Simians, Marines Bear Tattoos : Monkey Population Sets Island Jumping

This subtropical coastal community is flanked, quite literally, by U.S. Marines and tattooed monkeys.

The Marines, 8,000 of them, are based at Parris Island, just southeast of Beaufort. They mingle freely with the local folk, their close-cropped scalps gleaming in the bright South Carolina sunshine.

The much more hirsute monkeys, 3,000 of them, are based on tiny Morgan Island, just northeast of Beaufort. They don’t mingle, however, and their status is mysterious to many residents.

Have Run of Island

“People who have gone out to the island tell me the monkeys have the run of the place and come down to the dock to greet visitors,” an admittedly curious George McMillan, who lives on neighboring St. Helena Island, said recently.

Visitors are not welcome on Morgan Island, however.

“There are big ‘No Trespassing’ signs that say the island is government property,” McMillan said. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on out there on that little island.”

David Taub is the person who can shed light on the mystery, but he is reluctant to do so.

For one thing, he doesn’t want area residents monkeying around on the 22-acre island, which, besides the monkeys, is inhabited only by crabs and a few million mosquitoes.

Contract With FDA

“We simply don’t want to call attention to the place,” explained Taub, a primatologist who looks after the monkeys for Bionetics Research Inc. The company has a contract to provide rhesus monkeys to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for laboratory research.

Taub said the monkeys “are encouraged to multiply” on Morgan Island, where they have lived since 1979. Before that, the island was uninhabited.

Taub’s job is to look after the wide-eyed little animals and periodically deliver shipments of them to the FDA. He tattoos the monkeys with identification numbers, by which they could be traced if stolen, and regularly hauls them loads of Purina Monkey Chow.

The surrounding salt water, he said, prevents the monkeys from going AWOL, as Marines occasionally do.

No Visitors Allowed

Taub referred a request for permission to visit the island to Dr. James Vickers of the FDA’s Center for Drugs and Biologics at Bethesda, Md., who said the government permits no one to visit the monkeys.

“If someone takes a child out there who is positive for polio virus or measles, then the whole project is down the tubes,” said Vickers, who acknowledged that some persons living near Morgan Island wonder what’s happening there.

He said the monkeys are used primarily for tests ensuring that batches of oral polio vaccine are safe. He would only describe other uses as laboratory research.

Morgan Island is one of four FDA monkey refuges around the country, Vickers said. The others are in the Florida Keys, at Tulane University and at a site near Corpus Christi, Tex.