Skin Diver, November 1999
Story and Photos by Catherine Holloway
Oh ye! Who have your eye-balls vex’d and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the sea;
- From ‘The Sea’ by John Keats (1795-1821)Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
- From "Little Things"
Amelia Earhart, 1927
Just the thought of it was excruciating. We were aboard NAI’A in March 1997, 1000 miles out to sea from Fiji, at a tiny uninhabited island oasis in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We were at a spectacular equatorial atoll most people only dream about, moored over pristine and remote coral reef that no-one had ever explored. And yet, the expedition’s immutable rules and regulations declared: “NO SCUBA DIVING.”
They came from all over the US - Minnesota, California, Indiana, Texas. Among them a farmer, an engineer, a librarian, an architect. They had homes, families, jobs, other lives. But none of that mattered on the atoll of Nikumaroro. Here they were scientists and – despite that their rigid duty description forbade it – they were adventurers. Their single concern was to find aviation history’s holy grail and prove to a skeptical world that Amelia Earhart not only landed here, but also survived, albeit briefly.
Amelia: valiant woman pilot and charismatic ambitious American icon of the 30s. Earhart: disappeared, perhaps mysteriously, along with her Lockheed Electra and her navigator Fred Noonan, on the final leg of her round-the-world flight in 1937.
“Adventure is what happens when things go wrong,” cautioned expedition leader, Ric Gillespie. “We do nothing just for the experience.”
“If you’re a die-hard Amelia fan, we don’t want you! That passion has a dangerous agenda. If we don’t fall over a silver plane in the bushes, you’ll be disheartened and want to go home.”
“Well, we’re a long way from home.”
Gillespie is the executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) which promotes, organizes and actually carries out this search for Amelia Earhart’s remains as well as those of her Lockheed Electra and her world-class navigator, Fred Noonan. The reluctant hero of this controversial project, Gillespie is a disciplined pragmatist with a Vaudevillian sense of humor and the motivational verve of the diet guru, Richard Simmons. In fact, many members of the TIGHAR team are remarkable lyricists. Painfully tedious archaeological tasks were brightened daily by the hilarious ritual of rewriting old favorites – and the ensuing tour-de-force performances. The group’s rare camaraderie was forged by sunburn, sea sickness, exhaustion and a shared dedication against all odds and in defiance of all criticism. As Archaeological Assistant, Gary Quigg, explained: "The songs keep us from going insane as we're sifting for hours through the dirt looking for what we don't even know!"
Once a crazy lady vanished in an aeroplane
Crazy, but not near as crazy as we,
For we sing as we search
Mid the black tip sharks and buka trees
You’ll come a finding Amelia with me.
Gillespie’s first job is to raise money – lots of it – to fund these high-tech search expeditions to the middle of the Pacific. His second is to ensure this precious sponsorship is not wasted. Understandably, he has zero tolerance for unnecessary risk-taking that might jeopardize the group’s work towards the ultimate goal: prove to the world that its entirely logical theory about Amelia’s disappearance is true and correct. TIGHAR has already gathered solid evidence that they are in the right place. But to unequivocally resist dispute, TIGHAR needs a “smoking gun”. They need to find Amelia’s bones and a serial number from her Lockheed, such as on the craft’s engine.
They say the best things in life are free
They never tried to put a ship to sea
Although Gillespie’s personal passion and TIGHAR’s global goal is to reveal and preserve historic aircraft, the Amelia Earhart project is the organization’s “cash cow” and Gillespie has found himself “in the vicarious adventure business.”
“This is one part science, four parts theatre.” Gillespie admitted, while hacking through Scaevola bushes to pick up yet another scrap of aluminum that just might have been the jigsaw piece he needed to "finish this thing once and for all."
Nothing TIGHAR says or does is fabricated. The work is genuine and methodical. But they must present it with flair and showmanship. Without the allure and illusion of adventure, the team could not relish the searing heat, the filth and salt, the backbreaking hauling, the fastidious inspections, the frustrating technological mishaps and the enormous distance to travel. Neither could they raise funds, attract media attention or earn credibility.
Gillespie and his TIGHAR volunteers have journeyed four times in the last decade to the atoll of Nikumaroro (previously Gardner) in the Phoenix Islands of the Republic of Kiribati. Their most recent journey was in July of this year. Here, under the planning and guidance of the project’s chief archaeologist, Dr Tom King, they have sifted meticulously through dirt, scoured murky lagoons and, yes, dived the fringing reef. In fact, the TIGHAR members who searched the outer reef of Nikumaroro in 1989 were the only divers ever to have explored under these wild untouched shores. With no human habitation, usually vulnerable targets like giant clams were plentiful and reef sharks became their constant companions.
It had to be sharks
Not groupers or snarks
They’d think it all grand
If we gave them a hand
Or some other parts
We’re here on a lark
A shot in the dark
But down on the reef
They cry “Here’s the beef”
When we disembark
According to the expedition physician and 1989 team diver, Dr Tommy Love: “There was an astonishing amount of sealife and in large numbers. This island is a turtle nesting area - there were at least 100 turtles laying on the reef !”
During the 1997 expedition, we did manage to steal another intoxicating glimpse underwater…
Nikumaroro is the embodiment of remote. Five days sailing from Fiji, it is a pretty spec of green, with a halo of white sand amid endless blue. Our first view from the crow's nest was divine - Niku seemed like a gloriously romantic oasis in the desert-like ocean. But, everything looks beautiful from a distance and Niku is no place for honeymooners, as Amelia and Fred probably discovered back in 1937.
Entirely surrounded by a heavy verandah of fringing coral reef, the atoll’s only path to shore is a treacherous channel that was blasted in the reef in the 60s during the relocation of villagers after a failed settlement attempt. Precocious black tip sharks buzzed around our bare ankles. The visibility had to be easily 200 feet!
NAI’A owner, Rob Barrel, and I were itching to throw on mask and fins and explore. But the command was clear and fair. The only diving allowed would be to check out anomalies detected by magnetometers in the shallow lagoon. The project was far too costly and important to be risked for the sake of an enthusiastic splash about in the sea. So concerned about the consequences of a serious sting, a bite or bout of decompression illness this far away from medical services, Gillespie decreed even recreational swimming out of the question! And true, there did seem to be somewhat of a surplus of sharks.
Neptune blessed us though. Nikumaroro provided no safe anchorages and Rob and I would have to dive to set moorings for NAI’A. And since the ABC Turning Point film crew wanted to take home some exciting underwater footage, we were obliged to take their brand new digital camera along.
This was the most fun I’ve ever had setting moorings! The reef sloped fast beyond our vision – unblemished and unbroken hard corals untethered in their reach. Black tips, white tips, a silver tip and several curious gray whaler sharks cruised in close for a look at the foreigners. A giant green turtle nudged its head up against the camera. At the mouth of the blasted landing channel, we rolled into a swirling mass of maybe 500 trevally. Rob pointed madly. “OK, I see them, I’ll get the shot, don’t worry.” I thought. Finally, I lifted my eye from the viewfinder to see the real show beside me! Half a dozen manta rays tumbled and looped feeding in the plankton-rich current created by the swell rising and falling in the narrow channel.
Exhilarated, Rob and I battled over who shot video and who set the mooring cables! We vowed to return to this island with NAI’A someday for an exploratory diving expedition. Two years later, with the help of some adventuresome sponsors, it now looks set to happen. NAI’A will voyage throughout the eight Phoenix Islands in June/July 2000 on an exploratory diving and marine research expedition.
As luck would have it, these were not our only dives at Nikumaroro. In fact, along with the project’s chief diver, retired USAF Colonel, Van Hunn, we spent most of the long days in our sticky wetsuits combing the murky lagoon. A former fighter pilot with the patience and gentleness of a saint, Van would cheerfully allow himself to be literally dragged through the mud in the hope that he might simply bump right into a sunken Lockheed Electra.
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Yesterday
Magnetometer don’t wanna play
Now the depth sounder’s been soaked with spray
Oh GPS got washed away
Because TIGHAR’s electromagnetic sensor, magnetometer and sub-bottom profiling sonar were temperamental and time consuming, Gillespie agreed that there was no real harm in manually searching on SCUBA within the lagoon. As William Beebe wrote in The Arcturus Adventure, “There are two kinds of thrills in science; one is the result of long, patient, intellectual study. Another thrill lies in an absolutely unexpected discovery.”
We towed “manta boards” behind one of the skiffs stationed inside the lagoon. While one of us slowly drove up and down a marked grid in the search zone, one or two divers gripped the manta boards below – able to steer and maneuver relatively easily while concentrating on the search rather than the navigation.
Sounds simple? The hitch was the atrocious visibility! Because the lagoon had no deep passage open to the ocean, fine perpetually suspended silt meant we could not even see our hands in front of our faces let alone Amelia’s plane in the distance! We could not see the surface nor the bottom. To maintain a fairly constant and safe depth, we had to watch our depth gauges constantly, holding them where we gripped the boards as close to our faces as possible. Not a minute passed when I did not imagine myself lifelessly impaled on Amelia's rusting propeller beside her skeleton in the cockpit. Every so often we ran into a rock or coral head and stopped to investigate lest it turn out to be the fuselage. Alas, the only other thing we bumped into was the soft marshmallow-like bottom. But there is a lot more lagoon to be covered on Nikumaroro.
Meanwhile, the shore archaeological dig continued. On a quest for aluminum, bones, personal effects –anything that might identify Amelia Earhart or Fred Noonan as past visitors to the island – the shore team was fatigued but focused. Not to mention frustrated by the dense woody Scaevola grove that had to be cleared before anyone could fight or find their way through the vegetation. Nikumaroro is small and narrow, but it was remarkably easy to become lost and out of earshot. I strayed from the marked path one day and within moments was disoriented and confused. Just me and a few hundred voracious coconut crabs. It was easy to imagine Amelia’s loneliness and fear here.
Wasted away again here in scaevolaville
Searching for my dull bush knife and rum
An odd spiritual power encircled Nikumaroro. The very first settlers here in 1938 recognized the place immediately as the legendary home (Nikumaroro) of the Polynesian Goddess of Ocean Navigation, Nei Manganibuka. Prior to the settlers’ arrival, the island was called Gardner. Certain island rituals must be obeyed here, for Manganibuka is known to be fierce and vengeful toward unwanted visitors. Never cut wood after dark because spirits live in the trees. And always rub sand on your face when you first step ashore to hide your foreign odor.
Our crew, while fishing off shore late at night, swore they heard “ghosts breathing”. Perhaps it was actually sperm whales blowing – the Phoenix Islands were the hub of the South Sea Whale Fishery in the 1800s. In fact, it was here that Hermann Melville set his confrontation between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick.
On our first day, each of us – including the crew remaining aboard the ship - heard a twin engine prop plane fly over the atoll. Yet, despite that we were spread all over, not one of us actually saw it. Team members spotted unexplained lights at night emanating from the uninhabited atoll. Swamp gas? Later, five researchers were stranded on shore for two heady nights while swells rose so full and high that we could not safely retrieve them from the landing. They returned unscathed but obviously moved by their impromptu camping experience. However, we could not convince them to reveal what had happened there.
On Nikumaroro
We spent two fine nights
Communing with Nature
And mystery lights
As the weather worsened, we began to wonder if the goddess had cursed us. Rob, distracted by his daily death-defying role driving the skiff that landed equipment and expeditioners ashore and home again, had failed to rub the ritual sand on his face and was heavy with guilt and superstition. But the swells were actually generated 1000 miles away in Fiji where cyclone Gavin was wreaking havoc. And we were actually counting our blessings - until the second larger and closer cyclone developed. The Captain had been religiously monitoring weather reports and radio faxes. Things did not look good.
" Sorry everyone, it's going to get much worse before it gets better.” Rob reported to a team far more disheartened than frightened. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
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It’s a long way to Funafuti
Through the waves and rain and wind
It’s a long way to Funafuti
Where we hope they’ll let us in
Once we got to Funafuti, the real question was, how do we get away? Spooked by the cyclone at sea, many of the team opted to wait for a scheduled aircraft to fly them back to Fiji. Unfortunately, schedules don’t mean much in this part of the world. And the TIGHAR team and ABC film crew were stranded on Funafuti for almost a week! NAI’A and her few hardy sailors enjoyed three glorious days of sunshine and calm seas, ultimately making it home to Fiji before the others.
But fate plays funny games. In tiny Funafuti, as tempers frayed and boredom squeezed the last drops of sanity out of sweaty pores, an unexpected disclosure seemed to salvage the entire expedition and lead TIGHAR into its next exciting chapter. For on Funafuti there lives an old man who was Nikumaroro’s schoolmaster during the brief settlement days. While talking to the researchers about his time living on the atoll, he said he remembered seeing “pieces of an airplane on the lagoon side.”
The saga continues…
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