Bahamas - iNaturalist World Tour
The Bahamas is the 96th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. We hope all those affected by Hurricane Dorian are safe and recovering. The top observer is @marthar with observations clustered around the capital of Nassau. A cluster of top observers such as @graysquirrel, @mikeakresh, and @nataliewaddellrutter have observations clustered around San Salvador Island. @nataliewaddellrutter leads marine biology trips to the Gerace Research Station on San Salvador. @bennypoo and @noaboa's icons are pulled towards Florida from their mainland observations, but their Bahama observations are on islands like Great Abaco and elsewhere. @ardysnbread's observations are clustered on Great Abaco and @johnnybirder's on nearby Grand Bahama. @flabellare223 and @maractwin's observations are on clustered on North Bimini island.
The number of observations per month has been slowly inreasing over the last 4 years.
@maractwin is the top identifier and leads in fish IDs. The second top identifier, @kemper, also focuses on fish. @joshuagsmith leads in birds and @mikeakresh in plants. @nataliewaddellrutter leads in 'other animals' (in this case marine invertebrates) and @wayne_fidler leads in insect IDs. Thanks to other top identifiers such as @chrisharpe.
What can we do to get more people in the Bahamas using iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread.
@marthar @graysquirrel @bennypoo @mikeakresh @noaboa @maractwin @kemper @joshuagsmith @mikeakresh @chrisharpe
We’ll be back tomorrow in Egypt!
Comments
I mentioned inaturalist to a couple of local naturalists I met down there, and they seemed interested, although I don't know if they ever joined. There seem to be a lot of very conservation-minded folks there, which was wonderful to see. I hope I get to return and do more observing one day.
I'm hoping in our future classes that we take to San Salvador, we'll be able to incorporate iNaturalist into the class to get students involved in adding their observations to the database. Then, perhaps, they'll continue to use iNaturalist when they go home as well!
There are lots of U.S. students that take class trips down to San Salvador and the Gerace Research Centre (and other research/teaching institutes on other islands), so getting more students involved would be good. More importantly, getting local Bahamians interested and aware of iNaturalist is needed. It would be great to get the Bahamas National Trust involved. I had talked briefly with the BNT a few years ago about the idea of a nation-wide BioBlitz using iNaturalist. I'd be happy to work more with iNaturalist and the BNT on trying to get funding/support for this effort, and a BioBlitz would be a good opportunity for locals to start using the site.
Now that I actually work in conservation (just started 3 months ago), I'll try to train more research center staff on iNaturalist when I'm out there. I occasionally work out of Bimini Shark Lab or Friends of the Environment, the latter of which I desperately hope survived Hurricane Dorian. It was the most beautiful research station I've ever seen, and completely solar powered.
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