National Geographic - July 2017

THE LAST HONEY HUNTER | HUMMINGBIRDS | MASSACRE IN MEXICO
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I CO N T E N T S
J U LY 2017 VO L . 232 N O . 1 O F F I C I A L J O U R N A L O F T H E N AT I O N A L G EO G R A P H I C S O C I E T Y
FRONT FEATURES
3 QUESTIONS
Al Gore keeps the climate
change discussion going. 74 DESP ER ATE FOR A CU RE
In Venezuela, public hospitals turn patients away for lack of supplies, and most basic
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VISIONS
Story and Photographs by Meridith Kohut
POSTER
The history of stadiums
EXPLORE
Adventure: deadly wing-
suits, epic ocean voyages,
iron mountain roads
On the Cover In spring, when SPECIAL REPORT: ANTARCTICA SPECIAL REPORT: ANTARCTICA 80|THE LAST
the sea ice retreats to within a 30|THE CRISIS 50|THE BEAUTY HONEY HUNTER
few miles of the Adlie Coast of ON THE ICE BELOW THE ICE
East Antarctica, an expedition 2QO\RQHPDQFDQKDUYHVW
A dramatic rise in sea $SKRWRJUDSKHUQGV the honey guarded by the
of divers and photographers set
out to drill through the ice, dive level is coming. But when? SOHQW\RIOLIHRXULVKLQJ worlds largest honeybees.
beneath it, and exploreas deep By Douglas Fox under Antarctic ice. By Mark Synnott
as 230 feet down. Photographs by Story and Photographs Photographs by
Photo by Laurent Ballesta Camille Seaman by Laurent Ballesta Renan Ozturk
(two images stitched together)
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Go to natgeo.com/corrections. 98|FLIGHT SCHOOL 120|THE MAKING 142|YELLOW RIVER
High-speed cameras OF A MASSACRE AT RISK
freeze hummingbirds in As vengeance for a leak, Rapid development is fuel-
time and reveal the secrets the Zetas drug cartel ing Chinas rise. The cost
of their darts and dives. attacked a Mexican town. may be a vital resource.
By Brendan Borrell By Ginger Thompson Story and Photographs
Photographs by Anand Varma Photographs by Kirsten Luce by Ian Teh
|CONTENTS
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| F R O M T H E E D I T O R | O U R P H O TO G R A P H Y
extraordinary traits. Their wings can Anand Varma sets

S E E I N G B E AU T Y flap as fast as a hundred times a second. up to photograph an
V I A T EC H N O LO G Y In horizontal flight they can go at least
Annas hummingbird in
a virtual reality tunnel
35 miles an hour, and males courtship at the University of
When photographer Anand Varma first dives can hit 60 miles an hour. British Columbia in
Vancouver, Canada.
pitched us a story about hummingbirds To capture these marvels, Varma
in 2011, he says we told him: Thats worked in a lab equipped with still ONLINE
boring. Every photo of a hummingbird cameras that can record action within If you think Varmas still
that can be taken, has been taken. 1/13,500 of a second, video cameras that images of hummingbirds
I wish wed been more polite than shoot 3,000 frames a second, and tools are great, wait until you
see his videoat
that because, as youll see in this issue, that he designed. To get just the right ngm.com/Jul2017.
such a response would make us not only view of a hummingbirds tongue (see
rude but wrong. In fact, no one has seen page 111), he had a glassblower make a
photos quite like this beforeand thats tiny basin with a spout at one end. Varma
especially true of Varmas video of hum- filled it with nectar he concoctedand
mingbirds in action, on our website at trained hummingbirds to drink from it.
ngm.com/Jul2017. Back in 2011 we were right about one
One of our principles of storytelling at thing: Weve done a lot of hummingbird
National Geographic is, Do what others stories. This is the 10th in our 129-year
cant. Others may not have our global history. But this one stands out for its use
reach, our crazy ambition, or the depth of technology to create unique images
of our visual and reportorial journalism. and advance knowledge.
In this case they dont have Anand Var- As Varma says, I take a very technical
ma and his ability to photograph animal approach because I want to find new
behavior and movement in a new way. ways of visualizing familiar creatures.
At first I imagined myself as a con- My hope is to capture peoples imagina-
ventional wildlife photographer who tion and inspire them to see the world
would document animals in their natural with a renewed sense of wonder.
habitat, Varma says. Then I learned that Thank you for reading National
photographing creatures in a controlled Geographic.
environment allowed me to reveal details
that wouldnt be visible any other way.
What kind of details? When it comes
to hummingbirds, there are many Susan Goldberg, Editor in Chief
PHOTO: NICOLAS LOCATELLI

RO L E X PA R T N E R S W IT H N AT I O N A L
G EO G R A P H I C O N A V ITA L M I S S I O N
A message from Gary E. Knell, President as they seek solutions that will ensure a 1DWLRQDO*HRJUDSKLFDQG
and CEO, National Geographic Society: healthy and sustainable future. 5ROH[KDYHVXSSRUWHGWKH
KLVWRU\PDNLQJHQGHDYRUV
How will we pursue these goals? By RIVRPHRIWKHZRUOGVPRVW
National Geographic is synonymous focusing, during the next ve years, on GLVWLQJXLVKHGH[SORUHUV
with exploration. It has been the core of three critical attributes of our planet: the $PRQJWKHPIURPOHIW
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our identity for 129 yearsand no one oceans, the poles, and the mountains.
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For 63 of those years, weve had an tions that lead to scientic discovery, -DPHV&DPHURQ
incredible partner in this mission: Rolex, foster research and invention that will
whose watches explorers have worn to yield new exploration technologies, and
Earths deepest oceans and highest convene summits and activities that gen-
peaks. Rolex has long been driven by erate public support for conservation.
the spirit of exploration, and it contin- To inform and inspire as many citi-
ues to support pioneering ventures in zens of the world as possible, well report
discovery and conservation. on the partnerships work via National
We and Rolex share a passion for ex- Geographics trademark journalism and
ploring the unknown. We also share a photography. We envision a digital story-
deep sense of responsibility toward the telling hub, videos and virtual reality
planet and a recognition of the impor- experiences, social media channels,
tance of protecting its wonders. television programming, lms, maga-
This month were pleased to an- zine articles, and more.
nounce an enhanced partnership with Were profoundly grateful to have
Rolexthe rst of its kind in National Rolex with us on this journey to un-
Geographics historythat further uni- derstand and protect our world, and
es the eorts of our two organizations. to support outstanding explorers like
What are our shared goals in this new those pictured above. With many years
partnership? To advance human knowl- together behind us, its a grand legacy
edge. To raise awareness of the planets on which to build.
challenges as well as its marvels. And to We invite you to explore with us as we
inspire the next generation of explorers dive into this exciting future.
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|3 QUESTIONS|AL GORE
A N U N L I K E LY What do you think the public mis-

OPTIMIST understands about climate change?
I think the overwhelming majority of
With his 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient the public understands very well that
Truth, former U.S. vice president Al Gore climate change is an extremely impor-
drew public attention to the threat of climate tant challenge, that human beings are
change. This July, An Inconvenient Sequel responsible for it, and that we need to
opens in theaters. Gore, 69, says the stakes act quickly and decisively to solve it.
are higher now but the solutions are clearer.
The most persuasive arguments have
come from Mother Nature. Climate-
related extreme weather events are now
so numerous and severe that its hard
to dismiss whats happening. But even
those who dont want to use the words
global warming or climate crisis are
nding other ways to say, Yes, weve
got to move on solar, wind, batteries,
electric cars, and so on. We have so
much at risk.
Why have such sharp political divi-

sions emerged over climate change?
Theres an old saying in Tennessee: If
you see a turtle on the top of a fence post,
you can be pretty sure it didnt get there
on its own. A determined minority
with active financial support from a
few large carbon pollutershas held
up progress for quite a while. They have
used lobbying power and the threat of
financing primary opponents, using
the same techniques we saw in the
past with Big Tobacco to falsely create
doubt. All of us are vulnerable to what
psychologists call denial: If something
is uncomfortable, its easier to push it
away, to not engage. But the solution
is to listen and approach people on the
basis of where they are.
What gives you hope for the future?

There are so many people working
around the world on this that I am ex-
tremely optimistic. It would certainly
be helpful to have policies and laws
that speed up our response. But market
forces are working in our favor. Solar,
wind, and other technologies are getting
cheaper and better. More cities and com-
panies are pledging to go 100 percent
renewable. I believe the sustainability
revolution is unstoppable.
PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON, MAGNUM PHOTOS

THIS INTERVIEW WAS EDITED FOR LENGTH AND CLARITY.
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I VISIONS
O Order prints of select National Geographic photos online at NationalGeographicArt.com.

China
In the Garz Tibetan
Autonomous Prefecture,
a red sea of dwellings for
students and disciples
surrounds Larung Gar, an
academy and monastery
said to be the worlds
largest center of Tibetan
Buddhist learning. The
view is from a mountain-
top overlook at sunset.
PHOTO: YAN GAO
| V I S I O N S | YO U R S H O T. N G M .C O M
Anthony Leutenegger
#N G M A DV ENT U R E Leysin, Switzerland
ASSIGNMENT We asked to see your daily One day last fall Leutenegger heard that someone might
adventures, whether epic or routine, through try to walk a highline between Tour dA and Tour de Mayen,
a lens that reveals the human spirit. Swiss peaks each more than 7,000 feet high. He arrived in
time to frame a man against the clouds covering Lake Gene-
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G E T C LO S E R
T R AV E L W I T H N AT I O N A L G EO G R A P H I C
V E N T U R E TO T H E W O R L D S W I L D P L AC E S W I T H N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C .
W H E T H E R YO U R E O B S E R V I N G W I L D L I F E O N S A FA R I W I T H O U R E X P E R T S,
HIKING THE ANDES ON AN ACTIVE EXPEDITION, OR SHOOTING IMAGES
I N M O N G O L I A A LO N G S I D E O N E O F O U R P R O S O N A P H OTO G R A P H Y
E X P E D I T I O N , W E G E T YO U C LO S E R T H A N YO U E V E R I M A G I N E D.
N ATG E O E X P E D I T I O N S .C O M | 1-888-966-8687
2017 National Geographic Partners, LLC. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPEDITIONS and the Yellow Border Design are trademarks of the National Geographic Society, used under license.
E X P LO R E
A DV EN T U R E
A 65-foot schooner, the WHY,

cuts through ice near Green-
land. Beginning this summer its
French crew will take the ship
from Greenland to Antarctica.
Under the Pole is supported

by Rolex, which partners with
National Geographic on explo-
ration, science, and storytelling.
A F A M I LY O N
THE HIGH SEAS
By Daniel Stone
It started with a husband, a wife, and

their dog.
In 2010 divers Ghislain Bardout and
Emmanuelle Pri-Bardout took their
Siberian husky, Kayak, to the North Pole
to explore the ecosystems beneath the
ice. The pair assembled a team of eight
to shoot photos and video and monitor
the groups health. Kayaks role was to
bark if he saw polar bears.
Under the Poleas their expedition
was first namedhas since grown into a
worldwide quest to explore the most in-
hospitable parts of Earths oceans. In 2014
the full team swelled to 55 people for a
trek to the west coast of Greenland, where
they dived to world-record depths of 364
feet. People said it wasnt possible, but
we believed it was, says Pri-Bardout.
Their trip resulted in films, a book, and
plenty of academic research.
This summer they and their rotating
teamnow up to a hundredare start-
ing the third part of the project: a three-
year excursion to nearly every latitude
on Earth. From France theyll travel past
Greenland, through the Arctic, around
Alaska, down to French Polynesia, past
the tip of South America, on to Antarctica,
and then up north through the Atlantic
back to Europea nearly 50,000-mile
journey. Along the way theyll study life
below a hundred feet, the dark and rarely
seen depths known as the twilight zone.
Theyll also test the limits of dive physi-
ology, attempting deeper dives (breaking
their previous under-ice record) and
diving for longer periodsincluding a
bid for 72 continuous hours submerged.
Bardout and Pri-Bardout have also
expanded their immediate crew. They
now rely on their sons, Robin and Tom,
ages five and one, for an important job.
They change the ambience on board,
says Bardout. If tensions get high, no
one can explode when theres a kid play-
ing with Legos.
LUCAS SANTUCCI, UNDER THE POLE/ZEPPELIN NETWORK
| E X P LO R E | A D V E N T U R E
T H E S P O R T T H AT
SOA R SA N D K I L L S
By Nina Strochlic
In 1997 Patrick de Gayardon donned a

webbed nylon suit and leaped, its be-
lieved, from Norways Kjerag mountain.
The rush of air inflated the suits three
wings, allowing him to glide. This first
modern wingsuit transformed BASE
jumping: named for launch points build-
ing, antenna, span (bridge), and earth.
Previously, BASE jumpers descended
vertically with parachutes. In wingsuits
pilots can perform daring horizontal
stunts such as flying through rings of
fire and narrow rock formations.
But wingsuit pilots are much more
likely to die. The first recorded fatality
from a wingsuit BASE jump was in 2002;
it has since become one of the worlds
most lethal sports. You feel you have ab-
solute control over what youre doing
thats whats become such a killer, says
Jeb Corliss, who has been jumping for
nearly 20 years. We are not birds. We
are not flying. We are falling toward the
ground at incredible speed, and if you do
something wrong, you can die.
Last year was the deadliest on record
for BASE jumpers: Twenty-four of the
estimated 37 killed were wearing wing-
suits. Few jumpers are trained in the add-
ed dangers of wingsuitsfor instance,
how to judge the distance from a cliff
face while hurtling toward it at 150 miles
an hour. In 2017 a company called Next
Level introduced the first curriculum
for progressing from skydiving to BASE
jumping to wingsuit flying. We cant
save the people who want to take maxi-
mum shortcuts and get maximum praise
from their peers after sharing a video
of themselves, says Matt Gerdes, the
co-founder of Squirrel wingsuits. But
at least now they cant say that they
didnt have a choice.
6EDVWLHQ%UXJDOODOHDSVIURPDFOLLQ
Chamonix, France. The town tempo-
rarily banned wingsuit BASE jumping
DIWHUWKHIWKGHDWKWKHUHODVW\HDU
PHOTO: DAMIEN DESCHAMPS

HER FUTURE
C A N B E YO U R
LEGACY
You can leave the world better

than you found it. When you leave
a gift to the National Geographic
Society in your will, trust, or by
beneficiary designation, you can
protect critical animal species for
generations to come. There is no
minimum amount and your gift
costs you nothing now.. Its an easy
way to make a lasting difference.
COPYRIGHT 2017 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY / MICHAEL NICHOLS/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
C R E AT E A L E G A C Y O F YO U R O W N
To discuss your legacy, call (800) 226-4438 or contact us at plannedgiftinfo@ngs.org.
Learn more about the exploration, conservation, and education programs you can
support by visiting nationalgeographic.org.
National Geographic is a 501(c)(3) organization.

E A R LY I S L A N D
C U LT U R E
Artifacts from Palau
that are 500 to 1,200
years old are similar to
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shores settled long ago.
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Bone needle
Shell scraper
The Hokulea, a modern replica of the kind
V OYA G E S O F O L D of double-hulled vessel that brought peo-
ple to eastern Polynesia, takes a test sail
By A. R. Williams before a voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti.
Settling the islands of the Pacific Ocean Once people reached western Polyne-
was one of the greatest maritime adven- sia, their explorations stalled for the next
tures in human history. Some 3,400 years two millennia. The study suggests why.
ago people began to sail from Southeast Sailors started off with the wind at their
Asia, crossing hundreds of miles of open backs, but near Samoa the wind reverses
Drilled bone ornament
water to find specks of land where they and they were stranded. Eventually they
could build new lives. Archaeological learned to sail against the wind, which
evidence provides a time line of when allowed them to continue eastward.
the individual islands were colonized. Going farther, to remote Oceania,
But scientists are uncertain about the required a very different voyaging strat- Shell pendant
precise starting points of the voyages egy from what was used before, says
and how the early sailors managed to University of Oregon archaeologist Scott
travel such long distances. M. Fitzpatrick, who contributed to the
A new study has worked out likely research. No islands were visible, so
scenarios by combining computer sim- sailors had to use a celestial compass.
ulations of seafaring with climatic and They also developed the double-
oceanographic data. Some colonists hulled voyaging canoe, which would
probably set out from the Moluccas in carry them to Hawaii, Easter Island, and Shell adze
northern Indonesia, arriving in Palau, New Zealand on trips lasting up to two
about 500 miles away. Others may have months. Sailing so far was ambitious
left the Bismarck Archipelago near and dangerous and a challenging test of
New Guinea and ended up as far east as endurance, says Fitzpatrick. They were
Samoa and Tonga. exceptional seafarers, no doubt about it. Shell adze
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This climber in the Italian Dolo-

mites is on a via ferrata equipped
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footholds that make the ascent
safer and less arduous.
GETTING A GRIP 53, took a West Virginia via ferrata

three years ago, in part to shake a fear
ON A DV ENTU R E of heights. Tethered to lines anchored
in rock, she could enjoy some of the
By Patricia Edmonds
challenges and scenic heights of rock
When a system of cables, steps, and lad- climbing, but in such a way that I felt
ders was built in the Dolomites to help pretty darn safe. Thrilled with the out-
World War I troops traverse the moun- ing, Farrington began climbing more
tains, it was called a via ferrata (iron and later took a trip to the Dolomites.
road). Today such assisted routes exist Her mountain guide there, Alberto
on six continents and let less seasoned De Giuli, calls via ferrata a perfect ap-
adventurers visit terrain once reserved proach to the vertical world. Its not an
for rock climbers and mountaineers, adventure parkstyle journeyits real
says veteran alpine guide Markus Beck. adventure. You use the cable to help you
Pediatric ER nurse Heidi Farrington, climb, but your feet are on the rock.
PHOTO: MARTIN BRAITO, IMAGE BROKER/AURORA PHOTOS
KNOB CREEK KENTUCKY STRAIGHT BOURBON WHISKEY, 50% ALC./VOL. 2017 KNOB CREEK DISTILLERY, CLERMONT, KY.
celebrate the mystery and beauty of the

EXPLORER HONOR
ocean while bringing attention to the
TO B RI A N S KER RY issues that threaten it, says National
Geographic Society President and CEO
By Patricia Edmonds
Gary E. Knell. To capture those images,
Knell says, Brian has lived on the bottom
Photographer Brian Skerry, who has of the sea, spent months aboard shing
spent more than 10,000 hours under- boats, and traveled in everything from
water exploring the worlds oceans with snowmobiles to the Goodyear blimp.
a camera, is the Rolex National Geo- Skerry is a founding fellow of the SKERRYS AIM
graphic Explorer of the Year for 2017. International League of Conservation I S TO C R E AT E
The award honors individuals who Photographers. He lectures widely on
I M A G E S T H AT
make scientic discoveries and share photography and conservation and has
them to benet the world. It is present- authored 10 books. C E L E B R AT E
ed by Rolex, which recently entered Rolex and National Geographic are THE SEA YET
into a new partnership with National longtime collaborators on the Explorer HIGHLIGHT
Geographic to support exploration. of the Year award, which is presented
Skerry, 55, is internationally known each June during the Societys Explorers E NVIRONMENTAL
for his images of undersea wildlife and Festival in Washington, D.C. PROBLEMS.
environments. A National Geographic We want our families, for genera-
photographer for two decades and a Na- tions to come, to be able to rely on and Top: In New Zealands
tional Geographic photography fellow enjoy our oceans. This is what drives Auckland Islands, Skerry
since 2014, he currently is at work on Brian, Knell says. Its about giving a captured his assistant
Mauricio Handlers close
his 25th feature story for the magazine. voice to the sea and its creatures, many encounter with a southern
Brians images tell stories that of which are endangered. right whale.
3+2726%5,$16.(55<7230$85,&,2+$1'/(5$%29(
1$7,21$/*(2*5$3+,&&5($7,9(%27+
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TRU E DI SCOV ERY

By Kenny Broad
Explorers lie, at least to themselves

myself included. We rationalize our
monomaniacal passions and risktak-
ing under the guise of discovering new
forms of life, identifying remedies from
nature, measuring climate change, or
testing physiological limits.
The truth is that some genetic defect
drives us to do things that make most
people uncomfortable. During the colo-
nial era, ego-based ventures were fueled
by the search for gold and glory. But
explorers today are increasingly moti-
vated by a wider set of goals, including
conservation and education.
In December I was involved in a Na-
tional Geographic Society expedition
supported by the Bahamian government
and local organizations. Our goal was
to map one of the worlds unique eco-
systems: underwater caves, aka blue
holes. Their biogeochemistry creates
hot spots for extremophile life-forms.
They also contain fossils from previ-
ous inhabitants, and their geologic fea-
tures allow us to reconstruct the climate
from hundreds of thousands of years
ago. Whats more, they hold our most
precious resource: freshwater. Call it one-
stop shopping for exploration science.
Underground, we collected imagery
for virtual reality models of cave features
and surveyed using cutting-edge equip-
ment. While the divers were underwater,
schoolkids tracked them with radioloca-
tors, crawled through a constructed cave,
explored underwater with VR headsets,
held fossils and living creatures, and
sampled medicinal plants.
On most expeditions the goal is to go
farthest or deepest. But working with
these kidsand sharing the adventure
of the environment that will be theirs
to managewas the most memorable
exploration achievement for many of
us. By applying new technologies and
University of Miami environmen-
empowering locals, we can discover more tal anthropologist Kenny Broad
about our world, and ourselves. explores a cave in the Bahamas.
PHOTO: JILL HEINERTH

in the Bible, became the capital of the

REVIVING A
neo-Assyrian Empire in 883 B.C., un-
RUINED CITY der King Ashurnasirpal II. At the end
of the seventh century B.C., the empire
By A. R. Williams
collapsed and a coalition of enemies
sacked the city. The relief of the priest
When British archaeologist Max Mal- may have been damaged deliberately in
lowan investigated the neo-Assyrian that attack. We know many things were
site of Nimrud in northern Iraq, he got desecrated as part of the sacking, says
help from someone who loved detective Mark Altaweel, a Mesopotamia expert
workhis wife, Agatha Christie. Despite at University College London.
her busy career, the mystery writer made History repeated itself when Islamic
time every winter from 1949 to 1957 to reg- State militants overran Nimrud in 2014
ister and photograph the artifacts that her after taking the nearby city of Mosul. Agatha Christie photo-
husbands excavations brought to light. Using bulldozers, sledgehammers, and graphs one of the several
WKRXVDQGQHO\FDUYHGLYR-
She probably also took the picture of bombs, they shattered the buildings that ULHVIRXQGDW1LPUXG0DQ\
the stone relief shown above left. That modern Iraqis had restored. But some RIWKHSLHFHVRULJLQDOO\
art, which once adorned a palace wall, things survived, such as this section adorned furniture and ar-
ULYHGLQWKHFDSLWDODVERRW\
depicts a priest performing a ceremony of a relief, above right. As with the one
RUWULEXWHIURPFLWLHVQHDU
before a motif called a tree of life. But the Christie photographed, the scene had WKH0HGLWHUUDQHDQFRDVW
photo reveals something curiousa cut been repaired before. Could it be pieced
around the priests head. Looters in the together again? Most of the site was
19th century are possible culprits, but so probably fractured from the shock waves
are invading soldiers in antiquity. of the explosions, says Altaweel. That
The city of Nimrud, known as Calah means its potentially xable.
3+2726&2857(6<-2+10$//2:$1/()7-(520(6(66,1,0$*1803+27265,*+7
%(770$11$5&+,9(*(77<,0$*(6%27720
| E X P LO R E | B A S I C I N S T I N C T S
C R U S TA C E A N him, cradling her in his legs. Her new H OMA RUS

shell has a new sperm pouch; he thrusts A MERICA NUS
A S S I G N AT I O N a packet of sperm into it using append-
HABITAT/RANGE
ages called gonopods. The deed is done. Atlantic Ocean waters
By Patricia Edmonds
As soon as one mate leaves, the male from northern Canada
will welcome another. The female, to southeastern U.S.
To a lobster couple, this is normal sex: meanwhile, will use the sperm packet
CONSERVATION STATUS
For days the female squirts urine into to fertilize thousands of eggs, which Currently assessed as
the den of her desired mate. Beguiled by shell carry under her tail for about a least concern by IUCN
the scent, he lets her move in. Foreplay year until the larvae hatch.
OTHER FACTS
stroking each other with antennae and But climate change is threatening this
American lobsters sold
with feet covered in taste receptors babymaking process, says Diane Cowan, for food average about
lasts several days. founder of the Lobster Conservancy. 1 pounds; the largest
Once shes convinced that hell protect When water is warm, lobsters put their ever recorded weighed
more than 44 pounds.
her, the female disrobes, slowly shed- energy into growing; when its cold
ding both her hard shell and the pouch winter water temperatures in the 30s
where she had banked sperm from a prior Fahrenheitthey put that energy into
mate. Molting leaves her in a perilously making eggs and sperm, Cowan says. If
soft new shell, so he stands guard for climate change shortens that cold period,
the half hour it takes to harden. Then, theyll produce fewer gametes. And if
supported by his claw legs, he suspends its steadily too warm, they just wont
himself above her and lifts her to face produce. No eggs. No sperm. No lobsters.
PHOTO: JERRY MONKMAN, MYN/NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY

THE CRISIS
S P E C I A L R E P O R T: A N TA R C T I C A
In this two-part feature, see how scientists on Antarcticas

icy surface are tracking the continents meltdown, which
could raise sea levels dramatically and cause a global crisis.
In Part 2, visit the rarely seen and exotic marine world below.
ON THE ICE
A startling sunset reddens the Lemaire Channel,

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7KHFRQWLQHQWVFRDVWDOLFHLVFUXPEOLQJDVWKHVHD
DQGDLUDURXQGLWZDUP
31
BY DOUGLAS FOX
P H OTO G R A P H S B Y C A M I L L E S E A M A N
Seen from above, the Pine

Island Ice Shelf is a slow-motion
train wreck. Its buckled surface
is scarred by thousands of large
crevasses. Its edges are shredded
by rifts a quarter mile across. In
2015 and 2016 a 225-square-mile
chunk of it broke off the end and
drifted away on the Amundsen
Sea. The water there has warmed
by more than a degree Fahrenheit
over the past few decades, and
the rate at which ice is melting
and calving has quadrupled.
The ice shelf is the oating terminus of the Pine Island
Glacier, one of several large glaciers that empty into the
Amundsen Sea. Together they drain a much larger dome of ice
called the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is up to two and a
half miles thick and covers an area twice the size of Texas. The
ice sheet is draped over a series of islands, but most of it rests
on the oor of a basin that dips more than 5,000 feet below
sea level. That makes it especially vulnerable to the warming
ocean. If all that vulnerable ice were to become unmoored,
break into pieces, and oat away, as researchers increasingly
believe it might, it would raise sea level by roughly 10 feet,
drowning coasts around the world.
The ice sheet is held back only by its fringing ice shelves
and those oating dams, braced against isolated mountains
and ridges of rock around the edges of the basin, are starting
32 NAT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C J U LY 2 0 1 7
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LQWRWKHVHDOLNHWKLVRQHLQ$QGYRUG%D\
Hays Glacierr
Hays R
Rayner
ayner Glacierr R
Robert
obert Glacier
Gl r
a
and
nd Wilma Glacier
Gl r
60E
70 E N D E R B Y
L A N D
C.
M A N
M
Mt.t. Menziess
111,007
1,007 ft
ft B E
R T
S O
D
Newly Vulnerable East
33,355
3,3
,355 m R O L A N
Shelf East Antarctica holds the bulk of the continents
ry Ice
Ame
N ice. It was long thought to be stable, even
E A A M
E R
I C A
L A N
D We s t
thickening under heavier snows. But warming
S H I
G H
Ice
She
A N T lf
waters are now undermining its ice shelves too.
T A
80 R C
T 90E
I
C
A Totte
D
Denman
Glacierr
Gl
Glacier
n
nG
laci
er i
85
85 ce
sh
ed
Lake
Vostok
13,370 ft (4,075 m) B d
Bond
ice depth Glacierr
Gl
Glacier
Under the ice 33,976
,976 ft
ft W
Water streams under the ice 11,212
,212 m
along the bedrock toward the sea.
I 13-foot threat
RA SUBGLACIAL BASIN
7KHZDWHUFRXOGOXEULFDWHWKHRZ AURO L
T
To
Totten
ottenn Larger than California, the Totten Glacier
of ice once coastal ice shelves fail.
K
S
South
outh Polee G
Gllacierr
Glacier ice shed holds enough water to raise sea
oscow
Mo
Moscow level 13 feet. The glacier is losing ice now.
E
U i ity
University
lf
Ice Shelf
S
W
I L
Mt. Kirkpatrick
p K
1
14,856 ftt E -3,655
-3
-3,655
655 ft
ft
L
4,528 m
4,528 S -1,114
-1
-1,114
114 m
A R C T I C S
A
A N T U
B
Frostt
Fr
Frost
Glacierr
Glacier
M G
N
L
Byrd
y Glacier
d p
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depression
n
O -3,061
-3
-3,061
061 fftt
-933 m
-933
A
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U
D
-
-9,416 ft
ft I
Stream -2,870
-2
-2,870
870 m A
Ice
la ns S F N L Dibblee
W hil S G
Glacier
lacierr
AST
L B
RO
H
E T A
CO
S S
E A I
IE
Mt. Erebuss
IC
L
112,448
2,448 ft
ft N
33,794
,794 m I
AD
Bindschadler Ice Str

eam N M
Mertz
ertzz
Roo SSea
ea ice extent, February 2017
7
G
Gllacier
Glacier
Islase
eve ((impermanent
impermanent ice))
Ice
Stre
am nd lt S Ninniss
al G
Glacier
lacier
Aye Potential
Mac A
E 305 feet sea-level
Edw
S rise from
ard V
II Pe n .
S melted ice
S
RO
M
Matusevichh
G
Gllacierr
Glacier
Sulzberger
Sulzb r ERODING FROM THE BOTTOM WEST
L d
Land lf
Ice Shelf Warm currents pushing under ice shelves are eating away at ANTARCTICA
Glacierr
Gl
Glacier the Amundsen glaciers and Totten in the east. As the glaciers 14.1 feet
D
DeVi
DeVicq
eVicqq
G
Gllacierr
Glacier H
Hulll retreat down sloping basins, they may pass a point of no return.
G
Gllacierr
Glacier If it all melted
Berryy
Berry Seas would rise 189 feet.
G
Gllacierr
Glacier Anchored glaciers Retreating glaciers
But that would likely take EAST
The glaciers sit in Warm currents push back ANTARCTICA
marine basins, pinned detach-
the grounding line, detach millennia. Under current
174.9 feet
/$85(1&7,(51(<$1'-$62175($71*067$))67(3+(17<621 at the grounding line ing the ice and speeding warming scenarios, Antarctica
WRDVHDRRUULGJH Grounding LWVRZDQGLWVUHWUHDW
6285&(6-(5(0,(028*,127%(51'6&+(8&+/$1'(5,&5,*1278&,59,1($1'
line could add 3.5 feet to sea
1$6$&5<263+(5,&6&,(1&(6352*5$0$1'0($685(60$57,1-6,(*(57,03(5,$/
&2//(*(/21'21:$/70(,(51$6$*2''$5'63$&()/,*+7&(17(5-8/,(11( levels by 2100. Melting glaciers
6752(9(81,9(56,7<&2//(*(/21'21$1'1$7,21$/612:$1',&('$7$&(17(5
3(7(5)5(7:(//(7$/THE CRYOSPHERE7('6&$0%2616,'&-$0(660,7+ Ocean elsewhere could raise that
%5,7,6+$17$5&7,&6859(<3+,/,33(+8<%5(&+7695,-(81,9(56,7(,7%5866(/ current to seven feetenough to
7+(5(,612,17(51$7,21$/$*5((0(17217+(1$0(25(;7(172)$12&($1

&2035,6,1*7+(,&<:$7(566855281',1*$17$5&7,&$ RRGFRDVWDOFLWLHV STORY NAM E HERE 38
6&$/(9$5,(6:,7+3(563(&7,9(
A FAILING BUTTRESS
5,)7 The oating Pine Island Ice Shelf, which supports a massive glacier, is
failing. Warm ocean water is weakening it from below, reaching farther under the -
shelf than ever. Satellite pictures (below) captured the growth of a riftRift 1 on
the large image at rightsome 10 miles in from the sea. It sliced across the width
of the shelf, releasing 225 square miles of ice.
-8/< $8*867
$8*867 $8*867
5,)7
5,)7
Fracture as of
August 6, 2015
)(%58$5< 6(37(0%(5
0 mi 5
0 km 5
39 NAT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C M O N T H 2 0 1 6
6(21*68-(21*2+,267$7(81,9(56,7<(8523($163$&($*(1&<(6$
A Buckling Surface
A Landsat 8 image shows the Pine
,VODQG,FH6KHOIMXVWEHIRUHWKHUVW
icebergs calved along Rift 1. The
next rift had already begun to grow.
The rifts form in zones where warm
ocean currents have thinned the ice,
causing the surface to sag (dark 5,)7 7KHXSVWUHDPULIWLQWKH/DQGVDWLPDJHDWOHIWZDVVWLOO
lines) and the ice to crack from the JURZLQJZKHQWKLVFORVHXSZDVPDGHIURPD1$6$DLUFUDIWLQ
bottom up. The discovery that ice 1RYHPEHU5LIWLVPRUHWKDQDKXQGUHG\DUGVZLGHDQGLWV
shelves can break so far upstream IUHVKO\IUDFWXUHGLFHFOLVWRZHUHLJKWVWRULHVDERYHWKHZDWHU
makes it more likely that we may
VHHVLJQLFDQWFROODSVHRI:HVW
Antarctica in our lifetimes, says
Ohio State glaciologist Ian Howat.
86*6 to fail. All around the Amundsen Sea, on the Pacic coast of
West Antarctica, the ice shelves are weakening and the gla-
ciers behind them are retreating as the ice ows faster into
the sea. The Pine Island Ice Shelf, about 1,300 feet thick over
most of its area, is a dramatic case: It thinned by an average
of 150 feet from 1994 to 2012. But even more worrisome is the
neighboring Thwaites Glacier, which could destabilize most
of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet if it collapsed.
These are the fastest retreating glaciers on the face of the
Earth, says Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the NASA Jet Propul-
sion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Rignot has studied
the region for more than two decades, using radar from air-
craft and satellites, and he believes the collapse of the West
Antarctic Ice Sheet is only a matter of time. The question is
whether it will take 500 years or fewer than a hundredand
whether humanity will have time to prepare.
We have to get these numbers right, Rignot says. But we
have to be careful not to waste too much time doing that.
Getting the predictions right requires measurements that
can be made only by going to the ice. In December 2012 a red-
and-white Twin Otter plane skimmed low over the Pine Island
Ice Shelf. The pilot dragged the planes skis through the snow,
then lifted of and circled back to make sure he hadnt uncov-
- ered any crevasses. After the plane landed, a single person
disembarked. Tethered to the plane by a rope and harness, he
probed the snow with an eight-foot rod.
Finally the scout was satised: There were no buried cre-
vasses that might swallow a landing party. More scientists got
out of the plane. The team, led by glaciologist Martin Trufer
of the University of Alaska, proceeded to set up camp. Their
plan was to spend two months on the ice shelf; they would
be the rst humans to spend even a single night. The ice had
NATHAN KURTZ, NASA T H E CR I SI S ON T H E I CE 41

The melt rates were front of the ice shelf before encroaching sea ice
forced it to retreat north. But that gave the crew
just crazy, researcher enough time to lower scientic instruments
through the water column. They made a disturb-
Adrian Jenkins says. ing discovery. Near the surface, a current was
streaming out from under the ice shelf that was
It was beyond our slightly less salty than the sea around it, because
concept that a glacier it was freshened by melted ice. (The ice is fresh
because it originated as snow falling on West
would melt that fast. Antarctica.) And at depths of 2,000 to 3,000 feet,
along a seaoor canyon that ran straight under
the ice, warmer seawater was streaming in.
Stan Jacobs, an oceanographer from the
long been considered too dangerous to visit. But Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New
Trufers team wanted to bore holes all the way York, quickly understood what was going on.
through the ice shelf, so they could measure the The warm water was coming from the South Pa-
heat eating at it from the seawater below. cic, more than 200 miles north. It was so heavy
As the researchers lay in their tents at night, in with salt that it was following the oor of a sub-
the middle of a 4,000-mile arc of coastline that marine canyon, which sloped down toward the
lacked a single permanent outpost, they heard glacier. The glacier itself had carved that canyon,
loud pops and bangs coming from the ice. Each thousands of years ago during the Ice Age, when
morning they saw new cracks, an inch wide and it and the other glaciers in West Antarctica ad-
seemingly bottomless, cutting across its surface. vanced hundreds of miles out from their present-
During their ve weeks of studying it, the ice un- day positions.
der their boots thinned by another seven feet. Now that same canyon was channeling warm
ocean water under the Pine Island Ice Shelf.
IT TOOK SCIENTISTS A LONG TIME to real- Somewhere tens of miles inland, the warm wa-
ize just how quickly West Antarcticas ice could ter was nding the grounding line: the place
melt. In part thats because the most vulnerable where the glacier lifts of the seaoor and be-
glaciers are so well guarded. In front of the Pine comes a oating ice shelf. Hitting that wall of
Island Ice Shelfthe oating end of the glacier ice, the warm water was eroding it, producing a
the sea surface itself freezes each winter. In sum- steady stream of melt-laden seawater. Because it
mer this fractured sea ice joins icebergs calved was cooler and fresher, it was less dense, and so
from the ice shelves to form a shifting palisade it was rising above the warmer, incoming water
that historically kept ships at least a hundred and owing back out to sea just under the shelf.
miles from the ice shelf. By measuring the amount of this freshwater,
In March 1994 the U.S. icebreaker Nathaniel B. the researchers could estimate how much ice
Palmer became perhaps only the second vessel was being lost. The melt rates were just crazy,
ever to reach it. For a few days powerful winds says Adrian Jenkins, a glaciologist from the Brit-
parted the ice oes, creating a narrow, ephem- ish Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. According to
eral passage for the Palmer to thread. With no his calculations, the ice shelf was losing 13 cubic
accurate maps to guide them, the crew on the miles of ice per year from its underside; back
ships bridge eyed the sonar monitor nervously. near the grounding line, the ice was probably
It showed a chaotic seaoor of canyons and sharp thinning up to 300 feet per year.
ridges, including one that rose within 20 feet of It was just beyond our concept that a glacier
the ships keel. would melt that fast, Jenkins says.
The Palmer would spend just 12 hours at the Over the next 13 years he and Jacobs tried
42 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C J U LY 2 0 1 7
three times to return to Pine Island. Sea ice of the ice shelf, back out to the open sea, it was
blocked them each time. When they nally got melting a lot of it.
back there on the Palmer in January 2009, they
found that the melt rate had increased by about LARGE SWATHS OF WEST ANTARCTICA are
50 percent. This time they came equipped with hemorrhaging ice these days. The warming has
a new tool: a yellow robotic submarine called been the most dramatic on the Antarctic Pen-
Autosub3. Shaped like a torpedo and as long as insula, a spine of ice-cloaked mountains that
a delivery truck, it could navigate autonomously reaches 700 miles up toward the tip of South
under the ice shelf, out of contact with the ship, America. Catching the powerful winds and ocean
for up to 30 hours at a time. currents that swirl endlessly around Antarctica,
On its rst three dives, Autosub3 discovered the peninsula gets slammed with warm air and
that the ice shelf had thinned enough to lift water from farther north. Average annual tem-
of a submarine ridge that, running across its peratures on its west side have risen nearly 5 de-
width, had once supported and stabilized the grees Fahrenheit since 1950several times faster
ice shelf. That had opened a gap that was allow- than the rest of the planetand the winters have
ing warm water to ow in and melt the underside warmed an astonishing 9 degrees. Sea ice now
of the ice even faster. On its fourth dive the yel- forms only four months a year instead of seven.
low robot nearly died. When the crew winched Since 1988, four ice shelves on the east side of
it out of the water, they found its nose cone the peninsula have disintegrated into armadas
smashed and some of its delicate internal equip- of icebergs. (A large and rapidly growing crack
ment damaged. on another shelf, called Larsen C, suggests it
Technicians reconstructed what had hap- might do the same.) Warmer air helped trigger
pened from the subs navigation data. Thirty these collapses by forming meltwater ponds on
miles back, under the ice shelf, Autosub3 had the surface of ice shelves; the ponds drained into
strayed into a chasm on the underside of the crevasses, wedging them deeper into the ice. As
ice. Searching for a way forward, it had smashed the shelves have vanished, the glaciers they once
and scraped against the walls of the chasm stabilized have stampeded into the ocean, accel-
ultimately rising 500 feet up into the labyrinthine erating to two, ve, even nine times their original
bowels of the ice shelf. Finally it had dropped speed. Theyre relatively small glaciers and wont
back out and escaped into open water. raise sea level muchbut their acceleration has
The subs sonar data, meanwhile, revealed the reinforced concerns that the same thing might
breathtaking landscape it had navigated. The happen to the much larger glaciers along the
bottom of the ice shelf was corrugated with not Amundsen Sea.
just one but many channels, which cut as far as The Amundsen Sea is farther south than the
600 feet up into it. The walls of these inverted peninsula, and the air there is not as warm. The
ice canyons were sculpted into terraces, ledges, biggest threat to its glaciers is the mechanism Ja-
and sharp corners, and along the ceiling of each cobs and Jenkins helped uncover: deep subma-
ran a gaping crack that penetrated even farther rine canyons that channel warm water from the
into the ice. north under the ice shelves, and deep inverted
What the hell is going on? Jenkins recalls canyons that focus the warmth on the underside
thinking when he rst saw the sonar maps. of the ice.
What he and Jacobs came to realize was that A satellite survey last year of many Antarctic
the upside-down canyons had been carved, like ice shelvesled by glaciologists Ted Scambos of
rock canyons on land, by owing water. Appar- the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boul-
ently the meltwater rising of the grounding line der, Colorado, and Helen Fricker of the Scripps
was still warm enough to melt more ice. And as Institution of Oceanography in San Diego
it owed for tens of miles along the underside revealed that such melt canyons are common.
T HE CRI SI S ON T HE I CE 43
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Research indicates deep into the ice from below, the unsupported
ice sags, causing the entire shelf to bend and
that the collapse warp. Crevasses erupt along the lines of stress,
on both the top and the bottom of the ice. The
of major glaciers pops and bangs the researchers heard and the
daily opening of new cracks bore witness to
that flow into the the ices gradual failure as it thinned and broke
Amundsen Sea is down beneath them.
As the Pine Island Ice Shelf has weakened and
now unstoppable. the glacier behind it has accelerated, the ice has
stretched and thinned for 150 miles inland from
the coast. The destabilizing efects spread farther
into West Antarctica every year. A little nudge
They tend to fan out and steer warm water to- can get you to several decades of retreating be-
ward the edges of the shelves. The ice there is havior thats hard to reverse, Trufer says.
crucial: It rubs against the stationary banks and In fact, research by Rignot and others over the
slows the ow of the shelf and the glacier behind past few years indicates that the collapse of sev-
it. But that edge ice is also thinner than the rest. eral major glaciers owing into the Amundsen
This is something that bears watching, Scam- Sea is now unstoppable. Between 2002 and 2009
bos said in early 2016. alone, the ice shelf in front of the Smith Glacier
Ian Howat, of the Byrd Polar and Climate thinned by 1,500 feet in some places, the one in
Research Center in Columbus, Ohio, is another front of the Pope Glacier by up to 800 feet. The
glaciologist whos watching Pine Island closely. grounding lines of the Amundsen glaciers have
Last November he reported two ominous new retreated so fartens of miles in some cases
rifts spreading across the ice shelf that threat- that they now rest on seaoor that slopes down
en to prune it to its shortest length in recorded toward the center of the ice sheet. Each incre-
history. As Howat looked back through month- ment of retreat exposes a greater ice surface to
ly satellite photos, he realized that the rifts had warm ocean water. Its a runaway processand
been triggered by a singular event that had scientists are urgently trying to gure out how
happened, unnoticed, three years before. The fast it will run.
strip of torn-up ice anchoring the ice shelf to The ice shelves, Fricker says, are the canary in
its northern bank had suddenly fallen apart, the coal mine. Because theyre already oating,
suggesting it had been undermined by melting they dont raise sea level themselves when they
from below. It blew out just in a matter of days, meltbut they signal that a rise is imminent, as
Howat says, like a zipper, unzipping the side of the glaciers behind them accelerate. Fricker and
the glacier. her team have found that from 1994 to 2012, the
Its unclear when the entire ice shelf might dis- amount of ice disappearing from all Antarctic ice
integrate. The warm water owing underneath shelves, not just the ones in the Amundsen Sea,
it from ofshore is only 4 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit increased 12-fold, from six cubic miles to 74 cubic
above freezing. But roughly 3,000 cubic miles of miles per year. I think its time for us scientists
it arrives every year, which means the ice shelf to stop being so cautious about communicating
is receiving an amount of heat that exceeds the the risks, she says.
output of a hundred nuclear power plants, oper- The retreat and hemorrhage of these gla-
ating 24/7. ciers will accelerate over time, agrees Rignot.
When Trufer and his team camped on the Maybe you dont care much about that for the
shelf in December 2012, they could sense how next 30 to 40 years, but from 2050 to 2100 things
it had already weakened. As the meltwater cuts could get really bad, and at that point listening to
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EHJXQWRORRNYXOQHUDEOHEHIRUHGHSOR\LQJLQVWUXPHQWVWRPHDVXUHKRZIDVWLWVPRYLQJDQGWKLQQLQJ
scientists is irrelevant. Yet after things get really to raise global sea levels by 1.5 to 3.5 feet by 2100,
bad, they could still get worse. depending on how quickly humans continue to
pump out greenhouse gases. Throw in Greenland
MOST OF THE HEAT trapped by our fossil fuel and other rapidly melting glaciers around the
emissions since the industrial revolution began world, and sea level could plausibly rise three to
in the 19th century has gone into the ocean. Most seven feet by 2100.
of the heat now hitting the Antarctic ice shelves, But thats not the worst case: Sea level wont
however, comes from another efect of climate stop rising in 2100. Earths past ofers worrisome
change: Intensied circumpolar winds and cur- clues to what the more distant future might
rents have driven warmer water from ofshore bring. Geologists studying ancient shorelines
onto the continental shelf and under the oating have concluded that 125,000 years ago, when
ice. Much more ocean warming is yet to come, the Earth was only slightly warmer than today,
even if we begin to cut emissions. A lot more heat sea levels were 20 to 30 feet higher. Some three
is on the way to Antarctica. million years ago, the last time atmospheric car-
Scientists are especially concerned about the bon dioxide was as high as it is today, and the
Thwaites Glacier, which by itself could raise temperature was about what its expected to be
global sea level four feet; last fall the British and in 2050, sea levels were up to 70 feet higher than
American science foundations announced a co- today. Yet a collapse of the Greenland and West
ordinated $20 million to $25 million eld cam- Antarctic Ice Sheets would raise sea level only
paign that will deploy ships, planes, satellites, about 35 feet.
and underwater robots to assess the glaciers sta- To consider the worst case, then, scientists
tus starting in 2018. For now, the best estimates must turn their eyes toward East Antarctica, home
suggest that Antarctica will sweat of enough ice to more than three-fourths of all the ice on Earth.
HAYDEN ANDERSON, AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC DIVISION THE CRI SI S ON T HE I CE 47

If Totten Glacier
were to collapse,
sea level could rise
13 feetthreatening
many of the worlds
largest cities.
This past January a twin-propeller DC-3 made

a series of ights from Australias Casey Station
along the East Antarctic coast. Built in 1944,
the plane was packed with modern scientic
equipment. As it ew over the Totten Glacier, a
radar recorded the thickness of the ice. Anoth-
er instrument recorded tiny changes in Earths
gravitational fieldclues to the topography
of the seaoor under the glaciers oating ice
shelf. Now and then a crew member opened the
planes rear door, knelt in the windy opening,
and tossed out a torpedo-shaped object. As the
device splashed into the water, it split in two:
One part oated, sending radio signals back to
the plane, while the other part reeled down 2,600
feet of wire, measuring the water temperature all
the way down.
Until recently the East Antarctic Ice Sheet
was considered secure; unlike West Antarctica,
it sits on high ground. But mapping with ice-
penetrating radar has revealed a low-lying re-
gion cut by glacially carved channels that drop
as far as 8,500 feet below sea levelperfect for
guiding warm ocean water deep into the heart
of the ice sheet. The Totten Glacier is the largest
coastal outlet in this region. If it collapsed, global glacier is already losing a couple of cubic miles of
sea level could rise 13 feetroughly as much as ice per yearsmall potatoes, in Antarctic terms.
all of West Antarctica, Rignot points out. One But Donald Blankenship, a University of Texas
glacier alone. glaciologist who oversees the aerial survey, fears
In January 2015, the Australian icebreaker Au- it could blow up.
rora Australis became the rst ship to reach the In 2016 his team reported evidence from the
front of Totten. Like the Palmer at Pine Island in bedrock that Totten repeatedly has retreated 100
1994, it found deep, warm water owing under to 200 miles inland from its current position
the ice shelf, at a rate of 4.5 cubic miles a day. The meaning it might help explain why sea level was
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so much higher three million years ago. Blanken- cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Copen-
ships surveys have also identied two seaoor hagen, Shanghai, and dozens of othersand its
grooves deep enough to let warm water under looking less crazy all the time. The fuse is lit,
Tottens ice shelf. Last January the team was re- says Blankenship. Were just running around
ning those seaoor maps. mapping where all the bombs are. j
Totten will lose its ice more slowly than West
Antarctica. The worst case coming out of Antarc- Writer 'RXJODV)R[KDVWUDYHOHGWR$QWDUFWLFDYH
tica still seems to be centuries away. But it would times and has spent months on the ice there. This is
mean abandoning many of the worlds largest KLVUVWIHDWXUHIRUNational Geographic magazine.
TIM PEAKE, ESA/NASA THE CRI SI S ON T HE I CE 49

Tendrils of ice-covered brine, or brinicles,
leak from sea ice near East Antarcticas Dumont
dUrville Station. Ephemeral and seldom seen, they
form when trapped, supercooled brine escapes
from the ice and freezes less salty seawater.
T H E B E AU T Y
S P E C I A L R E P O R T: A N TA R C T I C A
A rare look at life beneath the frozen continent reveals

a surprisingly colorful and vibrant world where penguins,
seals, and more exotic creatures thrive in icy waters.
B E LOW T H E I C E 51
A hundred feet below the ice, a feather star waves
its frondlike arms, groping for food particles. Its an
animal, not a planta cousin of sea starsand it
can swim. Photographer Laurent Ballesta dived as
deep as 230 feet to get these shots.
PROMACHOCRINUS KERGUELENSIS
Emperor penguins head for the open ocean in
search of food. The brownish patches above them
are microalgae that cling to the sea ice and start
to photosynthesize in spring. The photographers
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glowing and trailing a dozen stinging tentacles.
These bell-shaped plankton-eaters avoid
direct light, which can kill them.
PERIPHYLLA PERIPHYLLA
S TO R Y A N D P H OTO G R A P H S
B Y L A U R E N T B A L L E S TA
In the morning, when we arrive

on foot from Dumont dUrville,
the French scientific base on the
Adlie Coast of East Antarctica,
we have to break up a thin layer
of ice that has formed over the
hole we drilled the day before.
The hole goes right through
the 10-foot-thick ice floe. Its
just wide enough for a man,
and below it lies the sea. Weve
never tried to dive through
such a small opening. I go first.
Pushing and pulling with hands, knees, heels, and the tips
of my swim ns, I shimmy through the hole. As I plunge at last
into the icy water, I look backto a sickening sight. The hole
has already begun to close behind me.
The bottom surface of the sea ice is a thick slurry of oating
ice crystals, and my descent has set them in motion. Theyre
converging on the hole as if it were an upside-down drain.
By the time I thrust one arm into the icy mush, its three feet
thick. Grabbing the safety rope, I pull myself up inch by inch,
but my shoulders get stuck. Suddenly Im stunned by a sharp
blow to the head: Cdric Gentil, one of my dive buddies, is try-
ing to dig me out, and his shovel has struck my skull. Finally
a hand grabs mine and hauls me into the air. Todays dive is
overbut its only one of 32.
Ive come here with another photographer, Vincent Munier,
at the invitation of lmmaker Luc Jacquet, whos working on a
sequel to his 2005 triumph, March of the Penguins. While Jac-
quet lms emperor penguins and Munier photographs them,
my team will document life under the sea ice. In the winter the
ice reaches 60 miles out to sea here, but weve come in October
2015, at the beginning of spring. For 36 days, as the ice breaks
A curious young Weddell seal, weeks old, comes in
IRUDFORVHXS,WPD\KDYHEHHQWKHSXSVUVWVZLP
says marine biologist Pierre Chevaldonn, who has
worked at Dumont dUrville. Weddell seals are the
most southerly breeding mammal in the world.
59
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siphoning in water to collect food, orange sea
squirts look very simple, like sponges, says
Chevaldonn. Yet theyre quite evolvedtheyre
invertebrates, but the larvae have spinal cords.
SYNOICUM ADAREANUM
Extreme conditions beget
extreme animals. Clockwise
from upper left: Three inches
long, this icebound Antarctic
scallop is probably decades
oldgrowth is slow in the
extreme cold. An isopod
looks like a pill bugand
rolls up when threatened
EXWLVQHDUO\YHLQFKHVORQJ
Sea spiders are another
example of mysterious polar
gigantism: Theyre tiny in
other places, but this one in
Antarctica has legs that span
seven inches. And the sea
star nestled up to a worm-
ridden, treelike sponge? Its
more than a foot across.
CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT:
ADAMUSSIUM COLBECKI; GLYPTONOTUS
ANTARCTICUS; COLOSSENDEIS MEGALONYX;
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bottom dwellers have antifreeze proteins in their
blood that help them withstand temperatures
EHORZr)7KHUHDUHDWOHDVWVSHFLHVRILFHVK
in the frigid waters of Antarctica.
)$0,/<12727+(1,,'$(,&(),6+HIMANTOTHALLUS GRANDIFOLIUS .(/3
64
up and retreats to within a few miles of the coast, well dive
through it, down as deep as 230 feet.
Ive worked for decades as a deep-diving photographer, at
rst in the Mediterranean Sea, where I learned to dive 30 years
ago. Later, a craving for new mysteries took me elsewhere.
Ive dived to 400 feet of South Africa to photograph rare
coelacanths, and for 24 straight hours of Fakarava, in French
Polynesia, to witness the mating of 17,000 groupers. But this
expedition to Antarctica is unlike any other. Here well be
diving deeper than anyone has dived before under Antarctic
iceand the conditions will be beyond harsh.
AFRICA
SOUTH
AMERICA
ANTARCTICA
Dumont dUrville
Station
Getting into our suits takes

an hour. When at last we topple
into the freezing water, were
carrying 200 pounds each.
AT HOME IN FRANCE we spent two years preparing. On a

map of the Adlie Coast pinned to my wall, I chose dive sites
that had a range of bottom depths and were within six miles
or so of Dumont dUrville. We worked with manufacturers to
identify the weak points of classic diving suits. The water was
going to be colder than 29 degrees Fahrenheit. (Salt water re-
mains liquid below freshwaters freezing point of 32 degrees.)
Without dry suits wed die in as little as 10 minutes. With our
improved equipment we could last up to ve hours.
The preparations for each days dive take about as long.
Where we cant slide into holes left by Weddell seals and their
busy teeth, we dig our own with an ice-drilling machine. Seals,
when they need air, somehow nd their way back to their hole;
our greatest dread is getting lost and trapped under the ice.
So we drop a luminescent yellow rope into the hole and pull it
along with us during the dive. At the end we follow it back up.
NGM MAPS THE BEAUTY BELOW THE ICE 65

A Weddell seal accompanies her pup on a swim
beneath the ice. When the juvenile is full-grown,
it will be its moms size: about 10 feet long and
weighing half a ton. These placid seals stay close
to the coast, breathing air through holes in the ice.
LEPTONYCHOTES WEDDELLII
%RG\VWRZHGLQVLGHWKHLFHRHDQDQHPRQH
lets its tentacles dangle in the dark water. Marine
biologist Marymegan Daly says its the only anem-
one species known to live in ice. Scientists cant
say how it penetrates the iceor survives there.
EDWARDSIELLA ANDRILLAE
An octopus jets above a seabed packed with life.
Antarctica has at least 16 species of octopuses.
All have a specialized pigment in their blood called
hemocyanin, which turns the blood blue and helps
them survive subfreezing temperatures.
PARELEDONE SP.
Our suits have four layers: thermal underwear the long polar night, microscopic plankton have
on the inside, followed by an electrically heated not yet begun to bloom and cloud the water. Un-
bodysuit, a thick eece, and a half-inch-thick lay- der the oe its exceptionally clear, because there
er of waterproof neoprene. Theres a hood as well are so few particles to scatter the light. What little
as an underhood, waterproof gloves and heated light there is wells down through the cracks or seal
liners, ns, and 35 pounds of weights. There are holes as if from streetlamps, casting a subtle glow
two batteries for the heated bodysuit, a rebreath- over the underwater landscape.
er to remove carbon dioxide from our exhalations And what a landscape! Only a few species of
(allowing us to dive longer), backup gas cylinders, seals, penguins, and other birds live in East Ant-
and nally, my photography equipment. We look arctica, and no land mammals at all. You might
like astronauts minus the bubble helmets. Just think the seaoor too would be a desert. In fact,
getting into our suits takes an hour and the help its a luxuriant garden, with roots in deep time.
of Emmanuel Blanche, our emergency doctor. Antarctic marine life has been largely isolated
When at last were ready to topple into the from the rest of the planet for tens of millions of
freezing water, were wearing and carrying 200 years, ever since the continent separated from
pounds each. It feels like were learning to dive the other continents and froze over. Since then
The cold anesthetizes our exposed skin and

intrudes into our suits and gloves. It will take
seven months for my damaged nerves to recover.
all over again. Moving is a struggle, swimming the powerful Antarctic Circumpolar Current has
almost impossible. The cold quickly anesthetizes swirled from west to east around Antarctica, cre-
the few square inches of exposed skin on our ating a sharp temperature gradient that inhibits
cheeks, and as the dive wears on, it intrudes into the spread of marine animals. The long isolation
our suits and gloves, biting harder and harder. Its has allowed a tremendous diversity of species,
unbearable, but we must bear it. Toward the end, unique to the region, to evolve on the seaoor.
as were pausing on our ascent to decompress, we At depths of 30 to 50 feet, forests of kelp, with
search for anything to distract us from the pain. blades more than 10 feet long, create a sober,
When we nally crawl or haul ourselves out imposing scene. Farther down, we meet giant
of the freezing ocean, I lie prostrate on the ice, sea stars: At 15 inches in diameter, theyre much
my brain too dulled to think about removing my bigger than those in warmer seas. Then come the
gear, my skin hard and wrinkled, my lips, hands, giant sea spiders. Theyre arthropods, like insects
and feet swollen and numbthen, as my body and spiders on land, and theyre found in all the
warms and the blood starts to ow again, the pain worlds oceans, but in warmer waters theyre rare
is at its worst. Its so intense I nd myself wishing and tiny, nearly invisible to the naked eye. Here,
my extremities were still frozen. After four weeks, as in the Arctic, the sea spiders can span a foot
I cant feel my toes anymore, even in the warmth. or more. Yet their bodies are so small that their
It will take seven months after our return to Eu- internal organs extend into their legs.
rope for my damaged nerves to recover. Below 165 feet, the light dims and we see no
kelp or other plants. Instead, the seaoor is cov-
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY make this worthwhile? ered with thick carpets of feather hydroids (colo-
The light, rst of allits a sight to elate any pho- nial animals related to corals) and with thousands
tographer. At the very beginning of spring, after of scallops. The scallops are four inches across but
may be 40 years old or morethings grow slowly a remotely operated vehicle. Were disappointed
in the Antarctic. At these depths we also notice but still proud, because weve seen these amaz-
feather star crinoids, close relatives of sea stars, ingly delicate creatures live, with our own eyes.
which snag particles of drifting food with up to 20
undulating arms. Crawling and swimming among THE WATERS UNDER ANTARCTIC ICE are like
them are giant isopods that resemble beetles. Mount Everest: magical, but so hostile that you
At 230 feet, the limit of our dives, the diversity have to be sure of your desire before you go. You
is greatest. We see gorgonian sea fans, shellsh, cannot go half-heartedly; you cannot feign your
soft corals, sponges, small shesthe colors passion. The demands are too great. But thats
and exuberance are reminiscent of tropical cor- what makes the images you see here unprece-
al reefs. The xed invertebrates in particular are dented, and the experience of having taken them
enormous. Well adapted to a stable environment, and of having seen this place so unforgettable.
these plantlike animals grow slowly but, it ap- After 36 days we felt wed only begun to plumb
pears, without limitunless something disturbs it. The trip was so intensethe work so hard and
them. How, we cant help wondering, will they exhausting, the sleep each night so deepthat in
respond as climate change warms their world? memory it seems to fuse into a single, 36-day-long
As we ascend to the surface, the biodiversity dive. Our feet and hands froze, but our emotions
diminishes. The shallower waters are a less stable were on a perpetual boil.
environment: Drifting icebergs and sea ice scour One dive toward the end stands out in my
the seaoor, and the seasonal freezing and melt- heart, not for the animals we saw but for the lo-
ing of the sea surface, which removes freshwater cation. At home in France, looking at the Dumont
from the ocean and then returns it, causes dra- dUrville map, I had dreamed about it. Where, in
matic swings in salinity. But there is still plenty this century on this Earth, can you be truly alone?
to occupy the eye. Microalgae cling to the ceiling Where can you see something no one has seen
of ice, turning it into a amboyant rainbow of or- before? On the map I marked the Norsel reef, a
ange, yellow, and green. The ceiling is really more tiny island more than seven miles ofshore from
like a chaotic labyrinth, with layers of ice at dif- Dumont dUrville. In winter its icebound.
ferent levels, and we pass through them slowly, By the time our helicopter ew over it, Norsel
cautiously. One day as Im nearing the hole, I see was in the open sea, a spire of rock just piercing
a mother and baby seal plunge through it. I watch the surface of water more than 600 feet deep. It
them for a long, envious moment as they move was topped with a little ice cap. When the chopper
efortlessly through this fairy landscape. dropped us, we were surrounded by ocean and
On another day, while Im desperate for dis- giant icebergsand well aware of the privilege
traction from the cold, Gentil calls my attention of being where nobody had ever dived.
to a eld of tiny, translucent anemones hanging Summer was coming, and it was a mild, almost
from the oe. Theyre rooted a few inches deep in balmy day, around freezing. But the water was
the stonelike ice, and their tentacles, pierced by still below 29F. Blanche, the doctor, activated
the sun and waving in the current, are sharp and the chronometer: He gave us three hours and 40
shiny. In all my research Id never heard or read minutes. Then we were of, for another soak in
of such animals. Theyre mesmerizing. another world. j
The scientists back at the French base, look-
ing at our pictures, say theyd never seen our ice
French biologist and photographer Laurent Ballesta
anemones either. At rst were very excited; we covered coelacanths for the March 2011 issue. His
think weve discovered a new species. Later we next expedition will take him back to French Polynesia
learn that scientists working in the American to swim at night with gray reef sharks on the hunt.
sector had described the animals two years earli- *R:LWK1DW*HR Explore Antarctica on a National
er, based on photographs and samples taken with Geographic Expedition (natgeoexpeditions.com).
THE BEAUTY BELOW THE ICE 73

After more than two weeks without medication for
kidney disease, Oseas Ros was so weak he could
hardly walk. Here mediums who are adherents of
the religious cult of Mara Lionza channel Viking
spirits in a healing ceremony for him at the base
of Sorte Mountain, near Chivacoa.
74
| D I S PATC H E S | V E N E Z U E L A
Desperate
for a Cure
Venezuelans are turning to
spiritual healers as the nations
health care crisis deepens.
S TO RY A N D P H OTO G R A P H S
BY MERIDITH KOHUT
Y
asmary Daz piled her three chil- N.
dren into the back of a pickup truck AMER. ATLANTIC
OCEAN
one day and made the short but
Caracas
bone-jarring trip from her home in
PACIFIC VENEZUELA
Guarenas up a rutted track to a tiny
OCEAN SOUTH
mountain shack in Zamora made of dried mud AMERICA
and tree branches. She was desperate to cure the
cancer growing in her breast, and with no other
option available, she had come to be treated by
a shaman, a traditional healer who would chan- Bare shelves tell a grim
nel the powerful spirit of an elderly man named story in Silvia Limardos
Emeregildo, who had died decades before. pharmacy, which was
previously considered one
According to custom, she lay down on the
of the best stocked in
bare dirt, surrounded by ickering candles and Caracas. Now its hard or
intricate patterns drawn in white chalk, and LPSRVVLEOHWRQGPRUH
closed her eyes. Standing over her in a cloud of than 85 percent of such
cigar smoke, Edward Guidice, bare chested with essential medicines as
antibiotics and drugs for
strands of colorful beads and wild boars teeth
pain, allergies, epilepsy,
draped around his neck, began to pray aloud and hypertension.
invoking a pantheon of saints and spirits of the
religious cult of Mara Lionza to send a spirit to
take over his body and heal Daz.
Then he knelt down, grazed her breast with Federation reports that more than 85 percent
a razor blade, and covered it with red hibis- of basic medicines are impossible or diicult
cus owers. Leaning in to within inches of her to nd. Pharmacy shelves are bare, and public
chest, he pufed on his cigar, alternately blowing hospitals turn patients away for lack of supplies.
smoke on the skin above the tumor and dripping The government wont disclose health care sta-
red candle wax on it. Tobacco smoke is believed tistics, but in a survey of 92 state-run hospitals
to absorb sickness, and when the ash changes published in March 2017 by the Venezuelan non-
color from black to white, healing is said to be prot Physicians for Health, 78 percent reported
taking place. having no medicines or severe shortages of them.
Daz, 28, is one of likely thousands of Venezu- The same survey also found that 89 percent of
elans now ocking to spiritual healers because hospitals cant regularly perform x-rays and that
their health care system is in crisispart of the 97 percent of medical labs arent functioning at
broader economic collapse in the wake of the full capacity.
late president Hugo Chvezs proigate social- Daz had spent a year waiting for care. Doctors
ist revolution. The Venezuelan Pharmaceutical at her hospital repeatedly turned her away: The
76 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C J U LY 2 0 1 7 NGM MAPS

mammography machine was still broken, there and said, Im afraid, but Im going to go, to see
were no medicines in stock, no chemicals for her what happens.
blood work, no way to develop her x-rays. Unin- Patients arrive with diferent kinds of sick-
sured and living on meager wages earned clean- nesses: heart problems, spine problems, cancer,
ing homes and baking cakes, she couldnt aford problems with their leg, knees, and eyes, Guidice
treatment at an expensive private clinic. says. There are many poor people sufering.
In November 2016 Daz buried her grand- Weeks after seeing him, Daz said the pain in
mother, who had died from untreated cancer. This her breast had subsided. She felt more energetic.
January, after a woman in Dazs extended family Guidice told her that because it had taken so long
died from untreated cancer, child protective ser- for the cigar ash to whiten up, she would need
vices took her year-old baby away. Daz was strick- at least two more sessions. No longer a doubter,
en by the fear that the same thing would happen shes committed to the process. Knocking on
to her children if cancer ended her life too. this door, there can be help that one cannot see.
I never believed in this before, she says of Its like the windyou cant see it, but you can
spirit-medium healing. But that day I stood up feel it. j
DESPERATE FOR A CURE 77

Above: In the mountains outside Guatire, healer Edward Guidice channels the spirit of a venerable chieftain
named Mara and uses tobacco smoke and a mixture of herbs to treat the knees of Rmulo Fuentes. Below:
In Petare, on a street lined with spiritual-healing clinics known as the Alley of the Witches, Glenda Abach
symbolically snaps scissors to alleviate Marcos Cabraless back pain. Up to 80 people a day come to her clinic.
Above: After invoking the spirit of Jos Gregorio Hernndez, a doctor revered for treating the poor for free,
Henry Ruz extracts a tumor from the uterus of Belkis Amalia Ramrez. What happened was a miracle, she
says. Below: Guidice ministers to Yasmary Daz, whose local hospital could operate on her breast cancer only if
VKHSURYLGHGKHURZQPHGLFLQHVDQGSDLGIRUEUHDVWVFDQVDWDSULYDWHFOLQLFZKLFKVKHFRXOGQWDRUGWRGR
The
Last
Honeyy
Hunter
One man from Nepals Kulung culture
harvests black market honey that is
guarded by capricious spirits and
the worlds largest honeybees.
Mauli Dhan climbs a hundred feet up a bamboo rope ladder to his prize:
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By Mark Synnott W AT C H 3 6 0 - D E G R E E V I D E O
Photographs by Renan Ozturk -RLQSKRWRJUDSKHU5HQDQ2]WXUNDVKHGDQJOHV
IURPDFOLWRVHH0DXOL'KDQKDUYHVWUDUHKRQH\LQ
this video at natgeo.com/honeyhunters360.
T
hree hundred feet in the air, Mauli Himalayan honeybees make several types of
Dhan dangles on a bamboo rope honey depending on the season and the eleva-
ladder, surveying the section of tion of the owers that produce the nectar they
granite he must climb to reach eat. The psychotropic efects of the spring honey
his goal: a pulsing mass of thou- result from toxins found in the owers of massive
sands of Himalayan giant honeybees. They rhododendron trees, whose bright pink, red, and
carpet a crescent-shaped hive stretching al- white blossoms bloom each March and April on
most six feet below a granite overhang. The north-facing hillsides throughout the Hongu Val-
bees are guarding gallons of a sticky, reddish ley. The Kulung people of eastern Nepal have used
uid known as mad honey, which, thanks to its the honey for centuries as a cough syrup and an
hallucinogenic properties, sells on Asian black antiseptic, and the beeswax has found its way into
markets for $60 to $80 a poundroughly six workshops in the alleys of Kathmandu, where it is
times the price of regular Nepali honey. used to cast bronze statues of gods and goddesses.
86 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C J U LY 2 0 1 7 BEN KNIGHT

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the river, swollen with monsoonal runof, cascad-

ing down a V-shaped valley.
With each move toward the hive, the holds get
smaller and farther apart. He moves slowly but
with condence until only 10 feet separate him
from his quarry. This nal section of loose, wet
rock ofers hand- and footholds no bigger than
Maulis ngertips, and since he is not attached to
a safety rope, it would be certain death should he
lose his grip. Adding to his challenge, he carries a
25-foot bamboo pole hooked over one shoulder,
and he pinches a bundle of smoldering grass
between the thumb and forenger of his right
hand. A wispy trail of smoke drifts upward from
his hand toward the agitated bees. If air currents
cooperate, the smoke may engulf the bees and
confuse them slightly as he approaches.
The hive pulses like a subwoofer, each beat
sending waves of angry bees into the air. They
continue to swarm Mauli, but he doesnt inch.
Instead he murmurs a Kulung mantra meant to
appease the bees and the spirits that inhabit this
clif: You are Rangkemi. You are of the bee spir-
its. We are not thieves. We are not bandits. We
For Mauli, honey hunting is the only way to are with our ancestors. Please y. Please leave.
earn the cash he needs to buy the few staples he Rangkemi, the guardian spirit of bees and of
cant produce himself, including salt and cooking diicult, dangerous places, has always looked
oil. But no matter how important the money is to after Mauli, and there is no reason to believe he
him and to others in his village far below, Mauli will abandon him now. With this knowledge in
believes it is time to stop doing this. At 57 he is his heart, Mauli shows no fear as he commits to
too old to be attempting this dangerous, seasonal the most diicult part of the climb.
honey harvest. His arms grow tired as the ladder
swings in space. Bees buzz around him, sting- FOR CENTURIES THE KULUNG PEOPLE have
ing him on his face, neck, hands, bare feet, and remained separate from the outside world
through his clothes. thanks to the dense jungle surrounding their
But he pushes aside such thoughts and focuses home in a deep gorge carved by the Hongu
on the problem at hand. He swings his leg over to River. Although Mount Everest is just one val-
the rock face and steps onto a small ledge, barely ley to the north of these Himalayan foothills,
the width of a brick. Letting go of the rope ladder, the area remains isolated and remote. Much
he shules sideways to make room for Asdhan of it is still a mystery, even to wide-ranging
Kulung, his assistant, to join him. Now both men Kulung hunters such as Mauli.
share the narrow ledge. Far below, Mauli can see But every year the outside world gets closer.
LAST HONEY HU NT ER 87
CHINA thatched grass, a sign of his poverty. He may be
ASIA MAP
NEPAL AREA the only one of the small band of hunters allowed
NEPAL Kathmandu to actually rip hives from the rock walls with his
0 mi 150
0 km 150
INDIA own two handsbut clearly the honor does not
convey a great deal of cash.
Its been 42 years since Mauli had the dream
CHINA that put him on this path. It came when he was
H
I Mt. Everest 15, the night after he assisted his father with a
M 29,035 ft
A 8,850 m honey harvest for the rst time.
L A I saw two beautiful women, he recalls. Sud-
KHUMBU Y A
denly I found myself trapped in a spiderweb on
N E PA L the side of a clif. I was struggling to get free when
K oshi
I saw a large white monkey above me. It dropped

Lukla its tail down, and the women helped me grab it.
h
gu
a
Dud
Then the monkey lifted me up, and I escaped.

ol
Hon
Kh
The elders, one of them his father, told him
hu
Chheskam Honey cliffs

ik
L Salleri Saddi un that the monkey was Rangkemi, the guardian

Ar
6,000 ft
0 mi 10
1,830 m spirit of bees and monkeysa sometimes wrath-
0 km 10 ful energy that inhabits dangerous places where
few humans dare to go. They assured him that he
would be guaranteed safe passage onto the clifs,
A dirt road has been cut to within a couple days that the spirit would not retaliate against him and
march of his village, Saddi, and work has begun his family when he took the precious honey. On
on a tourist trekking route that will penetrate into that day Mauli shouldered the rare and diicult
the upper reaches of the valley, connecting Saddi burden of a honey hunter. In the decades since,
and its sister villages to a popular trekking area he has risked his life every spring and fall to har-
just over a pass from the well-known circuits of vest the sweet, mind-bending substance from the
the Khumbu region. A politician has promised to same clifs his father harvested a generation ago.
build a small airport in the area. Mauli was born under the light of a bamboo
Kulung elders like Mauli still refer to Kath- torch across the valley in the village of Chheskam.
mandu as Nepal, a place apart from where It had no formal school, and his classroom was the
they live. In their minds the capital is a for- steep hillside terraces where he spent his youth
eign country, a distant neighbor of their own cutting grass and farming. Poverty and isolation
tiny realm. But the world around them is mean early death for many Kulung. Mauli had
changing so fast that the boundariesand the four brothers, but two of them died; he has been
magicthat have long defined this ancient married and widowed three times, leaving him
community are beginning to fade away. alone to care for his four daughters, two sons, ve
grandchildren, and the few other relatives who
MAULI SITS BESIDE THE FIRE PIT in his ram- scurry in and out of his hut at all hours.
shackle, one-room home. The mud walls, riddled As we sit beside the re pit, Mauli reaches into
with cracks from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake the hip pocket of his rough wool jacket, grabs a
of April 2015, look as if they could cave in at any pinch of homegrown tobacco, and deftly rolls it
moment. Most homes visible from his doorway into a scrap of dried corn husk. He shoves the
have bright blue metal roofs, but his is made of stubby cigarette into the coals and brings it to his
lips. As he exhales, his cloudy, bloodshot eyes re-
Q Society Grant Your National Geographic Society veal the soul of a man who is worn out. Im tired,
membership helped fund this project. and I dont want to do it anymore, he says. The
88 MAP: RILEY D. CHAMPINE, NGM STAFF

SOURCES: HUMANITARIAN DATA EXCHANGE; USGS; NASA
Life-size illustrations
of maximum length
only reason I still do is because Im poor, and no
Giant honeybee
one else will do it. (Apis dorsata)
One of Maulis nephews sits on the only furni- BODY LENGTH*
.87-.98 in
ture in the dark room, a wooden trunk wedged in a
corner. His hair is spiked at wild angles, accenting
his tight jeans and black T-shirt. A large fake-gold
medallion hangs around his neck. He has no inter-
est in following his uncle up the clif faces. Western honeybee
As for his sons, Mauli wont let them harvest (Apis mellifera)
.81-.85 in
the honey. People who climb clifs are idiots,
he says. My kids go to school so they wont have
to do it.
The obvious person to take over as the head
honey hunter is his assistant Asdhan, who is wiry Asian honeybee
(Apis cerana)
and strong, in his early 40s, and a community
.39-.75 in
leader. He and Mauli have worked together on
the clifs for some 15 years, but in all that time
Asdhan has never had the dream and, adhering
to Kulung tradition, has never led the harvest
or touched the precious honeycomb before it is Koschevnikovs bee
(Apis koschevnikovi)
separated from the clif. .71-.75 in
Yeah, Id like to have the dream, Asdhan says,
but I havent, and I dont know why. Of course I
could harvest the honey. But other people have
tried without the dream, and bad things have
happened to them. Their fathers have died, their Philippine honeybee
(Apis nigrocincta)
children have died, their houses have fallen in, and .43-.74 in
their crops have failed. And Im afraid of that.
AT DAWN, AS IS THE CUSTOM during the har-

vest, we follow a shaman deep into the jungle to
Red dwarf honeybee
a tiny clearing from where we can see the honey $SLVRUHD
clifs. There are 10 of us, including Mauli and his .57-.61 in
band. The shaman walks around the clearing,

driving bamboo stakes into the ground and wrap-
ping a long piece of twine around them to form
an enclosure. He hangs bits of meat and other
Black dwarf honeybee
food from the twine and burns incense made (Apis andreniformis)
of cotton soaked in butter. Its pungent smoke .57-.61 in
wafts through the air. Once the ceremony begins,

says the shaman, we must remain in this sacred
enclosure for our own safety. +21(<0$.(56
In one corner the shaman carefully builds The Himalayan giant honeybeethe worlds
a pair of altars from banana leaves. One is for largest honeymakeris a subspecies of Apis
dorsata (top). Only four of the seven species of
Rangkemi; the other is for his companion, honeybees are kept commercially. Dwarf and
the forest spirit Baneskandi. The altars are giant honeybees practice open-air nesting,
provisioned with dried beans, corn, and rice. PDNLQJLWGLFXOWWRNHHSWKHPLQPDQPDGHKLYHV
*WORKER BEES. ALBERTO LUCAS LPEZ, NGM STAFF; KELSEY NOWAKOWSKI

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The honeys The ceremony ends, and as soon as we leave
the enclosure, the camera starts working again.
psychotropic effects The barometric pressure drops, signaling bad
weather, but instead a ray of sun breaks through
result from toxins in the clouds. The shaman plops down on a rock next
the flowers of the to Mauli and opens the bottle of Johnnie Walker.
The others begin to pluck the dead chicken.
massive rhododendron
trees on the north- BACK IN SADDI, Jangi Kulung beckons me into
his home to show of the new, 300-foot rope ladder
facing hillsides. that he and the rest of Maulis helpers have spent
the past two weeks weaving from hundreds of
long, thin strips of bamboo. Jangi is the keeper of
the tools and, for the past 18 years, the brains be-
Rangkemis also includes a bottle of Johnnie hind the honey harvest. With his massive potbelly
Walker Red Label whisky. and sausage-like ngers, he stands out from the
The ceremony begins. The tiny circle is crowd- other honey hunters, who are all wiry and thin.
ed with us, the altars, and two bamboo baskets, Jangi is a born dealmaker, possessing the ruth-
each containing a cackling chicken. Mauli kneels less savvy necessary to get permission for the
before the altars, head bowed, his hands on his harvests from the local forest committees, and
thighs. The shaman has donned a vest made of the contacts to sell the honey and beeswax in
stinging nettles and has wound a colorful sash distant markets in Kathmandu and beyond. He
around his waist. He dances among us, chanting trades other goods as well, sending his team of
in a tongue known only to him and the forest spir- mules loaded with heavy bags of sweet-scented
its that he beckons to our enclosure. In one hand black cardamom to the new dirt roada rugged
he holds a bamboo wand, in the other a gourd two-day trek awayto meet other traders and
lled with water. He continuously dips the wand bring back batteries, instant noodles, cooking
into the gourd and ings the water onto our heads. oil, and beer. Jangi can read, unlike many in
The shaman grabs a chicken and in one smooth the village, and does his own accounting. He ra-
motion slices of its head with a knife. Everyone tions the pay for the eight other members of the
is splattered with blood. He carefully places the honey-hunting teamall his cousinsaccording
lifeless head at Rangkemis altar and rubs some to their duties and experience. Mauli makes the
of the blood onto Maulis forehead. The headless most, about a hundred dollars for three days of
chicken thrashes at our feet. DO NOT leave the death-defying work, twice a year. No one in Saddi
enclosure, commands the shaman. knows how much Jangi earns from the harvest,
As if on cue, several honeybees land on the and he wont tell me, but he is the only person
altar. Inexplicably the camera our documentary in the village who owns a house in Kathmandu.
team is using to lm the ceremony shuts of and For many years the trade in mad honey cen-
wont restart. One of our team members looks at tered on a single trader in Kathmandu who had
his altimeter watch, which shows the barometric a buyer in South Korea, where some people be-
pressure spiking, indicating clear weather. But lieved it improved sexual performance. For a
instead it starts to rain. long time we could basically name our price,
The shaman snatches something invisible out Jangi says. Then someone in Korea ate too
of the air in front of him, brings his hand to his much and died. The death is rumored and not
mouth, and chants into his closed st. He opens proven, but the incident killed the Korean mar-
his hand, inging the invisible object back into ket and drastically reduced the price of the hon-
the thick jungle that surrounds us. ey. One has to be careful not to eat too much of
the honey, says Jangi. Two to three teaspoons is its sharpened end against the comb and begins
usually the correct dose. After about an hour you sawing it from the rock.
are overcome with an urgent need to defecate, After a few minutes the hive breaks free and
urinate, and vomit. After the purge you alter- swings on the rope, just missing Mauli. He cries
nate between light and dark. You can see, and out, the rst loud noise he has made since he left
then you cant see, says Jangi. A soundjam the village hours before. The two men tending
jam jampulses in your head, like the beehive. the re at the foot of the clif cover their heads
You cant move, but youre still completely lucid. as a gooey dark rain and a black hail of dead bees
The paralysis lasts for a day or so. fall upon them.
I will give you some honey, he says, and you
can try it for yourself. MAULIS SON SITS alongside a small river at
the base of the clif, waiting to help carry loads
THE HONEY HUNTERS are sitting on benches of honey, wax, and tools back to the village. The
around a long wooden table while hailstones honey hunters appear in the mistwet, exhaust-
pummel the tin roof above them. The sound is ed, swollen. As Asdhan carefully pulls a few
deafening but not loud enough to drown out their remaining stingers out of Maulis face, his son
animated voices as they argue about whether they pulls out a phone and takes photo after photo.
will leave for the honey harvest in the morning He has a Facebook page; later he may post a shot.
or cancel. A battered jug of raksi, a clear, millet- As with much of rural Nepal, there is cell
based alcohol that tastes like Japanese sake, reception. All the teenagers in Saddi know when
makes the rounds. to gather on the appropriate rock so that they
The next morning its still raining. The deluge can catch a weak 3G signal with their inexpen-
overnight has started a landslide across the river. sive Chinese smartphones. These portals to a
Through breaks in the fog, we watch refrigerator- separate reality, which exists far from the elds
size boulders crash down the hills to the river. in which their parents toil, have instilled in them
The honey hunters gather to talk. The approach a desire to see the world and to earn wages.
to the honey clifa steep and exposed climb up Children these days dont value the culture,
a grassy slope and moss-covered rockwould be Mauli says. If this continues, our culture is going
suicidal in these conditions. Perhaps Rangkemi to disappear. The elders know its the reason no
has spoken. The honey hunters nd a jug of raksi one has had the dreamor if they have, why they
and pick up where they left of the night before. wont admit it.
Its 7 a.m. As the loads of honey and wax are distributed,
A few hours later Mauli, reeking of raksi, is the never-ending bottle of raksi again makes the
making his impossible climb in the rain as large, rounds. No one mentions what were all thinking:
angry honeybees swarm and sting his face. that weve likely witnessed Maulis last honey
By whatever forcehis skill or perhaps hunt, the end of an era.
Rangkemis benevolenceMauli, now obscured Mauli puts the jug to his lips and drinks deep-
on the clif face in a dense cloud of bees, makes it ly. He takes one last look at the clif, shoulders
across to the hive. He carefully places his bundle his bamboo pole, and moves silently up the trail
of smoldering grass on a tiny ledge and wipes the toward home. One by one the other honey hunt-
bees of the hive with his bare hands. The swarm ers, like worker bees following their queen, fall
falls, almost as if it is a single being, and becomes in behind. j
a stinging, writhing fog.
Mauli pokes two wooden pegs through the
0DUN6\QQRWWwrote about Uzbekistans Dark Star
comb and xes them to a thin bamboo rope that cave system in March 2017. 5HQDQ2]WXUNwas part
has been lowered from above by helpers. He pulls of an expedition in Myanmar in Point of No Return,
the long bamboo pole of his shoulder and presses published in our September 2015 issue.
LAST HONEY HU NT ER 97
A captive Annas hummingbird feeds while hovering before an optical
illusion in a reenactment of an experiment that illustrates just how heavily
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SOURCES: BENNY GOLLER AND DOUG ALTSHULER, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, VANCOUVER
Flight
g
School
They move so fast that human eyes see
only a hovering spot of color, a blur of wings.
But when frozen in time by high-speed
cameras, hummingbirds yield their secrets.
99
Sight for flight
By tracking the trajectory and speed of
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By Brendan Borrell
Photographs by Anand Varma
In pursuit of the worlds smallest

bird, weve come to the backyard
of a amingo pink house in Pal-
pite, Cuba. Ornithologist Christopher Clark has a
car full of gear to unload: cameras, sound equip-
ment, a sheer cube-shaped cage. Within minutes
of arriving this May morning, Clark is spinning
around in circles. Hes trying to follow the path of
a bullet with wings as it whizzes from one clump
of orange re bush blossoms to the next. When
the hummingbird pauses to draw sugary fuel
from the owers, his wings continue to beat a
grayish blur too fast for the human eye to resolve.
Even by the Lilliputian standards of hum-
mingbirds, Cubas bee hummingbird (Mellisuga
helenae) is a midgetliterally the smallest bird
in the world. Its iridescent green body weighs a
bit more than the average almond. Locally its
known as zunzuncitothe little buzz-buzz, after
the sound it makesand is even smaller than its
cousin the zunzun, or emerald hummingbird.
What this bird lacks in size, he makes up for
in enthusiasm when he spots a visitor in his ter-
ritory. Shes a comely female, contained by the
sheer cage that Clark brought and has placed on a
corrugated metal roof. If the male notices this fe-
males enclosure, it doesnt dampen his ardor. He )RUDVWXG\RIPDOH&XEDVEHH
helicopters up from his perch on a branch, hovers KXPPLQJELUGVPDWLQJGLVSOD\V
in the air, and lets out a trill in her direction. scientists captured the birds to get
body weight and wing measurements
He climbs higher, until hes a pinprick against
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the cloudy sky. Then, like a roller coaster thats
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reached its apex, he pitches forward and whooshes WHPSRUDULO\GLVRULHQWHGZKHQLSSHG
toward the ground. In an instant the daredevil is on their backsbut within moments
doing it all over again: climb, dive, and swoop. RIEHLQJUHVWRUHGWRWKHLUIHHWWKH\UH
These plunges last a mere second. Then he van- DJDLQ]LSSLQJDURXQG1RELUGVZHUH
ishes, and the only trace of his passage is the KDUPHGLQPDNLQJWKHVHLPDJHV
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leaves trembling in his wake.
Though I stared intently at the courtship show,
I did not see it. VIDEO
Neither did Clark, but he did something better. See video of these hummingbirds
He recorded the display with a high-speed camera in motion at ngm.com/Jul2017.
that slices each second of it into 500 frames. Af- hummingbird mating systems in particular.
ter Clark downloads video of the divethe rst With their rocketing movements and jewel-
ever recorded of this species at that high camera like plumage, hummingbirds seem like a hybrid
speedhe shows the footage to me on his laptop, of esh, feather, and reworks. The wings of some
clicking through every hard-won frame. Only then species ap up to a hundred times per second.
do we see the breathtaking maneuvers that the Their heart rate can exceed a thousand beats per
hummingbirds speed had concealed. minute, and they gulp nectar with a near-invisi-
For the past eight years, Clark has traveled ble ick of the tongue. In gardens or at backyard
from the Arizona desert to the Ecuadorian rain feeders, theyre the denition of eeting beauty.
forest to rural Cuba, recording hummingbird So who could resist the temptation to slow their
courtship displays. Back in his lab at the Universi- motion, to dissect their movementsto inhabit,
ty of California, Riverside, the professor examines even briey, the hummingbirds world?
the videos for what they reveal about humming-
bird ight. His ndings could contribute to our HUMMINGBIRDS LIVE EXCLUSIVELY in the
understanding of animal ight in general and Americas. From southern Alaska to Tierra del
FLIGHT SCHOOL 103

A flip
of the wing
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104 NAT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C J U LY 2 0 1 7
STORY NAM E H E R E 106
107 NAT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C M O N T H 2 0 1 6
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FLIGHT SCHOOL 109

Tongue
twister
Fuego, there are about 340 recognized species. 7KHIRUNHGWRQJXHRIWKLV$QQDV
Of these, 27including the seemingly ubiquitous hummingbird can be seen through
ruby-throated hummingbirdhave been sighted WKHJODVVYHVVHOIURPZKLFKLWVGULQNLQJ
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in the United States. The center of hummingbird
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diversity is in the northern Andes, where 290 spe-
WKDQWKHHTXLYDOHQWRIWKHLUERG\ZHLJKW
cies reside in lowland rain forests, mountaintop LQQHFWDUHDFKGD\YLDDWRQJXHWKDW
cloud forests, and every ecosystem in between. makes a sipping motion up to 15 times
The smallest can weigh less than two grams. The DVHFRQG7RNHHSWKHELUGVKHDOWK\
largest, the giant hummingbird found in Peru LQFDSWLYLW\WKHDUWLFLDOQHFWDUWKH\UH
and Chile, tips the scales at around 20 grams. fed contains protein powder and other
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You could send something that weight in the U.S.
mail with a single rst-class stamp.
Worlds smallest birds is just one of several
distinctions that hummingbird species claim. THE FIRST ATTEMPT to analyze hummingbird
Theyre the only birds that can hover in still air ight is believed to have occurred in Nazi Germa-
for 30 seconds or more. Theyre the only birds ny in the late 1930s. With support from the Reich
with a reverse gearthat is, they can truly y Oice for Educational Film, two German orni-
backward. And theyre the record holders for the thologists secured a camera capable of recording
fastest metabolic rate of any vertebrate on the 1,500 frames a second from a military research
planet: A 2013 University of Toronto study con- institute. With it, they lmed two South Amer-
cluded that if hummingbirds were the size of an ican hummingbird species at Zoo Berlin. The
average human, theyd need to drink more than regime was developing the rst helicopters, says
one 12-ounce can of soda for every minute theyre Karl Schuchmann, former curator of birds at the
hovering, because they burn sugar so fast. Small Alexander Koenig Zoological Research Museum
wonder that these birds will wage aerial dogghts in Bonn. They wanted to know how birds could
to control a prime patch of nectar-laden owers. hover on the spot.
The tongue that sips from those owers is a The images showed hummingbirds to be
specialized organ, nearly transparent, and made more like bees or ies than like other birds, in
up of two tubes rolled up like sheets of cello- that they generate lift on both the downstroke
phane. As the bird drinks, its tongue icks about and the upstroke of their wings. When the or-
rapidly, and as English naturalist William Charles nithologists published their paper in 1939,
Linnaeus Martin noted in 1852, the liquid disap- they compared hummingbirds to the German
pears very fast, perhaps by capillary attraction. Focke-Wulf helicopter.
When Alejandro Rico-Guevara, a postdoctoral In the United States, Crawford Greenewalt had
researcher at the University of California, Berke- served science on the opposite side of the war efort:
ley, made high-speed films of hummingbirds He was an engineer with the Manhattan Project,
drinking from feeders and owers, he found that the U.S.-led program that produced the rst nu-
their forked tongues are more like a catchers clear weapons. A dozen years after the German
mitt than like rigid drinking straws. Each tube ornithologists published, Greenewalt picked up
of the tongue unfurls to snatch the nectar in a the thread of their investigation. His wife, Marga-
hundredth of a second. Then the birds pump the retta, had become interested in bird-watching at
liquid into their gullets by squeezing their beaks. their home in Delaware, and from her Greenewalt
What a 19th-century scientist could only guess at, caught what he called hummingbird fever. His
a 21st-century camera showed in minute detail. hummingbird photographs were rst published in
the November 1960 issue of National Geographic.
Q Society Grant Your National Geographic Society Dissatised with the high-speed motion pic-
membership helped fund this photographic coverage. ture cameras then available, Greenewalt built
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Majesty in
Miniature
his own. He lmed the ight of hummingbirds Unlike other birds, such as pigeons,
inside a homemade wind tunnel, capturing them a hummingbird can y in multiple
at speeds up to 27 miles an hour. As the birds ac- directions, including backward and
celerated from a hovering position, Greenewalt sideways. Its wings can beat up to a
documented the plane of their wings tilting from hundred times per second. Its brain,
horizontal to vertical, redirecting their thrust. at 4.2 percent of body weight, is pro-
The new images were groundbreaking, but portionally one of the largest in the
they didnt solve the mystery of how humming- animal kingdom.
birds can ap their wings as quickly as they do.
Typically, the faster a muscle contracts, the less
force it generates. So how do hummingbirds pro- Bee hummingbird
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duce enough force to stay aloft?
In 2011 Tyson Hedrick and his colleagues
jury-rigged a way to answer that question. A
Common pigeon
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill re- LQFKHVORQJ
searcher who specializes in animal biomechan-
ics, Hedrick knew that hummingbird wings are
diferent from those of their closest relatives, the
swifts. Hummingbird arm bones are relatively +RYHULQJKXPPLQJELUGV
smaller, and most of the wing is made up of the Hummingbirds produce lift with
equivalent of hand bones. To get a penetrating both upward and downward wing
strokes, creating vortices that help
view of the wing moving at top speed, Hedrick with hovering and maneuverability.
coupled a camera that shoots a thousand frames
per second with an x-ray imaging system. Lift
When Hedrick viewed the frames in sequence,

infinitesimal movements of the wing bones
merged into patterns, then continuous motion,
and the wings operation could be seen. Rather
than apping with an up-and-down motion of $LURZ
the shoulder, Hedrick discovered, humming-
birds ap with a twist. This modication gives Downstroke Upstroke
them what amounts to a high gear, so that a 75% RIWKHOLIW RIWKHOLIW
millimeter-length muscle movement is enough

to drive their wings across a wide arc.
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traptions, diicult to operate and lug into the Larger birds such as pigeons use
wing downstrokes to push air jets
eld. Now they can t in a large pocket and are down and behind them, propelling
as essential to hummingbird biologists as binoc- them forward.
ulars are. The sheer magnitude of information
captured by these cameras can be hard to fathom.
To put Clarks 500-frames-per-second videos in
perspective, consider this: At the typical frames-
per-second rate of a theatrical movielets say,
the 1939 classic Gone With the Wind500 frames
is roughly what it took for Scarlett OHara to run
down the staircase, tearfully plead, Rhett, Rhett!
Downstroke Upstroke
If you go, where shall I go? What shall I do? and RIWKHOLIW RIWKHOLIW
Motion detection Sharp memory 3RZHUIXOZULVWV
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mesencephali (LM), larger than in a hummingbird remembers the location allows wrist motion to control
other species, is believed to help RIRZHUVLQLWVWHUULWRU\DQGNQRZV a larger area of the wing, leading
with stabilization while hovering. ZKHQWKH\OOUHOOZLWKQHFWDU to a more powerful upstroke.
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Pigeons LMs, like those SCHUMACHER. ART: VLAD RODRIGUEZ
of most vertebrates, respond SOURCES: CHRISTOPHER CLARK, UC
RIVERSIDE; DOUG ALTSHULER,
mainly to motion from behind, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA;
ANDREW IWANIUK, UNIVERSITY OF
since it could be a threat. LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA
Shaking off
the rain
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four-hundredths of a second and subjects the birds
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The force
of flapping
for Rhett Butler to answer, Frankly, my dear, I An Annas hummingbird hovers inside
dont give a damn, walk out the door, and disap- DVSHFLDOFKDPEHUDW6WDQIRUG8QLYHUVLW\
pear into the fog. WKDWFDQLQVWDQWDQHRXVO\UHFRUGWKH
tiny wave of pressure generated with
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BY SLOWING DOWN TIME, scientists learn more
DQG'DYLG/HQWLQNGHVLJQHGWKLVGHYLFH
about what happens when biology brushes up researchers had to use theories of
against the laws of physics. Theres stuf that you aerodynamics to estimate the forces
absolutely do not see with the naked eye, Clark SURGXFHGE\IUHHO\\LQJDQLPDOV
says. Put a high-speed camera on it, and youre
like, Holy cow! Thats what the birds doing?
When some species spread their tails during
60-mile-an-hour dives, he says, theres a chirping diferent set of rules. In one of Dakins experi-
soundnot from their vocal cords but from the ments, she has them ying through whats es-
uttering of tail feathers as air rushes through. sentially a visual treadmill. Surprisingly, they y
In courtship displays some hummingbird spe- just as fast when vertical stripes are moving with
cies almost double their wingbeat frequency; their direction of motion as against it.
others ap with a single wing. And when the At the moment were watching a green dot jig-
Annas hummingbird pulls up after a stunt, it is gle around on the screen, an indicator that the
subjected to roughly nine times the force of grav- hummingbird is sitting in the dark, doing prac-
ityenough that a human ghter pilot, even one tically nothing. Periodically, he lurches halfway
wearing a specialized G suit, could pass out. down the tunnel but then boomerangs back to
Hummingbirds can do extraordinary things his perch. Its really annoying when they dont
using the same building blocks found in ordinary do exactly what you want them to do, she says
birds, says Doug Altshuler, a comparative phys- which is most of the time.
iologist at the University of British Columbia in Dakin is convinced that hummingbirds have
Vancouver. So studying their lives can tell us a an instinctual wariness of larger shapes that
great deal about general principles of biology. helps them avoid collisions. Today shes play-
On a summer morning a red glow emerges from ing around with projecting more complicated
a doorway of a room that Altshuler has taken to patternsincluding what looks, to my eyes, like
calling Hell. His postdoctoral research colleague, Elvis Presleys hair but is actually supposed to
Roslyn Dakin, greets us with a sheen of sweat on be a ower. To test this, she needs the bird to y
her forehead. The sauna-like atmosphere is gen- the length of the tunnel, which he is stubbornly
erated by six LCD projectors beaming vertical refusing to do.
stripes onto the walls of a tunnel that runs the Suddenly he lets out a chirp, and I watch the
length of the room. Inside that tunnel sits a male green dot it down the tunnel, pause at the feed-
Annas hummingbird, watched from above by a er, and return. Dakin perks up; the day might
panopticon of eight cameras. not be a bust after all. She types a code for this
Dakin is trying to gure out how the birds con- data entry into her computers command prompt
trol their ight. Previous researchers theorized and hits enter. On the screen thousands of coor-
that ying animals have a cruise control circuit dinates coalesce into a rainbow-colored piece of
in their brains to balance movement across their tinsela three-dimensional summary of 15 long
eld of vision. Bees do this. We do it too. When seconds in the fast life of a hummingbird. j
youre driving along a wide, open highway, it feels
natural to be going 70 miles an hour, but if youre
2QFHDQDVFHQWHOGELRORJLVW%UHQGDQ%RUUHOOis a
on a country road lined with trees, youll proba- freelance writer and a correspondent for Outside Mag-
bly tap on the brakes. azine. $QDQG9DUPDis an award-winning photographer
Hummingbirds apparently operate under a and a National Geographic Emerging Explorer.
THE MAKING
OF A MASSACRE
The inside story of a cartels deadly assault on a Mexican town
near the Texas borderand the U.S. drug operation that triggered it
In 2011 the Zetas cartel, seeking revenge against
members believed to be informants, rampaged
through Allende and neighboring towns, killing at
least 60 people. For this stricken community, the
Day of the Dead holiday, when Mexicans honor
their ancestors, has taken on extra poignancy.
121
In their murderous assault, the Zetas rounded up
men, women, and children who had nothing to do
with the betrayal that sparked the cartels wrath.
Among the dead was Edgar vila, who had gone out
to watch a soccer game with a friend. He is pictured
with his wife, Mara Eugenia Vela, and their daughter.
By Ginger Thompson
Photographs by Kirsten Luce
T
heres no missing the signs that
something unspeakable happened
in Allende. Entire blocks lie in
ruins. Once garish mansions are
now crumbling shells, with gaping
holes in the walls, charred ceilings, cracked mar-
ble countertops, and toppled columns. Strewn
among the rubble are tattered, mud-covered
remnants of lives torn apart: shoes, wedding in-
vitations, medications, television sets, toys.
In March 2011 the quiet ranching town of about
23,000, just a 40-minute drive from the Texas
border, was attacked. Gunmen from the Zetas
cartel, one of the most violent drug-traicking
organizations in the world, swept through Allen-
de and nearby towns like a ash ood, demolish-
ing homes and businesses and kidnapping and
killing dozens, possibly hundreds, of men, wom-
en, and children.
But unlike most places in Mexico that have
been ravaged by the drug war, what happened
in Allende didnt begin in Mexico. It began in
the United States, when the Drug Enforcement
Administration scored an unexpected coup. An
agent persuaded a high-level Zetas operative to
hand over the trackable cell phone identication
numbers for two of the cartels most wanted king-
pins, Miguel ngel Trevio and his brother Omar.
Then the DEA took a gamble. It shared the
intelligence with a Mexican police unit that has
long had a problem with leaks. Almost immedi-
ately, the Trevios learned theyd been betrayed. AB OUT THIS STORY
The brothers set out to exact vengeance against ProPublica, an independent,
the presumed snitches, their families, and any- QRQSURWLQYHVWLJDWLYHQHZVURRP
and National Geographic WHDPHG
one remotely connected to them.
XSRQWKLVVWRU\Ginger Thompson,
Their savagery in Allende was particularly sur- D3UR3XEOLFDVHQLRUUHSRUWHUVSHQW
prising because the Trevios not only based some PRQWKVUHVHDUFKLQJWKHPDVVDFUH
operations nearbymoving tens of millions of LQWHUYLHZLQJVRXUFHVRQDOOVLGHV
dollars in drugs and guns through the area each DQGZULWLQJWKHDUWLFOHKirsten Luce
SKRWRJUDSKHGLWIRUNational
monththeyd also made it their home.
Geographic.$GGLWLRQDOUHSRUWLQJ
For years after the massacre, Mexican author- ZDVGRQHE\Alejandra Xanic, a
ities made only desultory eforts to investigate. IUHHODQFHMRXUQDOLVWLQ0H[LFR
They erected a monument in Allende to honor
:LWKLQYLHZRISDVVHUVE\DQGQRWIDUIURPWKHSROLFHVWDWLRQWKHUHGHSDUWPHQWDQGDPLOLWDU\RXWSRVW
the Zetas demolished houses and businesses in Allende. The man who was mayor during the massacre still
lives across the street from this house. He initially reported that he hadnt seen any evidence of violence.
the victims without fully determining their fates. families preyed upon by the cartel and their own
American authorities eventually helped Mexico neighbors; cartel operatives who cooperated
capture the Trevios but never acknowledged with the DEA and saw their friends and families
the devastating cost. In Allende, people sufered slaughtered; the U.S. prosecutor who oversaw the
mostly in silence, too afraid to talk publicly. case; and the DEA agent who led the investiga-
A year ago ProPublica and National Geograph- tion and who, like most people in this story, has
ic set out to piece together what happened in family ties on both sides of the border.
this town in the state of Coahuilato let those When pressed about his role, the agent, Rich-
who bore the brunt of the attack, and those who ard Martinez, slumped in his chair, his eyes
played roles in triggering it, tell the story in their welling with tears. How did I feel about the in-
own words, often at great personal risk. Voices formation being compromised? Id rather not say,
like these have rarely been heard during the drug to be honest with you. Id kind of like to leave it at
war: Local oicials who abandoned their posts; that. Id rather not say.
THE MAKING OF A MASSACRE 125

As the massacre unfolded, local police stood by.
Years afterward, with top Zetas leaders in prison,
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its force, hired new ones, and asked the military to
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THE MASSACRE They embedded themselves in society, marrying
into local families or going into business with them.
As sundown approached on Friday, March 18, Some locals joined the cartels ranks, including sev-
2011, gunmen from the Zetas cartel began pour- eral members of a prominent clan of ranchers and
ing into Allende. coal miners, the Garzas.
Now those connections were proving deadly.
Guadalupe Garca, retired government work- Among those the Zetas suspected of being a snitch
er: We were eating at Los Compadres, and two wrongly, it turns outwas Jos Luis Garza, Jr., a
guys came in. We could tell they werent from relatively low-level cartel operative. When the
here. They looked diferent. They were kids18 truckloads of gunmen descended on Allende, one
to 20 years old. They ordered 50 hamburgers to of their rst destinations was a ranch owned by
go. Thats when we gured something was going Garzas father, Luis, a few miles outside of town
on, and we decided wed better get home. on a poorly lit two-lane highway. After nightfall,
ames began rising from one of the ranchs large
Martn Mrquez, hot dog vendor: Things be- cinder-block storage sheds, where the cartel burned
gan happening in the evening. Armed men began bodies of the dead.
arriving. They were going house to house, look-
ing for the people who had done them wrong. Sarah Angelita Lira, pharmacist and wife of
At 11 at night there was no traic on the streets. victim Rodolfo Garza, Jr.: My husband, Ro-
There was no movement of any kind. dolfo, arrived. He told me, My head is killing
me. Im going to take a shower. He was com-
Etelvina Rodrguez, middle school teacher pletely covered in soot because he was opening
and wife of victim Everardo Elizondo: My a new coal mine. After a while his phone start-
husband, Everardo, usually came home between ed ringing. I thought he had gone to lie down,
7 and 7:30 at night. I was waiting for him. Time but he came out of the bedroom, fully dressed,
passed7, 7:30, 8, 9. I began calling him. The and he looked me in the eye in a way I had never
phone was not in service. I thought maybe he was seen before. Dont leave the house, he told me.
at his mothers house and his battery had died. Theres something going on. I dont know what
I called his mother. She told me that she hadnt it is. But dont leave the house. Ill be back.
seen him and that maybe he was out with friends. After a while, Rodolfo called me. Get out of
But that didnt make sense to me. He would have the house, he said. He told me to ask my cousin
called. So I went out looking for him. to take our daughter, Sofa, and me to my moth-
The atmosphere felt tense. It was nine at night, ers house.
which was not very late, not on a Friday. The His uncle Luiss ranch was on re. And there
town was completely deserted. were a lot of armed men standing outside the gate.
His sister wasnt answering her phone. His father
Lawlessness was not unfamiliar to people in wasnt answering either. He sent one of his work-
Allende. Because of its proximity to the U.S. bor- ers, Pilo, to the gate to see what was going on. Pilo
derresidents do their weekend shopping at the had been in the military. The gunmen opened the
mall in Eagle Pass, Texasthere had long been gate. Pilo went in. But he never came out.
families engaged in smuggling who lived quietly Rodolfo was inconsolable. He couldnt nd his
in their communities. But by 2007 the Zetas had parents. He couldnt nd his sister. And now his
moved in, and the region became a haven for all best worker was gone. He told me he was going
kinds of criminality. Using money and threats, to try to sneak onto the ranch through the back.
the group took control of entire agencieslocal A few minutes later, he called again. He told
police departments, mayors oices, even the cus- me to get out of Allende. Tell your cousin to take
toms oice close to the border. you to Eagle Pass. Dont pack. Just go.
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A Merciless Assault Piedras
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In March 2011 the Zetas cartel conducted a brazen campaign of
violence from Allende to Piedras Negras that killed dozens MEXICO
CO
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possibly hundredsof people and destroyed scores of homes
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and businesses. Cartel leaders ordered the massacre as Nava
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with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Military
checkpoint Luis Garzas ranch
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Many victims were brought to a ranch outside
Allende, owned by the Garza family. The cartel
allegedly turned this storage shed, which held
equipment and animal feed, into an incinerator for
the bodies. Ashes, a rosary, and what appear to
EHEHOWEXFNOHVOLHRQWKHFKDUUHGFRQFUHWHRRU

Evaristo Trevio (no relation to Zetas leaders),
former re chief: Oicers under my command
responded to reports of a re at one of the Garza
ranches. Were talking about less than three kilo-
meters away from Allende. It appeared that the
Garza family was having some kind of gathering.
Among the rst responders was a group of re-
ghters with a backup engine. They noticed there
were certain people connected to criminal orga-
nizations, who told them, in vulgar terms and at
gunpoint, to withdraw. They said there were go-
ing to be numerous incidents. We were going to
get numerous emergency calls about gunshots,
res, and things like that. They told us we were
not authorized to respond.
In my capacity as re chief, what I did was to
advise my boss, who in this case was the mayor. I
told him that we were facing an impossible situ-
ation and that the only thing we could do was to
stand down, out of fear of the threats we faced.
There were too many armed men. We were afraid
for our lives. We couldnt ght bullets with water.
From Allende the gunmen moved north along the

dry, at landscape, rounding up people as they
covered the 35 miles to the city of Piedras Negras,
a grimy sprawl of assembly factories on the Rio
Grande. The attackers drove many of their victims
to one of the Garza ranches, including Gerardo
Heath, 15, and Edgar vila, 36. Neither had any-
thing to do with the cartel or with those the cartel
believed were working with the DEA.
Claudia Snchez, cultural affairs director and

mother of victim Gerardo Heath: At around came, carrying a lot of men with guns. The men
10 that night, my husband called Gerardos cell forced the neighbors and Gerardo into the truck
phone to see what time hed be coming home. and drove away. The boys told me they didnt rec-
Gerardo didnt answer. My husband called again. ognize the men. And since they had weapons, the
No answer. A while later someone knocked on boys didnt dare say anything.
our door. It was a couple of friends of Gerardos Within minutes, we called the mayor of Pie-
from school. They looked terried. I asked them, dras Negras. He was at a wedding. He said that he
Whats the matter? Wheres Gerardo? felt terrible about what had happened to us, but
The boys said, They took him. there wasnt anything he could do. Not a single
I asked, What are you talking about? Who police car came.
took him?
The boys said they saw Gerardo and our neigh- Mara Eugenia Vela, lawyer and wife of victim
bors in front of the neighbors house. A truck Edgar vila: I was at work, waiting for the judge
Claudia Snchezs 15-year-old son, Gerardo Heath, was kidnapped and killed in the attack, although he had
nothing to do with the drug trade. Authorities never recovered his remains. Instead they provided Snchez
ZLWKDQXUQOOHGZLWKGLUWDQGDVKHVIURP/XLV*DU]DVUDQFK6KHSODFHGLWLQVLGHWKLVFU\SW
to sign of on two sentencing reports I had writ- came over, and wearing my pajamas, I went with
ten, when Edgar called to say his friend Too had her and my brother-in-law to Toos house. There
invited him over to watch a soccer match. I was was no one there, but there were signs of a strug-
pregnant, and by the time I got home, I was super- gle. Everything had been thrown around.
tired. Edgar had fed our daughter and given her
a bath. The next morning, Saturday, March 19, the gun-
It wasnt until I woke up at two in the morning men summoned several heavy-equipment oper-
that I noticed Edgar wasnt home. None of my ators and ordered them to tear down dozens of
calls went through. I said to myself, How strange houses and businesses across the region. Many of
that he hasnt called. Edgar always called. the properties were ransacked in broad daylight,
I sat in an armchair the rest of the night and in busy, well-to-do neighborhoods within sight or
waited for him until about 6:30 a.m. Then I called earshot not only of passersby but also of govern-
my sister. I told her he hadnt come home. So she ment oices, police stations, and military outposts.

A drum and bugle corps practices at a state prison in
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had successfully co-opted around the time of the
massacre. Inmates told authorities that the cartel
had nearly unfettered access and had used it for
years as a hideout and an extermination site.

It was as if they had kidnapped me too. They killed
the future we had, the plans, the dreams, the illusions,
the peace, everything.
Mara Eugenia Vela, lawyer and wife of victim Edgar vila
The gunmen invited townspeople to take whatever Mrquez, hot dog vendor: I had two friends
they wanted, triggering a frenzy of looting. who collected and sold junk. They heard that the
ranch was burning and that the owners had left,
Rodrguez, victims wife: Saturday is when ev- so they wenta father and sonto see if there
erything began. Houses began exploding. People was anything worth taking. They said they saw a
began breaking in and looting, and all I could freezer of the highway, a big one. And they want-
think about was where Everardo might be. All ed to take it. But it was really heavy. So the father
day Saturday I spent searching and calling peo- told the son, Lets dump whats inside. They
ple to ask, What have you heard? opened it and saw two bodies. They ran away.
One person told me, I saw armed men. An-
other told me, The warehouses are still on re. Evaristo Rodrguez, a veterinarian, and Al-
The smoke is really black, as if someones burn- lendes deputy mayor at the time: All the
ing tires. Its black, scary smoke. members of the town council met, not in formal
I got a call from a man who worked with my session, but we all gatheredthe council mem-
husband. My husband raised fighting cocks. bers, the public security director. There were
In this region cockghting is very popular. He a lot of questions. The main one was, Whats
worked for Jos Luis Garza, but not full time. In happening? But what everyone really wanted to
the mornings and in the afternoons, he would go know was why. We already knew there had been
to the ranch to feed the animals. gunre and that there were cases of disappear-
The man told me, Theres something bad go- ances and deaths.
ing on at the ranch. We dont know whats hap- There were a lot of questions about what we
pened to all the people. I asked, What do you should do, but no one wanted to take charge. One
mean? What people? of the council members even said, Lets just get
He said that several of the men who worked out of here, before something happens to us.
with my husband had not arrived home the pre- I didnt want to be a hero, but I thought at the
vious night. One was a tractor driver. Another very least we should stay in our oices so that
watered the elds. None had arrived home. people would see that we had not abandoned
I asked him, OK, what do we do? Lets go look them. But all the staf wanted to leave. Everyone
for them. He said, Dont go anywhere near was focused on their own families.
there, or else theyll take you too. With all that we were going through, we dis-
The image of one thing that happened is still trusted everyone. We realized that there was a
with me: people breaking into supply stores two-sided government, the oicial one and the
and carrying away sacks of animal feed, parrots, criminal one that was in charge. We knew that
and cages. They were taking lamps and dining the police were controlled by criminals.
room sets. The director of public security told us, These
The image that sticks with me most is of a tiny are their afairs. He didnt say any more. He
motorcycle with a woman riding on the back. didnt need to. I understood: Dont investigate
She had turned a bedsheet into a sack. She had or intervene, or else.
stufed it full of things and was carrying it like
Santa Claus, with one hand. And with the other Lira, victims wife: The last phone call with
she was holding a lamp. The motorcycle looked Rodolfo was at a quarter to noon. He sounded
like it was going to tip over, but they looked hap- exhausted. He still hadnt heard anything from
py with all the stuf they had taken. his parents. I told him he had done everything
he could for them, and now it was time to think
Q Online ProPublica and National Geographic are
about Sofa and me. I begged him to come meet
HDFKSXEOLVKLQJDQH[SDQGHGYHUVLRQRIWKLVVWRU\ us in Eagle Pass. He said, OK, Im on my way.
RQOLQH7RUHDGLWJRWRngm.com/Jul2017. I never heard from him again.
Snchez, victims mother: Theres no playbook chance to capture its leaders, particularly the Tre-
to tell you what to do when someone steals your vios, known as Z-40 and Z-42, who had killed their
child. There is no rst step. You go crazy. You way to the top of the DEAs target list.
want to run, but you dont know where. You want What Martinez wanted were the trackable
to scream, but you dont know whether anyone is PINs, or personal identication numbers, of the
listening. One of my cousins suggested I put it on Trevios BlackBerry phones. Vasquez had left the
Facebook. So I wrote, Give me back my son. If agent plenty of leverage. His wife and mother were
anyone knows where he is, bring him back to me. still living in Texas.
Vela, victims wife: How can I explain how I Jos Vasquez, Jr., convicted Zetas operative:
felt? It was as if they had kidnapped me that day My wife calls me at like six oclock in the morn-
too. In some ways I died. They killed the future ing. She tells me, Hey, the house is surrounded.
we had, the plans, the dreams, the illusions, the I said, What do you mean, its surrounded?
peace, everything. At that time I had lived lon- She said, Yeah, theres a lot of cops outside.
ger with Edgar than I had lived without him. I said, Well, listen, theyre probably going to
Just think about that. On top of that I was preg- arrest you. Let me call [my lawyer]. Just make
nant, so I couldnt even think of taking any kind sure you dont tell them nothing. Just try to relax.
of sedative. I had to try to stay composed, very Well get you out on bond.
calm, but Id come home and feel like the house Then Richard [Martinez] called me from
was caving in on me. I couldnt nd a place to sit there. He put me on speakerphone, so my wife
down without feeling like the walls were falling. I could hear.
couldnt make sense of this. Despite being a law- He told me he was going to arrest her. I thought
yer, I couldnt make sense of what had happened. he was bluing, so I said, Do what you got to do.
Ernest Gonzalez, assistant U.S. attorney: At the

THE OPERATION beginning all we wanted was for Jos to turn him-
self in and cooperate, so that he could tell us the
Several months earlier, in the Dallas suburbs, the structure of the Zetas organization. I think that
DEA had launched Operation Too Legit to Quit af- would have appeased us at that point because we
ter some surprising busts. In one, police had found really didnt know how closehow nearhe was
$802,000, vacuum-packed and hidden in the gas to Miguel and Omar. We didnt knowuntil he
tank of a pickup. The driver said he worked for a started saying who he was talking to, who he was
guy he knew only as El Diablo, the Devil. seeingwhat they were doing. Thats when our
After more arrests, DEA Agent Richard Marti- perspective of what we could do, and how, began
nez and Assistant U.S. Attorney Ernest Gonzalez to change. We started to try to come up with ideas
determined that El Diablo was 30-year-old Jos about how to capture them.
Vasquez, Jr., a Dallas native whod started sell- When Jos didnt turn himself in, and we saw
ing drugs in high school and was now the leading that he was willing to sacrice his wife, we knew
Zetas cocaine distributor in east Texas, moving we needed to turn the screws even harder, or put
truckloads of drugs, guns, and money each month. more leverage on him.
As they prepared to arrest him, Vasquez slipped Richard tells him, Your moms going to be
across the border to Allende, where he sought pro- charged.
tection from members of the cartels inner circle.
But Martinez and Gonzalez saw an opportunity Vasquez, convicted Zetas operative: I told him,
in his escape. If they could persuade Vasquez to co- Man, listen, man, Ill go to the border right now,
operate, it would give them rare access to the senior walk over and turn myself in. I wont ght you for
ranks of the notoriously impenetrable cartel and a nothing. Ill sign all your seizure papers. Give me

a life sentence. Throw away the key. I dont care.
But leave my wife alone. Leave my mother alone.
Hes like, Listen, the only way your wife
doesnt do no jail time or your mom doesnt do
no jail time is if you cooperate with us.
I said, Richard, I dont want to cooperate,
man. Theres going to be a lot of murders that
come behind this.
He was like, All I have to tell you is if you dont
cooperate, theyre going to do time with you.
I asked Richard, What do you want?
Richard Martinez, DEA agent: I wanted the

numbers. Our hope was to get the Zetas leader-
ship. I gured that those numbers gave us the
best chance to get them.
When it comes down to it, a lot of these guys
ee the United States. But if you grew up here, its
still America, the best country in the world. You
still want to eventually come back to America. If
your family is here, you still want to be around
them. I thought that once Jos realized that the
jig was up, he was going to do whatever he had to
do to help us. I was going to push him to do that
while I had the opportunity.
Vasquez, convicted Zetas operative: I got all

the numbersfor 40, and 42, and all of them.
I didnt know what they were going to do with
them. I thought they were going to try to wiretap
them or something like that. I never thought they
were going to send the numbers back to Mexico. I
told them not to do that, because it was going to
get a lot of people killed. Not only that, I was still
there. I was still hanging around those people. the hands of criminals. An oicial with the unit,
They said they wouldnt. Richard told me I had the sources said, was responsible for the leak. The
to trust him. units leaders at the time didnt respond to multi-
ple requests for interviews.
About three weeks after Vasquez provided the PIN It wasnt hard for the Zetas to narrow the list
numbers to the DEA, the cartels leaders got word of suspected leakers, because very few people had
that one of their own had betrayed them. Law en- access to their PIN numbers. Among them were
forcement sources close to the case said a DEA su- Mario Alfonso Poncho Cullar, the Trevios top
pervisor in Mexico City shared information about lieutenant in Coahuila; and Hctor Moreno, who
the numbers with a Mexican federal police squad was Cullars right-hand man.
known as the Sensitive Investigative Unit, which Without telling Cullar, Moreno had given the
had been trained and vetted by the DEA but still PIN numbers to Vasquez. He was returning a fa-
had a poor record of keeping information out of vor. It was Morenos brother, Gilberto, who had
The Zetas hold on the state of Coahuila has been weakened, and nightlife has returned to Allende.
Hundreds of people gathered last fall for the cabalgata, a festive cowboy parade that goes on for two
to three days, stops at several ranches across the area, and ends with an evening rodeo.
been caught driving the truck with $802,000 in the many times before. Every time 40 planned to kill
gas tank. Facing 20 years in prison, Gilberto had someone in the organization, he would rst make
confessed that he was working for the Zetas and sure he had taken back their merchandise.
that the money belonged to the Trevios. Vasquez He sent me a photo of himself, with drawings
had arranged for his lawyer to represent Gilberto of frogs all over it. At the bottom of the photo he
and promised not to let anyone else in the cartel wrote, Look, the damned frogs had me shot.
know about Gilbertos incriminating statements. Frogs is their word for snitches.
I called 40 and asked him, Hey, whats this
Mario Alfonso Poncho Cullar, convicted about? He didnt answer. All he said was, I need
Zetas operative: How did I know there was trou- to see you. Where are you going to be later?
ble? Because I was holding 596 kilos of cocaine I told him I was going to be at the horse track.
for the cartel, and 40 sent a guy to take it back But I didnt go. I called a couple of my guys, and
from me. Thats something I had seen them do I told them to go see what was going on. After

they got there, they called me and said, Youre THE AFTERMATH
screwed. One of 40s guys was there, cursing my
name because I hadnt shown up. Thats when I For years state and federal authorities in Mexico
knew I had to leave. didnt appear to make a real effort to investigate
I began calling my friends, warning them to get the attack. Estimates of the number of dead and
out too. Unfortunately, none of them listened to missing vary wildly between the oicial count, 28,
me. When 40 couldnt nd me, he went after them. and the one from victims associations, about 300.
ProPublica and National Geographic have iden-
Vasquez, convicted Zetas operative: Hctor tied about 60.
[Moreno] called me and told me that all hell was Relatives were left on their own to piece together
breaking loose. He asked me what I had done what had happened and to rebuild their lives.
with the numbers. I told him that I had turned No family lost more members than the Garzas.
them in to the DEA. Nearly 20 are believed dead, including 81-year-old
I called Richard [Martinez] and said, Whatd Olivia Martnez de la Torre and her seven-month-
you do with the numbers? He said, Man, they old great-grandson, Mauricio Espinoza. The babys
went to Mexico. siblings, Andrea and Arturo Espinoza, ve and
I said, Man, how did you let that happen? I three at the time, turned up at a Piedras Negras
told you what would happen if those numbers orphanage after their parents had been killed.
came to Mexico.
Richard said, Man, it wasnt me. It wasnt Elvira Espinoza, hotel housekeeper and grand-
my call. It was above me. The boss did it. They mother of the Espinoza children: Andrea says
sent the numbers to Mexico, thinking they had a they drove to a place where the houses didnt
friend over there they could trust. have roofs. She said the men took her mother, her
grandmother, and her great-grandmother out of
Vasquez, Moreno, and Cullar ed to the United the car. They told the children, Stay here. Were
States when the massacre began and agreed to just going to talk.
cooperate with U.S. law enforcement in exchange The men kept them there and told them to
for leniency. Their horrifying accounts of what was stay quiet. No crying. Andrea said she changed
going on in Allende made American authorities the babys diapers and made his bottles.
aware of the wrath that the leak had unleashed. She doesnt remember how many days they
were there before the men took her, Arturo, and
Cullar, convicted Zetas operative: I remember Mauricio to Piedras Negras. Andrea said the men
my rst meeting with the DEA. I was telling them dropped her and Arturo in a park, but they took
what was happening in Coahuila, about all the Mauricio with them.
violence. I remember Ernest [Gonzalez] getting Andrea blames herself for what happened to
up from the table, going outside, and confront- him. She says, If I had been stronger, Mauricio
ing one of the DEA bosses. He started shouting would still be with us.
at him. He said something like, Did you hear
whats going on? All this because you sent those Snchez, victims mother: When they [Coahuila
numbers to Mexico. state authorities] gave me the news, my body went
limp. They told me Gerardo had been taken to a
Gonzalez, assistant U.S. attorney: I told him ranch and killed. Something inside told me that
this was bullshit. Things should have never hap- it was true. But I asked, Are you sure it was him?
pened this way. We had information that could They told me that the witnesses had said
have helped us capture these guys, but because there was a family with three boys, and that one
of the way it was handled, the whole thing had of the boys was my son. They said he had started
unraveled. And now it was a goddamned mess. to cry. It was stressing them out, so they killed
The potential for someone to get killed is always
there. But to actually be involved in something like
that is devastating.
Ernest Gonzalez, assistant U.S. attorney
him. Thats when I lost it. How could anyone kill But Martinez agreed to speak. Named agent of
a 15-year-old boy whos afraid, and crying? the year in 2011, he is now battling colon cancer,
The oicials asked me what I wanted. I told and so far aggressive treatment has failed. Russ
them I wanted remains. They said that would Baer, a DEA spokesman, twice ew from Wash-
be diicult, since my son was incinerated along ington, D.C., to Texas to monitor interviews with
with a lot of other people. Instead they brought Martinez and another agent there. As Martinez
me ashes and dirt from the place where he died. spoke, Baer interrupted to stress that the top Zetas
I asked them if I could go there. They told me it were in prison and the agencys investigation was
wasnt safe. I told them I wanted to go anyway. So ultimately a success.
they escorted us in a caravan.
I was struck by how close it was. I thought to Gonzalez, assistant U.S. attorney: Obviously
myself, Gerardo was so strong that if only he could Im devastated by it. You know that in this line
have gotten away and made it to the highway, he of work, there are going to be consequences. The
would have easily managed to make it home. potential for someone to get killed is always there.
But to actually be involved in something like that
Vela, victims wife: They gave me a death certif- and not being able to do anything is devastating.
icate dated the 19th of March 2011the day after The goal was an honorable goal: to try to get
he disappeared. The only thing I asked them was these guys arrested and put in jail so that they
whether they were certain they were right. They would stop killing people. But at that point in the
told me that the forensic specialists had not been investigation, it had the opposite efect.
able to test the fragments that had been recov-
ered, so they couldnt be 100 percent sure. But Martinez, DEA agent: I gave it a shot. Thats the
they told me they were condent that Edgar was way I felt. I did the best I could do that day. I had
there at the time of the massacre. I think its be- the opportunity to get the intelligence and pass
cause they had witness statements. it on. I got it. I cant very well go into Mexico and
I still dont know what to believe. I hadnt heard try to handle it myself.
anything from them in ve years; then, out of no-
where, they ask me to believe the case is solved. Russ Baer, DEA spokesman: As far as what
I bet that if you were able to get a look at my happened in Mexico and the aftermath of the
husbands case le, youd see its empty. compromise, the DEAs oicial position is: Thats
squarely on Omar and Miguel Trevio. They were
The Trevio brothers were eventually captured killing people before that happened, and they
in 2013 and 2015, in operations led by Mexican killed people after the numbers were passed. DEA
marines. Since then, the cartels hold on Coahui- did our job to target them and to try to focus and
la has weakened, and nightlife has returned to dedicate our resources to put them out of busi-
Allende, though many residents remain emotion- ness. We were eventually successful in that regard.
ally scarred. They xate on reports of drug-related Our hearts go out to those families. Theyre
violence, worrying that the Trevio brothers are victims, unfortunately, of the violence perpe-
exerting control over the drug trade from jail. trated by the Trevio brothers and the Zetas. But
The DEA takes credit for the captures but this is not a story where the DEA has blood on
wont say whether it has investigated how the in- its hands. j
formation about the PIN numbers wound up in
the hands of the Zetas. Terrance Cole, Martinezs
supervisor in Dallas, and Paul Knierim, then a Ginger Thompson, D3XOLW]HU3UL]HZLQQLQJUHSRUWHU
KDVFRYHUHG0H[LFRIRU\HDUV6KHZDVSUHYLRXVO\
DEA supervisor in Mexico City who served as a 0H[LFR&LW\EXUHDXFKLHIIRUWKHNew York Times and
liaison with the DEA-trained Mexican federal the Baltimore Sun. Kirsten LuceKDVGRFXPHQWHGOLIH
police unit, declined to be interviewed. DORQJWKH860H[LFRERUGHUIRU\HDUV

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for thousands of years, and today it sustains some 200 million people on the
n and heavy industryand about 40 North China Plain. But its degradation exposes the dark side of Chinas rise.
h China Plain. Yet the region has less By focusing on the dissonance in this fragile landscape, I hope to show
The control of water is a key part of that the price of our material desires comes at a great environmental cost. j
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FURTHER
A G L I M P S E O F W H AT S N E W A N D N E X T
C O L O R I N G S PAC E monochromatic and distant. He sympa- HIGH HONORS

thized when his own son, at age seven, Astrophysicist Neil
deGrasse Tyson is the
By Nina Strochlic posed the question: Back then was the 2017 recipient of the
world in black-and-white? I realized prestigious Hubbard
In 2015 NASA released a trove of black- that hed stumbled upon a poignant ob- Medal, the National
Geographic Societys
and-white photos documenting the servation, says Loughrey. He told his son
award given to leading
American-Soviet space race. The images that the world has always been colorful, scientists and explorers.
show command-center crews at tense but the tools to capture it have changed.
moments, engineers posing with the Having recently colorized a picture See FURTHER into
Apollo mission software codeand the of his grandmother as an experiment, space as Augusts
National Geographic
late John Glenn as a young astronaut Loughrey imagined how color versions looks at specks of
suited up for flight (below). Among those of the NASA photographs could excite a stardust, a radio tele-
sifting through the thousands of images new generation of scientists. Some 300 scopes cosmic light
online was Matt Loughrey, a photogra- hours later, using software that predicts show, and the future
of space travel.
pher based in the Irish village of Murrisk. the real-life colors in a pictures gray scale,
Loughreys father used to tell him Loughrey had transformed a dozen im- PHOTO: NASA; COLORIZATION
BY MATT LOUGHREY,
stories of the space race, but it seemed ages into windows to the vibrant past. MY COLORFUL PAST
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THE LAST HONEY HUNTER | HUMMINGBIRDS | MASSACRE IN MEXICO

Options shown. 2017 Lexus

EARTH LIVE: WILDLIFE IN REAL

COAL STORY: FROM THE ASHES

THE INCREDIBLE DR. POL IS BACK LITERARY TRAVEL

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extraordinary traits. Their wings can Anand Varma sets

PHOTO: NICOLAS LOCATELLI

A N U N L I K E LY What do you think the public mis-

Why have such sharp political divi-

What gives you hope for the future?

PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON, MAGNUM PHOTOS

O Order prints of select National Geographic photos online at NationalGeographicArt.com.

A 65-foot schooner, the WHY,

Under the Pole is supported

It started with a husband, a wife, and

In 1997 Patrick de Gayardon donned a

PHOTO: DAMIEN DESCHAMPS

You can leave the world better

COPYRIGHT 2017 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY / MICHAEL NICHOLS/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

National Geographic is a 501(c)(3) organization.

This climber in the Italian Dolo-

GETTING A GRIP 53, took a West Virginia via ferrata

celebrate the mystery and beauty of the

BLUE Wilderness is made with more

Made with the finest natural ingredients, BLUE

If you want your dog to enjoy a meat-rich diet like

Love them like family. Feed them like family.

TRU E DI SCOV ERY

Explorers lie, at least to themselves

PHOTO: JILL HEINERTH

in the Bible, became the capital of the

C R U S TA C E A N him, cradling her in his legs. Her new H OMA RUS

PHOTO: JERRY MONKMAN, MYN/NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY

In this two-part feature, see how scientists on Antarcticas

A startling sunset reddens the Lemaire Channel,

Seen from above, the Pine

Bindschadler Ice Str

NATHAN KURTZ, NASA T H E CR I SI S ON T H E I CE 41

HAYDEN ANDERSON, AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC DIVISION THE CRI SI S ON T HE I CE 47

This past January a twin-propeller DC-3 made

TIM PEAKE, ESA/NASA THE CRI SI S ON T HE I CE 49

A rare look at life beneath the frozen continent reveals

In the morning, when we arrive

Getting into our suits takes

AT HOME IN FRANCE we spent two years preparing. On a

NGM MAPS THE BEAUTY BELOW THE ICE 65

The cold anesthetizes our exposed skin and

THE BEAUTY BELOW THE ICE 73

76 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C J U LY 2 0 1 7 NGM MAPS

DESPERATE FOR A CURE 77

86 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C J U LY 2 0 1 7 BEN KNIGHT

the river, swollen with monsoonal runof, cascad-

I saw a large white monkey above me. It dropped

Then the monkey lifted me up, and I escaped.

Chheskam Honey cliffs

L Salleri Saddi un that the monkey was Rangkemi, the guardian

88 MAP: RILEY D. CHAMPINE, NGM STAFF

AT DAWN, AS IS THE CUSTOM during the har-

band. The shaman walks around the clearing,

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