Much like the skinny kid who memorizes sports stats because he doesn’t get picked for the team, I write about science because I love it but can’t do it.
Photo: Isle Royale Institute
Along with science, you can also add the Great Lakes and wildlife to my “things I geek-out about” list, which is why the Moosewatch Expeditions project on Isle Royale really speaks to my inner nerd.
Moosewatch expeditions are week-long, guided hikes through Isle Royale where regular old lay people are part of an ongoing wolf-moose research project. The purpose is to find moose bones and record data. Most of the bones come from wolf kills or starved animals. The collected bones tell researchers the moose’s size, age and health, which gives them information about the population.
“It’s citizen science,” said Ken Vrana, director if the Isle Royale Institute, which runs the expeditions. “The primary objective is to search for moose bones to analyze, but people get to see the island in a way that most visitors don’t … teams go to some remote areas outside the trails.”
Isle Royale is considered one of the best places to study wolf and moose interactions.
The project is one of the longest, ongoing predator-prey studies in the world, Vrana said.
The island is in the middle of Lake Superior, has no roads and is mostly wilderness. Not only do you “get away from it all,” but also be part of a research project — a pretty good deal for us on the sidelines that want to play.
If someone would just publish the research findings in comic book form, it would really be an all-out nerd fest for me.
And, yes, I am single.