Increasing volunteer monitoring of fish and invertebrates in the Salish Sea

Led by Janna Nichols, with REEF Environmental Education Foundation
Collaborators include the SeaDoc Society

This citizen science monitoring program uses trained SCUBA divers to collect data on the presence and abundance of fish and a big suite of marine invertebrates. It provides essential data on the decline or recovery of important species of concern like rockfish and abalone. It also helps gather data on species that are not regularly monitored, but could become scarce. For example, data from this monitoring work helped us understand which species of sea stars were susceptible to the devastating sea star wasting disease and to monitor their recovery, or in the case of the giant sunflower star, lack of recovery.

Individual divers collect data every time they go for a recreational dive. To collect annual pulses of high quality and high quantity data, every fall, a highly trained team of volunteer divers conduct 100 or more surveys in the San Juan and Gulf Islands. Data are available freely to the public online. You can join for free and contribute to this project. Snorkelers, free divers and scuba divers are all welcome to participate.