At 10:39 PM 7/2/02 +1000, you wrote:
>Warning! No electronics or wildlife sound. Delete now if not interested in
>a crocodile attack under unusual circumstances.
Dear Syd:
Uh, me too, the above warning . . .
Great tales, thanks much. We have always heard salt water is death to all
electronics. . . .metals in general.
Radio tracking doesn't always tell you very much that you could not more
easily (and cheaply) have found out by going there and doing what you must
do in the field - poke and look and listen and write. But it may give the
radio-holding biologist new courage to go where common sense had previously
forbidden. My thesis work was to create and use a radio tracking system
with homing pigeons, their tracks studied from small airplanes, so the
effect of the radios was to get me into far more trouble than I ever would
have without the apparent authority of technology advancements. The
pigeons, of course, remain utterly mysterious 40 years later . . . Or, try
to imagine Walt, without the sound systems, in all those late-night frog
ponds and marshes . . ;^)
This ironic point was again illustrated to me in the mid-1970's when in a
month I created a system entirely from Radio Shack off the shelf parts
(yes, even the crystals) that would track salt marsh turtles, Malaclemys
terrapin, in Cape Cod Massachusetts salt marshes. After using the
cumbersome system for about a year, they found the turtles just where my
friend Skip Lazell had SAID they always were - - the radio system was
necessary to get the biologists (and especially their assistants) out into
the actual salt marsh ponds, mucking about to find them.
I think it must take about an order of magnitude more courage to muck about
Australian waters than old New England, though, and I accordingly salute
all you Ozian biologists!
my very best,
Marty Michener
MIST Software Associates
PO Box 269, Hollis, NH 03049
coming soon : EnjoyBirds, bird identification software for all AOU area.
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