Ireland has 3,171 km of coastline and yet we have relatively few records of intertidal and coastal marine species. Explore Your Shore is a Citizen Science project funded by the Environmental Protection Agency focused on increasing our knowledge of the distribution of our intertidal species, exploring their potential as bio-indicators of water quality and climate change, and highlighting actions we can all take to tackle water pollution and climate change.
They are looking for volunteers like YOU, to take some time to Explore Your Shore and help record Iour intertidal species.
Dave Wall, Citizen Science Officer with the National Biodiversity Data Centre spoke to us recently about the project and how you can get involved:
“The project has been going great and we are delighted to see an increasing number of records coming in with 2,600 records submitted so far in 2020. We know that a lot of people struggle with identification of the huge diversity of species in our intertidal zones and so we will be focusing on developing online and print species identification resources for the next while. We recently finished our second Seashore Splash! recording event of 2020 and received records of 159 species!
We encourage everybody to visit our website at www.exploreyourshore.ie and to give intertidal recording a go. Remember you do not need to record everything, just the species you can identify. Do also try out the different surveys on offer on our website, they are great fun and each survey will help you get to know a different species or habitat. Finally we would ask everyone who submits records to please remember to submit a photograph with every record, as otherwise we cannot validate your records.”
Shifting baselines are one of the greatest challenges facing marine conservation. Each new generation accepts their natural world as ‘normal’ without the perspective of historical loss to guide their world view.
‘An Ebbing Tide…’ is asking people across Ireland to research or recount the past biodiversity of their local coastline and submit their stories, research and photographs to us so that we can build up a picture of local marine biodiversity in times past.
For details CLICK HERE.
The project also has a number of project partners, who are also involved in citizen science in Ireland. For more information on the Explore Your Shore! project and the partner surveys visit Explore Your Shore!
