Journeys
The expeditions, reassembled
Every dated label is a diary entry. Read a collector’s labels in order and the voyage comes back: the islands in sequence, the days at each, the specimens from every stop. 4 journeys so far, 1945 to 1977, 1,800 specimens between them.
4 collectors and expeditions239 days in the field51,247 km between stops404 photographed specimens
4 journeys match
Johnson Randall
35 islands · Feb – Sep 1977
Johnson Randall across 35 islands, February – September 19771,178 specimens · 101 stops · 216 days · 16,972 km
F. Raymond Fosberg
5 islands · Nov 1953 – Feb 1954
F. Raymond Fosberg across 5 islands, November 1953 – February 1954343 specimens · 50 stops · 83 days · 28,095 km
J.T. Conover
3 islands · May – Dec 1945
J.T. Conover in Okinawa, Luzon and Saipan, May – December 1945141 specimens · 32 stops · 207 days · 4,946 km
E.Y. Dawson
Okinawa and Luzon · Jan – Apr 1953
E.Y. Dawson in Okinawa and Luzon, January – April 1953138 specimens · 28 stops · 77 days · 1,234 km
How a journey is found
Every specimen with a full date (year, month and day; a bare “1 January” is treated as a missing day) and a named collector is a diary entry. For each collector the days are read in order, each day given the place most of its labels name. The place where a collector spent more than forty percent of their days, and at least sixty of them, is home: days there are left out.
A gap of more than 21 days between collecting days ends one journey and begins the next. A journey must run five to four hundred days, hold at least forty specimens and touch at least two places. Within it, consecutive days inside the same or a neighbouring tenth-of-a-degree cell (about eleven kilometres) are one stop; the stop’s point is the mean of its labels’ coordinates, or the island’s centre when none carry any.
Companions are collectors whose own labels put them in the same cell on the same days. Staff can name a journey, write about it, feature it or hide it; those words survive every rebuild. Everything else is read off the specimens and rebuilt by harvest.mjs expeditions as the records improve.