Citizen Scientist Sailors

[GordMay]

Crowd-sourcing Science on the High Seas

“Oceanographers are interested in recruiting blue-water sailors to sample rarely traveled parts of the world's oceans ...”

From CBC Radio’s “Quirks & Quarks” ➥ Crowd-sourcing Science on the High Seas | Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald | CBC Radio

Paper in PLoS Biology ➥ PLOS Biology: The Common Oceanographer: Crowdsourcing the Collection of Oceanographic Data

Indigo V Expeditions ➥ Home - Indigo V Expeditions

[s/v Beth]

Hi Gordon,
Exactly how would this work? Would they give us little start up kits to go sampling with? I have seen a few things not in current science literature/or have been described, as I am sure most of us have. How do they want us to report that?

[GordMay]

The concept is still under development, but:
From the previously linked PLoS Paper:

“... A prototype ocean sampling microbial observatory (OSMO) is currently being ruggedized and automated for citizen-science-based collections of bacterioplankton samples.
This device is being developed as a collaboration between the Indigo V team members in their laboratories in the US, Singapore, and Australia and will autonomously sample microbial populations onto filters and preserve them.
The sailor/scientist would be responsible for metadata collection, uploading that data to a central database, and shipping the samples back to the lab for processing ...”

[Draikhyan]

Originally Posted by GordMay

“Oceanographers are interested in recruiting blue-water sailors to sample rarely traveled parts of the world's oceans ...”

Crazy scientists... They should know that seawater tastes pretty much the same everywhere.

[MarkJ]

There was one a few years ago where you had to stop the boat dead in the water twice per day for 15 minutes. Try doing that on an oceanic downhill run.

This one appears a bit better

In all but the heaviest seas, the crew was able to inventory the surface water population of bacterioplankton using a simple pump and filtration apparatus and make basic measurements of ocean physics and chemistry.

But the photo shows its heavy equipment using 3 crew, and the boat is stopped. That aint easy!

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

But the photo shows its heavy equipment using 3 crew, and the boat is stopped. That aint easy!

Indeed, but from Home - Indigo V Expeditions :

“... the team has an answer: Keep it simple. “Our approach is to use automated instrumentation that will self-collect samples and eliminate the ‘human error’ aspect ...
... Next steps include designing "an ocean sampling microbial observatory" that's rugged, small and easy to deploy by next year ...”

The Indigo V expedition was a pioneering, proof of concept mission.

[MarkJ]

Thanks Gord.

If the record keeping was simple and electronic, mostly automatic, and the collection simple for one crew and the boat doesnt stop, then sure I wpuld be in it.

One must realise they are just a remote collection point and anomalies can not be investigated.

And yes, on the Tropical Trade winds routes theres a fair number of boats crossing, but only in one season. But i the high latitude or off the beaten track area, the places I call the Beth and Evans Oceans how many boats go through each year? Not many at all. I dont know if that makes it better or worse for the scientists.

[Ex-Calif]

Originally Posted by GordMay

<snip>
as a collaboration between the Indigo V team members in their laboratories in the US, Singapore, and Australia and will autonomously sample microbial populations onto filters and preserve them.
The sailor/scientist would be responsible for metadata collection, uploading that data to a central database, and shipping the samples back to the lab for processing ...”

So we are going to collect microbes and then ship them into various countries.

There are some interesting complications with that.

In my business we got very interested in dirt from various locations around the world to understand the various differences in corrosive effects. Details can't be shared and aren't important but...

One reason customs asks you if you have been on a farm lately is to stop microbes from moving around the world unmolested.

In fact we found that shipping "dirt" into the US required approvals and permits, required a "certified" lab to receive the stuff and was treated almost as hazardous waste.

There are ways to do things and there the ways to do things that the government approves of. I don't think I would be sending "dirty" microbial filled filters to anyone without understanding what laws I might be breaking...

[GordMay]

There are protocols* for shipping/mailing environmental samples, biological samples, and even for Toxic and/or Infectious Substances; so I shouldn’t expect that these samples would present a significant problem.

I imagine the receiving Labs would provide appropriate instruction, packaging, and labeling.

* Per Title 49 of the US Code of Federal Regulations (49 CFR).
Along with the 49 CFR regulations, shippers can prepare air dangerous goods packages according to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and published in the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Dangerous Goods Regulations.

[GordMay]

Want to pitch in to help discover unknown planets?

Researchers/astronomers, working on a project, called the Next Generation Transit Survey [1], are inviting the public to help to scan five years of data, from telescopes observing nearby stars, looking for tell-tale signs of orbiting planets, in our galaxy.

Using the citizen science platform Zooniverse [2], they have launched a project called Planet Hunters NGTS [2], which allows volunteers to participate in the search for other worlds.

The data comes from a cluster of twelve small robotic telescopes in the high Atacama desert of northern Chile, at the same site as the European Southern Observatory. Every night they scan the skies measuring the brightness of stars, looking for changes that might indicate the presence of a planet.

There is also a sibling project, called the Planet Hunters TESS project [3], that allows the public to help comb through data, from the space-based Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

A study [4], by Michelle Kunimoto and Jaymie Matthews, from the University of British Columbia, has suggested there could be up to six billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, but so far, a twin to the Earth has not been found. Most exoplanets are either giants like Jupiter, that orbit extremely close to their stars, making them super hot, or go around very dim red dwarf stars, that are quite different from our sun. Solar systems like ours could be quite rare.

[1] Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) ➥ https://ngtransits.org/

[2] Zooniverse Planet Hunters NGTS ➥ https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/...t-hunters-ngts

[3] Planet Hunters TESS ➥ https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/...t-hunters-tess

[4] “Searching the Entirety of Kepler Data. II. Occurrence Rate Estimates for FGK Stars” ~ by Michelle Kunimoto & Jaymie M. Matthews
➥ https://iopscience.iop.org/article/1...38-3881/ab88b0

[GordMay]

Anyone up for some climate-themed citizen science?
Weather Rescue At Sea
Today we relaunch #WeatherRescue!
Millions of pages of ship logbooks are full of detailed weather observations, which have never been digitised.
Transcribing this data will improve our knowledge of how the climate has changed.
Do you have some time to help?
We are transcribing historical ship weather logbooks, written in the mid-19th Century. The logbooks contain many different weather parameters. Select a weather parameter, from the list below, to transcribe those measurements, from a set of logbook images.
Here ➥ https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/...-rescue-at-sea

[Tetepare]

iNaturalist is to record photos and data, and identify animals and plants worldwide. I’d urge sailors, particularly those who visit remote places, to contribute. I use it regularly to identify species ranges in my research.

[alaskanviking]

With some of the public sonar and chart additions. I have been thinking that it wouldn't be too difficult to collect sensor data for climate and weather.

GPS combined with sonar, sunlight, pressure, wind ect. A little more effort and equipment and you could have salinity, pH, and other water readings.

Signalk seems to be a good way to log this data. Not sure how you would calibrate things or even where you would send such data. I haven't stumbled into any databases looking for such

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Tetepare

iNaturalist is to record photos and data, and identify animals and plants worldwide. I’d urge sailors, particularly those who visit remote places, to contribute. I use it regularly to identify species ranges in my research.

Every observation can contribute to biodiversity science, from the rarest butterfly to the most common backyard weed. We share your findings with scientific data repositories like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility to help scientists find and use your data. All you have to do is observe.
iNaturalist ➥ https://www.inaturalist.org/

Join the largest group of naturalists in the world! ➥ https://www.inaturalist.org/signup

[RaymondR]

You never know where these things will end.

To collect samples at high altitude in order to detect soviet nuclear weapons tests the British government had BOAC aircraft fitted with filters which only sampled during the period where it was believed the aircraft would fly through stratospheric residues of the fallout lifted there by the nuclear explosion. They did detect the residues after the first soviet test and announced it to the world. What surprised them was to find small spiders in the test samples which were still viable after being exposed to the low oxygen, extreme cold of the atmosphere at the sampling height.