Amazon Scientific Expedition

As scientist Laura Marsh was working with specimens in museum basements across the globe to update the taxonomy of Saki Monkeys, she discovered that one primate, the Vanzolini Saki Monkey with golden arms and a thick head of hair, hadn’t been recorded alive since 1932. Fearing it had gone extinct, she scaled an expedition to find the monkey and take the pulse of the ecosystem in the far western Amazon of Brazil. For six weeks in the winter of 2017, I joined an international team of scientists to document their quest to find the missing primate. Working and living aboard a houseboat, the team surveyed old rubber tapping trails and river tributaries for the Vanzolini Saki Monkey and recorded other mammals, insects, birds, habitat conditions, logging and wildlife trafficking practices, and came to know the lives of the “riberinhos” (river people) along the way. Rather than finding a "monkey paradise," the expedition uncovered the complexities of the rainforest, the tribulations of science, and the off-the-map realities of life in the jungle.

Published in: bioGraphic, Mongabay, National Geographic online, and more than 40 other international publications.

Awarded: Top 24, 2022 North American Nature Photographers Association Showcase, Judge’s Choice Award, Conservation Category; 2018 North American Nature Photographers Top 250 Showcase