On the lookout for adventurers

He has sailed the South Pacific alone, motorcycled from Alaska to South America, and lived with a primitive tribe he discovered in Ethiopia.

He has paddled a kayak hundreds of miles along the United States' East and West Coasts, on rivers in Germany and France, and down dangerous rapids on the Yangtze in China.

He has filmed tribes in Guyana, acted in films, and helped save the life of a woman whose car plunged from a bridge into icy waters at the Jersey Shore.

And along the way, he was in a 1979 Playgirl magazine photo spread and won five national American Ironman titles with the U.S. Lifesaving Association.

Joel S. Fogel could stand in for "the most interesting man in the world" on those Dos Equis beer commercials. (As the ad says, "It's never too late to start beefing up your obituary.")

A diver, a Coast Guard-licensed ship captain, and an aircraft pilot, the resident of Somers Point, N.J., seems to have been everywhere and done everything - except chair an Explorers Club chapter. Members of the international organization of adventurers and scientists, founded in 1904, have been the first at locations from the North Pole to the moon.

Now he can claim that honor. Fogel, 66, was named to the position in January by the Philadelphia chapter's board of directors, which recognized his lifetime of exploration and work related to water quality.

"Whether undersea, in outer space, down the river, up the mountain, or into inner-space pursuits like medicine, genetics, and psychiatry, our members have excelled in all of these fields and more," said Fogel, the founder, president, and executive director of WaterWatch International, a nonprofit volunteer water-monitoring organization.

"In an age when people are taught to value security and avoid risk at all costs, the Explorers Club teaches you to be a poet of action, to take calculated risks for the benefit of science, and to gather knowledge that will enhance various fields of study," he said.

Fogel, an Atlantic City native, is working to bring new blood - especially young people - into the 120-member chapter.

"This is not entirely altruistic on my part," he said. "We want new members and corporate sponsorships. . . . We want to let people know who we are and what we do.

"We are not daredevils, risking our lives for the thrill of it by jumping off bridges with bungee cords. We thoughtfully plan explorations like military missions. Many of us have families and want to make sure we are there for them."

On Tuesday, the club will hold a program at the Downtown Club in Center City, where members and guests will hear tales of discovery involving two ships - the Atocha, a Spanish galleon filled with gold, and the Revenge, a ship commanded by Navy hero Oliver Hazard Perry and wrecked off Rhode Island in 1811.

The club has more than 30 national and international chapters, and members have included explorers such as Robert Peary, Sir Edmund Hillary, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.

Fogel shares their curiosity and desire for adventure. He can still recall a teacher's droning on about a map and scolding Fogel, then 10, for not paying attention.

"I was off, mentally traveling down some dark jungle river, which the map showed only as a green curving line," he said.

Fogel studied marine zoology at the University of Hawaii on Oahu, where he worked with Jacques Cousteau on his Conshelf project of undersea living and research stations.

"I was inspired by him. He said, 'Your mother is the sea. She has given you everything. You must protect her,' " Fogel recalled.

In 1966, he sailed a Danish folkboat sloop through the South Pacific, and he rode a motorcycle 10,000 miles from Alaska to South America in 1968. He hit an oil slick and crashed in Mexico, where he met his future wife, Coty, now 67.

"When I married him" in 1969, she said, "I knew he was adventurer. But sometimes it was difficult with the children."

"My father-in-law told me he'd get tired in his 40s, but he didn't. When he puts his mind to something, he does it."

In 1970, Fogel paddled a kayak from New York to Miami and lobbied for the Clean Water Act. He kayaked over rivers in Germany and France in 1971 and through the Grand Canyon in 1972.

One of Fogel's most memorable adventures came in 1973 when he carried the Explorers Club flag to the Omo River in Ethiopia in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution. Once there, he was initiated into a Stone Age-like tribe that could barely meet its food needs and that gave him the name Nogolull, meaning "the man who came by water."

"I got malaria while I was there and lost 50 pounds," Fogel said. "I wore a loincloth made from the bark of a coconut tree and sandals made from the skin of a warthog."

Fogel was nominated this year for the Lowell Thomas Award for humanitarian work in Ethiopia and continues to seek help for the tribe.

He "is irrepressible," said Peter Hess, a Wilmington lawyer, shipwreck diver, and Explorers Club member. "He's clearly a pioneer in river exploration. He's out doing things that are exciting and adventurous but is also a leading voice for the environmental cause in South Jersey and internationally."

As the club takes a larger role in environmental issues, "it is terrific to have someone with Joel Fogel's interests at the helm," said Robert Peck, senior fellow of the Academy of Natural Sciences and a group member since 1983.

The club encourages "the study and protection of some of the last great wild places on earth, including those that are close to home," Peck said.

In Fogel's travels, he often confronted fears such as claustrophobia. In 1975, he explored the underwater caves and caverns of the Rio Camuy in Puerto Rico. Four years later, he filmed and wrote about the Nicaraguan civil war and lived with the Sandinistas for three months.

He felt the call of the wild again in 1986 when he led the Maroni River expedition to study the Guyana tribes of the Amazon basin.

Back in Somers Point that Christmas Eve, Fogel was driving with his son through sleet on a wooden bridge near Margate when the car ahead of them crashed through a rail and hit the water.

He and other passersby helped extract the woman from the water. Fogel was awarded a commendation from President Ronald Reagan and nominated for the Carnegie Hero Award.

One of his closest calls came in 1987 when he paddled a kayak through the Great Bend and Tiger Leaping Gorges on the Yangtze River. He carried the Explorers Club flag on the Sino-American expedition to find a site for a hydroelectric power plant.

"I ran one large rapid and was injured," Fogel said. "They later called it Fogel's Folly. I could have died a dozen times on that river."

He continued kayak missions on the East and West Coasts and Mississippi River in the 1990s while trying his hand at acting. He worked with Robin Williams and Woody Allen and appeared in 10 major motion pictures, including Rocky V, Dead Poets Society, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Passenger 57.

But his chief passion remains exploring and supporting expeditions that advance knowledge.

"It's a great honor to be recognized by colleagues and associates who know what the passion of exploration is about," Fogel said. "It is important to have an organization that places a value on these endeavors and supports them."