Volunteers raced against the clock to collect, identify and count as many living things as they could find in 24 hours at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge recently.
The 250 nature enthusiasts — ages 2 to 81 — hiked the 9,000-acre grounds armed with butterfly nets and binoculars as part of the park's first BioBlitz, organized by Queens College and the Jamaica Bay Institute.
The tally: 665 species, including birds, mammals, insects and fish.
But the BioBlitz was about more than just numbers.
"It's one thing to be able to read about science in a magazine or a textbook, but it's another thing to be able to go out and see how scientists conduct their work in the field," said John Waldman, 52, a Queens College biology professor and a BioBlitz organizer.
During the marathon event Sept. 7-8, scientists and volunteers collected specimens and took them back to a makeshift lab in the visitors center. Scientists worked together at the center, peering through microscopes and cross-referencing textbooks, to categorize the findings.
"Probably one the most inspirational moments was at about midnight," Waldman said. "There was a little boy here who was helping us count, and he didn't want to go home. His father was rubbing his eyes and wanted to get out of here. But they didn't leave until 2 o'clock. And they [came back the next day]. He couldn't get enough of it."
That boy was John-Kaarli Rentof, 12, of Manhattan, who declared he wants to be a herpetologist — someone who studies amphibians and reptiles. The boy's favorite finds were a red-spotted newt and two tree frogs.
"One of the frogs was a big guy, and he was gray, and the other was a small one and it was green. I put them in a bag to bring them back and I gave them a shower in the water fountain," he said.
Inspiring the next generation of naturalists was a key goal of the event.
Earlier this summer, the Jamaica Bay Watershed Advisory Committee released a report contending the refuge's salt marsh islands — which serve as a natural sewage-battling filtration system — were vanishing much faster than previously thought. They could be gone in as little as five years, the report said.
At the event's closing ceremony, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Queens, Brooklyn) called on New Yorkers to help protect the park.
"Would it be so bad to lose one mollusk? Would it be so bad to lose one bird? The answer is we have no idea what the impact would be if we lost one species or all of the others," Weiner said.
