Each year National Geographic, along with the National Park Service, helps conduct a BioBlitz - "a 24-hour event in which teams of scientists, teachers, students, and other community members work together to find as many species of plants, animals, microbes, fungi, and other organisms as possible."
This year the event was in Rocky Mountain National Park so a few folks from my office volunteered alongside the DC group. While a majority of my time was spent manning a small booth and giving away maps, Mark and I did participate in one of the inventories early yesterday morning. We went out with several other volunteers and a scientist to count the number of species of diatoms in one of the Park's lake. We only found two. Not a good day for diatoms I suppose.
I have never seen Mark more in his element than when surrounded by a bunch of scientists talking about snakes or ants or water bears. Fortunately he wasn't wearing the costume above while doing it.
And we scored two packs of NG Explorers trading cards. Pretty sweet! The hard part will be finding someone else to trade with - especially since I got a Rob Ballard {the guy who discovered the Titanic}, and a Zahi Hawass {Mark's favorite expert on Egyptian antiquities}, but no Meave Leakey. Bummer.
{photos from my iphone}
This year the event was in Rocky Mountain National Park so a few folks from my office volunteered alongside the DC group. While a majority of my time was spent manning a small booth and giving away maps, Mark and I did participate in one of the inventories early yesterday morning. We went out with several other volunteers and a scientist to count the number of species of diatoms in one of the Park's lake. We only found two. Not a good day for diatoms I suppose.
I have never seen Mark more in his element than when surrounded by a bunch of scientists talking about snakes or ants or water bears. Fortunately he wasn't wearing the costume above while doing it.
And we scored two packs of NG Explorers trading cards. Pretty sweet! The hard part will be finding someone else to trade with - especially since I got a Rob Ballard {the guy who discovered the Titanic}, and a Zahi Hawass {Mark's favorite expert on Egyptian antiquities}, but no Meave Leakey. Bummer.
{photos from my iphone}
2 comments:
OK, I hope you stole that hat in the last picture cause it's all sorts of awesome.
PS - I'm way smarter now than I was before I read this post, because I had to google a lot of terms/people you mentioned. And let me tell you I'm now equal parts obsessed and disturbed by water bears. And I'm pretty sure the pictures I just saw will haunt my nightmares. :) Haha!
Um, in rereading that comment, I think I need to clarify that it's the pictures of the water bears that will haunt my nightmares. The google image search is now scorched into my brain.
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