Story originally printed in the Coulee News or online at www.couleenews.com
Published - Wednesday, July 09, 2008
National Geographic comes to Coulee Region to film mayflies hatching
CHASEBURG, Wis. — It turns out the Coulee Region is world famous for at least one thing — mayflies.
Make that millions of things. Renowned wildlife cinematographer Alastair MacEwen from the United Kingdom is visiting he area to film the larvae for a future National Geographic film on migration.
“One of the mysteries is these creatures that live in the mud,” MacEwen said. “There are tens of thousands of millions of them and something tells them that this one day is the time to emerge from the mud all together.”
The massive hatching, usually occurring around July 4, has brought MacEwen and camera assistant Skip Hobbie to capture each phase on film.
The pair spent the first week of July at a makeshift studio in the basement of Emmy Award-winning wildlife cinematographer Neil Rettig’s home in Chaseburg. The former school house afforded MacEwen and Hobbie ample space to film mayfly larvae in tanks emerging from the mud and water.
“What we’ve been doing — the shots of the head of the insect underground — it’s a face to conjure with,” MacEwen said. “It’s just an extraordinary thing. It’s one of the most bizarre faces I’ve seen.”
Hobbie, from Austin, Texas, said the insects have tusks, possibly for digging, and play an important part in the Mississippi River’s ecosystem.
“They’re food for other things and at the same time they’re eating other stuff,” Hobbie said.
Rettig, who will be shooting the hatch somewhere along the Mississippi River with MacEwen, said he’s been filming birds, mammals and insects since March. The footage will be used in a 15 to 20-minute Upper Mississippi River segment of a film with the working title “Planet In Motion.”
Shooting will continue until next spring, Rettig said, and there’s a good reason to be shooting in southwest Wisconsin.
“La Crosse is the epicenter of the mayfly population in the world,” he said.
The team of 10 will be filming near Stoddard, Wis., and as far downriver as Lansing, Iowa, he said, and the crew has to be ready to shoot at night when the hatch happens. Predicting that moment is problematic.
The work in the Chaseburg basement allows the team to capture what happens in the murky mud of the river, Hobbie said.
“We’ll get stuff in the wild — of them on the surface of the river as they shed their former body and take off into the air,” he said. “This shot (in the basement) will match that with one leaving its burrow and swimming up.”
Once the mayflies hatch, Hobbie said, they have a short life span of about a day and a half.
“During that time they don’t have a mouth, they don’t have a stomach. All they do is breed, lay their eggs and die,” he said.
Creatures that eat insects on the river will gorge themselves.
“The transition is very fast,” MacEwen said. “Once the larva hit the surface the top of its body turns into a kind of a raft and splits, and literally as it floats there a flying insect emerges.”
After their mass birth, the insects fly to nearby trees and land there for 12 hours, he said. Then they molt again and take to the air. After that they mate and die.
And when they die, Rettig said, they can fall into huge piles and become traffic hazards.
“They’re attracted to any light,” Rettig said, “even moonlight. We don’t know why. Many animals and insects are.”
The larvae in the tanks will emerge at the same time as those in the river bed, MacEwen said. Although the insects do not communicate with each other they somehow know when to emerge. Even when they’re miles apart.
“What we’re trying to film here is that part of the story that no one ever sees,” he said. “They see the fluttering insects, but in fact, it’s like kind of an iceberg. There’s a huge portion of that story which is hidden and that lurks in the water underground.”
All stories copyright 2006 Coulee News and other attributed sources.