Earthwatch redefines retirement for couple

Don and Sandi McVay's idea of a vacation isn't karaoke on a cruise ship. You're more likely to find them poking about a remote Australian island to learn about the nesting habits of Rosenberg's goanna, a type of monitor lizard that lays its eggs in termite mounds.

That was what the Queen Anne couple did on a "vacation" last August, volunteering with an Earthwatch Institute expedition. It was their eighth outing with the nonprofit research organization.

Both retired biology educators, the McVays are hooked on Earthwatch projects, which recruit volunteers who pay their own way to all pockets of the world to assist in natural- and cultural- history research.

The McVays started with an expedition to Jamaica in the early 1980s, helping with a baseline study of the island nation's mongoose population.

Next stop: Queensland, Australia, to study a tree formerly thought to be extinct. And continuing, about every second year: an expedition focused on mosquito fish in the Bahamas; then netting wild birds in a New Mexico wildlife refuge; back to Australia to examine aboriginal rock shelters on the Great Barrier Reef; to Italy to assist with an archaeological dig of an Etruscan farmhouse; then a study of macaws on the Amazon in Peru; and last year to Kangaroo Island, Australia, to look at breeding habits of goannas and another unique Australian species, the echidna (a cousin of the platypus, it lays eggs but incubates them in folds of its skin, which oozes milk to feed the hatchlings).

"Once you get into these things, it's amazing the details you learn!" said Don, 71, who was a founding professor at Shoreline Community College.

Sandi, 64, formerly taught at Seattle's Roosevelt High School. Why do they keep returning to Earthwatch?

"There's such a feeling of accomplishment because you're contributing to scientific knowledge, instead of sitting on a beach during a vacation," Don said.

The McVays already have signed up for their ninth Earthwatch experience — a little tamer and closer to home: working at the National Herbarium of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., cataloging information about plant samples and their uses.

Brian J. Cantwell: 206-748-5724 or bcantwell@seattletimes.com