Innehållsförteckning för Winter 2015 - 2016 från The Explorers Journal

subscribe to THE EXPLORERS JOURNAL online today! WWW.EXPLORERS.ORG AVAILABLE IN PRINT AND AS A DIGITAL PUBLICATION From vast ocean depths to the frontiers of outer space, THE EXPLORERS JOURNAL offers firsthand reporting from those pushing the limits of knowledge and human endurance. Founded in 1904 to promote exploration “by all means possible,” The Explorers Club is an international organization dedicated to the advancement of field exploration and scientific inquiry. Among our members are leading pioneers in oceanography, mountaineering, archaeology, and the planetary and environmental sciences.…

PRESIDENT Theodore P. Janulis HONORARY CHAIRMAN Col. John H. Glenn Jr., USMC (Ret.) HONORARY PRESIDENT Don Walsh, Ph.D. HONORARY DIRECTORS Robert D. Ballard, Ph.D. Sylvia A. Earle, Ph.D. James M. Fowler Col. John H. Glenn Jr., USMC (Ret.) Gilbert M. Grosvenor Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D. Richard E. Leakey, D.Sc. Frederik D.A. Paulsen, Ph.D. Roland R. Puton Johan Reinhard, Ph.D. George B. Schaller, Ph.D. Kathryn D. Sullivan, Ph.D. Don Walsh, Ph.D. HRH Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck BOARD OF DIRECTORS CLASS OF 2016 James M. Clash Peter C. Keller, Ph.D. Leon “Lee” V. Langan Col. Donald T. Morley Alan H. Nichols, J.D., D.S. CLASS OF 2017 Capt. Lynn D. Danaher Richard Garriott de Cayeux Kenneth M. Kamler, M.D. Mabel L. Purkerson, M.D. Alexander Wallace CLASS OF 2018 Robert J. Atwater David A. Dolan…

HUNTED TO EXTINCTION, THE WOOLLY MAMMOTH ONCE ROAMED THE NORTHERN REACHES OF EURASIA AND NORTH AMERICA, THE LAST REMNANT POPULATIONS SURVIVING UNTIL SOME 4,000 YEARS AGO ON WRANGEL ISLAND IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN.A MODEL OF THE CREATURE IN THE ROYAL BRITISH COLUMBIA MUSEUM, IMAGE COURTESY WIKIMEDIA. A STUDENT MEMBER OF THE EXPLORERS CLUB, MATT DAVIS IS A PALEONTOLOGIST AT YALE UNIVERSITY AND A FORMER SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION PREDOCTORAL FELLOW. HIS RESEARCH FOCUSES ON UNDERSTANDING THE ECOLOGY OF EXTINCT ICE AGE MAMMALS SO WE CAN BETTER CONSERVE TODAY’S ENDANGERED SPECIES. A TERM MEMBER SINCE 2015, JESSICA GLASS IS A PH.D. CANDIDATE IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY AT YALE, WHERE SHE STUDIES THE GENETICS OF COMMERCIALLY IMPORTANT MARINE FISHES. SHE’S CURRENTLY BASED IN SOUTH AFRICA, WHERE HER RESEARCH FOCUSES ON FISHES OF THE…

240 PP • CHICAGO: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 2015 • ISBN-10: 022623715X • ISBN-13: 978-0226237152 • $45 In The Curious Map Book, antiquarian map researcher Ashley Baynton-Williams has assembled a glorious collection of historical maps, mostly from the collection of the British Museum. She calls maps “one of the most essential tools of communication,” circumventing culture and language to transmit information. She says, “the boundaries of the uses that maps could be put to seem to have been limited only by the imagination of their makers.” Baynton-Williams selects fine representatives of several genres of maps dating from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries—game maps, maps in animal and human form, maps printed on objects, and allegorical maps—offering scholarly commentary on each. The early game maps are fascinating. One, Geography Reduced to…

president’s letter Exploration is evolving in two major ways. The focus on “firsts”—to the poles, to the Moon, and so on—is transitioning into research expeditions that develop a deeper understanding of our world in order to become better stewards of our home and its abundant life-forms. The second transition is taking place in space and the oceans. Once dominated by governments and educational institutions, exploration of these frontiers is now finding new sources of funding, ideas, and energy from the private sector. Space exploration headlines, once dominated by NASA and other national agencies, now regularly feature the efforts of companies created by Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson. If you visit the magnificent Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, you’ll see that Launch Complex 39A (Pad A), which…

JOIN THE “EXPLORERS IMMORTALS” AND ENGRAVE YOUR NAME OR DEDICATION IN STONE ON NEW PAVERS FOR THE LEFRAK TERRACE AT EXPLORERS CLUB HEADQUARTERS. ADORN OUR LANDMARK OUTDOOR SPACE AND HELP PAY FOR URGENT WORK FOR PHASE II RENOVATIONS BY MAKING A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION OF $2,500 PER DEDICATED PAVER TO OUR LOWELL THOMAS BUILDING FUND. THE EXPLORERS CLUB WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE FOLLOWING WHO HAVE PURCHASED A PAVER: Robert Ashton, James H. Alexander, John G. Alexander, Darlene T. Anderson, Jeanne D. Andlinger, Barbara Annan, Robert J. Aresty, Atlanta Chapter, Robert J. Atwater, Norman L. Baker, Andreas Bender, Josh Bernstein, John Bierley, Bruce Blanchard, John R. Bockstoce, Brian M. Boom, John R. Boreske Jr., Gary W. Bowersox, Lawson W. Brigham, Diane Britz-Lotti, Julianne M. Chase, James M. Clash, Allen S. Counter,…

Frederick Roots thinks about deep things. From long habit of mind, he dwells on big questions: things like the movement of Earth’s plates and the ways of glacial ebb and flow around the globe. And his thoughts often plumb the murkier depths of mankind’s motivations to either explore or exploit our home planet too. Speaking with him is like peering into a telescope and seeing new constellations in place of the stars one has long known. He connects ideas, experiences, and philosophies gained from nearly a century traversing the Earth from pole to pole, looking for clues in vast, featureless landscapes, shaping treaties, and sitting in icebound stillness for extended periods. A scientist and diplomat, Roots, 92, is frequently described as a Canadian national treasure, and his accomplishments have been…

On May 10, 2015, members of our Explorers Club Flag expedition, led by Edmundo Edwards, ascended the Hatuturi Fortress complex to assess its condition, and in doing so, commemorated a survey of that site undertaken by Thor Heyerdahl’s expedition in 1965. Built in the early years of the eighteenth century, Hatuturi was carved into one of Ra’ivavae’s steepest volcanic ridges, a ridge that points northward to Mount Hiro, the highest point on the island. It is a defensive puzzle configured into 54 ascending, palisaded terraces. From the air, the terraces look like a fish with its tail fins at the base of the ridge and the fish’s head rising to swallow Mount Hiro. Hatuturi would have been the last refuge for at least one if not more of the island’s…

by Marcus Baynes-Rock 240 PP • UNIVERSITY PARK: PENN STATE PRESS, 2015 • ISBN-10: 0271067209 • ISBN-13: 978-0271067209 • $34.95 In his remarkable book, Among the Bone Eaters, anthropologist Marcus Baynes-Rock paints a portrait of life in Harar, a community in Ethiopia where people and hyenas, the second largest African predator, peacefully coexist. While towns near Harar are sometimes attacked by hyenas, which are known to have killed and devoured children, Harar is like an island in the storm. Baynes-Rock’s mission was to understand why this one place lives in apparent harmony with our ancient enemy, how they both survive. Almost universally reviled as carrion eaters, hyenas, Baynes-Rock writes, have preyed on humans since our distant ancestors began to walk the savannah. As scavengers, they were in direct competition with…

224 PP • CHICAGO: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 2015 • ISBN-10: 022618871X • ISBN-13: 978-0226188713 • $45 Plankton, the myriad tiny living creatures that drift in the ocean currents, are the crucial food source for all larger creatures. They make up some 98 percent of ocean life. They are truly the jewels of the ocean, strange pulsating shapes, multicolored bioluminescence, flashing dazzlingly in the deep, dark waters. Christian Sardet, cofounder and research director of the French Laboratory of Cell Biology at the Marine Station of Villefranche-sur-Mer, the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, and cofounder of the Tara Oceans expedition to study plankton, has produced the gorgeously illustrated and fascinating new book Plankton: Wonders of the Drifting World. Biologically, plankton are the foundation of the aquatic food web. “Plankton,”…

46 EAST 70TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10021 I 212-628-8383 I WWW.EXPLORERS.ORG ALASKA L. Michelle Ridgway Tel: 907-957-2277 mishridgway@gmail.com ATLANTA Steve Pigott Tel: 770-337-5450 jagter@msn.com AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND David Strike Tel: 61-2-9971-2559 Cell: 61-0-411-254 066 strikinc1@optusnet.com.au CANADA Elaine Wyatt chapterchair@explorersclub.ca CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA Prof. Claudio Cristino Tel: 562-458-3736 cristino@uchile.cl CHICAGO/GREAT LAKES Robert A. Shuchman, Ph.D. Tel: 734-649-0937 shuchman@mtu.edu EAST AND SOUTH ASIA Steven R. Schwankert Tel: 86-1350-116-3629 steven@sinoscuba.com FLORIDA Aida “Idee” Belau Tel: 321-243-8448 chair@floridaexplorersclub.org GEORGE ROGERS CLARK Leonard A. Weakley, Jr. Tel: 513-702-0725 lweakley@rendigs.com GREAT BRITAIN AND WESTERN EUROPE Seb Coulthard Tel: 44-7960-479485 sebcoulthard@hotmail.com GREATER PIEDMONT David N. Brinkman dobrink@bellsouth.net NEW ENGLAND Gregory Deyermenjian Tel: 781-968-5174 paititi@alumni.clarku.edu NORTH PACIFIC ALASKA Mead Treadwell Tel: 907-258-7764 Fax: 907-258-7768 meadwell@alaska.net NORTHERN CALIFORNIA Joan Boothe Tel: 415-233-1697 hoodooskr@aol.com NORWAY Synnøve Marie…

A WALK ON THE MOON David Scott Apollo 15 Commander David Scott, 83, is one of only 12 humans to have walked on the Moon, in July 1971. Prior to that, Scott flew with the late Neil Armstrong aboard the difficult Gemini 8 space-docking mission and served as Command Module Pilot for Apollo 9. A West Point and MIT graduate and retired Air Force colonel, Scott is coauthor, with Alexei Leonov, of Two Sides of the Moon, a look at the space race from both sides of the Cold War. JC: When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon, what were you thinking? DS: Oh, darn [laughs]! Everybody wanted to be there first time down. That is a light-hearted answer, in a way, but I like to throw…

editor’s note On May 20, 1916, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Frank Worsley, and Tom Crean appeared at Stromness, a whaling station on the north coast of the island of South Georgia. Over the course of 36 hours, they had hiked 51 kilometers over mountainous terrain—an extraordinary coda for a two-week journey that took them through 800 nautical miles of stormy seas from Elephant Island, off the Antarctica Peninsula. This issue, we celebrate that heroic moment in the annals of exploration with a reflection on its legacy penned by none other than the Honorable Alexandra Shackleton, Sir Ernest’s granddaughter, who heads up the London-based James Caird Society, named after the tiny craft in which Shackleton and his men made the perilous crossing of the Southern Ocean. Complementing her commentary, we check in…

WITH LIGHTNING SPEED record ascent of four Patagonian peaks On January 31, Colin Haley, 31, and Alex Honnold, 30, completed Patagonia’s Torre Traverse, a north-to-south link-up of four peaks in the Torre range—Cerro Standhardt, Punta Herron, Torre Egger, and Cerro Torre—in an astonishing 20 hours, 40 minutes with a camp-to-camp time of 32 hours. The climbers shattered the previous record set in January 2008, when Haley and Rolando Garibotti nailed the route, which boasts some 2,100 meters of vertical gain, in four days’ time. Haley and Honnold attempted the route last year but their efforts were thwarted by a storm, which forced the duo to abandon the climb just two pitches short of topping out on the 3,128-meter Cerro Torre, 22 hours into the effort. Upon completing the traverse, Honnold…

JOE MACINNIS IS A MEDICAL DOCTOR WHOSE PIONEERING RESEARCH ON UNDERSEA SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING PROJECTS EARNED HIM HIS NATION’S HIGHEST HONOR—THE ORDER OF CANADA. SUPPORTED BY THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT, HE LED TEN RESEARCH EXPEDITIONS UNDER THE ICE OF THE ARCTIC OCEAN. AMONG HIS TEAM’S ACHIEVEMENTS WERE THE FIRST SCIENCE DIVES UNDER THE GEOGRAPHIC NORTH POLE, THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE FIRST POLAR UNDERSEA STATION, AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE HMS BREADALBANE, THE NORTHERNMOST KNOWN SHIPWRECK. CURRENTLY HE STUDIES LEADERSHIP IN HIGH-RISK ENVIRONMENTS AND ITS ROLE IN SOLVING GLOBAL PROBLEMS LIKE CLIMATE CHANGE. (PORTRAIT COURTESY JOE MACINNIS.) It is 1989 and I’m on the Akademik Keldysh, the world’s biggest research ship, operated by the Russian Academy of Sciences. We’re in the Atlantic north of the Azores preparing to use two $20-million Mir…

472 PP • CHICAGO: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 2015 • ISBN-10: 022629837X • ISBN-13: 978-0226298375 • $35 Harvard University lecturer Michael Canfield has added immeasurably to the burgeoning literary history of one of the best-loved American presidents with his new book, Theodore Roosevelt in the Field. Roosevelt (1858–1919), the 26th and youngest president, is remembered as a robust man, enthusiastically pursuing his multiple careers as statesman, soldier, explorer, and naturalist. Roosevelt’s unrivaled accomplishments in conservation and preservation include founding the National Park Service and creating 150 national forests, five national parks, and many other preserves, collectively totaling 230,000,000 acres of land. In his book, Canfield draws on Roosevelt’s prolific writings, focusing on his well-known love of the natural world, which began at an early age. By the time he was…

176 PP • LOS ANGELES: J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM, 2015 • ISBN-10: 11606064630 • ISBN-13: 978-1606064634 • $49 In the Middle Ages, as today, epic stories of adventure and heroism were captivating. One of the more popular was the exotic story of a Flemish knight named Gillion de Trazegnies, whose story embodies the romance of the East. According to the tale, Gillion embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, during which he is captured and thrown into a prison in Egypt, from which he ultimately emerges. Through a series of strokes of good luck, not only does Gillion wind up taking command of the sultan’s armies, he marries the man’s daughter. The story was meant to be read aloud to an audience. Reproduced in this volume is a magnificently illustrated copy…

John G. Alexander Robert J. Atwater Capt. Norman L. Baker Barbara Ballard Robert D. Ballard, Ph.D. Samuel B. Ballen* Mark Gregory Bayuk Daniel A. Bennett Josh Bernstein Bruce Blanchard John R. Bockstoce, D.Phil. Bjorn G. Bolstad* Capt. Bruce M. Bongar, Ph.D. Brian M. Boom, Ph.D. Garrett R. Bowden Capt. Lawson W. Brigham, Ph.D., USCG (ret.) Harry Davis Brooks Lt. Col. Jewell Richard Browder* August “Augie” Brown John C.D. Bruno Lee R. Bynum* Virginia Castagnola Hunter Julianne M. Chase, Ph.D. James M. Chester* Maj. Gen. Arthur W. Clark, USAF (Ret.) Capt. William Clark* Steven Cohen, Ph.D. (hon.) Leslie E. Colby* Jonathan M. Conrad Catherine Nixon Cooke S. Allen Counter, Ph.D., D.M.Sc. Constance Difede David A. Dolan Mr. & Mrs. James Donovan Col. William H. Dribben, USA (Ret.)* Sylvia A. Earle, Ph.D.…