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. 3 journeys so far, 1948 to 1950, 774 specimens between them.
1 collectors and expeditions103 days in the field3,898 km between stops676 photographed specimens
3 journeys match
Otto Degener
6 islands of the United States · Apr – Sep 1949
Otto Degener across 6 islands of the United States, April – September 1949517 specimens · 50 stops · 133 days · 1,742 km
Otto Degener
4 islands · Dec 1949 – May 1950
Otto Degener across 4 islands, December 1949 – May 1950142 specimens · 27 stops · 159 days · 1,031 km
Otto Degener
3 islands of the United States · Oct 1948 – Apr 1949
Otto Degener in Maui, Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island, October 1948 – April 1949115 specimens · 24 stops · 160 days · 1,125 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.