Fragile Followings: Leaving and Returning to the Ecological Field

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Mayline Strouk can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/fragile-followings-leaving-and-returning-to-the-ecological-field/. About the post: This piece calls for renewed attention to returning to ecological field sites to conduct long-term monitoring studies. In marine ornithology, seabird colony monitoring – often carried out over the course of a career – shapes scientific trajectories, but financial support for such work remains largely limited and confined in short-term projects. In the social sciences, researchers are also expected to spend extended periods in the field to truly know and “own” it – until they move on to other projects and sites, following new positions and funding schemes. Taking the case of a petrel monitoring program in Iceland and an STS PhD thesis following it, I draw attention to the fragility of fieldwork, caught between the expectations and needs to stay and return to the field, and the realities of the precariousness faced by both researchers and the seabird populations they study. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)