Citizen science on BC Ferries
Over the summer, passengers on BC Ferries helped scientists better understand ocean health and declining salmon populations in the Salish Sea.
Hundreds of passengers on select sailings of the Queen of Oak Bay on the Nanaimo–Horseshoe Bay route participated in the onboard coastal naturalist program, using a tablet and app to collect images of the sea and sky. The images are being used to define and document the colour of the water—the greener the water, the higher the ocean productivity and health.
“This type of crowdsourcing is very useful to scientists,” says UVic geographer and ferry ocean colour observation system project lead Maycira Costa. “The data collected from the tablets will be compared to the data scientists are gathering with precision instruments installed on the ferry and with satellites.” UVic geography, computer science, math and statistics students will compare crowdsourced photo information to the data collected by satellites and an autonomous hyperspectral sensor installed on the ferry by UVic’s Ocean Networks Canada.