Play Digital Fishers Now

Hello Digital Fishers,

You have done such a great job mapping Mapping Seafloor Geology at Endeavour Ridge.  There were 15, 791 annotations which resulting in thousands of data points. Thank you!  We hope to have a bit of a map of what you saw posted as soon as we input all the data.

In the meantime, we have another similar mapping challenge we need your help with:

We couldn’t let the week go by without commenting on the video that is going viral on oceannetworks canada‘s YouTube channel.

It is incredible to see the connection that the NEPTUNE Canada array can have across the world.  We keep talking about the power of the crowds and the opportunities that every day citizens like you our Digital Fishers can have and here is a real life example. How do you connect people with the scientists? This young man Kirill shows that you don’t need a PhD to spot something out of the ordinary; but, you do need a someone who is willing to work with you to connect the dots and that is just what NEPTUNE, VENUS, and Oceans Network Canada did.

If you haven’t had a chance to read all about 14-yr old Kirill Dudko from the Ukraine, his love of the ocean, and his discovery of an elephant seal  894 metres under the sea slurping up a hagfish meal, click on the links below.

BELOW IS A SNIPIT FROM THE POST ON NEPTUNE CANADA NEWS

“Kirill grabbed the clip and posted it on his YouTube channel, then sent us a message asking if we could help identify the creature that caught the hagfish. We put the word out to marine mammal experts in Canada and the US, who identified the mystery animal as a female northern elephant seal. This is our first sighting of an elephant seal in seafloor footage, recorded by a camera situated 894 m below the surface.”

Click here to read more

Click here to see the YouTube video

How are geological features distributed at a mid-ocean ridge?

                                                                    CLICK HERE TO GET STARTED

Please help us with our next challenge. For this mission, we have added videos from Endeavour Ridge where the seafloor exhibits spectacular geological features. We need your help in this seafloor mapping expedition of a mid-ocean ridge.

Details of the seafloor geology through video will enhance current bathymetric data sets (underwater maps) and enable better planning of the NEPTUNE Canada network. Also, scientists will be able to use this data to better understand the dynamic geological history of the ridge. Correlating geological features with select animals will also help scientists better understand what affects species distribution in one of the most extreme habitats on earth.

Special Instructions

For this mission, we’d like you to describe structures in the seafloor and pay close attention to a few selected species.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some of you have asked for a more detailed explanation of the scientific research being done by the “competitors” of this new campaign and why it is important to learn more about the data that you, the Digital Fishers, are producing.

We asked Marjolaine Matabos and Maia Hoeberechts, Research Theme Integrators at NEPTUNE Canada, to help us understand the science.

What are activity or biological rhythms and what is important about this type of research?

Activity or biological rhythms are any rhythms in the life of an organism that follow a natural cycle like the daily or tidal periodicities. For example, some species bury themselves at certain moments of the day, others will migrate along the slope from deep water to shallower water following the tide. The study of those rhythms is called ‘chronobiology’.

Read the rest of this entry »

So glad to see so many annotations already. We have had some initial comments and questions regarding this mission.

Q1. Can you please clarify when to annotate for sablefish and when we can annotate other sealife?
A1. Just to clarify, you can annotate other sealife by pausing and adding the annotation like usual.  But if you are working annotatinf for the sablefish (black cod), we ask that you watch the entire 15 second clip and when the video pauses you enter your count 0-10.  Remember a count of 0 is just as important as a count of 10.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a new and exciting challenge.  We have added a competition between the crowd (you), the expert, the student, and a new automated detection system, and want to investigate how each compares. We have added video clips from Barkley Canyon, where we sampled 1 minute every half hour to study the behaviour and activity rhythms of the animals.  For this mission, we’d like you to count sablefish (black cod). Seem simple enough…

Meet the competitors

	Scientist (PhD student): A research group in Spain is investigating the influence of the daily and tidal cycles on the activity of the sablefish (black cod). A PhD student from their lab analysed these videos, counting fish and invertebrates, and focussing on the sablefish (black cod) because of their large numbers.
	Experienced users (biology class): 60 students in a biology class at the University of Victoria analysed these videos and counted the fish.
	Automated detection (computer algorithm): We have a PhD student who has developed a computer algorithm; this mission can be used as reliability test
	General public/citizens Digital Fishers: YOU

With your help, we would like to compare results in order to assess how we can best use a variety of sources to help researchers process the large amount of video data. We hope to publish our results in a leading science journal.  Let’s work together to show how well we can do!

Special Instructions
For this mission, in addition to your annotations on the variety of sealife, we ask that you pay particular attention to the sablefish (black cod).  We need you to count the number of sablefish (black cod) that you see throughout the entire 15 second clip. *If you are a returning user, this is a different task than you are used to.* At the end of the 15 second clip, your screen will pause.  You can then select sablefish (black cod) and a corresponding number (0-10) from the dropdown menu under the “Sealife” category.

See the news article on NEPTUNE Canada’s website  for more photos and details.

This mission on “Trawling, thornyhead rockfish & deep-sea ecosystems” will be ending soon.  We thought we would show you a few preliminary results…

Over the last 8 weeks, you have added nearly 8000 annotations to the database including 1122 annotations of thornyheads! Below are a couple of illustrations of the sealife you discovered:

Or if you like the word cloud idea, this one was created in R:

Thank you so much for helping us out.  Stay tuned as the new mission will be released in a couple of days and looks to be a very exciting adventure!

Ever wondered where the other Digital Fishers come from?  We did a survey of those that have been working on the current “Thornyhead Rockfish mission” and since June 4, 2012 we have users from Canada, the United States, France, China, Italy and more…  See if you can spot your city in the Word Cloud below.  The larger the word the more visits Digital Fishers has had from that city:

Image created from Word It Out

Looking for something to do on World Ocean’s Day?  We have added a new mission to Digital Fishers for the curious citizen scientist on “Trawling, thornyhead rockfish & deep-sea ecosystems.”

The last mission on “Trawling Impacts on Deep-Sea Ecosystems” resulted in 106 visits from the United States, Canada, France, and Belgium.  Over the past 4 weeks, you have added over 3000 annotations to the database.   Thank you to all who participated.  We will post some of the findings after we have had a chance to review them.

New Mission:

Below is the new mission on Digital Fishers.  In theses video clips, there is a huge variety of interesting marine life to see and annotate.

Trawling, thornyhead rockfish & deep-sea ecosystems: Mid-Continental Slope off Vancouver Island, BC

Bottom trawling is an industrial fishing method where a large weighted net is dragged along the seafloor, over long distances. On the mid-Continental Slope, the main target species for bottom trawling fisheries are thornyhead rockfish. These deep sea rockfish may be particularly vulnerable to overfishing because of their slow growth rate and long lifespan, possibly more than 100 years. Over the last eight years there has been a 50% decline in thornyhead catch per unit effort.

Unlike other rockfish, thornyheads are not found in schools but are distributed over wide areas of soft bottom sediment. With increasing fishing capacity, bottom-trawling activities are conducted further offshore and deeper; the government (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) estimates the footprint is now over 38,000 km2 along Canada’s Pacific coast.

The size of the thornyhead population in this area is unknown. Your annotations will increase our data on species diversity and distribution in known trawling areas and perhaps increase our understanding of deep-sea ecosystems in response to human disturbance.

Special Instructions

For this mission, in addition to your annotations on the variety of sealife, we ask that you pay particular attention to the trawl marks and thornyhead rockfish. Trawl marks appears under “Objects” and thornyhead rockfish has been added to “Sealife”.

Click “more” for examples of the images you will see.

Read the rest of this entry »