Huge day during citizen science of the GBR expedition

362 observations on 30 October 2023 by the staff and guests participating in the Citizen science of the Great Barrier Reef expedition. Is this the biggest day of citizen science observations in the history of the Citizen science at MOUA?

There are now 3,438 observations of 488 species by 36 observers and 147 identifiers. The most observed species is the Sixband Parrotfish (Scarus frenatus) and ray finned fish comprise 61% of observations. A high 72.6% of observations are research grade.

The top observers are Adam Smith, Matthew Wilke and Rachelle Brown (all Reef Ecologic staff) and the top identifiers are @maractwin, @adam_smith3 and @francoislibert. Many of the observers on 30 October are new to iNaturalist and were trained in the methods by guest lecturers Adam, Joseph, Toni, Samantha, Jo and Paul. Several of the participants took their first ever underwater photograph and the Sealife underwater phone housing was a great piece of equipment to make this easy.

We acknowledge support from Coral Expeditions, Australian Geographic and Reef Ecologic for the expedition and acknowledge there are significant opportunities for communication in the future and welcome any support of time or finance to assist with future data entry, analysis, writing and publication

Posted on November 8, 2023 01:03 AM by adam_smith3