Research Volunteers Pay for the Privilege

For the last 10 years, orca scientist Ken Balcomb has welcomed Earthwatch’s volunteer corps to his Center for Whale Research here.

Dozens of people eagerly pay $1,895 each to spend 10 days assisting Balcomb and his small staff as they gather killer-whale data in the idyllic San Juan Islands.

It’s just one of this year’s offerings from Earthwatch, a Watertown, Mass.-based nonprofit program that links “needy” scientists with paying volunteers, says spokeswoman Blue Magruder.

Earthwatch expeditions this year include collecting behavioral data on the lemur in Madagascar, searching for caterpillars in Costa Rica, documenting the traditional log houses of Finland and cataloging the features of the Oregon Caves.

Program volunteers this year pay between $595 and $3,500 for an expedition, with the average about $1,500 for a couple of weeks.

Earthwatch, which is changing its name to Earthwatch Institute, got started 25 years ago by some folks loosely associated with the Smithsonian Institution, Magruder said. They knew that lots of scientists doing fascinating work were in need of helping hands.

“You have the fun of helping a ‘starving’ Harvard scientist get his fieldwork done,” she quipped.

Earthwatch gets about 500 project applications a year and selects about 150 that “we feel are the highest-quality research.” And the projects must be such that volunteers can be useful with only a couple of days of coaching.

One of the summer’s orca volunteers, Caryl Bridges, a Chicago elementary school teacher, plans to use what she learned about killer whales in her fourth-grade classroom.

“They totally educated us, which was great,” she said. “We did everything.”

That included learning how to photograph and identify the whales, to determine and record data such as longitude, latitude, tides and currents, and to log the number of whales spotted.

They also noted the presence of other marine mammals--harbor seals, Dall’s porpoises--and bald eagles and deer, Bridges said.

“It’s a life-changing experience,” Magruder said.

Earthwatch can be reached at P.O. Box 9104, Watertown, MA 02272 or on the Internet at:

www.earthwatch.org