Project Exploration Blog

Project Exploration team at BioBlitz 2009

Who knows why a bunch of high school students would get up at the crack of dawn on a perfectly good Saturday in the middle of the busiest month of school (May) to get on a bus across town to muck around in Indiana? We haven’t put our finger on it quite yet but we don’t think it’s for the cold breakfast we offered.

Heading into the wet woods for the survey with Alan. (From left: Jehad, Gabe, Nina, Khadijah, Michael, Mikki, Alan)

Nevertheless, the Advanced Science Crew (Khadijah, Jehad, Michael and Nina) and Project Exploration staff (Mary Beth, Mikki and me) loaded up a 12 passenger van for the much anticipated BioBlitz. We headed out at about 7:30 am for the Indiana Dunes Lake Shore to meet up with Field Museum herpetologist Alan Resetar. After our rendezvous at the Ly-co-wi-ke Horse Trail Parking lot (you just can’t miss it on Route 20). With Alan as a guide we embarked on a three hour tour of the wet-parts of the Indiana Dunes in search of any critter that crawled (or, as it turned out, swam, clambered, burrowed, or floated).

Dipnet discoveries await.

We’d been anticipating an extremely muddy, mucky trek after the torrential downpours the day before but were pleasantly surprised. By the time we reached the field site it had stopped raining. Two hours later a feeble sun even appeared!

American toad tadpole!

Alan helped lower our hopes for seeing a blitzkrieg of reptiles – the rain had put some into hiding and others into exploration mode. Our first reptile was spotted by eagle-eyed Khadijah, who saw an American toad tadpole. No log was safe from being (gently) overturned, no standing pool of water safe from the dipnets.

Our BioBlitz team (officially “Team 178″) was lucky: Alan was as comfortable on his knees in pursuit of an evasive frog as he was telling us about edible plants and invasive earthworms. From a Project Exploration perspective, Alan did something invaluable: he took it slow – something sorely missing from most of the way we learn about science. His approach meant that students became “noticers” – observation fueled by pure curiosity. “What is this?” was a question our team posed relentlessly not only for reptiles, but for plants and even fungi.  With Alan creating such a comfortable space, everything became interesting and full of possibility.

Alan in action with the Advanced Science Team.

This snapping turtle needs to get more exercise!

BioBlitz really was as much about people and their passionate pursuits as it was about the animal encounters. All of us were impressed by a tray with dozens and dozens of ant species – collected by a pair of researchers who flew in from New York just to be part of the Blitz. Another guy had a display of a diversity study he did in his own backyard – capturing more than 4000 insect species in just two years. 

BioBlitz, an annual event that takes place at a different National Park each year is a massive effort by the National Park District, National Geographic and area conservationists, scientists and people who love or just want to learn about the natural word.  The National Geographic crew gave us a warm welcome. Project Exploration has partnered with them on many online expeditions out of America - now they were in our backyard! Veteran journalist and blogger David Braun interviewed the team and offered all of us budding writers some thoughtful pointers about what it means to write for the web. David even did some tech promotion.

 Khadijah, Jehad, Michael and Nina are crafting their blog posts, which will be up in the next few days.

Blog posts in production.

We’ll keep you posted!

-gabe