Material from Kokemushi Paradise was collected by Shunsuke Mawatari, Matthew Dick, Andrei Grischenko, Andrew Ostrovsky, Reishi Takashima, Masato Hirose, Paul Taylor, James Taylor, Piotr Kuklinski and Luella Taranto during field excursions to Kuromatsunai in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Collections were subsequently deposited at the University of Hokkaido, Sapporo, and in the Natural History Museum, London (NHM).
Most specimens were rinsed with a hard stream of tapwater or washed gently with a soft brush before examination under a binocular microscope. Selected specimens either were mounted on stubs and coated with Pd-Pt in a Hitachi E-1030 sputter coater for study using a Hitachi S-2380N SEM at Hokkaido University, or ultrasonically cleaned and studied using a low-vacuum LEO 1455-VP SEM at the NHM, London. Images produced by the two SEMs have different tonal attributes, being formed by secondary electrons in the case of the Hitachi SEM but by backscattered electrons in the LEO SEM. Various techniques of digital imaging have been explored to assist curation of the complex specimens which may consist of numerous colonies of several species densely encrusting a single clast (see Clements and Taylor 2011).