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. 5 journeys so far, 1946 to 2008, 5,537 specimens between them.
5 collectors and expeditions242 days in the field174,731 km between stops2,886 photographed specimens
5 journeys match
F. Raymond Fosberg
56 islands · Apr – Nov 1946
F. Raymond Fosberg across 56 islands, April – November 19462,439 specimens · 102 stops · 209 days · 105,682 km
Ernani Meñez
50 islands · Jun – Sep 1960
Ernani Meñez across 50 islands, June – September 19602,317 specimens · 38 stops · 100 days · 40,857 km
R.L. Stemmermann
28 islands · Nov 1977 – Feb 1978
R.L. Stemmermann across 28 islands, November 1977 – February 1978620 specimens · 70 stops · 102 days · 20,526 km
Steven Perlman
10 islands · Dec 2007 – Feb 2008
Steven Perlman across 10 islands, December 2007 – February 200883 specimens · 18 stops · 53 days · 7,666 km
E.J. Funk
Hawaiʻi Island and Palau · Nov – Dec 1990
E.J. Funk in Hawaiʻi Island and Palau, November – December 199078 specimens · 2 stops · 20 days
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.