Sneed's Research Page
 

Unlike many other authors, I like to gather the information for my books by talking to the experts. I especially love to travel into the field with scientists to see first-hand how they work, where they work, and what they are discovering. In the past ten years alone, I've taken some unforgettable journeys to some of the world's most exotic, fabulous places.

MY HEAD IN THE CLOUDS
In 1994, I traveled to a little-known place called the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve in Costa Rica. Monteverde is a small dairy community that happens to be surrounded by an incredible kind of rain forest called a tropical cloud forest. I visited Monteverde twice, once in the dry season and again in the wet season. On each trip, I took many hikes through the cloud forest to see and photograph the animals and plants that live there. More importantly, I interviewed the many scientists who worked there. These trips led to two of my most popular books, MONTEVERDE‹SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS IN A COSTA RICAN CLOUD FOREST and THE FOREST IN THE CLOUDS. Both of these books have won numerous honors, real proof of how much people love learning about tropical forests.
   
Monteverde's Tropical Cloud Forest is one of earth's most spectacular places, filled with plants and animals found nowhere else on our planet.

Ithomiid or "clearwing" butterflies are some of my
favorite animals in the cloud forest.

LIZARD LIFE AND CORAL REEFS
Because of the success of my book MONTEVERDE, I was asked to write a similar book about coral reefs a few years later. In 1998, I journeyed to one of my favorite places on earth‹Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Right about Thanksgiving, I flew to a small research station called the Lizard Island Research Station, in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef. Talk about a tropical paradise! Dozens of spectacular coral reefs surround Lizard Island and the island itself is home to monitor lizards, fruit bats, and a host of other interesting animals. As I did in Costa Rica, I interviewed scientists and went scuba diving with them to learn about their work. The trip wasn't all fun and games. I got a bad earache from diving and ripped open my hand on a piece of coral. The scientists were wonderful to work with, though, and I got to see one of earth's most amazing phenomena‹the mass spawning of corals. The resulting book, LIZARD ISLAND‹SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS ON AUSTRALIA'S GREAT BARRIER REEF was named one of the New York Public Library's Best Books for the Teen Age. I hope you check it out!

Lizard Island sits in the heart of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. It is also home to one of the world's largest coral reef research stations.

Besides getting to meet and
interview scientists at Lizard Island,
I also made friends with some giant
potato cods--fish that were twice
as large as I was!

DIVING INTO THE DEPTHS
After my trip to Australia, I hadn't planned on taking any more major research trips for a while, but in 2001 an opportunity of a lifetime landed in my lap. I had just received a contract to write a series of four books for Benchmark Publishing. The books are about scientists and their research and one of the books is about Dr. Edith Widder, a woman who studies marine bioluminescence‹ocean animals that make their own light. The way Dr. Widder studies these animals is by going down in a deep-sea submarine and observing them in person. Unfortunately, running the submarine is VERY expensive so I never thought I'd get to go down in one myself. Last August, though, Dr. Widder called me up and said, "Sneed, how would you like to take a submarine ride?"
Two months later, I was on board the Research Vessel Edwin Link II, steaming for the Bahamas. With Dr. Widder and other scientists, I spent five days out at sea. Even better, I got to dive two times in the research submersible Johnson Sea-Link. Each time, we dove to the bottom of the ocean‹3,000 feet deep. I saw viper fish, tripod fish, comb jellies, squid, and many other animals. Most of these were bioluminescent. I took tons of photographs and had the time of my life. Making it even more fun, my author friend and wolf wrangler Bruce Weide got to come along. The book about Dr. Widder and her research won't be published for another couple of years, but I thought you'd like to see some of the photos I took on the trip.

The Johnson Sea Link is one of the most important research submarines in the world. In October 2001, I was lucky enough to take two dives in the submarine to the ocean bottom off the coast of the Bahama
Islands.

The Johnson Sea Link is divided into two compartments, each of which holds two people. On my second dive, I got to sit up front. This gave me a great view of the animals, the ocean floor, and the way light changed as we dove deeper.

Ctenophores or "comb jellies" are some of the most common animals in the ocean. This deep-sea ctenophore is called "Big Red" by scientists--can you figure out how? Most animals between 200 and 1,000
meters deep are also bioluminescent--they can make their own light.