Last year the Southsea Marina Angling Club was introduced to the work of Seakeepers International with a talk by Gill Rodrigues, Director of International Relations. The charity aims to connect boat owners with marine research, through Citizen Science projects and hosting research teams on board. This year there are more projects available including ORCA Ocean Watchers and Seabed 2030. Rebel Runner has signed up to both of these!
ORCA Ocean Watchers simply involves reporting sightings of whales and dolphins so that a more global record of these magnificent animals can be maintained. This will in turn support more extensive research and understanding. Because most of us probably can’t be trusted to identify a short-beaked dolphin from a white-sided dolphin, by signing up for the programme we are also booked onto an on-line Whale and Dolphin identification course. This means that the sighting we record on the ORCA app will be more reliable for the researchers.
The Seabed 2030 project is a global Citizen Science Initiative to map the world’s oceans by 2030. This will be particularly valuable in areas where leisure boaters travel but hydrographic survey data is out of date. Signing up to this project is a little more involved because the data is recorded on a data logging device attached to your vessel’s data network. It picks up depth, location and time data and stores it on a micro SD card for uploading later to the research data portal.
Last week Rebel Runner hosted a visit from Gill Rodrigues and Vicky Neild, UK Programme Manager to install and test the data logger. As we have a NMEA2000 network this was a very easy job and the green data light was soon blinking to show all was well.
The next step will be to generate a test file which sounds to me like a jolly good excuse to take Rebel Runner out for a spin. Even better, I can now tell the FPO* that I am conducting important oceanographic research which may sway things in my favour.
There was also an unexpected treat for me in the form of a very impressive goodie bag from Seakeepers as a thank you. Inside a useful mesh bag was a bottle of eco boat-wash, eco detailing spray, a very posh insulated bottle, a cap and a sample of the Cano resealable can of water.
If anyone wants to get involved in these or other marine research projects, there are more details here. Please contact Vicky at Seakeepers International to register your interest.
* Fishing Permission Officer