In August 2020, Amit and Danny had a chat with Andy Ridley, Founder of Earth Hour & Chief Citizen of Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef, who shared about the 2020 Great Reef Census and how it was designed to help fill critical gaps in our knowledge of how individual reefs are coping with stresses. Today, the team returned with a huge success.
With hundreds of volunteers’ hours committed from scientists, dive crew, tourists and conservation groups,150 reefs from the tip of Cape York to the remote southern Swains have been surveyed. With their help, 13,000 images have been captured and uploaded to the Great Reef Census platform for analysis. Now, the project is recruiting citizen scientists from all around the world to help analyze the images – a huge trial to determine how best to utilize everyday people as part of the major conservation effort.
If you have five minutes to spare, we urge you to please visit greatreefcensus.org. All you need to do is to select a reef image and ‘color-in’ where you see key elements including coral, sand and rubble.
Find out more in our chat with Katie Chartrand, Senior Researcher at James Cook University and Lead Science Coordinator, for Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef’s launch of the Great Reef Census. Katie shares with us her work on this project, what’s next for the team and what sparked her interest in marine ecology.