Shigeru Nakano – An Uncommon Japanese Fish Ecologist

Abstract

On 27 March 2000 Shigeru Nakano was lost in the Sea of Cortez off Bahia de Los Angeles in Baja California, when the research vessel that he and eight others were using to return from nearby islands capsized in an unexpected storm. Shigeru Nakano, Takuya Abe, and Masahiko Higashi, all faculty of the Center for Ecological Research (CER) at Kyoto University in Japan were visiting island research sites where Gary Polis of the University of California-Davis was studying food webs, and were accompanied by five other researchers and students. Nakano and his two Japanese colleagues, Polis, and Michael Rose, a postgraduate researcher, drowned. Survivors reported that Shigeru Nakano repeatedly pulled others back to the capsized boat when they were washed away by the raging sea, and strapped his own life jacket onto one of his colleagues who could not swim, literally giving his own life to save the lives of others. Nakano was a superb diver and field biologist, the best I have ever known, but I know from personal experiences during grueling field work in the mountains of Japan and Montana that he would never have left his friends to swim to the nearest island more than a kilometer away and save himself. Nakano's body was not recovered despite an extensive search effort. He was 37 years old and is survived by his wife and three children, and his parents and brother.