally, a couple of years ago I did return. Despite the T-shirt shops, the oil spills, and the presence of many more people, I still felt the magic of those enchanted isles, where Darwin wrote in his journal, “The natural history of these islands is eminently curious....Most of the organic productions are aboriginal creations found nowhere else... Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact––that mystery of mysteries––the first appearance of new beings on this Earth.” Jerold M. Lowenstein is professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. jlowen@itsa.ucsf.edu |
