Perhaps the watching Marines thought we were moving a load of strange looking recruits destined for Parris Island.Įvery flight sought and received permission to land at MCAS, and the plane always arrived late at night - I believe that old DC3 was slower than my Nissan 300ZX twin turbo sports car. In the moonless dead of night, we drove to our boat dock at Lucy Creek. Marines came out to witness this spectacle as we unloaded monkey crates onto a trailer. The pilot radioed MCAS air control requesting permission to land - perhaps he was a Marine aviator in a previous life. To this day, I marvel at how we managed the following magic act: That antique DC3 had to stop in Miami for refueling before continuing on to Beaufort. About 100 crates filled the plane’s belly. The FDA chartered an aged DC3 and monkeys were shipped in crates that contained three slots per crate, one animal per slot.
There were nine shipments from the Ponce, Puerto Rico, airport to Beaufort via Miami: six starting in July 1979 and three more in early 1980. This would be my second time in Beaufort the first was in 1964, when I spent a challenging semester at University of Parris Island (another story for another time). Yemassee Center hired me to manage the Morgan Island colony, and in spring of 1979 I moved to Beaufort, with wife Pam, 6-year old daughter Alison, and our aged cat Winky. The contract we sought was awarded, and we began the arduous and challenging task of moving about 1,500 monkeys from southern Puerto Rico to Beaufort. I was asked to write the scientific section of the FDA application. Helena Sound, which they believed was an ideal location to reestablish the Puerto Rican free-ranging breeding colonies. They had identified an isolated island, Morgan Island in Beaufort County’s St.
Litton Bionetics badly wanted to obtain this contract. At about this time, the FDA announced an open competition for the Puerto Rican breeding colonies that it was funding. The veterinarian at the Yemassee “monkey farm” asked me to consult to reduce aggression in their breeding colony.
In 1978, as an assistant professor at Bowman Gray School of Medicine, I conducted basic research on social risk-factors and cardiovascular disease using non-human primate models. This was a prescient FDA decision because by 1977, India had permanently banned all exportation of rhesus monkeys to the United States. The FDA was among the first government agencies to proactively contract with the University of Puerto Rico to support two satellite island rhesus colonies, which were spin-offs from over production at the original Cayo Santiago colony. In last week’s column, I shared the history behind the creation of the Yemassee Primate Center and promised to fill you in on the details of how our notorious and mysterious Monkey Island came to be, as well as explain my unique connection to all this monkey business.Ībout 1974, the FDA began supporting rhesus monkey colonies in Puerto Rico for the Sabin Poliomyelitis Virus Vaccine Program.