Last year before my trip I had little knowledge about what awaited me. Back on that trip the mission was to collect as much high quality footage of social insects as possible. So I packed three DSLRs, two gopros, tons of SD cards, hard-drives and backup hard-drives, and lighting equipment. It was easy to pack for the mission because the mission was straightforward, but I had no idea what the living environment would be like at all. Thus, that year I went overboard on survival supplies due to my cluelessness about the everyday life. I packed tents and sleeping bags and a full bee suit. I had mosquito nets and tarps and space blankets. I didn’t realize then that we would be staying in re-appropriated tropical resort villas next to the jungle instead of in the jungle.

I now face the reverse problem. I have a very good concept of how the area functions and what supplies I truly need for general life, but for carrying out my research I had to stay as open-ended as possible. I ended up with a kitchen-sink style, basically bringing as much of my digital toys and physical computing / biocrafting equipment as possible.

Determining the way to optimize the packing to avoid 200 dollar overweight fees on the airline, as well as balance out pesky TSA rules about carrying potentially hazardous material like LIPO batteries or CO2 canisters was tricky and took me 3 days of thinking to sort. I tried to be overly cautious since most of the equipment is out of my own pocket, and I included notices for the TSA officers and a full inventory printout that I placed in each pelican case. This social hacking attempted to over-weigh the suspiciousness of my boxes full of wires and strange devices with the pseudo-authenticity of an “official” research scientist going into the jungle with lots of “official” forms.