A naturalist’s journal
Field photography and observations by David Rolla. More than two decades of documenting wildlife in two dozen countries, most of it underwater across the Pacific and the Coral Triangle, and now a new chapter in the streams and forests of the Laurel Highlands.
22 credits: 5 journal papers, 7 books, 3 exhibits, 7 databases and apps · All credits
34,339 observations and 5,204 species on iNaturalist · 186 species in this archive
Every iNaturalist observation with public coordinates, binned into hexagons. The full map gives the counts and species for each cell, filters by group, and marks where each photo in the archive was taken.
26 countries · 2001 to 2026 · Explore the map →New chapter · Western Pennsylvania
I moved back to western Pennsylvania in 2026, and this chapter is just beginning. The archive holds 5 photos from here so far. It will grow as I get to know these ridges and valleys again.
See the Appalachia photos
Red-spotted Admiral
Osprey
Eastern Garter SnakeNov 2026 · Conservation
In 2015 Nate Yuen led me up a gated trail in the Waiʻanae Mountains to look for happy face spiders, and asked me afterward not to name it. I kept the name out. Several years later, building a map of my own observations, I found what I had missed.
Oct 2026 · Conservation
In 2016 I photographed a dead rat on Lord Howe Island. Five years earlier I had dived off Lehua, another island where rats were winning. Both have since removed every rat, and how they did it says a lot about what island conservation actually demands.
Oct 2026 · Science
I am an engineer with a camera, not a scientist. Fifteen years and 33,000 observations later, here is how travel and backyard records turn into science, from Oʻahu's reefs to the Laurel Highlands.
I’m a diver and field naturalist. By profession I’m a security and technology architect, and both reward the same habit: check the evidence before trusting the identification. In the field that means photographing everything, because a photo often catches details the naked eye misses.
My photos have supported two new species descriptions, new fish records from the Galápagos, five field guides and reference books, and exhibits at the Smithsonian and the California Academy of Sciences. After many years in Hawaiʻi, I now live in the Laurel Highlands of western Pennsylvania.
More about me
