Diario del proyecto World Oceans Week - 2022

As mentioned in previous posts this iNat project will not include all taxa that are marine and a few of the groups selected will include species that are not marine. This is ok – this overall objective of this one-week project is to raise awareness of iNat and to encourage beach walkers, divers, ecotourists, and people working or playing on the water to share their observations. Existing iNatters are encouraged to get out and explore coastal areas as an Oceans Week activity. If participants don’t live close to an ocean, then they are encouraged to explore a local river or lake or look for snails and slugs in their garden. Click here to view a Facebook post promoting the oceans week iNat project.

A proper iNat project that includes a very lengthy list of marine species as criteria does exist. Click here to view the Worldwide Marine Life iNat project.

It will be interesting to review/compare content in the two projects at the end of the week.

Do you have photos of marine species observed in the past? Perhaps associated with past travels or perhaps associated with old research projects. Don’t let these images get lost or gather dust. Upload to iNat as an Oceans Week activity – or at least start the process!

In 2020 a Canadian group composed a blog article titled ‘5 Ways to be an Armchair Naturalist’. Here is an extract describing one of these activities:

Take a trip down memory lane
You likely have an abundance of nature photos languishing on your hard drive, unseen by anyone but you. Reminisce about past trips while adding those photos to iNaturalist! There is no age cut-off for observations, and historic data provide valuable context. This nature enthusiast has even scanned decades worth of photographic slides.

"This nature enthusiast", Greg Lasley, passed away on January 30th, 2021. An iNaturalist blog in Greg's memory is posted here. His addition of over 8,000 observations from 50 years prior to him joining iNaturalist continue to provide valuable context.

Click here to view observations uploaded to the more species inclusive Worldwide Marine Life project during Oceans Week but observed sometime in the past.

Oceans Week is over for another year. Please upload any observations by the end of the day on Sunday June 19th. Reach out to others who might have recorded observations during Oceans Week and introduce them to iNat!

Currently the project stats are as follows: 10,692 Observers uploaded 36,051 observations of 5,168 species. of course, not all of these species are marine. These observations were reviewed by over 2,000 Identifiers.

Encourage people to continue to upload old collections - 'rescue' these observations and help fill in temporal, geographic, and taxonomic gaps.

If participants have ideas on how to enhance the marine content in iNat please reach out and/or leave comments below.

Happy iNatting!