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. 6 journeys so far, 1970 to 1979, 2,141 specimens between them.
1 collectors and expeditions121 days in the field4,816 km between stops1,923 photographed specimens
6 journeys match
Seymour H. Sohmer
Sri Lanka and Oʻahu · Oct – Dec 1975
Seymour H. Sohmer in Sri Lanka and Oʻahu, October – December 1975936 specimens · 26 stops · 44 days
Seymour H. Sohmer
Sri Lanka and Pahang · Sep – Dec 1973
Seymour H. Sohmer in Sri Lanka and Pahang, September – December 1973672 specimens · 28 stops · 94 days
Seymour H. Sohmer
5 islands of Papua New Guinea · Mar – Jun 1979
Seymour H. Sohmer across 5 islands of Papua New Guinea, March – June 1979294 specimens · 22 stops · 106 days · 3,435 km
Seymour H. Sohmer
3 islands of the United States · May – Jul 1970
Seymour H. Sohmer in Kauaʻi, Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island, May – July 1970111 specimens · 13 stops · 60 days · 1,246 km
Seymour H. Sohmer
Maui and Oʻahu · Aug – Sep 1970
Seymour H. Sohmer in Maui and Oʻahu, August – September 197059 specimens · 7 stops · 21 days · 135 km
Seymour H. Sohmer
Tubuai · Jun – Jul 1971
Seymour H. Sohmer in Tubuai, June – July 197169 specimens · 6 stops · 23 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.