The Explorers Page #2

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and hear the first pictures

in natural sound

ever made in the jungles

of Central Africa

There will be the roar

of the lion

herds of elephants

millions of flamingos

and rivers alive with

the vicious crocodiles

The film was made by Martin

Johnson and his wife, Osa

In 1917, they quit the

Vaudeville Circuit

left their New York home

and began two decades of

exploring and filmmaking

When they began

shooting Congorilla in 1929

wildlife was so plentiful they

needed only to drive into the bush and

turn on their cameras.

The abundance is long gone

To capture what remains, it took

National Geographic photographer

Nick Nichols

weeks of brutal trekking

through the jungles of Central Africa

I have no interest in

wildlife photography for

the sake of it

It's just not justifiable

in this time when

we've got so many habitats

and creatures that are

endangered

In our case,

we're going out in

an unexplored part

of the African forest

We really know

what's out there

but we want to come back

and show everybody and say

"Let's save it."

The job that I do is

considered

one of the most romantic

jobs on earth

Everybody wants to do it

But nobody sees it for

what it really is

being hot, insects

diseases

People see the glamour of

the finished product

or the glamour of the travel

and they want to do it

But they don't really want

to do it

Why do explorers subject

themselves to such hardship?

You've got to have something

that drives you

because you are getting

into the suffering

the hardships, being away

from home

So if you don't feel like

you've got a mission

I don't think you can put

those feet

in front of you when

the going gets tough

There's difficult cultures

difficult political

situations

difficult physical

circumstances

and no guarantee of

anything except that

there's gonna be

an endless number of hurdles

that you're gonna have to

pass over

to pull something out

and make it meaningful

And that is enough to

really deter any

but the most hardened

explorer

There's fleas that burrow

into your feet and lay eggs

You gotta deal with those

You may get 100 a night

that you gotta deal with

There's other animals that

go into your privates and

burrow away

Shuffling in the mud,

looking for animals

There was heat and there

is piranhas

and there is caimans and

there is crocodiles

and killer bees

Then there is the mosquitoes

that bite you

and cause all the different

kinds of malaria

Then there is flies biting

that cause blindness and

elephantitis

It's just endless

It's five a.m.

and I'm going out to

photograph in the fig tree

that [Neil] just rigged

a tree platform in

I'm trying to get pictures

of monkeys and birds

which are real elusive

I have no assurance that

they'll be there

I just hope so

I studied art as a young man

I was a painter and

I wasn't very good at it

As soon as I picked up

a camera

and took

my first photographs

when I was 18 in college

I decided at that moment

that's what I was gonna do

There's something in nature

that is out of our realm

of control

I'm not sure what it is

It's an essence

That's what I have been

looking for all my life

Who knows how to get

a frog to stand up?

It is this word "wild"

which means not controlled

What's behind that is

trying to

find an essence that

I can't define

but we all know what it is

We all know that there's

something edgy out there

that keeps us whole

because we come from

wildness, too

In 1997, when Nichols was

photographing tigers in India

his journey embodied

the new creed of exploration

Unlike earlier explorers

he is not driven by a desire

to return with animals

in cages or trophy heads...

but with pictures?

pictures he hopes will save

these animals from

extinction

When I see an elephant in

a zoo or a tiger in a zoo

I'm looking at a specimen

If we had five gazillion

tigers in zoos

we have no tigers

If they're not out walking

around in the forest

that forest is

not even whole

Tigers are part

of the package, the chain

A tiger won't pose while

Nick snaps its portrait

So his crew rigs intricate

camera traps

to capture a tiger's image

They hope one of

the big cats

will trigger the

motion-sensors on the cameras

We're trying to find a way

to take pictures of tigers

on their terms.

Actually, the tigers are

taking their own pictures

That's what it gets down to

There's no humans here

they come along

whenever they want to

We really wanted just to

find a way

to get into their world

it's such a secret world

Weeks pass? No tigers.

Go in!

Oh, my God, yes!

Yes!

C'mon!

Go in!

My mission is definitely

to look at the earth

as a finite thing and say

let's celebrate this thing

Let's find a way to realize

that it's so precious and

so fragile

The new edge to exploration

is that

we must know how

the planet works

Like Nichols,

Sylvia Earle is driven

by the desire to preserve

what she finds

What drives me to explore?

It's the need to understand

what we're doing

so that we perhaps might

be able to do better

in the future

Earle is the Chuck Yeager

of oceanography

a pioneer of undersea

exploration

Five species of marine life have been

named after her

Earle was raised on a farm in New Jersey

in a time when girls weren't expected go

grow up and have professions, let alone

become explorers.

For me, my playground was

the sea

I knew from the moment

I first saw a horseshoe crab

sort of crawling up

a beach

in New Jersey that I had

to know more

about where it came from

and how it lived

and how it spent its

days and nights

And I've been intrigued

with that ever since

Seventy percent of the

earth's surface is water

but most of it remains

as unexplored as

the New World

was to Columbus

No place on the planet is more difficult

to explore than the deep

There's nothing more

frustrating for a biologist

a scientist such as I

than to go down to 150 feet

or even push the limits

and go over to the edge

of a drop-off

into the sea and know that

you just have to stop

People have always dreamed

of exploring the ocean

But for centuries anything

below a few hundred feet

was impossible to reach...

...until William Beebe and

Otis Barton invented

the bathysphere

a steel ball they hoped

would take them a half-mile

below the surface

It took four years

of testing

before the bathysphere

was ready

Finally in 1934,

Beebe and Barton

jammed themselves in

not knowing if it would be

submarine or a coffin

As they were slowly lowered

into the depths

the pressure built up

to more than 1,300 pounds

per square inch

It was so cold,

Beebe recalled

it was like sitting on

a cake of ice

But they did it

The bathysphere went a

half-mile below the surface

The record stood for

Building on the accomplishments

of Beebe and Barton

Earle has pushed the limits

of underwater exploration

In 1979, untethered and

alone

she dove to over 1,200 feet

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