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NEW SPECIES CAUSE GROWN MEN TO "TREMBLE WITH EXCITEMENT" by Paul Spencer Sochaczewski © 2002
Within the last two months, researchers have found two new monkey species in the Amazon, a large cypress-related tree in Vietnam that is so rare that it forms its own genus, and two new dinosaurs from the Arizona-New Mexico borderland. And each of these discoveries stirred a man's soul. For some people, this soul-stirring business comes about with a sports victory, for others a romantic encounter. For Mark Erdman it was a large, ugly fish that oughtn't to have been where it was. Erdman, 33, an American marine biologist working to develop protected areas in the northern part of Indonesia's Sulawesi island, stumbled on one of the biggest prizes in marine biology: a coelacanth, a rare fish a continent away from where it was thought to belong. And he let it get away. The coelacanth ("SEE-la-kanth") is an ancient fish sometimes dubbed the "dinofish" because it was known only by fossil records and assumed to have gone extinct some 70 million years ago, about the same time the dinosaurs disappeared. When a fisherman caught a coelacanth in 1938, in the Indian Ocean north of Madagascar, the scientific world was stunned. Just days after their wedding in September 1997, Mark and his wife Arnaz, took four friends to the Manado fish market. "We stepped out of the taxi and an old guy pushed a cart past us that contained a large fish," Erdman recalls. "My wife said 'what in the world is that?' I recognized it as a coelacanth. Manado's a city of one million; it was like finding a dinosaur in Central Park. The fisherman seemed uncomfortable, so I just took some photos and we each went our separate ways. It just didn't seem feasible, and anyway I figured if it really was a coelacanth we'd find another." Several days later, on the plane journey back to the States, Erdman remarked to his wife that "maybe we should have bought that fish." He admits now: "I was biggest bonehead ever." Erdman put out the word in the Manado fish market that he wanted to buy a coelacanth, and some ten months later a fisherman called Erdman and sold him a coelacanth, which they call "Rajah Laut" (King of the Sea), for around US$70. Erdman's fish turned to be a different species to the African variety, Latimeria chalumnae. He named it Latimeria menadoensis. The two coelacanths are morphologically similar, but differ genetically by five million years. He explained these fish are called 'old fore legs' because of their characteristic dorsal fins. The coelacanths, which first appeared some 400 million years ago, branched off from the "normal" ray-finned fish at an early period. "Some people think they're precursors, along with lungfish, of sea animals that eventually became terrestrial," he says. When the scientist found the coelacanth he had already discovered 14 new species of mantis shrimp. Was this a different feeling? "There is a unique euphoria in finding a new species and realizing that you are the first human to recognize this life form as something separate from all others," he said. "It's as if you've been privileged to a first showing of a new exhibit in the gallery of life." Every biologist who has been lucky enough to find something new can understand Erdman's buzz at finding the coelacanth. I find this curious. Passion is an emotion, and therefore seemingly outside the Cartesian realm of science. But enough scientists experience this rapture to give us pause. Arguably the most successful collector in Southeast Asia, Alfred Russel Wallace, a mid-19th century naturalist and "beetle collector" who roamed Southeast Asia for eight years, broke through Victorian emotional reticence to write about the passion of finding new species. While in Bacan, in eastern Indonesia, Wallace wrote: "None but a naturalist can understand the intense excitement I experienced when I at length captured [the bird-winged butterfly]. On taking it out of my net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt much more like fainting than I have done when in apprehension of immediate death. I had a headache the rest of the day, so great was the excitement produced by what will appear to most people a very inadequate cause." I wondered whether the coelacanth/butterfly buzz holds for plants? I accompanied Max van Balgooy, one of the world's leading field botanists, on a collecting trip to isolated Aru island in eastern Indonesia. One afternoon he returned to the camp beaming. "New species," he said. Max showed me a plant he had pressed which was already beginning to shrivel in the heat, and opened his notebook. "No. 6511. STRONGYLODON? liana, infl. caulifloris and on young twigs, small flowers and pods, flower orange, pods inflated, ripe dehiscent red/black. slide" His shorthand-like notes didn't betray much emotion and I asked him how he felt at the moment of discovery. "It was pure luck that I found the Strongylodon - the genus was never recorded from here. I was very excited, I recognized it immediately and it almost made me jump up and down." His feelings in one word? "Ecstasy. I know exactly how Wallace felt. I don't think you can explain this kind of feeling to someone who is unfamiliar with biological exploration. It's something more than just satisfaction or just pleasure." "Max, is it as good as sex?" He thought a moment. I'd say it was comparable to very good sex...and there's no disease."
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