This has to be among the saddest news for this year - for us in the naturalist, iNaturalist community.
May Marina rest in peace, may she always be loved.
When I first joined the forums - she was always there - chatting, helping advising - a friendly active presence and a very prolific one. Both as a naturalist and as a friend on the forum.
Her observations - that she shared through various forum messages were very cool.
She was not shy of expressing her opinions. It made her who she was giving freely of herself and willing to engage however messy it was.
Somewhere above someone spoke about the impact of the Ukraine war – it surely resulted in a reduced presence.
What will always stand out to me is Marina’s energy and prolific contribution. Her passing is a reminder that life is very transitory. I am once again sad that what I could have said to her - that chance is gone.
Hope her family knows she is respected and will be honored.
She’s come up in my feed or when I was identifying; I don’t remember whether I identified one of her observations or identified something she also identified.
What to say? Of all the things I like about iNat, its community is the thing I like most. Marina has been a prominent member in every way, observing and IDing prodigously and participating in this forum in a way that was both straightforward and from the heart.
She was also kind (she never once commented on my bad Russian in our private conversations) and generous with her knowledge. We never met face to face but I will miss her. The iNat community is poorer with her passing.
After reflecting on this for a day, it really bears to notice how precious life is.
Life is unpredictable. We should all be cherishing our lives every day regardless of who we are. For everyone who uses Inat, I hope that Inat is the joy that brings people happiness to their days.
So if you can, get outside and enjoy nature. There will eventually be a time when you cannot, so while you can——why not take advantage of it?
Marina left us way too early. It makes me want to cry just reading her profile update. I hope we all continue her and other deceased Inatter’s legacies by continuing to do what they(and us) loved best: observing, identifying, and most of all, being part of a community.
My goodness, what a shock. She was a kind, intelligent and generous person. One of the first people I interacted with much on iNat, back when she was melodi_96. You would never have known that she was fighting this battle with her health. My heart goes out to her family; I know she had a husband, but I don’t know any more. My prayers are with them. Her contribution here, both in terms of IDs (especially, but not only, Arthropods) and community interaction was enormous (I believe her last ID was this Bracket Fungus in November). The iNat community has lost one of its true giants. Rest in peace.
This is terrible news! I had no idea Marina was ill - she used to refine insect IDs for me frequently, before the war. I had missed that but it did force me to learn more about insects myself.
Oh wow, this is very sad. When I started out in the forums, she was a very prominent presence and when i started IDing in Europe we frequently “ran” into each others activities as well. I still do qhen IDing in Northern Asia. She did a lot for the community and she will leave a gap behind. Rest in peace.
And her comments on forest types and such – a lot packed into her words – as always! Such a powerfully, driven observer. Her passing will surely leave a huge hole in the iNat observation power of that region. (sigh)
Also, thanks for digging that thread up, too. (Would love to see it re-open!) I don’t think we talk enough about the diversity of the places we roam through and how they relate to the diversity we encounter.
Marina certainly covered much more territory than I would ever dream be possible, in her years with iNat. Another testament to her incredible record.
It has been several days since I heard this news and I still don’t know what to say.
For a while her avatar photo showed her wearing a knit hat with double pompoms. I loved that picture.
During ID Blitz December 2021 Marina made 4,000 identifications in 48 hours. I didn’t publish rankings for this event; there was no official “winner” but she definitely surpassed everyone else by quite a lot.
I always knew that if I put pterygota on an observation, she would come by and sort it.
Oh, gosh. I am so very sorry to read this news. Marina was a person I admired and looked up to. I valued her knowledge and the massive contributions she made to the iNaturalist and to the community.
very sad and surprising news, indeed. well, we don’t have to disclose who we are, or in what situation we live. so, we mostly know the alias, observations and IDs. she was very active, fluent in English (as a Russian) and knowledgeable. therefore, I will miss her. she helped me with hundreds of IDs and I helped her with hundreds of IDs, we even had that occasional PM conversation between 2021 and 2025. I still remember, her earlier alias was “melodi96” which I found very poetic.
A very sad news. We had arguing in the past about misunderstandings when I was trying to identify her craneflies. She had a large amount of detailed photos of Tipulidae but no experts to ask. Rest in peace.
Марина была для нас больше, чем просто участник. Во многом, она была живой постоянной связью между Россией и миром. Я постоянно удивлялся: откуда у нее мотивация делать десятки тысяч наблюдений и сотни тысяч определений? Что движет ею? Марина спешила жить. Вот здесь короткая история про то, как она за один день сделала больше 1000 наблюдений: https://vk.com/id8111236?w=wall8111236_4755 . Почему-то именно эта короткая история мне больше всего врезалась в память.
Марина всегда имела своё собственное мнение, могла и умела его объяснить и защитить, всегда активно помогала нам в разных биоблицах и челленджах.
Марина, спи спокойно. Нам будет тебя не хватать.
To us, Marina was more than just a community member. In many ways, she was a living, constant link between Russia and the rest of the world. I was always amazed: where did she find the motivation to make tens of thousands of observations and hundreds of thousands of identifications? What drove her? Marina was in a hurry to live. Here is a short story about how she made over 1,000 observations in a single day: https://vk.com/id8111236?w=wall8111236_4755 . For some reason, it is this particular story that stuck with me the most.
Marina always had her own opinion; she knew how to explain and defend it, and she was always an active presence in our bioblitzes and challenges.
I was checking what Marina was up to today because of an ID she had made and saw the sad news. I was shocked to see she had been battling cancer pretty much since I joined iNat, all this time. She taught me about all sorts of things (pot worms being one of them) when I started and we exchanged a couple of messages for clarifications (she was a feisty one; she opened a little bit about herself then) and again when she traveled to Siberia. Farewell Marina, it was too early but you certainly contributed so much, here and I am sure, out there.
She did! (have her own opinion). So do I, so one time I had to message her and then, we chatted a little bit and I ended up learning a little bit more about her… This is very sad.
