Our expert team has a combined decades of experience carrying out field experiments and field maintenance at sites all around Okinawa. Our field team maintains the 24 OKEON field network sites, has experience sorting insects by genus, managing slam traps, acoustic recorders, camera traps, weather stations and experience solving practical problems in Okinawa's challenging environment. Our section can help with planning and conducting field research, manage community contacts and permissions, and carry out and maintain experiments in the field.

Environmental acoustic recording in Okinawa has been ongoing at OKEON sites since 2017 comprising, as of 2025, 13.5 thousand hours (37~ years) of data across all sites. ESI maintains these recordings, along with models for detecting bird songs, acoustic identification workflows, and preliminary acoustic statistics (such as biophony and anthrophony metrics). We are experienced with Kaleidoscope bioacoustics sound analysis tools, creation of bespoke acoustic identification workflows, acoustic statistics processing, and graphing. We also house high quality handheld field recorders for one off recordings or deployable boxes for long term acoustic monitoring, including underwater deployments.

The OIST Insect Collection is a rich, diverse treasure trove of insects and other invertebrates collected from across Okinawa Prefecture. The collection primarily consists of material collected over the last decade (2015-present) in Malaise traps deployed at 24 sites across the OKEON field network. The dry collection contains approximately 240 drawers (~60,000 specimens) of mounted ants and beetles identified to the species level. The wet collection is largely unsorted and contains a diversity of insects and arthropods stored in high concentration ethanol and freezers to preserve DNA. The collection is ideal for a wide range of project types, including systematics, evolution, taxonomy, ecology, and genomic studies. ESI’s in-house collection is available for research along with expert consultation to aid you in your projects. We can also assist with insect identification (including dissections), z-stack micro imaging, and insect-specific preparations for X-ray micro-CT scanning. 

At ESI we maintain datasets for the 24 OKEON field sites, specimen collections, acoustic recordings, weather stations, camera traps, and various other data. We can help with finding data, starting a project, or doing analysis. We also collect and have experience with GIS datasets such as satellite image analysis, soils, water features, land use & land cover, elevation & bathymetry, and watershed analysis. We can also help with cartographic and mapping tasks, or spatial analysis both in Okinawa and worldwide.

The members of ESI have spent years maintaining relationships with the local community in Okinawa as well as stakeholders and government agencies to fulfill our roles in both research and education. We have developed multiple educational programs for young students as well as museum displays, community collaboration, and outreach programs. We can help connect you with the relevant parties to discuss field research, or other outreach you may wish to do. We can also aid in applying for research permissions, field sampling, and contracts.