One of the first things I give each of my graduate students is a waterproof “Rite-in-the-Rain” notebook.
“This is the key to discovery,” I tell them. “Write down everything you do in the field, everything you see, and anything unusual you notice, even if it isn’t part of your research. And use a pencil, so it doesn’t smear. You’ll thank me later.”
After they’ve completed their first field trip and collected a ton of data, I ask them.
“What time did you leave the dock, and when did you return? Did you see any unusual species? Sharks? Whales? Turtles? What were they doing? How was the weather?”
The usual response is a blank stare, followed by “Let me check my computer.” At which point they discover that their files contain lots of data but none of the information I requested.
Every Pencil has a Point
The point, I tell them, is that every time they venture into the field, they have the opportunity to observe and learn much more than whatever they think they are looking for. Writing those things down in a simple pocket-size notebook will provide them with a wealth of information later, some of which might be extremely valuable. Their data files might contain hundreds of counts and measurements, but they don’t contain the kind of knowledge they can obtain by simply observing and recording nature.
Modern scientists are hard-wired to their gizmos. We use devices that will automatically record water temperature and salinity along with the depth and GPS coordinates of the observations. But it doesn’t record the fact that spinner sharks were jumping out of the water nearby, or that a giant sunfish drifted by the boat. Not only are those observations that can’t be easily recorded in a data sheet, but they make indelible impressions on your brain that can help you instantly recall a specific field trip when something else was recorded or observed.
I started recording all my field trips and notes in the little yellow notebooks when I was a graduate student. And I have kept every one of them. Even after retirement, there is a box on my shelf that includes over 35 years of field notes. Some of those notes are mundane observations on the weather, e.g. “Rained and blew all day”. Others are mind blowing one-of-a-kind observations, such as when, lying in the front of a two-person submarine, 600 feet underwater, we ran into a wall of crabs. “BIG PILE OF CRABS! WTF!” I wrote. That turned out to be a career-making discovery that initiated a ten-year research program to determine WTF indeed was going on. (A never-before seen but annually-occurring aggregation of hundreds of thousands of Tanner crabs hatching their larvae. Which will be the subject of another E@L post in the future).
It's the Ecology, Stupid!
Several years ago I received a phone call from the NOAA Fisheries lab in Kodiak, Alaska, where I had worked for 22 years. The caller, another biologist, was asking about a field trip I had made to the Bering Sea in 1991, when we were sampling the sea floor for the presence of juvenile king crabs.
“All the data was in the cruise report I submitted,” I told her. “Yes, but,” she said, “It doesn’t contain any observations. What kind of habitat were the crabs found in?”
That, in fact, was the most important question. The number of crabs caught, their size (10-12 mm), their age (somewhere between 1 and 2 years old), and the geographic coordinates of their location were recorded, reported, catalogued, and stored in a vast government database. But the most important part is that they were not found scattered randomly around on the seafloor, but only in association with other fauna, specifically those we consider “emergent epifauna” that form structurally complex habitats in which little crabs love to hide. That was another career-defining discovery, that I only published many years later, after I had conducted laboratory experiments to prove that crabs not only preferred such habitats, but deliberately selected them.
Opening the box on my shelf, I dug out a mud-smeared yellow notebook from 1991, photocopied all the pages and sent them to her. Those pages contained a wealth of information that I had recorded, but which never made it into the official data files. And which I would not have been able to recall if I had not carried that notebook in my pocket as I sat on deck digging through a pile of muddy seaweed, hydroids, and other fouling organisms while I searched for little crabs.
The Most Important Words in Science
In a previous substack post “Chasing Nature”, Bryan Pfeiffer wrote that he prefers to observe nature without cameras and computers, and record all his first impressions in pencil. In this way, he prevents technology from distracting him or interrupting his interactions with nature.
We can all benefit from this approach. Our cameras, phones, iPads, and automatic recording devices all have their uses. But often the best way to absorb nature is to put them all down and just observe. Use your eyes, ears, and other senses. Think about what you are seeing, hearing, smelling. Is it unique to this place and time? Does it differ from expectations or experience? What does it mean?
What are the most important words in science? In a science fiction movie, the “mad” scientist (actually just hyperfocused, mis-understood, and suffering a bad hair day) blurts out “Eureka! I have found it!” But in the real world, the most important words are more likely to be “WTF! That’s not what I expected!”. Expected results are nice (and publishable!), but often not that interesting, because they just confirm what we already knew. It is the unexpected result that really gets our attention, and can lead us down a rabbit hole, to spend the next ten years trying to determine what, how, and why something happened. That’s how science is really done.
And writing it down in my little yellow notebook gave me the key to unlock nature’s secrets. More so than any computer data file could ever do.
This is great, Brad. It's the kind of advice that's relevant beyond science too. I'm reminded of my little Navy-issued Memoranda notebooks that were still stocked in McMurdo during my years there, and which I stuffed full of writer's lines, images, and notes on landscape amid my miscellaneous work notes and to-do lists as I put together field camps.
Side note: In all your NOAA and AFS years, you may have crossed paths with my father, Vaughn Anthony, who was a stock assessment scientist out of Woods Hole. We almost moved to Kodiak when I was a kid, actually, when he was offered a job there (maybe to run the lab). He loved a good mechanical pencil too, though his writing was unreadable even on a good day.
Thanks so much for this, Brad. It resonates a lot, of course.
Among all the books on the shelves in my office, the most treasured are my field books — mostly orange Ben Meadows level books, but more recently LEUCHTTURM hardcover notebooks. (For whatever reason, I've never been a fan of Rite-in-the-Rain.) And although I may have switched field books over the years, few things have been more enduring in my life than 0.5mm Pentel P205 mechanical pencils, which I’ve been using in the field for at least three decades (preferring rust or green barrels now because I’m picky about pencils).
My first draft essays are also in pencil in my hardcover notebooks (sometimes second drafts as well). I'd sooner have my laptop stolen or drift away with the tides than my current essay and idea notebook, which is like a sacred diary to me. (I photograph its pages with my phone by way of backup.)
Thanks again! Oh, the biology that must dwell in those notebooks of yours!