[meteorite-list] Hunting hours vs. recovery rate

From: Matson, Robert <ROBERT.D.MATSON_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Mar 6 01:23:51 2006
Message-ID: <A8044CCD89B24B458AE36254DCA2BD070B17F5_at_0005-its-exmp01.us.saic.com>

Hi Sonny and List,

> Have you ever wondered how many hours you must spend before your
> first cold find ? Or how many hours after you find a new area
> with a new meteorite before your next find?

Great subject! When I first started cold meteorite hunting in
September 1999, there was very little information available as to
how long one could expect to search before finding a meteorite.
The first hard number I remember reading was an estimate by Ron
Hartman of (I believe) ~100 hours. I decided that was acceptable,
and thought it would be worthwhile to keep a detailed log of my
hours for statistical purposes.

Well, 10 desert trips and nearly 40 hours of active searching later,
I finally made a cold find in May 2000. I felt I had perhaps beaten
the odds, and that it might take me 160 hours or more to find my
second meteorite! But no, the second and third meteorites came
(different location) after only an additional 30 hours.

As the hours continued to rack up, the average time between finds
steadily decreased. In retrospect, I can say that there is a huge
learning curve with meteorite hunting, and that your first 15 hours
of hunting are extremely unlikely to produce a find unless you
are already a rockhound and know a terrestrial rock when you see
one. Knowing what a meteorite looks like is not as much help as
you might think -- weathered meteorites, at least initially, do
not stand out in a desert environment as much as you might think.

Here are some stats extracted from the Excel spreadsheed I've
maintained for the last 6 1/2 years:

Time to first find: 39.5 hours
First 5 finds: 75.5 hours
First 10 finds: 128.8 hours
First 20 finds: 220.3 hours
First 50 finds: 340.8 hours
First 100 finds: 482.7 hours

I should point out that many of these finds are paired to one
another and were found close together, so the statistics are a
bit misleading (overly optimistic). My first 100 finds represent
perhaps 45 different meteorites. If I consider my first 5 finds
to be part of the learning curve, that means ~40 unpaired finds
in 407 hours, or about one every 10 hours.

How long this recovery rate can be maintained, I don't know, but
I see no evidence of diminishing returns ... yet. These days I
would prefer to make new finds at new locations; however, it's
nice to know that if I get discouraged by a run of unproductive
trips, there are still places I can choose to go and be nearly
guaranteed to make a find on a 2-day trip.

Cheers,
Rob
Received on Mon 06 Mar 2006 01:23:33 AM PST