May 4, 2010
Sevengill Shark Research by Citizen-Scientists
Good news from Mike Bear, curator of a repository of seven gill sightings at this site, and active "citizen-scientist" diver.-Dida
Well, everyone, I have good news:
I had a good, long talk with Vallorie Hodges up at the Oregon Coastal Aquarium on the phone today, and she said that we do not need to be scientists associated with a accredited institution to do this study--or even write a paper on it.
Luckily for us, in recent years, the concept of "citizen scientists" operating under the guidance of a PI or "real" scientist, if you will, has gained wider acceptability in the scientific community, mainly through groups such as REEF and Reef Check, where the same concept applies and much valid data has been gathered, by both groups, using trained "citizen scientists" in place of grad students. Prior exposure to either group's training here is a plus, but, obviously, not mandatory.
--so, according to the evolving definition of science diver, technically, anyone using the scientific method or protocol is a scientist, and we will be considered "science-divers-in-training" while working under her tutelage
--she is willing to be the Principle Investigator [PI] on this project and the divers will be "data collectors'
--Val knows researchers at her aquarium who can actually do the actual scientific "write-ups" for any academic journals, should we decide to submit the data, down the road, in a couple years.
Right now, we will be focusing on...... all you photographers and videographers out there.....expanding our photo and video database to include two things:
1. Lateral views [from the side] of each shark as it passes by, showing, when possible evidence of "gender," i.e., claspers and:
2. views of each shark, whenever possible, from both sides, whenever possible.
(We will not be using the "top-down" views of Robert's thesis paper, because from that view, gender is nearly impossible to determine."
The reason for this should be fairly obvious: we need to be able to rule out repeated sightings of the same shark, and we can't do that, if we only have views from one side.
Being able to determine gender is important also, because it cuts possible repeat sightings in half if we can sort each shark by gender.
The rest of the ID'ing of each shark will be done using the photographic and video evidence we collect after it has been passed through the pattern recognition software--see Robert's the grad student's thesis, a copy of which I sent out today, to see how this is done.
So, will all this, I think we can really be well on our way to pulling this off.
Vallorie has not only been very supportive and encouraging, but she's very much 'down with' the idea of "science-divers-in-training" operating under the guidance of a PI, being able to collect useful data for science.
I've also been getting excellent cooperation from Alison Kock, in South Africa--she is the one who made the excellent paper from her grad student, Robert, available to us, on using patter recognition software to ID sevengill sharks.
They are doing pioneering work, upon which we can build.
We will be basically, repeating what they have done, and confirming the hypothesis that pattern recognition programs, can indeed, be used to ID certain species of shark.
Thanks for everyone's help.......this is going to be pretty exciting!
Mike
Posted by Dida at 3:04 PM
April 16, 2010
At the Smithsonian: The Revolution of Science through Scuba
A wonderful, and FREE opportunity for students, marine ecology researchers, and enthusiastic members of the public to meet, interact, and learn is being held May 24 and May 25 at the Smithsonian. The full program, speaker abstracts, and bios are located here. There is no cost for the online symposium registration.
Hope to see you there!
Posted by Dida at 9:47 AM
