Exploration: Scientific Photography

This post focuses on the scientific work we did in Mahu Whenua. During the second two days of our mountainous excursion, my smaller group focused on collecting beech seeds (Fuscospora solandri, the black beech trees). We set roughly 34 traps, made from upside down tents with the bottoms cut out. The tents were secured to tree branches or pounded into the ground using Warepahs (steel stakes). Milk cartons were cut and slid onto the strings to keep the mice from climbing into the traps and eating all the seeds. The first picture represents typical placement of the seed traps, as well as some of the participants working on hanging a new one in the background. The second picture offers a close up of the tent, its bag of rocks as a weight, and a worker (Allie G.) pausing in her process of cutting milk cartons. The final picture demonstrates our use of Warepahs to secure the traps when tree branches were not conveniently located.