Today’s #TBT can’t wait to get in the water.
This photograph was taken during one of the Museum’s historic Archbold Expeditions in Papua New Guinea, a series of seven expeditions to New Guinea conducted between 1933 and 1964. “Standing in water near seaplane Guba” was photographed in 1938. See more expedition photos in the Museum’s Digital Special Collections.
In the fall of 2014, a team of vertebrate specialists from the Museum headed to one of the most remote areas in the world in search of new species and specimens on the Explore21 Papua New Guinea expedition. In this SciCafe, Brett Benz, Paul Sweet, and Christopher Raxworthy talk about the discoveries they made, as well as the adventures they had along the way.
Download this lecture as a podcast, and read field posts from this expedition.
Last fall, Ornithology Collections Manager Paul Sweet was one of a team of Museum researchers who travelled to the island nation of Papua New Guinea on an Explore21 Expedition. Sweet and his colleagues Brett Benz and Chris Raxworthy will be discussing their fieldwork at the next SciCafe on Wednesday, March 4. (If you want to learn more before the talk, you can also read the team’s reports from the field here.) Sweet answered a few questions about his time in the field:
You were in the field for seven weeks on this expedition. How do you prepare for a trip like that?
I’ve led and participated in many expeditions, so I have a packing list ready. You have to be prepared with camping gear like your tent and sleeping bag, as well as equipment to capture and prepare specimens. There’s a visit to the doctor to get inoculations up to date, as well as prescriptions for malaria prophilaxis and antibiotics. But every trip is different. For instance, we knew this was going to be a very wet trip, so gear like a wet bag—a waterproof backpack that rolls closed—was key. And then there’s the research prep, like studying field guides and loading the vocalizations of birds we hope to encounter onto an iPod.
Was there anything you wish you had packed once you were there?
A better pair of hiking boots. I decided not to buy a new pair for this trip, because hiking boots take some time to break in. But the moisture in Papua New Guinea was such that the soles detached from my boots within the first day. So I was stuck hiking in “muck boots,” which are like heavy-duty rain boots. They’re not meant for the heavy hiking we were doing, and they cut my legs up pretty badly.
Expedition Report: The Final Leg in Papua New Guinea
Since the last post, we left our camp at 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) and returned to Malaumanda village. The return was somewhat more graceful than the trip out to camp, but it still took Chris, Neil, and me two long, hard days.
Back at Malaumanda, we had a chance to do some surveying in the disturbed forests around the village and also to interact with the local people. Most importantly, our colleague Michael Kigl, an environmental scientist from the PNG Institute for Biological Research, was able to interview a village elder and record the “Tok Ples” (local language) names for the birds, mammals, and herps of the area.
Finally it was time to strike up for the mountains. The research survey work has been largely completed at Wigilia Camp—my climbing strength has fully recovered after two colds—and I was fully acclimatized to the local conditions. Our camp assistants warned us it will be cold up there, so I packed four layers of clothing to bump up the pathetic insulation in my tropical grade sleeping bag. I have been now dreaming about wine, crackers and soft French cheese every night, but we packed noodles, rice, tinned fish, and the famous Papua New Guinea chocolate frog cookies for this trip.
On the first day, we climbed a muddy freshly cut trail through bamboo and moss-laden trees to reach 1,260 meters (4,133 feet) and a small camp situated on a knife-edge ridge, swirling in clouds and fog. That night I saw a huge mountain rat (about the size of cat!) sitting on a tree branch but oh, so few frogs.
At this elevation you have to work so hard to find anything. Even worse, there are some large-sounding frogs calling from high up in the canopy, out of reach, who are so skittish that they shut up as soon as they see your headlight from afar. So near yet so far. Luckily on my next night I finally found one hiding at 5 meters, and I reached it with a handy bamboo cane.
If all goes according to plan, today will be the last day at Wigilia Camp, our home for the past 17 days.
Living out in the bush, so far from any road, has been an amazing experience. Although on maps the area looks uninhabited, there are small settlements scattered throughout the forest, and we are visited daily by villagers who bring in kaukau and taro to supplement our rations (we’re still bored of tinned mackerel).
We also employed many of the local people as field assistants, and they have been our daily companions. We have had a real insight into their lives, and I think they have also enjoyed observing us and our strange work.
Our surveys have been fruitful, and all the vertebrate groups were well sampled for this site. Although we occasionally find the odd new species, our species accumulation curve has flattened out—a good sign that we have made a thorough survey. We have recorded around 90 species of birds, 26 species of mammals, and 30 of amphibians and reptiles.
[Filed October 12]: We’ve now been at our base camp, in a site known to the local people as Wigilia, for 10 days. Aside from a few scattered “gardens,” clearings for growing kaukau and taro, this is untouched bush.
Camp life has settled into a routine. Breakfast is “Hardman Bisket” a 2-by-4-inch thick cracker with peanut butter. Lunch is usually instant noodles or perhaps boiled kaukau with tuna. The big meal of the day is always rice with a sauce of tinned mackerel, or corned beef mixed with more instant noodles. Sadly, all the hot sauce is gone!
The vertebrate surveys are proceeding well, and we feel satisfied that we have made a fairly complete inventory of the local fauna. Birdlife is diverse: we wake up to the bizarre calls of the Black Sicklebill, a bird of paradise, and on the ridge above camp we have found the maypole bowers of MacGregors’s Bowerbird. At night, the screams of Cuscus, arboreal marsupials, and many species of frog fill the chilly night air.
