Heeding earth's call
Lincoln teen skips school for global adventure
In 2004, Tyler Robinson skipped school to wrangle crocodiles in Botswana.
The Lincoln teenager also searched for leatherback sea turtle eggs in Costa Rica, excavated ancient skeletons in Thailand, and measured argali sheep in the Gobi Desert.
Robinson was one of three high school students sent on a 10-month world tour by the Maynard-based Earthwatch Institute. Their exploits are the subject of the documentary, "A Year on Earth," airing in two parts tonight and next Sunday on the Discovery Kids channel.
The trip was the idea of Earthwatch president Ed Wilson, who saw it as a way to show how young people can tackle global problems. The teenagers helped Earthwatch scientists collect data on a dozen projects, ranging from documenting vanishing species and forests to digging up traces of an ancient civilization.
Robinson was among some 200 teenagers nationwide recommended for the trip. He was selected in part on the basis of a letter from his science teacher at the Noble and Greenough School in Dedham; his passion for making home videos was also a plus. The other students selected were from Texas and California.
In Botswana, Robinson not only corraled crocodiles, he helped give them a physical.
"At night, we'd go out on boats to capture crocodiles in order to take blood, urine, and DNA samples," Robinson said. "They're an indicator species for the ecosystem, so if there's any harm to the population of the crocodiles, the Okavango Delta suffers."
Located in the southern African nation of Botswana, the delta is Africa's largest oasis and the main source of water in the Kalahari desert.
Besides helping the scientists, the students updated a website about their travels. Robinson's job was shooting videos for the site. The trio was accompanied by an entourage that included the expedition guide, cinematographer, sound recordist, producer, associate producer, and writer. The documentary took a year to shoot, including three visits home, and another year to edit.
More than a dozen schools across the United States kept in touch with the trio, who some mornings woke up at 4 to speak with students via satellite radio.
The Earthwatch expedition inspired them to launch earth-friendly projects at their schools, such as planting 300 trees in Pennsylvania, protecting brook trout in Ohio, and monitoring pollution in urban ponds in New York.
After poking and prodding one of the world's gnarliest critters in Botswana, the teenagers headed north to Kenya to study one of nature's most lovely. "Seeing nearly a million flamingos was an incredible sight," Robinson said.
The birds flock to Lake Bogoria, where the dark green waters provide a banquet for the birds in the form of a protein-rich algae called spirulina. The algae, though, is on the decline, and so is the flamingo population.
Bogoria is "an alkali lake powered by volcanic geysers," Robinson says in his Web video. "Chemicals in the water make it undrinkable. It will burn even the tiniest flesh wound."
The group gathered data such as wing measurements and feces samples for the scientists to study.
For Robinson's flamingo video, visit earthbound3.earthwatch.org/kenya.html.
He spent nights patrolling the beaches for turtles and their eggs. "On a good night, we would find the eggs from four or five turtles," said Robinson. They carried the eggs back to the researchers for safekeeping until the turtles hatched and could be set free.
Scientists theorize that bright lights from resorts along Tamarindo Beach reflect off the Pacific and throw off turtle navigation.
"It was a very depressing site, in the sense that it really felt like there was no hope," Robinson said.
Off the Baja Mexico peninsula, the prospects are brighter for the gray whale, the first of the great whales to be removed from the endangered species list.
"The whales would come 2 feet from our boat, which was about 10 feet long, and push it," said Robinson, who assisted researchers studying the whales' migratory patterns. "They were really friendly and docile and wanted to play with us. It was amazing."
Robinson said that some people kissed the whales, but he passed on the opportunity to smooch with a mammoth mammal that can grow to 50 feet and 40 tons.
To go whale watching, visit earthbound3.earthwatch.org/baja.html.
Some days they went by foot, once covering 20 miles, and other days by car. It was frigid and windy.
"There was . . . a dust storm, which kind of freaked me out, because we were driving around in the middle of nowhere with no roads and we weren't able to see more than 4 feet in front of us," Robinson said.
In Malaysia, Robinson's nerves were put to a new test by bats and leeches. The rainforests in that Southeast Asian nation are dwindling at a rate of 2.4 percent a year, threatening the habitat of 31 species of bats. The team's job included catching and measuring the bats to determine their age, sex, and species.
"Handling the bats was kind of difficult," Robinson said. "It kind of creeped me out as they bit [through the gloves] and made weird head movements."
In preparation for the trip, everyone was vaccinated for rabies, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, and hepatitis. Meanwhile, the leeches were biting, too, furtively fastening themselves to Robinson's legs. It was only when he saw blood dripping down his legs that he knew he had been bitten.
To see the bats, visit earthbound3.earthwatch.org/MAL.html
"I saw rows and rows of photographs of swelled dead, unclaimed bodies," Robinson said. "To this day, it's really difficult for me to describe the emotions I felt when I witnessed that."
At an elementary school where many students had been orphaned by the disaster, the Earthwatch teenagers handed out stuffed animals donated by the Audubon Society, soccer balls, coloring books, and crayons. They were rewarded with wide smiles from the children who had seen so much of their world perish before them.
Robinson also learned a little about the Thai language. It can be confusing, because the same word can have many meanings, depending on the inflection or tone. For example, the word mai can mean no, microphone, question, new, and silk.
Near the Cambodian border, the group joined in an archeological dig, researching the Angkor civilization.
"We found infant skeletons in pots, beads, and bangles around wrist bones," Robinson said. "It was incredibly fascinating."
But was it creepy? "No, I thought it was just cool," he said.
Watch Robinson practicing his Thai at earthbound3.earthwatch.org/THA.html.
"Initially, it's good to see your friends, but, after a week or two, you start getting tired of [things] and want to do more of what you've been doing during your travel with Earthwatch," he said.
Now a senior, Robinson is looking at colleges on the West Coast, with plans to pursue environmental studies and film.
Meanwhile, he's applying his Earthwatch experience to less-exotic locales, such as Boston Harbor, where his Noble and Greenough science class took out a boat to net samples.
"He's curious; he's passionate," said science teacher Ross Henderson. "Some students were willing to simply watch and learn. Tyler had a desire to 'dig in' much more deeply. He would say about . . . some of the species that we pulled up, 'Oh, can I touch that?' "
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