Where Naturalist’s Children Learn Naturally

Edward Harris is well attuned to his environment. “What a horrid smell,” he announced. “There must be a dead shark.”

And there was--a flat-snouted baby shark, decomposing nicely on the front porch, on a window sill above the 15-foot bench made of a whale’s jawbone. Only Edward Harris knew how the dead shark had made it up from the beach.

“This is spring,” he said. “Spring is when the snakes come out.”

Indeed it is. In winter it is the whales that come to Edward Harris’ front yard, but in spring it is the snakes. The snakes are poisonous pit vipers called jarara here in the south of Argentina, where the seasons are reversed.

Instructions for treating anyone bitten by the jarara, or by black widow spiders, are taped to the door of the Harris house. One day soon, Edward will be able to read them. For now, it is enough to know to be careful.

New Breed Takes Root

Edward Harris, a fetching and precocious 5-year-old, blond with blue eyes, is a product of a new breed of naturalist that has taken root here in one of the hemisphere’s premier outposts for wildlife observation and conservation. As ever, naturalists tramp off into the back of beyond, but nowadays their families go with them.

“It is very common now for a scientist embarking on a long-term project in the field to take his family along,” said William G. Conway, director of the New York Zoological Society, which built Whale Camp here and also supports backland research en famille in Peru and Venezuela.

A crude cinder-block bungalow on a wind-swept beach 25 dirt-track miles from the nearest telephone, doctor, school or ice cream parlor is the only home Edward Harris and his 3-year-old sister, Sabrina, have ever known.

It is not lonely. For company there are the whales, playful dolphins, sea lions, elephant seals, penguins, ostrich-like rheas, guanacos (relatives of the camel and the llama), wildcats, foxes, skunks, stoats, tortoises, uncounted varieties of mice, and an armadillo named Bluebottom that comes every day for lunch. Some blustery afternoons, killer whales hunting sea lion pups swim right up to the beach.

On this remote tableland peninsula jutting into the cold South Atlantic, Argentine naturalist Graham Harris finds not only professional fulfillment but also safety in the wilderness for his young family.

Snakes the Only Worry

“Apart from the snakes, there are no real worries,” Harris said. “The children have plenty of space, we are not concerned about theft, or traffic, or any of the problems that trouble city parents. If a child gets sick we are two hours from a doctor. In a big city, we might spend that much time in a waiting room.”

A veterinarian turned conservationist, Harris, 33, is a self-taught wildlife artist of emerging reputation. With the support of Argentina’s Fortabat Foundation, he is completing a book on local fauna that is the product of six years in isolation he began as a newlywed and continues as father to a growing family.

Whale Camp, built for $3,000 in the 1970s to support the research of American conservationist Roger Payne, is homey, if hardly suburban.

Sheltered at the foot of a cliff from the fierce Patagonian winds, the Harris manse boasts electricity for three hours a day, when the generator works, and fresh water enough for a quick shower every other day, when it rains enough to fill the catchment basins. The shower water is reused--to rinse clothes and then to water the plants that make a bright splash around the white-painted house staring out at the Gulf of San Jose.

Wife Studies Tidal Pools

“We go to town once a month for supplies if the kerosene refrigerator is working, every two weeks if it’s not,” said Patricia Harris, whose own wildlife observations are dedicated mostly to the study of mollusks in tidal pools--”the animals I can best study with the children.” Edward Harris counts exceptionally well up to 44--the number of research traps for field mice he patrols each day with his mother and sister.

Whale Camp honors the southern right whale, the 35-ton giant whose annual pilgrimage to waters off the Peninsula Valdes is unparalleled in this hemisphere. From May to November the right whales, the most endangered of all whale species, make a nursery of the Golfo de San Jose and the Golfo Nuevo on the other side of the scrubland peninsula.

The Harris family and short-term observers who bunk in huts and trailers scattered around the camp watch them from a cliffside hut 150 feet above the sea. Sometimes Graham Harris takes out a small boat and cruises among the whales.

“Usually they don’t mind,” he said. “The adolescents will stop what they are doing and come over. There’s always a first moment of panic when you see this great thing coming toward you, but then he goes under the boat and everything’s OK. He’s just curious.”

Whale Births Recorded

About 1,000 right whales, a quarter of the world’s population, are drawn instinctively to the Peninsula Valdes, although not all come every year. This season, Payne and Argentine researchers recorded about 200 animals, around 40 births, and the death of four newborn calves, whose only predator in a sea reserve protected by the Argentine government is the killer whale.

“When I first came in 1970, I had never heard or imagined such a good place to study whales,” said Payne, a senior scientist with the World Wildlife Fund who has kept coming back.

In the 1970s, Payne lived at the camp for nearly two years with his wife and four children, and he says this was a fairly radical proposition at the time.

“A guy would go off with his family,” he said, “and some people would ask, ‘Is he researching or is he on vacation?’ But that old tradition of going out alone to face the wilds while leaving the family safe at home was absolute baloney. Long-term field research enables you to know an animal, its offspring and its offspring’s offspring. If a man’s family is along, he is not lonely and he can concentrate better on what he is supposed to be doing.”

Harris, completing his sixth year, has lived the longest at Whale Camp, and he is in no hurry to leave.

Tag With Dolphins

“This is not only the best place in Argentina to see wildlife,” he said, “but it the only place you can actually walk among animals like elephant seals and penguins, swim with the whales and play tag with the dolphins. In addition, just our being here exerts a strong conservationist presence in the area.”

Civilization intrudes, though, even at Whale Camp. Soon the children will be of school age, and what then?

“We go back and forth about what to do when school time comes,” Harris said. “We think we could educate the children well enough ourselves, but they need contact with others of their own age. Edward is an introvert. In the rough and tumble with other kids, he doesn’t stand a chance.”

Whatever his eventual formal education, there seems a fair chance that Edward Harris is a twig already bent.