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, 1977 to 1979, 261 specimens between them.
2 collectors and expeditions119 days in the field7,955 km between stops73 photographed specimens
4 journeys match
G.P. Buelow
8 islands of Tonga · Apr – Aug 1978
G.P. Buelow across 8 islands of Tonga, April – August 197870 specimens · 38 stops · 148 days
G.P. Buelow
5 islands of Tonga · Jan – May 1979
G.P. Buelow across 5 islands of Tonga, January – May 197973 specimens · 28 stops · 121 days
Noel Louis Hilmer Krauss
7 islands · Nov 1977 – Feb 1978
Noel Louis Hilmer Krauss across 7 islands, November 1977 – February 197861 specimens · 19 stops · 80 days · 5,557 km
Noel Louis Hilmer Krauss
6 islands · Nov 1978 – Jan 1979
Noel Louis Hilmer Krauss across 6 islands, November 1978 – January 197957 specimens · 17 stops · 90 days · 2,398 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.