Does technology make field work less immersive?

Tags

field, field camps, glow in the dark kitchen spatula ping pong, technology

Since 2001, I’ve spent the better part of my summers in wonderful, amazing locations for weeks at a time.  From the Bay of Fundy (home to 10-12m tides that come in and out twice a day), to a 4000-foot active volcano with about 2 million seabirds in the far western Aleutian Islands, to the largest Atlantic puffin colony in North America, I’ve soaked up the natural world.

But I fear the experienced I had (and helped others have) is in peril.  The threat, you see, is nearly everywhere and spreading fast.  It’s teh internetz.

Now before you accuse me of being a Luddite, and throwing my sabots into the cogs of progress, hear me out.  I’m a frequent (habitual?) user of online tools (like this blog), and I have an unhealthy relationship with email checking (which I really need to work on, I know).  But despite these, when I find myself on a seabird island, or on a boat at sea, or waking up at 3am to catch swallows underneath highway overpasses, anything connected to the internet is far from my mind.

The Before-time

Aeons ago, when phones were something that were attached to a wall with a giant wheel of numbers (and often a little but after this), the evenings in field camps were often spent in conversation, playing cards, engaging in “extra-curricular” natural science, reading, writing, thinking, exploring (or playing glow-in-the-dark kitchen-spatula ping pong).  I loved this “free” time in the field, because it meant I could often catch up on books I didn’t have (find) time to read during the academic year. (In a distinctively non-Luddite approach, I find carrying an e-Reader much easier than my former cadré of 15-20 books, especially when landing/loading field camps.)

In 2005, I recall one particular discussion about whether we should haul out the old 1970s vintage TV from the closet, and try to find the VCR to hook it up and watch Pirates of the Caribbean one rainy evening (we were at an active light station with ample power, and living in an old Coast Guard house).  “Really? Watch a movie in the field?” I recall one team member saying as if the concept was totally foreign.  Because it was.  In the end, we did manage to drag the TV and VCR out, find the video cassette, and spent the night laughing and eating popcorn.

Double-click, then swipe and tap

Fast forward a few years.  Now, nearly everyone has their own laptop, and their own TV shows and/or movies downloaded or on DVD.  Many field camps (especially those run by large organizations) are now equipped with internet connections, if not wifi and full-on cell coverage, and many evenings are spent sitting around the common room checking email, and basically being “in the office”.

Why?

For me, being in the field is an immersive experience.  Whether my tent is flapping at 3am in 40-knot winds (forcing me to get up, go to the temporary building, and read Barney’s Version by headlamp), or the auklets flying in at sunset are putting on what we affectionately called “The Show”, it’s all part of being in the field.

It ain’t all bad

Things like smart phones can be used extensively by those in the field, epitomized by this recent paper by Amber Teacher.  But as has often been said, with great power comes great responsibility.  Sure the phones can be used to figure out a bird call, or connect with experts through Twitter, but they can also be used for email, and text messages – the very things I enjoy not having in the field.

I’ve heard from more and more colleagues that this year, they’ve resolved to spend less time online.  I achieve the same goal through immersive field work.  And I’ve been fairly lucky so far in that my camp-mates have all generally shared a similar philosophy when it comes to personal technology in the field.  But now, movie nights are more common, and on our research island in Newfoundland, there’s cell coverage, which is fantastic for field safety and coordinating with folks in the mainland and keeping in touch with family.  I wonder how long, though, before evenings spent around the table playing Dutch Blitz are behind us.

And I, like many I’m sure, enjoy the respite from being instantly contactable through myriad channels (email, phone, office, Twitter, Facebook, telegraph station).  I love writing and outlining new projects in the field (particularly in the mornings with a pot of tea and CBC Radio before everyone else is up).

 

So how do you approach the non-science parts of field camp life, and the increasing presence of technology?

 

Music in the field: an under-appreciated necessity

Tags

field, music

A major part of my alter-ego lives firmly on the arts end of the arts-sciences spectrum (false though it may be).  But one area where I find the two intersect is in the field.  As anyone who spends copious time either getting to a field site, or doing observational work knows, those lengthy periods can be improved with a little audio stimulation.  For me, it was flying from Newfoundland to Alaska (and back) for field work, days on a boat at sea en route to my field site, and then 3-6 hours each day in a blind watching for marked birds, marking new birds, or collecting diet samples.

Climbing up to our observation blind (about 1m x 1m) on Kiska Island, Aleutian Islands, Alaska

At my very first field sites, we were close enough to have radio reception, and a portable radio would accompany me during countless observations (for those Canadians reading, this was during the last CBC lockout/strike in 2005 – a particularly bad summer to be relying on radio).

Various blinds (and the outhouse) scattered around the south end of Machias Seal Island, New Brunswick

But then I started doing field work in the Aleutians away from any radio signals (apart from the ones we created getting weather reports and checking in).  The first summer I was there, My field tech and I (miraculously) subsisted on about 4 dozen CDs, and often sharing earbud headphones.  This was clearly not ideal, especially when listening to some albums like The Beatles, where the two channels had different information (e.g., guitar & vocals in the right, bass, drums, & back-up lyrics in the left).  Still, that gave me a renewed appreciation for the music that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Fast-forward to the last year of my PhD, and we had a pretty great set-up.  Battery-powered speakers (kept in ziplock bags for protection against the constant Aleutian rain, drizzle, and fog), and each of us had an iPod with several hundred or thousand items.

Banding a least auklet in our blind on Kiska. Photo by Chris Brake.

But even that was insufficient for the summer I spent on a 10-week 3-person archaeological dig in the western Aleutians.  Solo work for 6-9 hours/day trowling bits of a shell midden, and screening it through ¼” mesh (about 25 tons all in all) meant I would rapidly exhaust (and then grow tired of) my music selection.  Enter the podcast.  I was fortunate enough to have been tipped off to a radio show in late 2007 called “This American Life” (TAL), and had their complete archive with me that summer, starting from their first show 1995 (when the show was called “Your Radio Playhouse”.  Because each episode was an hour, I could keep track, roughly, of how many hours in “the pit” I did.  I think the total was around 350 or so.

Working the archaeological site of Imuqudaagis (Witchcraft Point), Kiska Island.

So because of these experiences, when I listen to certain songs, or TAL podcasts, I’m transported back to the field almost instantly.  Sometimes I plan it.  If I’m feeling particularly nostalgic, or needed a brief escape from my windowless office, I’ll tune up some “field music”, and 3-5 minutes later, my mood is markedly improved.

And in the field, it’s amazing how music in general, or a certain album/artist in particular can really improve the mood and morale in camp, which is really important when the field crew is small, and the deployment for a long time.

How do you integrate music into your lab or field work? Does a particular song remind you of certain experiences?

Sexual assault in the field

Tags

field, grad students, rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment

Field work is the main reason I started on a career in science.  I’ve spent months on remote islands in eastern Canada and the Aleutian Islands of Alaska (in the latter case, without resupply for 11 weeks and with only one other person on the whole island!).  I’ve been really lucky and always had great field techs, all of whom I would hire again.  Being in the field with little / no other contact with humanity is a physically and mentally challenging experience, and with one small exception related to a steep hill and late snowfall, everything has gone tickety-boo and a-OK.

Not everyone is as lucky.

Kathryn Clancy, a blogger over at Scientific American, and an anthropology prof at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has compiled some sobering numbers and accounts of sexual harassment and even assault in bioanthropology field camps.

You should go and read her entire post.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

 

 

And now I’ll let you digest the fact that 59% of her respondents experienced sexual harassment, and 19% were sexually assaulted in the field.

Again, I’ll wait for those numbers to sink in.

What’s equally sobering (or perhaps chilling is a more appropriate word) is that in about half of the cases, the perpetrators of these occurrences of harassment and assault were higher in the chain of command of the field crew (e.g., a faculty member harassing a grad student).

Read that twice to make sure it sinks in.

In about half of the cases, the perpetrators of these occurrences of harassment and assault were higher in the chain of command of the field crew (e.g., a faculty member harassing a grad student).

 

 

Clancy and her colleagues have opened up the survey to other disciplines, and you can participate here.

Ecology and field biology have extensive field components, so there’s no reason to believe that similar offences are occurring at some level; hopefully this will be revealed in subsequent results of the survey.

In the meantime, if you or someone you know has been harassed or assaulted in the field, bring it to the attention of the proper authorities.  I suspect (and Clancy reports) that one’s degree or career aspirations (and the fact that they can rest, at least in part, in the perpetrator’s hands) are reasons harassment and assault (and a variety of other transgressions that I’ll likely write about sooner rather than later) go unreported.

And remember–this is not just an issue for female field workers. Harassment, assault, and rape are not OK. At all. Ever. Period. Full stop. fin.

The science never says it all

Tags

ethics, field, plastic, publishing, storm-petrels

Behind every paper that’s published, there’s a story.  Whether it’s the field truck breaking down 15 km from camp, or a blind (hide for my European readers) blowing over (with or without an occupant inside), these are some of the things that don’t make it into papers.

I like to think of this blog as a place where I can wax poetical (or not) about whatever is on my mind, freed from the confines of the relatively strict format of an academic paper.  This is the tale of a project that did end up published as a paper, and some of the bumps along the way.  Consider this a sort of “Behind the Science” exposé.  But for me, it’s also almost like a confessional – not because I think the science is bad, or we did anything wrong in the study, but, well, you’ll see.

Humans love plastic.  That ubiquitous petrochemical product that fuelled the post-war boom has made goods cheaper, and more disposable.  Everything from toy cars to razors, dishes to automobiles now has a significant plastic component.  What I study is what happens to some of the plastic after we throw it away.  A major chunk of it ends up on the ocean where it’s ingested by marine birds, turtles, whales, fish, even zooplankton.  Yes, copepods ingest microplastic.  And if that weren’t bad enough, this plastic acts like a sponge to soak up hydrophobic contaminants from sea water – things like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and some metal compounds.

There’s been a recent resurgence in plastic ingestion studies in seabirds in the last 5 years, mostly focusing on documenting the species affected, and to what extent.  For the vast majority of these studies, the plastic was assessed by dissection.  The birds were either found dead (e.g., as bycatch or beachcast birds), or were collected for other purposes.  A few studies actually used a stomach pump to flush things out but birds’ gizzard is a massively convoluted and ridged structure (and is where much of the plastic ends up).  How could we be sure that we got everything out?

Another approach is to use emetics.  These are pharmaceuticals that make you throw up.  The reason so many packages of dangerous household substances say “do not induce vomiting” was because when I was growing up, we had a bottle of ipecac in the house (though never used) to induce vomiting as a method of poison control before the ambulance arrived to cart us away.   This has generally fallen out of favour.  But we wondered if it could be used to study plastic ingestion in birds.

Now, a few quick words about emetics.  Some are toxic (like tartar emetic), especially if the dose isn’t right.  Ipecac is considered non-toxic, but has been largely ignored by the ornithological community until about 2007.

We chose to look at Leach’s Storm-petrels, a cute, peaty-smelling adorable little seabird that breeds in the northern oceans (Newfoundland in our case).  We got the ipecac, tried a few birds, and immediately noticed we had a problem – birds weren’t recovering from capture.  The long and the short of it was 12 birds required euthanasia because we had held them too long, and they just couldn’t take it.  It’s important to note that it wasn’t the emetic, and we couldn’t find anything in these birds (pre- or post-mortem) that would have told us they were more likely to keel over.

Fuck.

Now, I’ve been handling birds since 2005, and I figure I’ve banded well over 5000 individuals.  I’ve got a Master Banding Permit from the Canadian Wildlife Service, and I’m always militant of putting the birds’ welfare ahead of data collection.  Up until this study, I hadn’t had a single mortality. Ever. Period.  Now I had 12 in about 3 days.  Talk about shaken confidence.

We adjusted our protocols, and things went smoother.  We found that almost half the birds had ingested plastic, and that the amount was of moderate concern.  But what to do with those dead birds?  I took them back to the lab and checked the GI tract – no plastic.  Some of them had regurgitated plastic in the field, so that meant that the emetic worked – we got all the plastic (and food bits) out.  This is a significant step forward for plastics research.

But how could you possibly write that in a paper?  We included the data, and a brief section detailing our dissections.  In the first round of reviews, the paper was rejected largely on ethical grounds.  It’s important to remember that we had obtained approval from my university’s Animal Care and Use Committee.  We appealed the decision to the editor, and the study was eventually published with a section called “Ethical considerations”.  That’s what I want to really write about today.

Shit happens.  Despite all our best efforts as researchers, sometimes things don’t work.  In the most severe cases, animals die.  It sucks, it’s awful, gut-wrenching, and demoralizing for the field crew.  So we did the only thing we knew how – adopt, adapt, and improve.  In our case, it worked.

But what I think is more important is that these birds were not “wasted”.  The vocal tracts were removed for one study, and the spread wings & tails, along with skeletons will be sent to the Canadian Museum of Nature this spring for their museum collection.  And, they gave us valuable insight into the efficacy of emesis.

Shit happens, but it’s what you do with it after the fact that matters. I think we had an ethical obligation to use those birds to their maximum potential.  And by publishing our mortalities, others won’t make the same mistakes we did.

It was a damned hard paper to write, and even today, almost a year after the data collection, I still have a visceral reaction whenever I think of those three awful days.  Even writing this post, my hands are sweaty, and my heartbeat faster than usual.  But faced with the same situation, I don’t think I’d do anything differently.

Why volunteer field techs are a bad idea

Tags

field, hiring, interns, volunteers

Ah January!  The crisp (read: bloody freezing) Saskatchewan air, the start of a new academic term, and the time when many of us start thinking about our upcoming field season.  All the joys of animal care protocols, collection permits, access permits, and hiring field assistants.

Call them what you will (I prefer “field technician”), but chances are most of us would be floundering (or perhaps even dead) without them.  Seasonal field staff provide a great resource to scientists and grad students, and the experience the techs gain is often very important for their own professional advancement and development.

But here’s where I have a problem: if these people are so valuable (i.e., most of us couldn’t do our research without them, for scientific, logistic, and/or safety reasons), why are so many field positions volunteer positions?

The way I see it, there are two main arguments for hiring volunteer field technicians (spoiler alert: I don’t think either is valid).  The first is financial.  It’s simply just too expensive to hire n field techs at $x/hour (or day, or month) to accomplish what we want to do (which is important scientific work).  I’m sure factory owners in pre-industrial Europe said the same thing when employees started asking for an 8-hour work day, or 5-day work week, or honest pay for an honest day’s work.

The second is that the experience is SO AMAZING that most people actually pay to experience it for themselves, so volunteering (but having your expenses covered) is a great deal.  This sort of rationalization is the same as above.  Imagine the look on someone’s face when I tell him or her that my stable-isotope lab is SO AMAZING that most people pay for their samples.  You, I will tell my prospective volunteers, can come in for free to prepare my samples – isn’t that great?

From the tech’s perspective, volunteering (or “interning”, which is where they receive far below minimum wage under the guise of “experience building), could be attractive in that it gives them some valuable experience in a field they likely want to pursue.  It’s the old “date before you marry” argument that techs should get to know the flavour of the work before committing to it.  But can this not all be done with appropriate pay?

We hire technicians for their expertise and ability to complete a job; not paying them for it undermines their professionalism, and scientists’ ethical standing.  Yes, funding is limited, and yes it can be expensive to travel to and work in some field locations.  But this does not excuse not paying someone for a job.

It also selects out many who would not take a volunteer “job” because they need to work during the summer to pay for tuition, keep rent on an apartment, or have other financial obligations.  It’s a very small minority who can pick up and not get paid for 2-4 months (let alone do it again the following year).  This was certainly the case with me.  During undergrad, I signed up for a weekly e-mail of bird-related jobs (you can here, and also see here).  It struck me how many of these sounded like wonderful studies in neat locations, but had no (or very low) pay.  A few even asked me to provide all my own equipment (tent, sleeping bag/pad, food, etc.).  I was being asked to functionally move somewhere new, stay for 2-4 months, and not get paid.

If you wouldn’t “hire” a volunteer to fix your car or your house, why would you hire one to collect the scientific data on which your career is built?  And if you want to hear just how absurd the practice really is, listen to this [**satire alert**], but replace “government employee” with “field technician”.