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, 1934 to 1956, 2,946 specimens between them.
4 collectors and expeditions225 days in the field36,545 km between stops1,732 photographed specimens
5 journeys match
F. Raymond Fosberg
32 islands · Apr – Oct 1934
F. Raymond Fosberg across 32 islands, April – October 19342,503 specimens · 85 stops · 201 days · 23,387 km
Wm. R. Taylor
6 islands · Feb – Aug 1946
Wm. R. Taylor across 6 islands, February – August 1946242 specimens · 52 stops · 156 days · 5,901 km
Smithsonian Institution
4 islands · Feb – Aug 1946
Smithsonian Institution, February – August 194658 specimens · 21 stops · 166 days · 3,062 km
F. Raymond Fosberg
9 islands of the Marshall Islands · 4–15 Feb 1956
F. Raymond Fosberg across 9 islands of the Marshall Islands, 4–15 February 1956102 specimens · 11 stops · 12 days · 1,332 km
J.P.E. Morrison
4 islands · Feb – Jul 1946
J.P.E. Morrison across 4 islands, February – July 194641 specimens · 17 stops · 153 days · 2,863 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.