Covering the people, projects and phenomena of citizen science
Blog: Citizen Science Projects, People, and Perspectives
Dive into Shark Week with SciStarter
By Arvind Suresh, Jun 30, 2016
Dive into Shark Week with SciStarter
It’s shark week! Celebrate by getting involved in one of the many citizen science projects that study and protect sharks. Find even more projects with the SciStarter Global Project Finder.
Cheers!
The SciStarter Team
Photo: Lisa Schroeter
ELMO
South African Elasmobranch Monitoring (ELMO) needs help to monitor small sharks and rays along the coasts of Mozambique and South Africa. Reports of eggcases on beaches and sharks in the water are both valuable.
To protect whale sharks, we need to be able to identify specific individuals. Volunteers can submit photographs and sighting data, and advanced software identifies the individual shark based on its markings.
Divers in the San Diego area and in South Africa are needed to photograph sevengill sharks and upload the pictures, along with sighting details, to this project. With this information, we can learn what areas the sharks visit and if the same sharks return from year to year.
If you live in Fiji, or if you’re planning a visit, your help is needed for this project. Divers can report shark sightings to a large database, which will be used to inform conservation.
Arvind Suresh is science communicator and a former laboratory biologist, he has a Master’s degree in Cell Biology and Molecular Physiology from the University of Pittsburgh. He enjoys reading, teaching, talking and writing science. Connect with him on Twitter @suresh_arvind.
