Spider Experts Perish At Sea

As one of the world's foremost experts on scorpions and spiders, Gary Polis wanted to teach the world that the creatures should not be loathed or feared but appreciated for their integral place in the ecosystem.

This week, he and four other researchers apparently died in the rough waters off Baja California while returning from a expedition to study Polis' passion. Their 20-foot power boat was upended by wind-churned waves, and they were tossed into the thrashing Sea of Cortez.

The bodies of three team members were found Tuesday. Polis and another researcher were still missing Wednesday, but university officials said they were presumed dead.

Polis' enthusiasm for the kinds of creepy crawlies that send shivers up the spines of many people inspired scores of students to follow him to Mexico over the years to poke through the arid Mexican landscape and discover their virtues.

Polis, three Japanese researchers and five students from the University of California at Davis were headed for Bahia de los Angeles, a remote village 300 miles south of the Mexican border, just before noon Monday after a morning of studying spiders and scorpions on an island.

After being thrown into the rough water, the group spent two hours clinging to the boat, while the waves "just pounded us," said one of the four survivors, Gary Huxel, 38, a post-doctoral researcher in ecology.

The 53-year-old Polis appeared to suffer a heart attack and die, UC Davis spokeswoman Sylvia Wright said, citing accounts from the survivors and U.S. officials.

Eventually, Huxel said, the group used life jackets and seat cushions to float away. After three more hours in the water, Huxel washed up on one deserted island; three students reached another.

The four of them were rescued Tuesday, sunburned and spent.

Mexican authorities recovered the bodies of three team members: UC Davis researcher Michael D. Rose, 28; and two ecology professors from Japan's Kyoto University --Takuya Abe, 55, and Masahiko Higashi, 45.

A Japanese assistant professor, Shigeru Nakano, 37, was missing and also presumed dead.

A U.S. Coast Guard plane and helicopter helped Mexican military boats and aircraft search the waters Tuesday and Wednesday for the missing men. More than 100 soldiers scanned the coastline without success.

The survivors and fellow UC Davis researchers -- who avoided the disaster in a companion boat and alerted authorities -- quietly left Bahia de los Angeles on Wednesday, driving out on the dirt road in vans and cars sent in by the school.

Polis, married and the father of two children, had tried to spread his love of scorpions and spiders to a wide audience -- from top scholars to children.

"He was a tremendously likable person, intense and bright," said Laurence Pringle of West Nyack, N.Y., who wrote Scorpion Man, a 1994 children's book that described Polis' work and featured his photo from the field.

Polis, the chairman of UC Davis' environmental sciences department and president of the American Society of Naturalists, said in Scorpion Man that he decided to study biology because he had fun outdoors. His fascination with scorpions began when he saw one on a 1972 camping trip and discovered little was known about the venomous creatures.

"When you talk about scorpions, you tend to use a lot of words like 'the only known example,' 'the first,' 'the largest'," Polis said in the book. "It's just one gee-whiz fact after another."

Philip Brownell, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University, met Polis at the University of California at Riverside in 1971. Over the years, they teamed up on books, television projects and Smithsonian work.

"Gary was trying to understand the flow of nutrients and energy from the ocean onto land. Spiders and scorpions are a step in that movement. The material that floats onto shore is eaten by insects. Scorpions and spiders eat the insects. Birds and other reptiles eat the spiders and scorpions," Brownell said.

The enormous variety of species in Baja California had drawn the men to the harsh landscape since the 1980s. The last time the pair visited the area, Brownell got caught in the bay's rough seas.

"When you get beyond the headlands, it gets rough and suddenly winds come up," Brownell said.

Knowing the boats they use for the expeditions, "it's no wonder they couldn't hold onto it. They just got in seas that were too much for their boat."