Many of you are aware that Guam lost one of its best friends last week.  Peter Melyan has left us to seek out the undiscovered country.  He has embarked on the greatest adventure. Peter was one of the world’s renaissance men.  He was a traveler, an adventurer, a racer, a climber and a great humanitarian.  He had contacts all over the world and led all of us on The Deep on some amazing adventures.  He was a great promoter of Japanese culture and language on Guam and was also a member of the Guam Diabetes Association. We are having a special tribute edition of The Deep radio show this Wednesday night on K-57. Please listen to some of Peter’s expedition calls and tributes from his many, many friends.  For this article, I’m featuring some of the items I wrote for some of Peter’s expeditions so you can appreciate his wide-ranging interests.

In February of 2005, Peter contacted Mr. Yoshiteru Takahashi about an amazing adventure he had on the slopes of the 7th tallest mountain and he was interviewed on The Deep.  I wrote this article about Takahashi-san’s story.

IN SEARCH OF BIGFOOT	One of the deepest mysteries concerns the continuing reports of ‘almost’ humans.  We are fascinated by these tales of human-like creatures; from the ‘Bigfoot’ of the American west to the Yeti of the Himalayas to the ‘little people’ of Europe and Asia, like the Hawaiian menehunes and the Chamoru duendes.  Most scientists tend to relegate these stories to the status of myth, but with the undisputed discovery of the remains of ‘little people’ on the Indonesian island of Flores, perhaps it’s time to reexamine the ‘myths’ again. The remains found on Flores are not fossils and they have been dated at around 13,000 years.  There are many stories in Indonesia about ‘little people’ who inhabit the forest.  Racial memory? Or is there a possibility that in the deep and unexplored jungles of Indonesia, these tiny hominids still exist? There have been many reports of larger creatures that tend to be lumped in the category ‘Bigfoot’ or Yeti.  In the high mountains of Tibet and Nepal, people have been searching for these creatures.
Yeti footprint taken by Eric Shipton in 1951

Yoshiteru Takahashi actually spotted three of them on the slopes of Dhaulagiri, or White Mountain.  This 26,794 foot tall peak is the world’s 7th highest mountain and the highest mountain located entirely in Nepal.  They were the ‘small yeti’ and he estimated they were about 150 cm (5 feet) tall.

They left several sets of tracks above 15,000 feet and Mr. Takahashi and the other members of his expedition saw them more than once.  The first time, the people at the base camp looked up in the direction of the A camp higher in the mountain and saw ‘people’ walking along a ridge.  They radioed the other camp and were told that no one was outside the tents.  They converged on the area but saw no sign of anyone. 

This expedition also found footprints in the snow that were very human in appearance and were about 4 by 8 inches.  None of the expedition members had walked in that area.  The footprint patterns indicated that the creature walked upright and Mr. Takahashi estimated the stride length at 14 inches.  This small creature certainly isn’t the Bigfoot of southern California, but much mystery remains about what it actually is. 

Peter had many Japanese contacts and in March 2005, one of Peter’s expedition calls featured Dr. Akira Iritani.  Here’s the article I wrote about this exciting adventure.

We all remember Jurassic Park, that safe haven of cloned dinosaurs that turned out not to be so safe after all, at least for the humans involved.  So what are the odds that there will someday be a real Jurassic Park?  One of our guests tonight on The Deep will be Dr. Akira Iritani, a Japanese scientist who has the knowledge and credentials to bring Jurassic Park to life. Dr. Iritani is a well-known and respected researcher at Japan’s Kinki University and has had a long and distinguished career in the fields of DNA research and cloning.  Since Dr. Iritani knows what he’s talking about, he knows that the chances of actually finding viable dinosaur DNA are virtually nil.  After all, they’ve been gone for 65 million years!	RAISING THE DEAD
Dr. Iritani has a slightly more modest dream. He dreams not of Jurassic Park, but Pleistocene Park. For you see, Dr. Iritani doesn’t want to clone a T-rex.  He wants to clone a mammoth. This preserved carcass of a mammoth calf found in 1977 in Magadan, a city facing the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia, is believed to be 40,000 years old.

In 2002, he led a team of researchers to remote Yakutia Province in Siberia.  There, he and a team of Japanese and Russian scientists scoured the ground for mammoths frozen in the permafrost.  Several have been discovered over the centuries so the odds are not impossible.

"The best way to clone one of these animals is to find frozen sperm, but that is very difficult," says Dr. Iritani. "Alternatively, a portion of muscle, skin or any piece of tissue can be a good source of viable DNA.  "The most important thing is to find a good carcass. We need to find specimens that were frozen immediately after death and have remained at a temperature of between -25 and -30 degrees C ever since."

Dr. Iritani didn’t find any mammoths in 2002, although they did find the frozen carcass of a wooly rhinoceros.  Join us tonight on The Deep as we ask Dr. Iritani about his latest research (spinach genes in a pig?) and his upcoming quest to find that elusive mammoth.

Peter’s contacts certainly weren’t limited to Japanese.  We had several exciting calls from a Russian correspondent named Alexei Ilyichev that Peter had contacted.  Here’s a story from August 2005.

SIBERIAN FIRE	We talked about the Asian peninsula Kamchatka last week on The Deep when we interviewed our correspondent Alexei Ilyichev about the dramatic rescue of the trapped Russian submarine.  The sub became entangled in wires on the bottom of Berezovaya Bay.  But there’s more news from Kamchatka.  The Kamchatka Peninsula is one of the most active volcanic regions in the world.  Over a hundred volcanoes stretch across this landmass, and 29 of them have currently active vents.  An expedition of Russian, British and American volcano experts is starting research at the Klyuchevskoi, Shiveluch, Bezymyanny and Tobalchik volcanoes in the central region of the peninsula.  The results of the research will be used for computer modeling of processes deep in the volcanoes.
Klyuchevskoi Volcano

Shiveluch, which is 3,283 meters high (about 10,800 feet), is the northernmost volcano in Kamchatka.  The western part of its dome was completely destroyed when the volcano erupted on 27 February 2005 releasing an ash cloud that spread 700 kilometers westward, covering the peninsula and the adjacent area of the Sea of Okhotsk with a 150-kilometer wide ash strip.

The highest Eurasian volcano, Klyuchevskoi, last erupted in January-May this year.  Hundreds of tons of lava poured from the volcano’s crater that partly melted two glaciers.

The eruption of the 1,500-meter (around 4,930 feet) high Karymsky volcano has continued periodically since January 2, 1996.  Karymsky is one of the most active of the 28 active volcanoes on the peninsula.
The last eruption of Tolbachik happened in 1976 and it was the first to have been predicted with absolute accuracy.  The eruption changed the surrounding terrain and caused an environmental disaster that wiped out all life in a radius of several miles.

Here on Guam, we also live with active volcanoes in our back yard.  Being able to predict their violent eruptions would be a great help. 

One of the things we like to promote on The Deep is the marvelous adventures of women who live on the edge.  From solo sailors to blind dogsled drivers to endurance racers; Peter covered (and contacted) them all.  But one of our favorite female adventurers was Christine Boskoff.  This astounding mountain climber had topped more of the world’s great peaks than any other woman before her tragic death last year.  She died doing what she loved most; climbing mountains.  In November 2005 I wrote this story about this amazing woman.

We’ll have a very special expedition call tonight when we talk with Christine Boskoff, one of the world’s best mountain climbers.  Fourteen mountain peaks are taller than five miles above sea level.  They are known as the 8000-meter peaks, and climbing any one of them is a lifetime achievement.  Christine Boskoff has climbed six of them and has reached the highest peak in four of the seven continents.  She has climbed Mt. Everest twice, and is one of the greatest mountaineers of all time.  She has turned her passion for climbing into a thriving, internationally acclaimed business.  She owns and directs the operations of Seattle based Mountain Madness, one of the largest adventure guiding operations in the country.	CLIMBING WITH CHRISTINE
Tonight Peter Melyan, our expedition coordinator will have us talking to Christine about her latest adventure.  Don’t miss it!

A major thrust of The Deep radio show was environmental issues.  We talked about global warming, the plight of endangered creatures, and one of our favorites, the senseless stupidity and waste of whaling.  This article from June 06 featured one of Peter’s expedition call coups; a visit with a New Zealand Member of Parliament.

A FISHIN’ FOR THE WHALE
On Sunday, at this year’s meeting of the International Whaling Commission in the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, its members voted 33 to 32 in favor of a resolution that declares, "The moratorium, which was clearly intended as a temporary measure, is no longer necessary."  Although many have viewed this resolution as a blow to those opposed to whaling, the good news is that to reverse the ban imposed in 1986, another vote supported by 75 percent of the 70 IWC members (53 votes) would be required

As I stated in last week’s article, I have been at a loss to explain why the Japanese government is so pro-whaling and I may have discovered the answer.  A statement made by one of the pro-whaling delegates implies that whales are the reason that worldwide fish stocks are plunging.  "We're dealing with an ecosystem where whales are on top of the food chain," said Daven Joseph, an IWC delegate from St. Kitts and Nevis.  "That's like blaming woodpeckers for deforestation," countered Vassili Papastavrou, a whale biologist for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.  "The real issue is overfishing, not whales." 

Interestingly enough, virtually all large whales (with the exception of sperm whales, which eat fish) are, in fact, at the bottom of the food chain and feed mainly on plankton and krill, the smallest oceanic plants and animals.  Who are these people trying to kid?

So, why should humans protect whales?  We are, after all, meat eaters.  Why don’t we rally to protect pigs or cows, chickens or fish?  Well, a lot of it has to do with the undisputed intelligence of these ocean-going cetaceans.  A lot of it has to do with the fact that they don’t constitute menu items for very many people so it’s easier to be against their slaughter than it is say, the average cow.  But there’s no question that the almighty yen is behind a lot of the controversy.  “Follow the money” worked for Deep Throat and it works here as well.

We don’t know what the ultimate outcome will be for this year’s IWC meeting since it ends on Tuesday 20 June, but we will be talking about this issue this week on The Deep.  Our host, Jim Sullivan, recently visited the Japanese embassy and had a very enlightening chat with the people there.  He’ll tell you all about it and the interesting things that were said to him.  We hope to have New Zealand’s Conservation Minister Chris Carter, on this week’s show.  He’s one of the leading anti-whaling delegates to the IWC and we’ve talked to him on The Deep several times.  He may be able to call us from the meeting (He did).  We’ll also be talking to local fishermen about their battle with longliners who are depleting local fish stocks.  And these people aren’t blaming the whales!

Peter was also a great health advocate.  He was a prominent member of the Guam Diabetes Association and we featured their programs on The Deep all the time.  He faced his final battle without fear (at least on the outside) and we featured it on The Deep as well.  Here are two articles from 9 November 2005 and 6 June 2006.

NAMING A KILLER
It is the belief in many primitive cultures that if you learn the true name of someone or something, it gives you power over that person or thing.  This week on The Deep, we are going to give a name and a face to one of the world’s most dreaded killers.  No, it’s not the great white shark or crocodiles, it isn’t a tsunami or earthquakes or typhoons.  It’s a killer that can strike anywhere, at anytime and no one on Earth is safe.  This week, we’re giving a name to this waster of life; it’s cancer.

Cancer is defined as “A general term for about 100 diseases characterized by uncontrolled, abnormal growth of cells.”  Cancer doesn’t strike from without; cancer happens when your very own cells stop listening to the DNA that gives them their instructions and strike out on their own.  Growth occurs when one of your body’s cells splits and forms two cells.  Many cells do this to replace cells that have died.  It also happens when children grow (or when you gain weight) and to replace skin cells and make hair andnails grow.  Most normal adult body cells don’t divide.

But occasionally, something goes wrong and a cell (or group of cells) starts to divide uncontrollably.  They continue to divide and divide and they form a tumor.  Cancer cells from the tumor can spread through the blood or lymph (the clear fluid that bathes body cells) to start new cancers in other parts of the body.  This is called metastasis.

Cancer treatment used to involve cutting out the tumor and hoping that it hadn’t spread.  Then we began to use radiation on the tumor to shrink or kill it.  Both methods are still being used, but we have made astounding strides in cancer treatment.  A vaccination on trial right now holds great promise in the treatment of advanced breast cancer.  Drugs like Tamoxifen and Herceptin have also cut breast cancer deaths.

A new treatment for brain disorders, including cancer is the Leksell Gamma Knife®.  This astounding treatment uses computerized data from diagnostic tests like CAT scans or MRIs to pinpoint problem areas within the brain and destroy them using multiple beams of gamma radiation. The patient wears a helmet with 201 holes.  A tiny beam of gamma radiation (the highest energy possible) passes through each hole.  The beam is so small that tissue along the route to the lesion receives only a harmless, low dose of radiation.  Then, the gamma beams converge to produce a high dose of radiation at the exact site of the lesion.  Thus, the Gamma Knife "cuts" deep into the brain without using a scalpel at all. This week on The Deep, we’re giving a name and a face to a killer.  Join us as we speak to co-host Peter Melyan who has undergone this treatment and to other cancer survivors and learn how science is learning the ‘true name’ of cancer and discovering new ways to protect you and me and our family and friends.

Gamma Knife simulation

Every The Deep radio show ended with a catch phrase from each of the three co-hosts.  Jim Sullivan said “Fair winds”, Peter Melyan said “Following seas” and Pam Eastlick said “And clear night skies”.  And so I say to you, Peter Melyan “Fair winds, following seas and clear night skies”.  Farewell, as you embark on the greatest adventure.