It’s Never Been This Easy To Save Threatened Penguins!

Wanna help save these little guys?

Photo credit: fineartamerica.com

With PenguinWatch, now you can!

PenguinWatch is a citizen science website that is trying to better understand the lives of penguins in the South Ocean and Antarctic regions.

There are some serious threats to the marine predators in these areas due to climate change, fisheries, and pollution. As penguins are among the top predators, the creators of PenguinWatch hope that by monitoring the changes in their populations the scientists will be able to predict changes in the Antarctic ecosystem as a whole.

The camera monitoring system has 50 cameras set up throughout the South Ocean and Antarctic Peninsula that photograph groups of Gentoo, Adelíe, Chinstrap, and King penguins’ nesting sites. Over the past three years, thousands of images have been captured that have yet to be analyzed.

Here’s where you come in. PenguinWatch needs help turning these images into data. They need people to log on to the site and mark the individual snapshots.

Each time a picture pops up you have several options for marking.

• You can mark adult penguins, chicks, or eggs to monitor populations.
• You can mark other animals to to monitor how often they come around the penguin nesting sites.
• You can also report the photo as not showing penguins at all.

After you are done there is an option to chat with scientists and share the work you did with friends and family.

We think this is an awesome opportunity for ocean and animal lovers everywhere to have a positive impact on the world they live in.

What’s even more awesome is that there has been an increase in these types of citizen engagement monitoring programs, like the salmon cam that we reported on last month. It’s amazing to see your everyday citizen taking an active role in the protection of our world’s inhabitants and ecosystems.

Source: penguinwatch.org