Diario del proyecto World Oceans Week - 2022

Many Canadians were first introduced to iNaturalist in 2017 as part of the Canada150 celebrations. iNat was the tool/platform chosen to hold all the observations collected during the bioblitzes held across the country as part of celebrations/events to mark Canada’s 150th birthday.

In 2018 it seemed logical to set up a global iNat project for Oceans Week. At that time ‘collection’ projects had not yet been released so people had to join the project and likely had to manually associate individual observations with the project. 239 participants shared observations – many of these iNatters were individually contacted and asked to participate! The process was tedious.

In 2019 focus was shifted to the City Nature Challenge. 2020 and 2021 were COVID years. It was our hope that people would be self-directed/motivated and if local restrictions permitted, they could explore coastal areas and add observations on their own during Oceans Week. That brings us to 2022. Setting up this iNat project may be last minute but most people by now should know that Ocean Day occurs on the same day every year!

On June 8th each year, we celebrate the ocean, its importance in our lives, and how we can protect it - World Oceans Day helps raise the profile of the ocean and inspire more involvement in helping to conserve this amazing resource we all depend on. During Oceans Week all around the globe events and activities are organized and all are encouraged to participate as it is up to each one of us to help ensure that our ocean is healthy for future generations.

For those of us who are lucky to live/play along the coast or work at sea or have opportunities to partake in ecotourism on the high seas we would like to encourage getting out and exploring nature. Recording and sharing our observations will help create research grade data for scientists working to better understand and protect nature. This is the vision of iNaturalist.

It is fitting that this Oceans Week challenge to share coastal and marine observations originates from Atlantic Canada as it was a group located in Nova Scotia, the Oceans Institute of Canada (OIC), located at Dalhousie University and led by its Director, Dr. Judith Swan, and supported and counseled by Haligonian, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, the founder of the International Ocean Institute, along with Peter MacLellan who first introduced at the United Nations (UN) Earth Summit in 1992, the concept of World Oceans Day (WOD) on behalf of the Government of Canada.

For more information on the history of WOD click here.

It is now 2022 and collection projects do exist but iNat does not include area definitions for oceans and seas nor is there a way to filter for marine taxa. For programmers this is likely not an issue as it is possible to write scripts to map the iNat taxonIDs to WoRMS AphiaIDs and come up with a list of marine species…this is getting a bit technical!

For the current year everyone is encouraged to get out and explore coastal areas, oceans and seas. If you don’t have an opportunity to visit these areas perhaps explore a local river or lake or use this opportunity to go through old photos and select images of plants and animals taken when on vacation at the beach.

A few taxonomic groups were chosen for this project – this does not mean to ignore the other taxa – they just won’t be included in the stats. The initial list of taxa include algae (red, brown, and green) and eelgrass (Zostera) as well as Molluscs, Echinoderms, and ray-finned fishes.

If your favourite taxonomic groups are missing and you really want to see them included in this project drop us a line.

The project's initial list of taxa:

• Molluscs
• Echinoderms
• Actinopterygii (Ray-finned Fishes)
• Rhodophyta (red algae)
• Chlorophyta (green algae)
• Phaeophyceae (brown algae)
• Zostera (Eelgrasses)

has been expanded to now include include:

• Cnidarians
• Ctenophores
• Porifera
• Crustaceans
• Cetaceans

It is recognized that many of the taxonomic groups selected may include species that do not live in 'saltwater'. Many may live in freshwater, brackish water, or may be terrestrial. Examples include freshwater and terrestrial snails, slugs, and of course many fish. This project is an opportunity to share information on how to photograph these groups - what views should be included to facilitate identification, etc.

The objective of this Earth Week Project is to encourage people to explore coastal and oceanic areas. The many species of plants observed along beaches will not be included in this project. Birds observed at sea will not be included. These taxa of course should be recorded and added to iNat - the challenge tho for this one week is to search for and record the growing list of taxonomic groups.