We got just close enough to Times Square to see the ball drop at the new millennium. Updates were coming to NY from Said Ahamada in the Comoros. The new resus set up, "Fin Walk One" remained on standby. I was contacted by a filmmaker who came by shooting for English TV, a documentary on the coelacanth that would later play on PBS as a NOVA program. She was making the rounds of the coelacanth folks and Hans had agreed for her to purchase some of his footage to highlight the show. In Indonesia, Mark Erdmann was working with local authorities to establish a conservation program for the coelacanths discovered there. Hans and the Fricke Dive group had taken Jago out there and done some dives. Evidently, Hans and Mark had disagreed on where the submarine should look. Coelacanth caves or crevices were not discovered until Hans had left, and just as in the Comoros, the find was made by sub pilot Jurgen Schauer, this time with Karen Hissman at his side. Now Mark Erdmann was organizing a coelacanth conference to be set in Bali in the fall. I had been invited to submit a paper on my projects, which Mark helped me bring up to speed online.

       I decided that after the conference, I would cross the Indian Ocean to the Comoros and check on the resus set up, before heading home. I had never been to Indonesia, so I planed to take full advantage of that phase of the trip. At the conference, I met John McKosker for the first and only time. He had been the only one supporting us during the capture controversy, taking the position that there was no way to confirm coelacanths were only limited to the Comoros. He had himself, led a capture expedition there in the 70's. Dr Eugene Balon, one of the founders of the C.C.C. was there. Durring an effusive conversation I recall him falling over backwards in his chair, fortunately on sand. We all met at a fancy hotel, the approaches to which were sprinkled with beautiful young delicate-looking prostitutes. Members of the Comorian delegation told me thay had "partaken of the local biodiversity." My talk outlined the various phases of my projects. Then a disciussion group was set up. I was assigned the role of arguing against live capture for an aquarium- since I was familiar with all the arguments, while others argued in favor of it. I was throuroughly trounced by the rest of the group. It was a whole different world of opinion from what I'd grown used to. The filmmakers were there and we all had a rather good time. After the conference ended, I visited several othe Indonesian Islands, Including Komodo, Sumatra, and Flores. On Flores which was far to the east, close to what is now called Indonesian Papua (formerly Irian Jaya ), I conducted interviews with fishermen that led me to suspect coelacanths may live that far east in the direction of New Guinea.

 

              I now headed west, stopping at Reunion and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean on the way to the Comoros. While they looked promising for coelacanths in terms of marine geology, both had an important negative: they were too civilized! Any coelacanths caught there would long ago have been known for what they were. (Mauritius actually had a natural history museum that included a coelacanth display at the time of my visit.) 

            Arriving in the Comoros in November, 2000, I had an odd piece of information tucked in the back of my mind. A family that had been emailing me and buying items from the website had sent me a link to an ebay auction that offered of all things a "coelasafari!" The idea was you won an auction that flew you to Kenya for a visit to a wildlife park and then out to the Comoros for a dive in Jago to see coelacanths. Apparently, Jago was to be in the Comoros in November. I found it hard to believe that a dive to see coelacanths, one of the rarest of animals, was for sale. It must have been a deal to lower the cost of renting the mothership. Thus, I was not as surprised to see Hans as he was to see me. But I didn't mention the ebay deal. He asked about the conference, which he had skipped, and it was clear there had been issues between Hans and Mark. "I won't take Jago again. " And Mark was "arrogant." It turned out he'd also had a falling out with the filmmaker who was due to arrive in the Comoros at any moment. Hans would no longer let her use his footage, and the other woman who had just written a book about the fish, claimed this woman was ripping off her book! Not a happy coelacanth world.

            But I had problems of my own. On a visit to Itsoundzou to see the resus, I was embarrassed and upset to find it deflated and virtually abandoned on the beach. I quickly mobilized Said, got the pool reinflated, refilled it with water, and operated the cool down system for tests. The filmmaker arrived and we were all staying at the same hotel. I helped her set up with some local fishermen for filmming and with traditional makers of fishing line. She had an interesting two man crew, and the four of us flew to the island of Anjouan to interview the fisherman- still living- who had caught the coelacanth that came to the attention of Eric Hunt and the world in 1953.

            Time was running out for my visit. Said and I watched the mothership with Jago on board moving up and down the coast making population survey dives. We tracked it with a rented car. Said had a radio handset lent to him by Hans so they could comuniate from the ship. But the batteries were low. I rigged it to the car's 12v battery and thought I blew the circuit. We flashed headlights at the ship in the evening, but no response. It was now or never to move on the ebay offer. There was no sign anyone else had picked up on it. No tourist had flown in. My flight out was in a couple days.

           The filmmakers had also been trying to contact the ship to interview Jurgen, the sub's pilot and Dr Karen Hissman, operations chief. On this morning (Nov 27th), near the end of my stay, I was to go down to Itsoundzou with the filmmaker and her crew to do an interview in front of the resus facility on the beach. We arrived and the crew was setting up when suddenly we caught sight of a Zodiac approaching the beach. Karen and a boatman were on board. I saw this as my chance to ask her about the ebay dive so I jogged down to the waters edge in front of the approaching boat. The filmmaker and crew stayed back by the resus. We had not started filmming. But a wave caught the Zodiac and surged it forward right into me. I fell into the boat! Seeing the landing was too rough, the boatman backed away taking me with it. In this bizzare manner, I soon found myself on the mothership talking to the captain about the ebay dive. At the moment Hans and the sub were underwater. We made a plan for me to return in the afternoon and the Zodiac took me back to the beach. The film team had left. In the afternoon, I was picked up again along with some of the ship's crew members at an arranged shore location. Hans who was back on the mothership, vouched for my credit to the captain, and my "Dive to Cave 4" as described on the website took place, with Jurgen piloting Jago. Later Hans said, if they had known I was interested, I could have gone on a dive as "ballast." without paying for the auction. At that time more humans had walked on the moon than had seen coelacanths in their natural habitat.