Jim Egenrieder: Underwater, Early and Often

Center for Humans & Nature:

“One of my favorite experiences is lying on the bottom of moving water and watching a smallmouth bass or sunfish use the micro-eddies created by my body to rest from swimming in the current. Less fun is when smaller fish nibble the air bubbles that form on your body hair, which they mistake for tiny eggs of other animals.

Those early exposures have formed the core of who I’ve become, and inform much of what I do. They influence not only my hobbies but the research projects and grants I pursue, the friends I spend time with, how I operate our riverfront farm, the trees I plant, and especially why I work with teachers and others to provide similar experiences for young people.”

Yes, experiences and places make people. Go out and explore nature every day.

Jessica Leber: Hobby Naturalists→

Yale E360:

“Amateur contributions to taxonomy are far from new — “Darwin wasn’t a professional,” notes David Pearson, an Arizona State University ecologist and beetle expert — but this work became the more exclusive domain of traditional academic and museum institutions in the 20th century. More recently, however, Pearson says the heyday of Darwin’s Victorian era — when amateur naturalists driven by their own curiosity helped dramatically expand the world’s biodiversity catalog — is having a comeback.

The data, though limited, support the trend. A 2012 study found new species of multicellular land and freshwater animals are being discovered at an “unprecedented rate” in supposedly well-explored Europe. Crucially, it found “non-professional” taxonomists were responsible for more than 60 percent of those new species descriptions from 1998 to 2007. In the ocean, it’s a similar story — 40 percent of first authors of recently identified marine mollusks have been so-called “amateurs.” Another paper by New Zealand researchers argued that because of these citizen scientists, as well as new tools to analyze species and online access to knowledge, “the field has never been stronger,” they write, despite a decline in funding for the formal profession.”