Philip Bethge

Author: Philip Bethge

  • Papua New Guinea’s Royal Trophy: Are Collectors Key to Saving Giant Butterfly?

    Papua New Guinea is home to the world’s largest butterfly, but oil palm plantations are threatening the rare species’ habitat. Conservationists and local residents alike would like to save the species by lifting a ban on trade in the butterfly and selling it for thousands of dollars to collectors.

    By Philip Bethge

    The butterfly’s silhouette is sharply outlined against the morning sky. It flies high up into the air, beating its wings slowly, more like a bird than a butterfly. Its long, narrow wings are reminiscent of a swallow’s wings, as they shimmer in the sunlight like iridescent sequins.

    The insect makes a wide circle around Grace Juo’s small stilt house and lands on a bright red hibiscus blossom. In Jimun, the language of the indigenous people, the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing butterfly is called a dadakul. It’s the world’s largest butterfly, with females attaining wingspans in excess of 25 centimeters (10 inches). “We are proud of our butterfly, and we take good care of it,” says Juo, glancing at the insect, which has now inserted its long proboscis into the flower.

    Juo, a Melanesian, lives in Kawowoki, a small village of huts on the Managalas Plateau in eastern Papua New Guinea. The volcanic soil here is dark and heavy, and the rainforest is an exuberant shade of green. The plateau is the last remaining habitat of any significant size of the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing butterfly, one of the world’s rarest insects. Some butterfly collectors would pay thousands of dollars for a single specimen. Local residents like Juo hope that they will soon benefit from the appetites of trophy-hungry collectors.

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    But multinational corporations believe that oil and natural gas deposits lie beneath the tropical paradise and the rainforest is threatened. Prospectors have also found copper and gold, and oil palm plantations are proliferating in the region.

    The temptations of the modern age are reaching Papua New Guinea, a country divided into hundreds of ethnic groups. It has a disastrous infrastructure, is wracked by tribal feuds and is at a high risk for disease epidemics. The history of the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing butterfly isn’t just the tale of a rare species. It also revolves around the question of how to go about protecting species in a developing country that is undergoing rapid change.

    The search for answers begins behind a barbed-wire fence in Port Moresby, the capital city. Armed guards provide security against the city’s criminal gangs, known as “rascals.” A rattling air-conditioner helps to stave off the heat and humidity in the office of the organization Partners with Melanesians.

    A Conservation Plan

    Kenn Mondiai and Rufus Mahuru are sitting at a dark table, explaining their rescue plan. “For the last seven years, we’ve been discussing ways to save the Managalas Plateau together with the local people,” says Mondiai, a heavy man with a round face and a moustache. The activist wants to transform the habitat of the giant butterflies into one of the largest conservation areas in Oceania. “The butterfly helps us convince the people to support this cause,” he says. “It symbolizes the diversity and value of our nature.”

    British naturalist Albert Meek was the first European to spot the giant butterfly in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. Hired by the zoologist Lord Walter Rothschild, Meek explored the region in 1906 to find fresh trophies for Rothschild’s private zoological museum in the English town of Tring.

    One day, Meek discovered a butterfly flying at a high altitude, and promptly brought it down with a shotgun. The adventurer dissected the butterfly and sent it to England. Rothschild named the animal “Ornithoptera alexandrae,” in honor of Queen Alexandra, the wife of King Edward VII.

    Meek’s first specimen was a female. A year later, he captured a male near Popondetta in Papua New Guinea’s Oro Province. Today the town can be reached by taking a half-hour flight from the capital. This is followed by an exhausting trip by Land Cruiser on muddy trails.

    Several bridges were washed away in a recent flood, and the SUV struggles through hip-high water, even getting stuck in the sandy riverbed for a while. After a grueling, three-hour drive, we reach the Managalas Plateau, 36,000 hectares (about 140 square miles) of privately owned rainforest, populated by about 20,000 people from 10 different cultures, each with its own dialect.

    Tall trees, covered with vines and orchids, stand next to wild banana trees, coconut palms and breadfruit trees. The indigenous people grow plantains, yams, ginger, tomato and sweet potatoes on small plots of land.

    This is the realm of the giant butterfly. The male looks as if it were wearing a magnificent cloak of turquoise and green, covered with a layer of gold dust. In contrast, the wings of the larger female are a velvety black, interspersed with a few yellow and cream-colored patterns here and there.

    –> read original article at SPIEGEL Online International

    Unusual Reproductive Biology

    The threatened butterfly is vulnerable because of its unusual reproductive biology. The female lays its eggs exclusively on a poisonous vine called Aristolochia. Once the caterpillars have hatched, they ingest the plant’s toxic leaves, making them unpalatable for potential predators.

    The Aristolochia winds its way up into the crowns of jungle trees, which can grow to heights of up to 40 meters (131 feet). The butterfly would be lost without the vine, so propagating the Aristolochia is one of the main goals of conservationists.

    Conwel Nukara, 31, is the local head of the butterfly project and an expert in Aristolochia cultivation. His teeth are stained red from chewing betel nut, a stimulant commonly used by the indigenous peoples of the region. The Melanesian, walking barefoot, leads us into the garden behind his house, where he has set up a greenhouse made of green gauze.

    Aristolochia cuttings are planted in neat rows inside the greenhouse, and a number of the butterfly’s pitch-black caterpillars are already nibbling away at some of the leaves. Bright red appendages protrude from the animal’s body like poisonous barbs, while a yellow band runs around the middle of its body. “We want the animals to reproduce quickly,” says Nukara. “The larvae can develop and pupate in peace here. I release the butterflies once they’ve emerged.”

    A Threatened Habitat

    Nukara is trying to convince his entire community to raise butterflies and, as part of his campaign, he makes regular visits to schools in the area.

    A villager brings him a transparent plastic jar. Nukara carefully opens the lid, revealing a dead female butterfly.

    “We show these butterflies to our children,” he explains, spreading the insect’s wings, which have become frayed after being touched by many small hands. “We want them to discover at an early age what a treasure we have in this area.”

    He means it literally. One of the reasons local residents pay such conscientious attention to the giant butterfly is that they hope to make money with the creatures in the future. But that could prove to be difficult.

    The Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing is on the red list of threatened species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and its international trade is banned. From the perspective of species conservationists, the butterfly satisfies all of the criteria to make it a critically endangered species: It lives in only one area, Oro Province, its numbers are unknown, and its habitat is increasingly disappearing.

    Farming Threatens Butterflies

    The problem is already obvious in the flatlands around the provincial capital Popondetta, which is surrounded by plantations of tightly packed oil palms. Local farmers also grow coffee and cocoa. Hardly any of the rainforest, together with the vines that the butterfly urgently needs, is still left.

    Eddie Malaisa is a wildlife officer with the Oro provincial government. He has been concerned with the giant butterfly for the last 25 years. “The butterfly population continues to drop,” he warns. “We only find two or three per month on the lowland plains.”

    On this particular day, Malaisa has an appointment with Paul Maliou, a manager with New Britain Palm Oil Limited (NBPOL). Large trucks are parked on the grounds in front of Maliou’s office, fully loaded with the red fruits of the oil palm. Across the street are long rows of the trees. When sunlight strikes the long palm fronds, they create shimmering patterns on the ground.

    NBPOL signs contracts directly with the farmers and sells their crops for them. Maliou’s job is to ensure that this is done in a sustainable way. “We assure that our operations don’t go into areas that affect the butterfly,” he asserts. But wildlife officer Malaisa begs to differ. There were once 27 butterfly reserves planned for the region, he says, and now “twenty of the areas went to palm oil.” Malaisa is left to manage only seven small reserves.

    The government employee seems helpless. His budget doesn’t even include money for a car, which he needs to patrol the reserves. Ironically, the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing is depicted on the flag of Oro Province.

    “The butterfly is an important part of our culture,” says Malaisa. But he too recognizes that farmers will only protect the insect if they can make some money with it.

    To address the problem, Malaisa has proposed compensating all landowners who preserve the insect’s habitat by leaving some areas unfarmed. He also favors lifting the ban on trade with the butterfly. “If the landowners don’t get anything out of protecting the butterfly, they will change the butterfly habitat to oil palm, cocoa or coffee and the butterfly will become extinct,” the wildlife officer warns.

    Could Lifting Ban on Trade Help Save Butterflies?

    A softening of the trade ban could indeed be the butterfly’s last chance. Buyers on the black market would pay up to $10,000 a specimen. If the trade were legalized, Malaisa argues, the farmers could charge several thousand dollars per insect. “What is worse?” he asks, “To legally trade a few butterflies or to watch the animal go extinct?”

    Do conservationists have to revise their thinking and accept that species like the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing can only be saved if they have a market value? Activist Kenn Mondiai of Partners with Melanesians also favors adopting a new strategy. “If we want to preserve the forest on the Managalas Plateau, and if no oil palms are to be grown there, then we have to propose alternative sources of income to local residents,” he says.

    It’s afternoon in Kawowoki by now, and half the village has gathered in front of Grace Juo’s house to look for a butterfly. The animal that was fluttering around her hut in the morning was a male. Now everyone hopes to be able to show the visitor from faraway Germany a female specimen of the royal butterfly.

    While the women roast bananas and sweet potatoes in the embers of a fire, the men dispense advice on how to stalk a butterfly. The insects are usually seen high above the treetops, but only when the sun shines. Otherwise the moisture from the forest would make their wings too heavy.

    But the weather is favorable today. Suddenly they all jump up and stare at the tops of nearby large trees. A female Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing is gliding through the warm air at a surprisingly fast pace. Grace Juo excitedly lifts her arms up to the sky.

    “The world has to know about our butterfly,” she says, and with shining eyes she follows the flight of the dadakul, “and then people will come here with bundles of dollars in their hands!”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    –> read original article at SPIEGEL Online International

  • Michio Kaku: ‘Eternal Life Does Not Violate the Laws of Physics’

    In his best-selling book “Physics of the Future,” American professor Michio Kaku lays out his vision for the world in 2100. Kaku, the son of Japanese immigrants, spoke to SPIEGEL about a future in which toilets will have health monitoring sensors and contact lenses will be connected to the Internet.

    SPIEGEL: Professor Kaku, in your book you write about how we will be like gods in the future. Are you saying that our grandchildren will be gods? Isn’t that a bit immodest?

    Kaku: Just think for a moment about our forefathers in the year 1900. They lived to be 49 years old on average and traveled with horse-drawn wagons. Long distance communication was yelling out the window. If these people could see us today with mobile phones at our ears, Facebook on our screens and traveling with planes they would consider us wizards.

    SPIEGEL: It’s still a big step to go from wizards to gods.

    Kaku: So what do gods do? Apollo has unlimited power from the sun, Zeus can turn himself into a swan or anything else and Venus has a perfect body. Gods can move objects with their mind, rearrange things, and have perfect bodies. Our grandchildren will be able to do just that.

    SPIEGEL: Let’s do a little time traveling. Close your eyes and imagine waking up on a September morning in the year 2112. What do you see?

    Kaku: More important than what I see, is what will be omnipresent. Intelligence will be everywhere in the future, just like electricity is everywhere today. We now just assume that there’s electricity in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. In the future we will assume that everything is intelligent, so intelligence will be everywhere and nowhere. As children, we will be taught how to manipulate things around us just by talking to them and thinking. Children will believe that everything is alive.

    SPIEGEL: We’ll ask the question in a different way. What will we experience on this morning in 2112?

    Kaku: When we wake up, the first thing we want to know is what’s going on in the world. So we put in our intelligent contact lenses and with a blink we are online. If you want information, movies, virtual reality, it is all in your contact lenses. Then we’ll drive to work.

    SPIEGEL: Driving? How boring!

    Kaku: Aw, you want to fly? Cars may even fly, but we will also be able to manipulate our cars just by thinking. So, if you want to get into your car, you simply think, and you call your car. The car drives itself, and boom, there you are.

    SPIEGEL: So our grandchildren will fly to work. And what will change there?

    Kaku: If you are a college student, you blink and you can see all the answers to the final examination by wearing your contact lenses. Artists will wave their hands in the air and create beautiful works of art. If you’re an architect, you will see what you are creating and just move towers, two apartment buildings around as you construct things.

    SPIEGEL: Why do we have to even bother leaving the house if all of our needs, questions and desires are played out virtually on our grandiose contact lenses?

    Kaku: Well, you will want to go outside because we are humans, and our personality hasn’t changed in 100,000 years. We’re social creatures. We like to size each other up, figure out who’s on first, who’s on second. But technology will be able to help with that. In 2100, for example, when you talk to people, you will see their biography listed right in front of you. If you are looking for a date, you sign up for a dating service. When you go outside and people walk by you, their faces light up if they’re available. If someone speaks to you in Chinese, your contact lens will translate from Chinese to English. We will still resist certain technologies, however, because they go against who we are.

    SPIEGEL: What’s an example of that?

    Kaku: The paperless office. The paperless office was a failure, because we like tangible things. If I give you a choice between tickets to see your favorite famous rock star or a video of a close-up of your favorite rock star, which would you choose?

    SPIEGEL: The concert tickets naturally.

    Kaku: That’s the caveman in us. The caveman in you says, “I want direct contact. I don’t want a picture.” The caveman in our body says once in a while, we have to go outside. We have to meet real people, talk to real people, and do real things.

    SPIEGEL: Speaking of real things, we were fascinated by the toilet of the future described in your book.

    Kaku: Yeah. You will still have to go to the bathroom because our biology hasn’t changed. But your toilet will have more computer power than a university hospital does today.

    SPIEGEL: The toilet as a supercomputer?

    Kaku: Your toilet will have a chip in it called a “DNA chip.” It will analyze enzymes, proteins and genes for cancer. In this way we will be able to fight cancer long before a tumor even has a chance to develop. We will be able to also detect other illnesses early and fight them. But we will still have the common cold. There are at least 300 different rhinoviruses and you need to have a vaccine for each one. No company is going to do that, because it is going to bankrupt a large corporation to make a vaccine for each of them.

    SPIEGEL: What a defeat! Comfort us — did you not just refer to the perfect body of Venus?

    Kaku: The nature of medicine will shift away from basically saving lives to perfection. We will be able to rearrange our own genome.

    SPIEGEL: I assume that you mean to make ourselves prettier, stronger and generally better?

    Kaku: Those ambitions will be there.

    SPIEGEL: As we get a better handle on genetic technologies, won’t there be more of an urge to create designer babies?

    Kaku: We need a debate about these issues. This is going to create societal problems. You have to have an educated public democratically debating how far to push our beautiful children and the human race.

    SPIEGEL: Will we eventually be able to conquer death?

    Kaku: Eternal life does not violate the laws of physics, surprisingly enough. After all, we only die because of one word: “error.” The longer we live, the more errors there are that are made by our bodies when they read our genes. That means cells get sluggish. The body doesn’t function as well as it could, which is why the skin ages. Then organs eventually fail, so that’s why we die.

    SPIEGEL: What can we do about that?

    Kaku: We know the genes that correct these things. So if we use genetic repair mechanisms, we might be able to repair cells so they don’t wear out, so they just keep on going. That is as real possibility. We will also be able to regenerate organs by growing new ones. That can already be done now.

    SPIEGEL: Then we will get rid of death?

    Kaku: In principle, yes.

    SPIEGEL: Then how will we decide who gets to live and who must die? Who will be allowed to have children?

    Kaku: I don’t think children or overpopulation are going to be a problem. When people live longer, they have fewer children. We see that in Japan, the US and in other countries where prosperity, education and urbanization are on the rise.

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

    ‘It’s Nice to be Superman for an Afternoon’

    SPIEGEL: Okay, back to the toilet. What do I do when the toilet tells me that I have cancer cells?

    Kaku: You talk to the wallpaper, and you say…

    SPIEGEL: Excuse me, but you talk to the wallpaper?

    Kaku: As I mentioned, everything will be intelligent, even the wallpaper. You talk to the wallpaper, and you say, “I want to see my doctor.” Boom! A doctor appears on the wall. It’s a RoboDoc, which looks like a doctor, talks like a doctor, but it’s actually an animated figure. It will tell you what is going on in your body and answers all medical questions with 99 percent accuracy, because it has the medical histories of everyone on the planet available.

    SPIEGEL: Will we also have robot driving instructors and robot cooks?

    Kaku: Yes, of course.

    SPIEGEL: But aren’t robots still rather dumb, even after 50 years of research into artificial intelligence?

    Kaku: That’s true. ASIMO, the best robot around today has the intelligence of a cockroach. However, that will change. In the coming decades, robots will be as smart as mice. Now, mice are very smart. They can scurry around, hide behind things, look for food. I can see that in 10, 20, 30 years, we will start to have mice robots, then rabbit robots, cat robots, dog robots, finally monkey robots maybe by the end of the century. They will do dirty, dull and dangerous jobs for us. That means they have to feel pain too.

    SPIEGEL: Are you talking about machines with the ability to suffer?

    Kaku: We will have to build robots with pain sensors in them, because we don’t want them to destroy themselves.

    SPIEGEL: Then won’t we have to start talking about robot rights?

    Kaku: Once we design robots that can feel pain, that’s a tricky point. At that point, people will say, “Well, they’re just like dogs and cats.”

    SPIEGEL: When will machines become a threat, like HAL from the movie ‘2001?’

    Kaku: At some point we can plant a chip in their electronic brains that shuts them down when they start to develop dangerous plans.

    SPIEGEL: But won’t they be intelligent enough to take the chip out themselves?

    Kaku: Sure, but that won’t happen until after 2100.

    SPIEGEL: How comforting.

    Kaku: Then we always have the option of making ourselves even smarter.

    SPIEGEL: Are you referring to the old science fiction idea that our brains are immeasurably smart?

    Kaku: Exactly, and spending the whole day calculating Einstein’s theory of relativity. I don’t seriously believe that. It goes back to the caveman in us. What do cavemen want? Cavemen want to have the respect of their peers. They want to look good to the opposite sex. They want prestige. If we’re stuck inside a computer calculating Einstein’s theory of relativity, who wants that?

    SPIEGEL: The idea that one day we will all be Supermen or Superwomen sounds really tempting though.

    Kaku: I think what’s going to happen is we will have avatars. They will have all these powers that we want — to be perfect, superhuman and good looking.

    SPIEGEL: Great! Does that mean we can send our avatars to meetings that we don’t want to attend?

    Kaku: You will send your avatars to the Moon or on virtual trips or whatever. But you also have the option of shutting it off and getting back to normal again. The average person will not necessarily want to be Superman, but they may want the option of being Superman for an afternoon. It’s nice to be Superman for an afternoon, but then to say, hey, “let’s go out and have a beer with friends.” Do you see what I’m saying?

    SPIEGEL: Yes, of course. Atavism beats out the avatar. But just how strong are these caveman impulses? Could there one day be a movement against all of this new technology?

    Kaku: Such movements always accompany technological changes. When the telephone first came out, it was very controversial. Throughout history, we only talked to friends, relatives, kids. That’s it, period. Then comes the telephone. There were many voices denouncing it, saying we had to go back to talking to our families, so on and so forth.

    SPIEGEL: You claim in your book that we are the most important generation that has ever lived. Doesn’t every generation think that?

    Kaku: Out of all the generations that have walked the surface of the Earth, we’re the only ones to witness the beginning of the process of becoming a planetary civilization. We decide whether humanity survives.

    SPIEGEL: What do you mean by “planetary civilization?”

    Kaku: We physicists rank civilizations by energy. A Type 1 planetary civilization uses all the energy that is available on the planet. In a hundred years, we’ll be Type 1. We’re on our way there. We will control the weather. We will control earthquakes and volcanoes eventually. Anything planetary, we will control. Type 2 is stellar. We will control stars, like Star Trek. Then Type 3 is the entire galaxy, where we’ll control the Milky Way galaxy.

    SPIEGEL: Hold on a second. We aren’t even close to that now!

    Kaku: No, we are in a transition. We still get our energy from dead plants, oil and coal. Carl Sagan did a more precise calculation. He figured out that we’re actually Type 0.7. So we’re on the threshold of being Type 1. We will have two planetary languages, English and Mandarin. Look at the Olympics. That’s planetary sports. Look at soccer, another planetary sport. The European Union is the beginning of a planetary economy, if it ever gets off the ground correctly.

    SPIEGEL: We are having a few tiny problems with that last one.

    Kaku: Well, nevertheless, when I look at the larger sweep of things, I see that we are already coming together. We’re entering the birth of a planetary fashion and we are already seeing the birth of planetary culture. Democratization of the world marches on.

    SPIEGEL: What is one thing from the world you imagine that you would like to have today?

    Kaku: Well, I wouldn’t mind having a few more decades to live and, for example, to see the first starship. Also, it’s a shame that I cannot live in the 11th dimension.

    SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that?

    Kaku: The energy of wormholes, black holes and of the Big Bang. You would have to be a Type 3 civilization before you can begin to manipulate that energy. That’s the province of my field of research, string theory.

    SPIEGEL: I think that’s where we can no longer keep up. Professor Kaku, we thank you for this interview.

    Interview conducted by Philip Bethge and Rafaela von Bredow

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

  • A Future of Self-Surveillance? Tech Pioneers Track Bodily Functions Day and Night

    Using smartphone apps and sensors, high tech pioneers are monitoring their own bodily functions such as heart rates, sleep patterns and blood. The ‘self trackers’ dream of a digitalized medicine that will enable people to lead healthier lives by getting around-the-clock updates on what goes on inside their bodies

    By Philip Bethge

    Larry Smarr’s large intestine appears to float in the middle of the room, nestled like a stuffed sausage between his other virtual organs.

    Smarr, a computer science professor, adjusts the dark-tinted 3D glasses perched on his nose and picks up an electronic pointer. “And this is where the wall of my colon is inflamed,” he says, pointing out a spot where the intestinal walls are indeed noticeably swollen.

    A supercomputer combined MRI images of the 63-year-old professor to create the three-dimensional illusion now projected on the wall. It gives the impression that the viewer could go for a stroll inside the researcher’s abdomen. (more…)

  • Lear Jets of the Deep: Private Submarines Gain Popularity with Millionaires

    A new class of private submarines has become the latest plaything for the super rich. They allow would-be adventurers to navigate the wonders of the coral reefs, explore shipwrecks or even to cruise alongside dolphins. The cheapest models start at $1.7 million, but prices can go as high as $80 million – by Philip Bethge

    Just recently, Graham Hawkes tracked down a group of hammerhead sharks. Along for the ride on his Deepflight Super Falcon at the time was an investor named Tom Perkins, a potential client. “We were literally stalking them from below,” Hawkes says. “It felt like flying in liquid sky.”

    Hawkes is an engineer in Point Richmond, California, and his workshop is located at the town’s marina, directly on San Francisco Bay. Visitors don’t exactly wander in here often, but when they do come, they generally have full pockets. Hawkes builds submarines for millionaires.

    His company, Hawkes Ocean Technologies, is one of a number of businesses that specialize in taking the superrich diving. Hawkes’ asking price for the Deepflight Super Falcon, for example, is $1.7 million (€1.3 million). American manufacturer SEAmagine’s Ocean Pearl costs even more, at $2.5 million, but has the benefit of being able to dive to depths of around 900 meters (3,000 feet).

    Triton Submarines, based in Vero Beach, Florida, is another company that specializes in submersibles for the well to do. “Our customers are large yacht owners who want to offer their friends and their family something special,” says Bruce Jones, CEO of Triton. In the deep sea, “they can show them things they have never seen before.”

    Crisis Hasn’t Stopped Demand

    The financial crisis hasn’t stopped the demand for submarines, says Jones, 55. “There are 2,500 large yachts in the world today,” he adds, and most of them have enough room to carry a submarine.

    Today, Jones is in the Bahamas for a trial run. Around 20 prospective clients have come to Grand Bahama Island to try out Triton’s submarines. From the dock in McLeans Town, a speedboat zips them across the turquoise water to the Atlantis II, a retired research vessel Jones uses as the mother ship for his submarine fleet.

    The mustachioed CEO welcomes his guests on the deck, where two yellow submersibles sit waiting. Voluminous floats mounted on their sides also function as ballast tanks. Triton’s trademark features, however, are the acrylic spheres jutting from the top and bottom of the submarines, offering a 360-degree panoramic view.

    A shipboard crane lowers the three-seater Triton 3300/3, which weighs eight metric tons (nine US tons), into the water. The guests board through a hatch in the top. Pilot Troy Engen points to two black valves located behind the gray artificial leather seats and explains they can be used to quickly “bring it (the submarine) up in an emergency.”

    “Roger, payload is okay,” Engen then calls into the headset that keeps him in contact with the Atlantis II. The pilot lets water gush into the floats.

    A few waves crash over the submarine, then it’s calm again. The only sounds are the whirring of the electric motors and the hum of the air conditioning.

    Straight Out of a ‘Bond’ Movie

    Engen pushes the small black joystick on the control panel forward. “Heading 285 (degrees),” he reports to the ship above. “Life support (systems) OK.” The Triton continues on its whirring way, gliding just above a reef like something out of a James Bond movie.

    Colorful fish glow in the submarine’s LED headlights. A nurse shark whooshes past below the passengers’ feet — a surreal experience, since the acrylic wall of the cockpit, around 16 centimeters (6 inches) thick, becomes invisible under water. “Pretty amazing, right?” asks Engen, good-humored and tan.

    –> read original story at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

    The Triton 3300/3 can remain under water for around 10 hours and its purchasing price is about $3 million. Most of the company’s customers wish to remain anonymous; Jones recently sold two submarines to an Australian businessman with a private island in Belize.

    Jones’ next idea is to take tourists under the sea. He’s building an underwater resort with submerged suites (price per week: $15,000) off a private island in the Fiji archipelago. Five submarines will be on hand to ferry guests across artificial reefs during the day. “I am just an old kid living a dream,” the CEO says. As a boy, he wrote letters to legendary French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, though Jones says regretfully, “Sadly, he never wrote back.”

    Triton’s submarines are large and heavy machines, hardly useable without a mother ship, but Graham Hawkes in California has developed a very different submarine concept. His vessels are sportier and slimmer — they look like small airplanes with truncated wings.

    A ‘Flight Over Ancient Shipwrecks’

    “We’re building the Learjets of the deep,” says the inventor, who likes to compare his work with that of aviation pioneers. He speaks in flowery terms, promising a “flight over ancient shipwrecks,” “barrel-rolling with the dolphins” and “skyhopping with whales.”

    A new design principle makes these lightweight vessels possible. Unlike other submarines, Deepflight models don’t sink using their own weight, instead applying a similar principle of physics to that used by airplanes: When water streams across the inverted wings, the underwater vessel is drawn downward.

    One of the Super Falcons stands propped up in Hawkes’ workshop in Point Richmond. Two hemispheres of Plexiglas curve up from the top of the cigar-shaped submarine, resembling fighter jet cockpits. Hawkes clambers into the front cockpit and explains the technology involved. A joystick steers the submarine. Instruments indicate cabin pressure and oxygen content in the air. A compass and artificial horizon provide orientation even in murky water.

    This latter-day Captain Nemo has completed around 200 dives with his submarines. A few months ago, Hawkes traveled to the Gulf of Aqaba at the invitation of Jordan’s King Abdullah II. With researchers onboard, Hawkes saw nearly all of Jordan’s coast. “We flew along the whole contour of a coral reef,” he recalls. “I felt like a bush pilot.”

    Graham Hawkes and his wife Karen have set up a “flight school” for submarines as a way of attracting new clients. Many of the customers are enormously wealthy CEOs. Virgin founder Richard Branson, for example, recently purchased one of Hawkes’ Merlin submarines, which the billionaire now rents out to visitors on his private Caribbean isle of Necker Island for $25,000 a week.

    Plans for More Affordable Subs

    But Hawkes has plans to make his submarines affordable for the less wealthy as well. He hopes to be able to bring the price for his “Ferraris of the ocean” down to around $250,000, as soon as there is high enough demand for the Deepflight vessels. “We’ve uncovered a new customer base with our submarines that nobody had thought of,” Hawkes says, expressing hope for his business’ future development.

    When that happens, the super rich will have to look for something more exclusive — perhaps the Phoenix 1000 model, made by manufacturer US Submarines, also part of Triton CEO Jones’ submarine empire.

    Passengers on this 65-meter (210-foot) submersible yacht can travel in comfort both above and below water. Its luxury berths easily hold 20 guests. The manufacturer promotes the Phoenix 1000 as a the unique “opportunity to explore the depths of the world’s oceans in perfect comfort and safety.”

    Such luxury comes at a price, of course. The Phoenix 1000 costs approximately $80 million.

    Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein

    –> read original story at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

  • Undeterred by Fukushima: Nuclear Lobby Pushes Ahead with New Reactors

    One year after the reactor accident in Fukushima, resistance to nuclear energy is growing around the world. But the atomic industry continues to push for the construction of new reactors, primarily in emerging economies. The German government even wants to support that expansion — despite the fact it has abandoned nuclear power back home. By SPIEGEL Staff.

    The road to the construction site is flanked by ruins. At one point, there’s a church that looks like its steeple has been shaved right off. An icy wind whistles through empty farmlands.

    The buildings, which are slowly decaying at the foot of a small hill, are relics of the former German province of East Prussia. Now they are located in the eastern part of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, located between Poland and Lithuania.

    At the top of the knoll, three cranes are pivoting. A massive construction pit comes into view, 20 meters (66 feet) deep and 500 meters long. Visitors can walk down a ramp to reach its bottom of sand-brown dirt.

    Yevgeniy Vlasenko, the director of the nuclear power plant that will be built on the site, slips on his hardhat. With Vyacheslav Machonin, his construction supervisor, trailing close behind, Vlasenko heads for a mass of freshly poured concrete blocks. All around, workers are bending the iron rods that will be used in the building’s ring-shaped foundation.

    “The reactor with its fuel rods will rest on top of this,” Vlasenko explains. His construction supervisor proudly reports to him that his workers are mixing 2,000 cubic meters (70,000 cubic feet) of concrete per hour for the structure. Should there be a core meltdown, the extremely hot uranium will drip down and be trapped in this basin. But, of course, Vlasenko insists that things “will never get to that point.”

    Vlasenko doesn’t want to spoil the good mood on the construction site. Everything is reportedly going according to plan: In four or five years, at most, the first block of the new Kaliningrad Nuclear Power Plant will begin generating 1,200 megawatts of electricity. “Then we’ll sell the energy to Europe,” Vlasenko says. “Including Germany.”

    Build Reactors ‘Until Your Noses Bleed’

    The gaunt director and his more rotund construction supervisor can’t help but laugh a bit about the irony of selling nuclear power to Germany, now that it has decided to phase out its own nuclear power plants by 2022. “You used to build fantastic nuclear power plants, elegant and solid,” says Machonin, who is now working on his ninth such construction project.

    Before this project, Machnonin was in the southwestern Iranian city of Bushehr. “There, we took over and finished the Siemens building project,” he says. “And we adopted some things from you there.” Both of them shake their heads. “How could the Germans just throw everything away,” asks Vlasenko. “Nuclear energy isn’t on its way out; it’s at the beginning of a renaissance.”

    (-> Read original story at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

    Vlasenko is employed by Rosatom, the state-owned Russian nuclear company that is building a third of the nuclear power plants currently under construction across the world. The German and Russian opinions about the future of nuclear energy couldn’t be more different. While Germany has decided to abandon atomic energy, Russia is unflagging in its commitment to the power of nuclear fission.

    Indeed, during a celebration marking the opening of a new reactor, Russian leader Vladimir Putin called on those in his country’s atomic industry to build nuclear power plants “until your noses bleed.” Likewise, he has plenty of derisive things to say about Germany’s nuclear anxieties. “I don’t know where they intend to get their heat from,” he says. “They don’t want nuclear energy; they don’t want natural gas. Do they want to go back to heating with wood?”

    No Economic Sense

    A year after the catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, it is clear just how little the nuclear lobby and its government supporters have been unsettled by the disaster in Japan. But rejection of nuclear energy is growing among people the world over — and building new reactors makes no sense in economic terms.

    On the face of things, it would appear that little has changed. Only a few countries, such as Switzerland, Italy and Belgium, are joining Germany in turning their backs on nuclear energy. Indeed, it is primarily Russia and the United States, the two nuclear heavyweights, that are competing in a new atomic race, though this time with technologies geared toward civilian purposes. New nuclear power plants are being built with particular relish in emerging economies, such as China and India, who want to satisfy at least part of their energy needs with uranium (see graphic).

    For the builders and operators of nuclear energy plants, the accident in Japan came at what might be considered a bad time. After years of stagnation, not only the emerging economies of Asia — China, South Korea and India — but also Russia and the United States were beginning to put greater emphasis on nuclear energy. This decision was driven not only by the growing energy needs of the newly industrializing nations, but also by fears related to carbon emissions and climate change.

    This prompted the backers of nuclear energy to make frantic attempts to downplay the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, with the aim of nipping the debate about nuclear safety in the bud. For example, John Ritch, the director-general of the World Nuclear Association, asserted that the disaster hadn’t cost anyone their life. “Nuclear power will be even safer after Fukushima,” Ritch told the BBC in November, “and will continue to mature as the world’s premier non-carbon technology.”

    Declining Support

    Ritch’s views are shared by Roland Schenkel, a German physicist who used to be the director-general of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. Fukushima, he says, did not prove that nuclear energy is risky elsewhere in the world. “Clearly, these plants were not appropriately protected against well-known specific risks, such as earthquakes and tsunamis.”

    Still, all of these efforts at placating and winning citizens over have apparently failed. Already in June 2011, the leading British polling company Ipsos MORI identified a decline in global support for the continued use of nuclear energy or its expansion. In a survey of around 19,000 people in 24 countries, the company found that only 38 percent of respondents approved of nuclear energy, which put it at the bottom of the lists of energy sources, far below even coal-generated energy. The survey also found that the greatest numbers of people who had changed their minds about nuclear energy in the wake of Fukushima were found in South Korea, followed by Japan, China and India.

    A poll conducted for the BBC in late November 2011 suggests that these survey figures are not a flash-in-the-pan reaction to the dramatic television images from Fukushima. Only 22 percent of the over 23,000 people questioned for the poll considered nuclear energy to be relatively safe and backed its further expansion. Somewhat surprisingly, there was also an increase in the number of people rejecting the construction of new nuclear power plants in France and Russia, where nuclear energy has traditionally enjoyed strong support. While the views of Americans seemed to be unaffected by events in Fukushima, there was even a slight gain in support for nuclear energy among the British, which might have something to do with the fact that many environmental activists there have embraced nuclear energy as a tool for combating climate change.

    China Leads the Pack

    On balance, it would be a stretch to speak of a renaissance in nuclear power. According to official figures, there were 436 nuclear power plants still operating around the world at the beginning of March 2012, or eight fewer than the record figure reached in 2002. “If you also subtract the reactors in Japan that have been taken off the grid, the number is only 388,” says nuclear expert Mycle Schneider. “That’s not exactly a renaissance.”

    Indeed, despite all the upbeat rhetoric from the atomic industry, hardly any nuclear expert seriously believes there will be a significant increase in the number of nuclear power plants in operation around the world. Schneider points out that existing reactors have a high average age and are gradually being disconnected from the grid. “The nuclear power plants being planned or under construction will not make up for this unstoppable reduction,” he adds.

    Granted, according to statistics from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 63 nuclear power plants are currently being built. However, a number of these are projects with no end in sight, such as the dozen plants that have already been on the organization’s list for more than 20 years. The current record is held by the second reactor unit of the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in the US state of Tennessee, whose construction commenced in 1973. The Westinghouse reactor is supposed to finally begin operation this year, but its launch was recently pushed back yet again.

    China leads the pack with 26 new nuclear power plants. Despite its skyrocketing energy needs, the country still conducted safety checks at all of its new plants in the wake of Fukushima. Construction work on several new plants is scheduled to commence this year, and a number of plants, such as the Hongyanhe Nuclear Power Plant in northeastern China, are supposed to begin generating energy. However, officials have not approved any new building projects since March 2011, the month of the Fukushima disaster.

    China is also putting much emphasis on renewable energy. Indeed, in 2010, the country boasted 42,287 megawatts in installed wind energy capacity, or over four times as much as its nuclear reactors can generate. This gradual turning away from carbon-based energy production is also supposed to continue, with plans calling for 100,000 megawatts of wind energy and 43,000 megawatts of nuclear energy capacity by 2015.

    Resistance in India

    India is following China in terms of both skyrocketing growth and the expansion of its nuclear-energy capabilities. Speaking at the India International Nuclear Symposium in late February, Minister of Power Sushil Kumar Shinde praised nuclear energy as both cheaper and “greener” than imported coal.

    Nevertheless, after Fukushima, there has also been growing resistance to nuclear energy among Indians. In October 2011, demonstrations were held against the Rosatom-built power plant in Koodankulam, on the southern tip of India, which have succeeded in postponing its start-up.

    Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has complained that environmentalist groups based in the US and Scandinavia backed the demonstrations. “The atomic energy program has got into difficulties because these NGOs … don’t appreciate the need for our country to increase the energy supply,” he said in the February edition of Science magazine.

    Still, the anti-nuclear movement is thrilled. “It’s already remarkable that these sorts of problems are suddenly appearing in such tightly run countries as India and China,” says Tobias Münchmeyer, a Greenpeace nuclear expert based in Berlin.

    New Plants for America

    But for the time being, Western builders of nuclear power plants can still take comfort in all of the contracts they have from emerging economies. It is primarily US-based reactor-builders like Westinghouse who are the big players on the global stage. Back in 2007, Westinghouse, which is a subsidiary of Toshiba, and a partner signed contracts to build four new nuclear facilities in China. Two AP1000-type reactors are currently being built in Sanmen, in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang. The first reactor is scheduled to enter operation in 2013. Construction work is simultaneously being conducted at the Haiyang facility on the eastern coast of China.

    Plans also call for new nuclear power plants to be built in the United States. In early February, for the first time since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved the construction of two new Westinghouse reactors. Workers have already dug up the ground and laid the power lines for the reactors in the pine forests of the southeastern state of Georgia. The two 1,000-megawatt giants, which together cost $14 billion, are scheduled to go online in 2016. The new reactors are part of an expansion of the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant operated by the energy supplier Southern Company near the city of Augusta.

    If the nuclear industry is to continue supplying 20 percent of America’s energy, there’s no way to avoid building new plants. The fact is that many of the 104 nuclear reactors currently in service in the United States are extremely old, and most of them have already been operating for over 30 years. To buy some time, since 2000, the NRC has extended the operational life span of 71 reactors to 60 years.

    The main focus of criticism are the 23 ancient boiling water reactors, developed by the US industrial giant General Electric. These are the same type of power plant that blew up in Fukushima.

    The US Department of Energy has $18.5 billion in federal guarantees available for building new nuclear power plants. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the co-winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics, praises the expansion project in Georgia as pioneering. “The Vogtle project will help America to recapture the lead in nuclear technology,” he says.

    Approval could also soon be in the works for two reactor blocks in South Carolina. Indeed, energy suppliers are putting added pressure on the NRC, which has already received applications for some 30 additional reactor blocks. Still, critics doubt that all of the planned facilities will actually be built. Even under the best of conditions, a single nuclear power plant costs, per megawatt of capacity, almost twice as much as a coal-fired power plant and almost four times as much as a gas-fired one.

    For this reason, Amory Lovins, an energy expert at the Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute, thinks that the supposed renaissance of atomic energy is nothing more than a nuclear-industry fabrication. Indeed, since a significant portion of the financing for nuclear facilities comes from federal subsidies and private investors are hardly ever involved, Lovins compares the situation to a form of “nuclear socialism.”

    “The nuclear industry is in a desperate effort to demonstrate that it is healthy,” he says. “Loan guarantees are not a sign of economic health,” he adds, in the same way that “blood transfusions are not a sign of medical health.”

    Germany Supports Plants Elsewhere

    Rainer Baake, a former senior official at Germany’s Environment Ministry who is viewed as the architect of the nuclear phase-out passed by the Social Democrat-Green coalition government in 2002, also finds it hardly surprising that there is not “more serious thinking about new reactors in any country with a liberalized energy market.” He notes how two new nuclear power plants in France and Finland are not being financed according to standard market rules. “Costs have doubled, as have construction times,” Baake says. “As a result, investment bankers regard the buildings as a kind of cautionary warning.”

    Even more surprising is the fact that Germany, the country so openly set on phasing out its own nuclear energy, intends to provide government support to the construction of a new nuclear power plant in far-away Brazil. Sitting on Economics Minister Philipp Rösler’s desk is an application for a so-called Hermes export credit guarantee from the German government valued at €1.3 billion. In the Brazilian municipality of Angra dos Reis, located in the southern part of the state of Rio de Janeiro, the French nuclear giant Areva wants to build a nuclear power plant that German engineers had planned to build in the 1980s.

    A report compiled by a Brazilian nuclear expert on behalf of the German environmental organization Urgewald finds that the proposed Angra location is dangerous. Wedged between the sea and steep slopes, the reactor would be practically defenseless against a tsunami or one of the region’s frequent earthquakes. Worse yet, there is only a single coastal road on which the population could be evacuated. “We have the potential for a catastrophe that could even surpass Fukushima,” the report says.

    Likewise, the report notes that the Angra location doesn’t meet the criteria that Eletronuclear, the Brazilian regulatory agency, “currently uses to identify suitable locations for future nuclear power plants.” This month, Germany’s Economics Ministry plans to decide whether it will make the construction of Angra 3 possible by extending a loan guarantee.

    In the wake of the Fukushima accident, the German government raised the prospect of also no longer granting Hermes loan guarantees for the export of nuclear technology should the country decide to phase out its own nuclear energy facilities. Since then, however, the issue has not been discussed. Klaus-Peter Willsch, a prominent member of Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrats and a member of the parliament’s Budget Committee, even disputes the claim that safety considerations played a role in the government’s decision to phase out nuclear energy. “We only did it on account of people’s sensitivities,” he says.

    Phasing Out the Phase-Out

    Everything is relative, it would seem, including Germany’s nuclear phase-out. The Rosatom higher-ups working in Kaliningrad on the nuclear power plant project have their own thoughts about that, as well. Project director Sergey Boyarkin finds it rather convenient that the second reactor block in Kaliningrad is scheduled to enter into service at the end of the decade, right when Germany is supposed to be shutting down all of its plants. “We are making an offer to German energy companies that we could lay a power line from Kaliningrad, along the Nord Stream gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea,” Boyarkin says. Doing so, he adds, would help Germany avoid shortages in its power grid.

    The Russian nuclear executive also thinks it’s conceivable that, before that could happen, Germany might once again phase out the phase-out. The first phase out he’s referring to is that passed in 2002 by the Social Democrat-Green coalition government led by then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and then-Vice Chancellor Joschka Fischer, which was then postponed by 12 years in 2010 by Chancellor Merkel. “Merkel has already revised once what Gerhard and Joschka passed back then,” Boyarkin says.

    Translated from the German by Josh Ward

    (-> Read original story at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

  • Feeding the Dream Business: Inside the World of the Hollywood Paparazzi

    Paparazzi have a bad reputation for bending the rules to satisfy the world’s insatiable demand for celebrity photos. But the business is also incredibly lucrative, something that prompted Bill Gates’ Corbis photo agency to buy the world’s top paparazzi shop. Some in the industry are trying to free it from its sleazy image, but upstart agencies have few moral qualms.

    By Philip Bethge

    The place feels like a temple to photography. A giant image of Marilyn Monroe, taken by star photographer Paul Rice in 1956, hangs in the lobby of the Corbis Corporation. Andy Warhol’s portrait of John Lennon dominates the company’s open-plan office in Seattle’s historic Dexter Horton Building.

    Printed on fine gauze, it adorns a staircase leading up to the executive floor, where we meet with Gary Shenk. He is wearing jeans and a T-shirt. The dark rings under his eyes suggest he is not getting enough sleep.

    Shenk is the CEO of Corbis, one of the world’s most renowned high-quality stock photography agencies. The company, owned by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, holds the rights to more than 100 million images. They include the photos of the legendary French agency Sygma, as well as photos from the historic Bettmann Archive, whose inventory dates back as far as the American Civil War.

    The agency sells icons of photography: a nude of Brigitte Bardot in the bathtub; Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue; the black-and-white photos of Vietnamese children fleeing from America napalm bombs.

    Recently, however, this traditional citadel of quality photography has been selling more trivial fare: There’s “Her Royal Hotness” Pippa Middleton wearing pink jeans in London, model Kate Moss drinking and smoking on the beach and French President Nicolas Sarkozy jogging in a blue T-shirt on the Côte d’Azur.

    The change results from Corbis’ acquisition of Splash News, the global market leader for paparazzi photos. It is a breakthrough for a business that, until recently, was still viewed as the street urchin of the industry.

    The thugs of the telephoto lens are becoming presentable — and mainly because the pictures they take can be worth a lot of money. In fact, Shenk estimates “that anywhere from 50 to 60 percent of images that are sold into media these days are entertainment images,” most of them taken by paparazzi.

    Shenk refers to the celebrity snapshots as “candid celebrity photography” — “candid” in the sense that they are “taken from real life.” They revolve around themes of love, sex and tears — and the satisfying feeling that even the rich and beautiful can occasionally have their embarrassing moments and failures in life.

    In the Lair of the Paparazzi

    It takes a trip south from Seattle to Los Angeles to discover how the paparazzi industry works. The small editorial office of Splash News is located at the top of a narrow staircase in a building in the city’s western Venice district. The covers of celebrity magazines hang on the walls like trophies. A large photo shows a group of paparazzi at work, bunched together like students posing for a class portrait.

    The people at Splash News are proud of their work — and of their successes. Company revenues grew by more than 20 percent in the last year alone, says Kevin Smith, one of its founders.

    These days, the British native and former London-based journalist heads a paparazzi empire. The company has supplied the photography for 500 magazine covers over the last five years, he says, adding that Splash News sells photos in close to 70 countries. “I was amazed when we hit the million dollar (mark) in revenues,” says Smith, who drives a Bentley. “Now I am laughing about it.”

    Celebrity news from the company’s field offices around the world have trickled in overnight. As he does every morning, news editor Paul Tetley delivers a brief status report: Jennifer Lopez is in Chile and allegedly sleeping with someone from her team of dancers. Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor plans to get married, for the fourth time, in Las Vegas. A rumor from England says that Prince William’s wife, Kate, is pregnant.

    And, of course, there’s always Alec Baldwin. “He refused to shut off his mobile on a flight yesterday,” Tetley reports. The actor allegedly became verbally abusive and was ordered off the plane. It’s a mini scandal — and a hit for Splash News.

    A Vast Intelligence Operation

    Indeed, the celebrity news agency thrives on the missteps of the stars. “We always used to say ‘Your misfortune is our fortune,’” Smith readily admits. Being in the right place at the wrong time — for the celebrities at least — is the art of the paparazzi, who ply their trade with the virtuosity of skilled investigators.

    The agency employs roughly 1,000 photographers across the world and operates an extensive network of paid informants. Smith has his “tipsters” in hotels, restaurants, theaters, hospitals and airports, including about 100 doormen, bartenders and chauffeurs in Los Angeles alone. Among other things, Splash News uses this network of tipsters to keep track of who is flying when and where, and it closely monitors publicly accessible police reports.

    “Hardly anything happens in this city without our finding out about it,” says Smith, who claims he could find almost anyone within a day. For this knowledge, he depends primarily on his photo reporters, a close-knit group that refers to itself as the CIA, or “Celebrity Intelligence Agency.”

    “The job is a bit like bird-watching,” Smith says. “You have to have a certain tenacity, and you have to be able to blend in.”

    And be fast, he could add. Indeed, Smith’s photographers can transmit their photos directly to the editorial office via a high-speed cell-phone network, thereby giving customers access to the images within seconds.

    “People pay for speed,” Smith explains. “The first picture runs; the second just doesn’t.”

    —> read original story at SPIEGEL ONLINE International edition

    Out on the Hunt

    Owing to this pressing need for speed, Splash photographer Darren Banks always has his Canon EOS 1D Mark IV within reach. The compact 36-year-old is wearing white sneakers and jeans. He was once a marksman with the British Army. “It’s the same training, exactly the same business: Have a recon, shoot the prey,” he says in a strong British accent, maneuvering his large SUV out of a parking spot.

    We drive toward Hollywood, the 20-square-mile (50-square-kilometer) zone surrounding Sunset Boulevard that is the hunting grounds of the paparazzi. Banks always drives up and down the same 12 blocks, along Melrose Avenue, Rodeo Drive and Robertson Boulevard, past “Ivy,” a restaurant popular with celebrities, the “Boa” steakhouse and the Fred Segal boutique. Eventually, he heads toward Beverly Hills, where the stars live.

    In Benedict Canyon, Banks monitors the situation in front of David and Victoria Beckham’s $22-million (€17-million) mansion. A few blocks later, he drives past Tom Cruise’s former house.

    Banks knows the area like the back of his hand. Three months before Cruise’s daughter Suri was born, Banks practically lived in front of the estate’s gate, sitting in his car from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day while taking only short breaks. He calls the practice of waiting for weeks on end for just the right opportunity “doorstepping.”

    At times, he says, there were eight paparazzi lurking in front of the house, but “in the end, I got the largest number of exclusive photographs.” The haul consisted of eight “sets” of photos, little vignettes from the life of the Cruise family that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

    Voyeurism and Pride

    This form of journalism is profitable because the Internet has created a huge new market for the big-game hunters of photojournalism. Magazines like Us Weekly and People, as well as newspapers like the British tabloid Daily Mirror and the German tabloid Bild, are still important customers. But, these days, Smith primarily sells his photos to celebrity websites, such as tmz.com, eonline.com and perezhilton.com, which have something to say about every shopping trip of a given celebrity. Splash News assembles about 200 photo sets of small episodes from the lives of the stars. With these photos and archive images, the company sells about 10,000 photos a day, making it the world’s largest dealer of voyeuristic content.

    With success, however, comes the pressure to liberate the company from its shady image. Indeed, Smith expends a lot of effort touting his company as a “legitimate news agency” and insisting that Splash News’ reporters are well-trained journalists and photographers. “We consider ourselves the gentleman on the block,” he says. “There are a lot of rogues out there,” he adds, referring to photographers only out there to make a quick buck. “They are all rubbish.”

    Allegedly Less Scrupulous Upstarts

    Francois Regis Navarre is one these “rogues” — and someone Smith would prefer to see banished to the deserts of California. After serving as a war reporter in Iraq and Cambodia for the French newspaper Le Monde, Navarre founded the X17 photo agency in 1996. Since then, the 49-year-old Frenchman has scored some of the biggest coups in the paparazzi world.

    For example, the world has Navarre to thank for photos of Britney Spears shaving her head. Navarre also claims to have been the first to know about Michael Jackson’s death because, as he says, one of his men managed to take a few shots of the inside of the ambulance carrying the singer.

    Navarre lives on Amalfi Drive, an exclusive street in Pacific Palisades, and he also owns a beach house in Malibu. Paparazzi photos have made him a rich man, with his company reportedly generating roughly $10 million in annual revenues.

    Others in the paparazzi world despise him because he doesn’t employ professional photographers. Instead, his team is primarily composed of immigrants from countries like Brazil, whom he pays a low flat fee every month for the rights to their photos. He instructs his photographers not to take pictures of stars from far away but, rather, to “flash” them at close range, as he calls it. “I want to have eye contact with the stars,” Navarre says.

    In fact, Navarre has a reputation for occasionally playing fast and loose with the law. For example, California law holds that a person cannot be photographed if a “reasonable expectation of privacy” exists. But, as Navarre sees it, the precise meaning of the words “reasonable expectation” is a subjective matter. For example, he just published photos of Bradley Cooper, one of the lead actors in the recent hit comedy “The Hangover,” with his new girlfriend on the balcony of his house.

    “We go as far as we can without breaking the laws,” Navarre says. “There is a little anarchist in every good paparazzi.”

    The Intensity of the Moment

    Navarre’s cell phone rings. “Kim Kardashian just left her place,” he reports. Even if, by Hollywood standards, the reality-TV star (with an estimated annual income of $6 million) is merely a B-list celebrity, photos of her will probably still be worth a few thousand dollars for X17.

    Navarre hurries to his silver Porsche Cayenne. “She is going down Benedict?” he shouts into the phone, which will not leave his hands anytime soon. “In a white Rolls-Royce?” On Canon Drive, Navarre pulls up just behind the car carrying the star, while one of his photographers pulls up in the next lane, shooting all the while. “Any competitors around?” Navarre shouts through his car’s open window. Within seconds, four other paparazzi speed by, running the next red light.

    The convoy comes to a stop in front of a small hair salon on South Doheny Drive. Navarre grabs his camera and takes pictures of the shop through its glass front door while his men take up positions outside the back entrance. There are only 10 steps between the door and the car as it is being parked. The photographers have to be quick.

    “How do we do this? Stay close to the door or at the car?” Jack Arshamian shouts to his fellow photographers. For months, the Armenian-American has been following Kardashian wherever she goes. “She knows me; she respects my job,” says the former chauffeur, who has been working for Navarre for five months. Eventually, when the star steps out of the salon with her hair freshly done, the clicking of camera shutters sounds like machine-gun fire.

    Questionable Justifications

    What is still permitted, and what isn’t? Which methods are justified by the growing demand for celebrity photos? Though they pride themselves on their professionalism, even the Splash News photographers will admit to taking part in “gang bangs,” the term they use for when a group of photographers launches a surprise attack on a star.

    Likewise, all of the “paps,” as they call themselves, like to show off by telling somewhat far-fetched stories about their own celebrity-hunting experiences. For example, Banks, the former marksman, speaks of his awe for the driving skills of actress Cameron Diaz, who he claims has routinely managed to outrun the powerful SUVs of the photographers in her Toyota Prius.

    However, some of his other stories bring to mind the horrifying accident in Paris that took the life of Princess Diana. To this day, many people consider celebrity photographers to be responsible for her death.

    For example, Banks says, up to 40 paparazzi chased singer Britney Spears around when she was embroiled in her divorce battle with Kevin Federline. “If you are following a celebrity,” he explains, “you build up a box system, and you tend to drive in a convoy. You don’t want members of the public to be at risk.”

    In saying this, Banks is trying to be reassuring. But the paparazzi have no sympathy for the stars. “This is a working town, and fame is something you have to maintain,” says Smith, the Splash News chief. “It’s like fitness: You have to do it everyday to keep it going; we are part of that.”

    In 2007, Smith landed the most lucrative deal in company history when Anna Nicole Smith died. The Splash paparazzi took footage of the model-turned-actress en route to the hospital, when she was presumably already dead. His agency raked in more than $1 million from the coup, Smith says. When asked if his work might be considered irreverent, he says: “The marketplace is the greatest democracy in the world. There is a demand for this kind of pictures.”

    Selling Dreams

    Serving this market is now up to Shenk, the Corbis CEO in Seattle. With the help of Splash News, he hopes to finally turn Corbis into a money-making machine. Twelve Corbis offices and more than 1,000 employees worldwide are now ready to work in the paparazzi-photo business.

    “There is a global appetite for celebrity pictures that is insatiable; consumers will never get tired of looking at beautiful people,” Shenk says.

    As recently as 2008, Shenk said that the celebrity-snapshot business was bad for the industry’s overall image. But now he raves about photos that, as he says, tell “stories about humanity.”

    “I don’t think that this market will ever go down,” he says. “This is about dreams and people’s connections to dreams, and that’s a perpetual human feeling and instinct that will continue forever.”

    Shenk recently discussed the acquisition with Corbis founder Bill Gates. “I could assure him that we have incredibly high standards about making sure that ethical lines are not crossed,” Shenk says.

    Besides, he adds, Gates knows perfectly well that he is also part of the celebrity world: “I fully expect that Splash will cover him.”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    —> read original story at SPIEGEL ONLINE International edition

  • Antibiotics Prove Powerless as Super-Germs Spread

    Antibiotics were once the wonder drug. Now, however, an increasing number of highly resistant — and deadly — bacteria are spreading around the world. The killer bugs often originate in factory farms, where animals are treated whether they are sick or not. By SPIEGEL Staff

    The pathogens thrive in warm, moist environments. They feel comfortable in people’s armpits, in the genital area and in the nasal mucous membranes. Their hunting grounds are in the locker rooms of schools and universities, as well as in the communal showers of prisons and health clubs.

    The bacteria are transmitted via the skin, through towels, clothing or direct body contact. All it takes is a small abrasion to provide them with access to a victim’s bloodstream. Festering pustules develop at the infection site, at which point the pathogens are also capable of corroding the lungs. If doctors wait too long, patients can die very quickly.

    This is precisely what happened to Ashton Bonds, a 17-year-old student at Staunton River High School in Bedford County, in the US state of Virginia. Ashton spent a week fighting for his life — and lost. This is probably what also happened to Omar Rivera, a 12-year-old in New York, who doctors sent home because they thought he was exhibiting allergy symptoms. He died that same night.

    The same thing almost happened at a high school in the town of Belen, New Mexico. Less than two weeks ago, a cheerleader at the school was hospitalized after complaining about an abscess. Twelve other female students had been afflicted with suspicious rashes. All the students tested positive for a bacterium that the US media has dubbed the “superbug.”

    The school administration in Belen believes that the bacterium was spread on mats in the school’s fitness and wrestling rooms. The facility was thoroughly disinfected 40 times, and yet the fear remains.

    Fears of a Pandemic

    Microbiologists refer to this bacterium as community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or ca-MRSA. The terrifying thing about it is its resistance to almost all common antibiotics, which complicates treatment. And, in contrast to the highly drug-resistant hospital-acquired MRSA (ha-MRSA) strains, which primarily affect the elderly and people in hospitals and nursing homes, ca-MRSA affects healthy young people. The bacterium has become a serious health threat in the United States. Doctors have already discovered it in Germany, although no deaths have been attributed to it yet in the country.

    The two bacteria, ha-MRSA and ca-MRSA, are only two strains from an entire arsenal of pathogens that are now resistant to almost all available antibiotics. Less than a century after the discovery of penicillin, one of the most powerful miracle weapons ever produced by modern medicine threatens to become ineffective.

    The British medical journal The Lancet warns that the drug-resistant bacteria could spark a “pandemic.” And, in Germany, the dangerous pathogens are no longer only feared “hospital bugs” found in intensive care units (ICUs). Instead, they have become ubiquitous.

    About two weeks ago, consumers were alarmed by the results of an analysis of chicken meat by the environmentalist group Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND), which found multidrug-resistant bacteria on more than half of the chicken parts purchased in supermarkets.

    The dangerous bacteria have even been detected on one of Germany’s high-speed ICE trains. Likewise, more than 10 percent of the residents of German retirement homes have been colonized by MRSA bacteria. In their case, every open wound is potentially deadly. The pathogens have also been found on beef, pork and vegetables.

    Another alarming finding is that about 3 to 5 percent of the population carries so-called ESBL-forming bacteria in the intestine without knowing it. Even modern antibiotics are completely ineffective against these highly resistant bacteria.

    Diminishing Defenses

    When the neonatal ICU at a hospital in the northern German city of Bremen was infested with an ESBL-forming bacterium last fall, three prematurely born babies died.

    Infestation with multidrug-resistant bacteria is normally harmless to healthy individuals because their immune systems can keep the pathogens under control. Problems arise when an individual becomes seriously ill.

    “Take, for example, a person who is having surgery and requires artificial respiration and receives a venous or urinary catheter,” explains Petra Gastmeier, director of the Institute of Hygiene and Environmental Medicine at Berlin’s Charité Hospital. “In such a case, the resistant intestinal bacteria can enter the lungs, the bloodstream and the bladder.”

    This results in urinary tract infections, pneumonia or sepsis, which are increasingly only treatable with so-called reserve antibiotics, that is, drugs for emergencies that should only be administered when common antibiotics are no longer effective.

    The Spread of Killer Bugs

    Recently, an even greater threat has arisen. With the spread of ESBL-forming bacteria, reserve antibiotics have to be used more and more frequently, thereby allowing new resistances to develop. In fact, there are already some pathogens that not even the drugs of last resort in the medical arsenal can combat.

    In India, where poor hygiene and the availability of over-the-counter antibiotics encourage the development of resistance, an estimated 100 to 200 million people are reportedly already carriers of these virtually unbeatable killer bacteria. There is only one antibiotic left — a drug that is normally not even used anymore owing to its potentially fatal side effects — that is still effective against these killer bacteria. In serious cases, people who become infected with these types of pathogens dieincreasingly only treatable with so-called reserve antibiotics, that is, drugs for emergencies that should only be administered when common antibiotics are no longer effective.

    The Spread of Killer Bugs

    Recently, an even greater threat has arisen. With the spread of ESBL-forming bacteria, reserve antibiotics have to be used more and more frequently, thereby allowing new resistances to develop. In fact, there are already some pathogens that not even the drugs of last resort in the medical arsenal can combat.

    In India, where poor hygiene and the availability of over-the-counter antibiotics encourage the development of resistance, an estimated 100 to 200 million people are reportedly already carriers of these virtually unbeatable killer bacteria. There is only one antibiotic left — a drug that is normally not even used anymore owing to its potentially fatal side effects — that is still effective against these killer bacteria. In serious cases, people who become infected with these types of pathogens die of urinary tract infections, wound infections or pneumonia.

    The killer bugs have also reached England, presumably through medical tourists who traveled to India for cosmetic surgery, and they have reportedly already infected several hundred people. A few cases have also turned up in Germany.

    Israel even experienced a nationwide outbreak a few years ago. Within a few months, about 1,300 people were afflicted by an extremely dangerous bacterium that killed 40 percent of infected patients. Even today, the same bacterium still sickens some 300 people a year.

    (–> Read original story at SPIEGEL ONLINE)

    The Post Antibiotic Era

    This rapid spread has caused many to wonder whether more and more people in Germany will soon die of infectious diseases that were supposedly treatable, as happened in centuries past. Unfortunately, there are many indications that this might ultimately be the case.

    “We are moving toward a post-antibiotic era,” predicts Yehuda Carmeli of the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. “But it won’t happen on one day or at the same time in every part of the world. And that’s the tragedy, because this means that it is not perceived as a serious problem.”

    The World Health Organization (WHO) recently warned against an impending medical catastrophe. And, in The Lancet, leading healthcare experts published an urgent appeal: “We have watched too passively as the treasury of drugs that has served us well has been stripped of its value. We urge our colleagues worldwide to take responsibility for the protection of this precious resource. There is no longer time for silence and complacency.”

    In fact, the carelessness with which doctors and farmers are jeopardizing the effectiveness of one of the most important groups of drugs borders on lunacy. Some 900 metric tons of antibiotics are administered to livestock each year in Germany alone. Instead of treating only those animals that are truly sick, farmers routinely feed the medications to all of their animals. Likewise, some 300 metric tons of antibiotics are used to treat humans each year, far too often for those merely suffering from a common cold.

    A Foe We Helped Become More Flexible

    This large-scale use inevitably leads to the spread of resistant bugs. Indeed, antibiotics offer ideal growth conditions to individual bacteria that have naturally become resistant through a small change in their genetic makeup. Simply put, they benefit from the fact that the antibiotics still kill off their competitors, the non-resistant bacteria.

    In many cases, a genetic mutation isn’t even necessary to allow a resistant bacterium to develop. Bacteria can incorporate bits of genetic material from other pathogens. For example, for millions of years, the gene for ESBL resistance lay dormant in the ground, where it was part of a complicated ecosystem of bacteria, penicillin-producing fungi and plant roots. Again and again, the gene was incorporated by human intestinal bacteria — as useless ballast. It was only the large-scale use of antibiotics that provided the ESBL-forming bacteria with the opportunity to proliferate.

    Recent studies show that quantities of antibiotics much smaller than previously thought can lead to the development of resistance. In retrospect, the uncontrolled dispensing of antibiotics has proven to be a huge mistake. “In the last 30 years, we have contaminated our entire environment with antibiotics and resistant bacteria,” says Jan Kluytmans, a microbiologist at Amphia Hospital, in the southern Dutch city of Breda. “The question is whether this is even reversible anymore. Perhaps we can prevent only the worst things from happening now.”

    Shocking Levels of Antibiotic Abuse on Farms

    Since a large share of resistant bacteria come from barns, it will be critical to drastically reduce the use of antibiotics in agriculture. Remarkably often, farmers, feedlot operators and veterinarians are themselves carriers of multidrug-resistant bacteria. Kluytmans has even demonstrated that the pathogens found in humans are very often genetically identical with the bacteria detected on meat.

    It’s virtually impossible to become infected by eating such meat, at least as long as it’s well-cooked. The risk arises when raw meat comes into contact with small wounds. What’s more, even vegetable crops can become contaminated when liquid manure is spread onto fields.

    The exhaust gases emitted by giant feedlots for pigs and chickens could also pose a danger greater than previously thought. These meat factories blow bacteria, viruses and fungi into the air. The government of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia has commissioned a study to determine whether feedlots are discharging multidrug-resistant bacteria, thereby endangering people in the surrounding areas.

    Last year, North Rhine-Westphalia was also the first German state to systematically investigate the use of antibiotics in chicken farms. The horrifying conclusion was that more than 96 percent of all animals had received these drugs — sometimes up to eight different agents — in their short lives of only a few weeks. “That was the proof that the exception — namely, treating disease — had become the rule,” says Johannes Remmel, a Green Party member and the state’s consumer protection minister.

    Abysmal Feedlot Conditions

    As the results of the investigation suggest, factory farming is to blame. The bigger an operation, the more antibiotics are administered to individual animals. Investigators also noted that the duration of antibiotic use was usually very short — shorter than specified in the licensing requirements. This saves money, but it also promotes the formation of resistance.

    The fact that livestock farmers mix antibiotics into feed has to do with production conditions in feedlots:

    • To produce veal, animals from different sources that are too weak for milk and beef production — and likewise more susceptible to infectious diseases — are often jammed into enclosures.
    • Pigs are usually kept in very small spaces, making them very aggressive and causing them to fight. Their wounds have to be treated with antibiotics.
    • In the past, it took 80 days until a chicken was ready for slaughter. Today it’s only 37 days. Chicken farmers have a profit margin of only a few cents per animal. To minimize losses through disease, poultry producers and their veterinarian helpers use antibiotics as a preventive tool.

    However, factory farming is also possible without the uncontrolled use of antibiotics. Dairy cows, for example, are usually not given these drugs since antibiotics would interfere with the production of cheese and yogurt. Nevertheless, there are still plenty of inexpensive milk products on supermarket shelves.

    “In the Netherlands,” says Kluytmans, “the use of antibiotics in feedlots was even reduced by about 30 percent within two years — partly as a result of stricter regulations for veterinarians. That’s more than we administer to humans.” Unfortunately, he adds, the use of antibiotics in feedlots is practically a matter of religious belief.

    Efforts to Combat Antibiotics Abuse

    In early January, Ilse Aigner, Germany’s minister of food, agriculture and consumer protection, unveiled a package of measures aimed at curbing the use of antibiotics in farm animals. The measures include stricter controls that would make it more difficult to add antibiotics urgently needed in human medicine to animal feed. Germany’s federal government is also considering suspending veterinarians’ right to dispense medicine. In contrast to doctors practicing medicine on humans, who prescribe drugs to be purchased at pharmacies, veterinarians can even directly sell drugs to farmers and feedlot owners, which means they stand to profit handsomely from the large-scale use of antibiotics.

    However, Remmel, the consumer protection minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, believes that Aigner’s proposals are “deceptively packaged,” and he is calling for exact specifications on the amounts of antibiotics that can be used.

    Similarly, there is also little control over the use of antibiotics in human medicine. In Germany, in particular, doctors prescribe antibiotics as they see fit, whereas in the Netherlands doctors must first consult with a microbiologist.

    “Just as in pain therapy, there really ought to be experts for treatment with antibiotics,” says Gastmeier, the director of the Institute of Hygiene and Environmental Medicine at Berlin’s Charité Hospital “But young doctors, in particular, are often relatively uninformed.” Indeed, in medical school, they learn very little about the proper use of antibiotics.

    Little Research into New Antibiotics

    Still, even more responsible prescribing practices will hardly be able to stop the advance of resistant bacteria in the long term. What’s more, no new antibiotics can be seen on the horizon. Only four pharmaceutical companies worldwide are still working on developing new agents.

    “Antibiotics have a serious problem,” says Wolfgang Wohlleben of the Institute of Microbiology at the University of Tübingen, in southwestern Germany: “They actually work.” Indeed, the drugs can get the better of an infection within a few hours or days, and then they are no longer needed. By contrast, patients taking drugs to fight high blood pressure or diabetes often have to take them for the rest of their lives — which translates into steady, reliable profits for pharmaceutical companies.

    Yet another factor making antibiotic-related R&D unattractive is the fact that doctors can only prescribe a new antibiotic in the most extreme of emergencies lest it lose its efficacy within a short amount of time.

    Given these circumstances, major pharmaceutical companies stopped searching for new antibiotics years ago. Nowadays, only small start-ups or university-based researchers are interested in the field.

    Abandoned by Big Pharm

    In reality, the search for new drugs should be getting easier rather than more difficult. In the 1990s, the large pharmaceutical companies spent several million euros searching for weaknesses in the genetic makeup of bacteria. But although the researchers were actually successful, the subsequently developed drugs never made the final leap into clinical use.

    “In the end, the risks of antibiotic research were simply too great for companies,” says pharmacist Julia Bandow, who went into academia to continue studying antibiotics after working for the US-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer for six years.

    But without the large pharmaceutical companies, there can be little hope of progress. After all, testing a drug in human subjects takes years and costs millions. And, as Bandow says of her fellow academics, “We can’t do it alone.”

    If pharmaceutical companies refuse to invest in the necessary studies, it’s critical for the government to step in. At the least, politicians could make the development of antibiotics more attractive, for example, by extending the time before patents expire so as to allow companies to earn returns on their investments for longer. But, so far, these are all nothing but ideas.

    “At some point in the coming years,” says microbiologist Kluytmans, “there will be a disaster involving resistant pathogens with many casualties. Only then will something change.”

    BY PHILIP BETHGE, VERONIKA HACKENBROCH, LAURA HÖFLINGER, MICHAEL LOECKX and UDO LUDWIG

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

  • A Passion for Bigfoot: Hiking the Redwoods with California’s ‘Squatchers’

    Amateur researchers in the United States continue to eagerly search for the mysterious creature known as Bigfoot, staking out California’s redwood forests at night in their hunt for the elusive beast. Despite many claimed sightings, the existence of Sasquatch has never been proven. Yet that hasn’t stopped the obsessed from pursuing his giant footprints.

    The plaintive howl echoes through the forest sounding like a muffled “whoop, whoop, whoop.” Brandon Kiel pauses to listen in the dark, holding his breath for a moment before drawing air into his lungs.

    Once again, Kiel cups his hands in front of his mouth and imitates the call: “whoop, whoop, whoop.” The sound echoes back through the night, but all else is silence. Bigfoot isn’t answering.

    “The season is favorable,” Kiel says, with a touch of disappointment. “But it’s always possible that the animals are not in the area.” The blueberries are ripe, and the calves of the Roosevelt elk, one of Bigfoot’s favorite foods, haven’t matured yet.

    Kiel, 41, is a field researcher with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), a group based in the United States. The creature he is looking for is said to be clever, shy and stealthy — an expert at camouflaging itself. But here in the redwood forests of northern California, Kiel is hoping he’ll be blessed with hunter’s luck. He and 20 fellow field researchers are on an expedition to track down Bigfoot.

    The Believers

    Kiel calls the ominous creature “Squatch,” short for “Sasquatch,” a word in a Native American language that means “wild man of the woods”. The shaggy, mythical creature — half ape, half human — is believed to be powerfully built, reach heights of up to 2.5 meters (over 8 feet) and weigh up to 230 kilograms (500 pounds), and it allegedly spends its time skulking through the forests of North America. So far, there is no real evidence of the existence of this alleged primate species. Indeed, human beings have never actually gotten their hands on a Sasquatch, either dead or alive.

    Nevertheless, experienced “Squatchers” like Kiel are convinced that the animal exists. Even the Native Americans in the region had songs praising this mysterious miniature version of King Kong. Dozens of huge footprints have been found. Hundreds of eyewitnesses from the Canadian province of British Columbia all the way down to Florida — including police officers, park rangers and professors — claim to have laid eyes on the creature. The literature even mentions tufts of hair and a Bigfoot toenail found near the Grand Canyon.

    “I am convinced that the Sasquatch exists,” says British Columbia wildlife biologist John Bindernagel. For years, Bindernagel has put his academic reputation on the line by not only believing in Sasquatch, but also studying it. “I estimate the population of the animal to be several thousand at least,” says Bindernagel, who has already written several books on Bigfoot.

    Bindernagel also has a theory on how Bigfoot reached the American wilderness. He speculates that Gigantopithecus, an extinct genus of giant ape, once migrated from Asia across the same land bridge in what is now the Bering Strait that the first humans are believed to have crossed to reach North America.

    The Squatchers

    Bigfoot is believed to be particularly prevalent in the area around the town of Klamath, in northern California, where a group of adventurous souls has gathered on this October day. Camouflage clothing is de rigueur, and the mood is euphoric. The most avid members of the group have studied the BFRO’s expedition handbook, which informs readers to expect “type 1” inspections: a visit by “one or more” Bigfoots to the tent camp while everyone is sleeping, “most often between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.”

    No one in the group questions whether the creature exists. Instead, they discuss its biology. The Squatch is “mainly nocturnal,” Kiel says. It lives in groups and is “stinky, musky.” Its diet includes “roots, slugs, frogs, deer, elk, fish, onions and berries.” It literally licks its fingers after eating a meal of skunk cabbage.

    Kiel has a round face with a vandyke beard, and he keeps his hair cropped short. When asked whether he has ever encountered the creature, he says: “Sure, just a couple of weeks ago.”

    In late July, he explains, the Squatchers gathered at Bluff Creek, less than 20 miles (32 kilometers) east across the mountains. “We had walked about a mile and a half, when someone suddenly said: ‘There’s a Sasquatch sitting by the side of the road,’” Kiel recounts. “I didn’t believe him, so I asked: ‘Is it a bear?’ But he was adamant.”

    Kiel grabbed an infrared camera and peered through the viewfinder. “And, sure enough,” he says, “there was the heat signature of a very large animal with its back to us, without a neck, with massively broad shoulders and a pointy head. You could see it from the waist up. I was totally flabbergasted.” Kiel claims that the creature then turned around and looked at him twice. The intimate exchange of glances lasted about 15 minutes. Then Kiel, the expedition leader, decided to pull out. “I wanted to be respectful,” he says.

    The area around Bluff Creek is well known among Bigfoot aficionados. It was where, on Oct. 20, 1967, a legendary amateur film was shot depicting a massive, hairy beast strolling through a riverbed for a few seconds.

    Film experts — and even special-effects artists working for the Disney corporation — have repeatedly scrutinized the blurred, grainy footage. But the evidence remains unclear. Is the creature a person in an ape suit or a world sensation of cryptozoology, the search for animals whose existence has yet to be proven? The man who shot the video, a rodeo rider named Roger Patterson, continued to insist that the film was authentic up until his death in 1972.

    At the BFRO camp in California, at any rate, no one questions the authenticity of the Patterson video. In fact, almost everyone in the group claims to have already seen a Bigfoot at least once. “I was elk hunting”, says Rey Lopez, a government employee who lives near Sacramento. “At first I thought it was another hunter, but then I realized that it was a Sasquatch with whitish hair.”

    Alleged Proof

    We pile into Lopez’s large pickup truck and drive out into the night. After a few miles, he stops the truck on a parking lot in the middle of the woods. The group uses headlamps with red lenses to avoid startling the beast. After a brief walkie-talkie test, everyone is ready to go out “Squatching,” the nightly foray into Bigfoot territory.

    We spend the next few hours whispering and stumbling through the same woods in which parts of Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” were filmed. The undergrowth is wet, and the red light is barely strong enough to illuminate annoying roots poking out of the ground. Kiel, the expedition’s leader, stops every once in a while and sends his “whoop” calls out into the night. Sometimes he also blows on a high-pitched whistle or hits trees with a large “Squatch knocker” — in layman’s terms, a branch — hoping the hollow sound might attract Bigfoot.

    Meanwhile, Robert Collier, who lives near Los Angeles, continues to observe everything with his night-vision goggles, which he proudly points out are “military grade.” His eyes look green in the device’s light.

    The whole production has only one purpose: to somehow convince the woodland beast to communicate with the group. “Bigfoots have been known to answer us,” says Kiel. “We experience time and again that rocks are thrown at us.” He also points out that “wood-knocks,” “whoops” and “screams” are regularly heard echoing from the undergrowth.

    In fact, noisy audio recordings bear witness to the creature’s supposed vocabulary, including sounds like blood-curdling screams and obscure-sounding jibberish. Particularly avid Squatchers say they’ve managed to make out bits of Russian and ancient Chinese in the audio soup.

    Even some of the creature’s genetic material is allegedly in circulation. Kiel claims that Melba Ketchum, a veterinarian based in Timpson, Texas, has analyzed dozens of hair samples, but that the results of her research have yet to be published. Nevertheless, there are rumors in the community that tissue from two dead Bigfoots is in refrigerated storage at Ketchum’s laboratory.

    Ketchum declines to comment, though, and the Squatchers have waited in vain for her to make an appearance at their annual Bigfoot conferences, which regularly attract several hundred attendees.

    ‘A Good Excuse to Go Camping’

    Does all of this sound crazy? Sure it does. And, yet, there are some questions that remain unanswered. For example, the 1992 discovery of a new bovine species, the Saola, in the jungles of Southeast Asia has given the Squatchers hope. The Saola lives in an area that is no less densely populated than many of the forested areas in the United States.

    Couldn’t it be possible that a shrewd giant ape has been hiding undiscovered in the forests of North America for centuries?

    “It’s a good excuse to go camping,” says Bill Brewer, who harbors a healthy degree of skepticism despite being a BFRO member. Squatching, he says, also happens to be a lot of fun.

    Perhaps this explains why these hikers in the northern California night seem undaunted in their enthusiasm, even though the woods remain stubbornly silent until the early morning hours. But at least that gives them a good reason to come back soon.

    And it might also be that the Squatchers don’t even want to find the mysterious, broad-shouldered creature after all.

    “I like the romantic notion of our search, this wonderful gray area,” Kiel says. If Bigfoot is actually discovered one day, he notes: “Then all of this will be over.”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    (->read original story at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)