Institutes often lack funds and manpower to perform large-scale biodiversity monitoring. Citizens can be involved, contributing to the data collection, thus decreasing costs. Underwater research requires specialist skills and SCUBA certification, and it can be difficult to involve volunteers. Our studies, started in 1999, involve large numbers of recreational divers for collecting data on the status of marine biodiversity. The "recreational monitoring" approach used in our projects allowed volunteers to perform normal recreational activities, ensuring the reliability of data and a greater amount of divers involved. Using user-friendly questionnaires, volunteers report the presence of taxa encountered during their dives. In these last 19 years recreational divers have been involved in 4 research projects: Mediterranean Hippocampus Mission (1999-2001), Divers for the Environment (2002-2005), STE: Scuba Tourism for the Environment (2007-2015) and Sea Sentinels - Divers United for the Environment (DUE project, 2017-2020). Mediterranean Hippocampus Mission was a census of two species of seahorses. Results showed that the greatest abundance of seahorses was reported in the northern Adriatic and central-southern Tyrrhenian seas and the distribution may be correlated with the degree of degradation of Posidonia oceanica meadows. Divers United for the Environment aimed to assess the marine biodiversity status along the Italian coasts. The results indicated a high significantly negative correlation between environmental quality and latitude (trend supported by surveys of the Italian Ministry of the Environment). The STE project investigated on the health of Red Sea coral reefs. The results revealed spatial trends across areas subjected to different protection strategies (higher biodiversity values in Sharm el-Sheikh, within protected Ras Mohammed National Park and Tiran Island, than in the less-regulated Hurghada area). Thanks to the collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, the results shall be integrated in the Egyptian coastlines management. Quality of volunteer-recorded data were validated comparing them with those collected by an experienced researcher. The results showed a sufficient level of the quality of data collected by volunteers. At last, the DUE project, started in March 2017, aims to verify the health status of the Mediterranean Sea after 12 years since the previous survey (Divers for the Environment). The greatest limitation with using volunteers to collect data was the uneven spatial distribution of samples. The benefits were the considerable amounts of data collected over short time periods and at low costs.

Recreational citizen science: unite research with what citizens do for fun. Divers in marine biodiversity monitoring.

Airi V.;Neri P.;Goffredo S.
2017

Abstract

Institutes often lack funds and manpower to perform large-scale biodiversity monitoring. Citizens can be involved, contributing to the data collection, thus decreasing costs. Underwater research requires specialist skills and SCUBA certification, and it can be difficult to involve volunteers. Our studies, started in 1999, involve large numbers of recreational divers for collecting data on the status of marine biodiversity. The "recreational monitoring" approach used in our projects allowed volunteers to perform normal recreational activities, ensuring the reliability of data and a greater amount of divers involved. Using user-friendly questionnaires, volunteers report the presence of taxa encountered during their dives. In these last 19 years recreational divers have been involved in 4 research projects: Mediterranean Hippocampus Mission (1999-2001), Divers for the Environment (2002-2005), STE: Scuba Tourism for the Environment (2007-2015) and Sea Sentinels - Divers United for the Environment (DUE project, 2017-2020). Mediterranean Hippocampus Mission was a census of two species of seahorses. Results showed that the greatest abundance of seahorses was reported in the northern Adriatic and central-southern Tyrrhenian seas and the distribution may be correlated with the degree of degradation of Posidonia oceanica meadows. Divers United for the Environment aimed to assess the marine biodiversity status along the Italian coasts. The results indicated a high significantly negative correlation between environmental quality and latitude (trend supported by surveys of the Italian Ministry of the Environment). The STE project investigated on the health of Red Sea coral reefs. The results revealed spatial trends across areas subjected to different protection strategies (higher biodiversity values in Sharm el-Sheikh, within protected Ras Mohammed National Park and Tiran Island, than in the less-regulated Hurghada area). Thanks to the collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, the results shall be integrated in the Egyptian coastlines management. Quality of volunteer-recorded data were validated comparing them with those collected by an experienced researcher. The results showed a sufficient level of the quality of data collected by volunteers. At last, the DUE project, started in March 2017, aims to verify the health status of the Mediterranean Sea after 12 years since the previous survey (Divers for the Environment). The greatest limitation with using volunteers to collect data was the uneven spatial distribution of samples. The benefits were the considerable amounts of data collected over short time periods and at low costs.
2017
First Italian Citizen Science Conference, Rome (Italy), 23-25 November 2017
30
31
Airi, V.; Neri, P.; Goffredo, S.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/621110
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