Happy Holidays - 2002 from Mary and Bruce Feay 

We had a very busy and exciting year. We both played a lot of golf and spent a week in March at the Ben Sutton Golf School. Bruce is doing some part-time consulting with BP, usually working on Monday's when we are in town.  Mary continues to volunteer at the Field Museum in the mycology department, doing white-cheeked gibbon observations at the Brookfield Zoo, and to lead the Earthwatch Chicago Field Rep Team. We went on 3 Earthwatch expeditions this year, so the current count is Mary - 36 and Bruce - 27. Remember you're invited to visit Chicago and stay with us. We have decided that Chicago is a nice city to visit as well as a nice place to live.  We enjoy sharing it with friends. (prints 4 pages - lots of trips this year).

Mallorca, Spain -  Mallorca's Copper Age - This was our first archeology project, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. We were in the tourist town of Deià in January when there were no tourists, and it was cool and drizzly.  We helped Bill Waldren continue his long-term study by each digging 1 meter square plots at the San Mas Sanctuary. We were looking at pre-Talayotic, Talayotic, post-Talayotic, and Roman finds, some as old as 4,300 years old. Bill and his wife Jackie were wonderful teachers and we leaned a lot. For instance, if the pot shards are mostly thin, the area is probably a residential area, but if they are thick, it is probably a commercial storage area. We stayed in Waldrens's custom built facility for researchers with art by Bill. Food was wonderful, and we were lucky to be able to participate in the 3 Kings celebration on January 6, where the 3 wise men come thru town to the church to distribute 1 present to each child in town. Don't tell the children, but the parents bring the presents to the post office for the 3 kings to pick up and deliver with much fanfare at the beautiful church near the top of hilly town. 

Alaska - Explorer World Travel - Not an Earthwatch, but a splendid adventure that we went on in July without really reading and understanding the fine print. We started with normal sight seeing in Fairbanks. We golfed 18 holes in light rain at North Star, the northernmost in the Americas. We saw a moose and baby on our 1st hole, and sandhill cranes on the 17th hole. The next day we went on a paddlewheel trip where we saw Susan Butcher of Iditarod fame, ate at a salmon bake and went to a saloon show. Then, we went by train to Denali. The bus trip to and from our lodge deep in the park was the game run and the best part. We saw a moose eating from the bottom of a glacier formed pond, a grizzly bear munching flowers by the side of the road, many caribou, and lots of birds.  That was the end of "standard sightseeing" but just the beginning of our adventure.

We packed up our gear in water tight bags and took a small plane to a gravel/sand bar in the Talkeetna River to start our white water rafting and camping trip.  The first day was a relaxing float trip followed by an evening of salmon fishing.  The king salmon were very big, and we fished for them by trying to snag a hook in them as they were getting ready to spawn, and weren't eating.  Mary was given a 35 pound salmon to land, and with lots of coaching she brought the fish to the bank and got pictures before releasing it.  She was given a second one to land, and it fought and won; they are really, really strong.  The second day was a white-knuckle class 4 white water day thru rapids named Entrance Exam, Toilet Bowl, Sluice Box and finally Bobby Socks.  You know you have to watch out for rapids that are named, but it turned out to be a blast. We were then jet boated down the final part of the river to Talkeetna  for Mary's Birthday celebration and preparation for our day and night on the Ruth Glacier.  After proper provisioning and check out we flew on a ski plane to the Don Sheldon Amphitheater at about 6000 feet where our 2 guides set up 3 tents and dug out a kitchen table for us. We got roped up and went for a short snowshoe walk and had a chance climb up to see the Don Sheldon Cabin and its precariously perched outhouse.  It looked very comfortable if you were weathered in, but with the weather wonderful for us, we were very glad we were in tents, instead of the cabin. We awoke at 6AM to a spectacular, jaw-dropping, clear blue sky view of the east side of Mt McKinley.  We took a longer snow shoe hike and saw some impressive crevasses.  We were told they were as deep as 3 Sears Towers, but we didn't go close enough to see. We broke camp and awaited our ski plane ride back to Talkeetna.  We were breathless after our experience.

Our next adventure was on an 8 passenger yacht in Glacier Bay. Our first evening we had fresh Alaska Dungeness crab that our Captain, Rusty, had trapped.  We went on sea kayak rides and were quite close to grizzly bears and black bears. On one kayak ride up a small river, we were watching a grizzly graze when another one, closer to us, noticed us and rose on its hind legs for a false charge. It was too fast for anyone to get a picture. We saw flowers, birds, and a glacier (John Hopkins) with glacier worms on our walks. We were in the yacht watching the Marjorie Glacier when a large piece of ice fell off.  It caused a large wave, and the captain scrambled and headed the boat into the wave, preventing the kitchen gear from being tossed all around the boat. We fished for salmon and halibut. A small 20 pound halibut that was caught was more than enough to feed the 12 of us on board. We were kayaking after humpback whales and saw a very big, killer whale that got much too close for comfort. The kayaks bunched together so we looked big and the whale dove under us.   

We flew to Juneau and then on a float plane to Pack Creek Reserve on Admiralty Island to see grizzlies. We saw 3 bears, and saw them catch and eat salmon. We had more respect for how hard it would be for a bear to catch the salmon after seeing them fight being landed. On to Ketchikan and back to tourist reality. We had seen the huge cruise ships from a distance, but here we saw the biggest in Alaska, 2,600 passengers with 2,400 crew; it was awesome and not something we ever want to do. We went on a tour of totem poles and a community house, and in the afternoon we took a float plane trip to see the Misty Fjords. The Misty Fjords are a national monument that consist of millions of acres of forests, streams, and shear cliffs. It was sufficiently dramatic that we really didn't need the accompanying music that included Out of Africa and Titanic.

Cape Town (Saldanha), South Africa - Whales of South Africa - Recall that in 1999 we did an Earthwatch with Humpback Whales off Maui.  We enjoyed that experience, so when we planned to go to Botswana for the Crocs of the Okavango, we were delighted to be able go early and  work again with Humpback and Southern Right whales with Dr. Peter Best and his graduate student, Jaco. We were a 2 hour drive north of Cape Town on the Atlantic coast. We stayed in quite comfortable, but unheated old WWII barracks in the Saldanha Military Academy. We were there in Oct., so the weather was very pleasant during the day, and just a bit chilly at night. The purpose of the research here is to determine the migrating patterns, populations, social structure, etc. of the humpbacks and Southern right whales that migrate from the equator (near Gabon) to Antarctica and back. During a pilot project in 1993, they were surprised to find that on the southern migration, some of the whales would stop and spend time feeding in this area. Since there is a cold upwelling, they hypothesize that some of the whales suspend their migration to feed on the krill in the Benguela upwelling. We worked primarily from a WWII cement bunker on an outlook that gave us a wide view of whales as they pass by.  We could see blows, fins, and splashes, especially when the whales would breech. We followed each group with a theodolite surveying instrument so we could track direction and speed of movement (or milling/feeding behavior). If the wind and mist permitted, half of the team went out in a zodiac, and verified the position, got ID photos of dorsal and tail (fluke) for humpbacks and the callosities for the southern right whales. For the humpbacks, we also got skin and blubber samples for DNA analysis. Mostly they wanted to know if the whale was male or female as otherwise, it is pretty hard to find out.  The weather was fine all the time we were there, but there were only 4 days when we could go out in the zodiac.  The first day we followed a skittish southern right whale and a young humpback.  The first time the other half of the team went out, they had a once in a lifetime close encounter with 2 humpbacks. As we watched from the outlook, the whales rubbed themselves on the side of the boat, blew krill laced breath on them, went under the boat, and let them get some wonderful photos.  Thanks to Jayne for taking and sharing her wonderful photos. The next day we saw the same two humpbacks, verifying for sure that they were staying in the same area and for at least 2 days not migrating.  They let us take pictures and get a blubber sample by darting, but they didn't come close to the zodiac. We were very happy to have had our whale encounters from the boat. On days we could not work we had the opportunity to visit the nearby Fossil Park, had a wine tasting at a local winery, visited an abalone farm, and spent some time shopping. This was quite relaxing as Earthwatch projects go, and it worked out well for us.

Maun, Botswana (Shakawe) - Crocodiles of the Okavango - We went with Nancy and Ann, two friends we had met in Madagascar in 1992, to the Crocs in the Okavango with PI Alison Leslie and her PhD student Aliki Strydom. We were a bit skeptical about the prospects of handling crocs, but trusting EW and our friend Nancy, we signed up, even though the accommodations are not up to our minimum requirements of having a roof. It took us a while to get used to climbing into our tent and keeping our stuff in another little tent, but we did survive and had a great time. The first 4 working moonless nights we went out on the Okavango River (north of where the Okavango Delta spreads out), to find crocodiles by spot lighting. We'd see red eye reflection, approach, and the researcher or her assistant would reach out and grab the small crocs. The smallest were about 18 - 20 inches long and after the mouth was taped, could easily be held by one person while others measured, weighed, and took blood. On the third night Bruce was asked to catch a small croc with his bare hands. Much to his (and Mary's) surprise, he actually did it. For each of the crocs we caught we also cut an id pattern in their scoots, the ridges that go down the back to the tail. These cuts don't grow out and allow for positive id when re-caught. It was good to practice with the little ones. The crocs lie very still for a while, and then every once in a while, they twist and struggle, so it is important to stay on task when you are holding a croc. If the croc was bigger, then they used a lasso on a stick put over the head, around the neck, and then flipped it in the boat as the rest of us moved out of the way. This was the method with crocs up to about 1.5 meters. This was a bit more exciting, but once the croc's mouth was taped with electricians tape we got in there, held the crocs, and helped with the measuring. Of course, lots of pictures were taken. For crocs bigger than 1.5 meters and up to about 2.5 meters, they had a special noose on a rope. After it was slipped over the croc's head and neck, they would let it twist and swim until it got tired in the water, then they'd haul it into the boat. Needless to say we hastened out of the way when this happened. Until the mouth was secured and the croc was subdued, we stayed well out of the way. After that it was business as usual, but with more people controlling the croc. Letting these big ones go was also done even more carefully. They took the tape off and quickly propelled the croc forward into the water. We each had released little ones, and that was enough excitement. In total those 4 nights, we caught 32 crocs, 7 were recaptures, and 3 were bigger than 2 meters, 10 were between 1 and 2 meters,  and 18 were male - and 18 female.

When there was too much moon to easily sneak up on the crocs at night, we put out 4 traps, baited them with donkey road kill or beef bones from the butcher. In the morning we'd go and process the crocs we caught. These were all on the bigger side. In total we got 8 over 2 meters long - the size that was needed to contribute reproductive data from the blood hormones for Aliki. Our largest was 345 cm - over 11 feet long, and he was very, very mad at being caught in the trap. He didn't want to come out, he didn't want us to measure him, and surprisingly, he didn't seem to want to go back in the river. He looked over his shoulder at all of us standing back by the reeds, and then slowly at first slid back into the river and disappeared into his river. Mary, for one, was a bit afraid that this might be the exceptional croc who would prefer to check us out rather than return to safety in the river.

The conservation of crocs is a delicate issue. They are a keystone species, needed to help keep the environment in balance. But if livestock or people come into their environment, the crocs do sometimes attack. And people and crocs are both competing for the diminishing stocks of the delicious bream fish, and the fighting tiger fish. The PI is hoping that in addition to adding to basic knowledge of crocs that the project can help educate the local people about crocs and why and how to get along with them. She is also planning to develop a truly sustainable croc farm that will provide jobs and income for the locals and return additional crocs to the system. This was a very exciting and interesting EW project, but is not for the faint of heart.

Field Museum - Mycology Department - This year, Mary and Bruce went to Swallow Cliff, Indiana Dunes, and  Cap Sauers to help collect mushrooms. It is a lot of fun and the Field Museum really needs and appreciates its volunteers. See Mary or the Field Museum web site to volunteer. This year Mary also volunteered at the Brookfield Zoo, doing Earthwatch type behavioral observations of the young white cheeked gibbon, Melouprey, and his parents - Benny and Indah.

Mary & Bruce Feay  
mfeay@att.net  and bfeay@att.net    To Christmas03     To Christmas01 Home Page