CoAuthors

Lauren Biermann (Plymouth Marine Laboratory, United Kingdom); James Carlton (Williams College, USA); Luca Centurioni (LDL/SIO, University of California San Diego, USA); Mary Crowley (Ocean Voyages Institute, USA); Jan Hafner (IPRC/SOEST, University of Hawaii, United States); Linsey Haram (Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, USA); Rebecca Helm (University of North Carolina Asheville, USA); Verena Hormann (LDL/SIO, University of California San Diego, USA); Cathryn Murray (Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Canada); Gregory Ruiz (Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, United States); Andrey Shcherbina (APL, University of Washingfton, USA); Justin Stopa (University of Hawaii, United States); Davida Streett (NOAA NESDIS, USA); Cynthia Wright (Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Canada); Chela Zabin (Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, USA)

Volunteers and citizen scientists can provide valuable support to scientific studies. In this presentation, we overview collaborations with citizen scientist during FloatEco (floateco.org) and GO-SEA (goseascience.org) projects, funded by NASA, and illustrate how samples and reports, collected by citizen scientists, advanced success of our projects. We also discuss difficulties of such collaborations and importance of careful selection of feasible tasks, development of clear and realistic protocols, initial training and equipping citizen scientists with sufficient tools. Value of citizen science increases as satellite altimetry evolves to resolve smaller spatial scales that play critical roles in climate and ecosystem but are not covered by limited scientific resources.

Collage. Citizen scientists from eXXpedition, The Longest Swim and The Vortex Swim help to deploy and inspect scientific instruments, and collect samples and measurements.