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, 1979 to 1979, 620 specimens between them.
4 collectors and expeditions94 days in the field4,530 km between stops494 photographed specimens
4 journeys match
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
Betsy H. Gagne
3 islands of Papua New Guinea · 9–30 Mar 1979
Betsy H. Gagne in Misima Island, Rossel Island and Tagula Island, 9–30 March 1979179 specimens · 6 stops · 22 days · 267 km
P. Katik
3 islands of Papua New Guinea · 1–29 Mar 1979
P. Katik in Rossel Island, Tagula Island and Misima Island, 1–29 March 197997 specimens · 9 stops · 29 days · 570 km
K.Q. Damas
4 islands of Papua New Guinea · 1–29 Mar 1979
K.Q. Damas across 4 islands of Papua New Guinea, 1–29 March 197950 specimens · 4 stops · 29 days · 258 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.