Marine Creatures

"Marine Creatures"
"Marine Creatures" aims to raise public awareness for the marine environment and coordinate crowd-sourcing activities for visual annotation of marine underwater images by Citizen Scientists. Volunteers are being called to visually classify the types of organisms present on the hard bottom seabed habitat and to detect the most important groups of sessile fauna present. Photos from a selection of artificial and natural habitats are being provided: artificial reefs, marine ports and natural sea caves.

The "Marine Creatures" project includes selected taxonomic categories and major seafloor organism types, such as Macroalgae, Sponges, Hydrozoans, Sea anemones, Corals, Polychaetes, Bivalves, Barnacles, Bryozoans and Tunicates. Some of these organisms are quite common and well known, while others are strange creatures that often do not get noticed or can be confused with plants although they are animals! All these creatures are part of the marine benthic communities and their diversity is a strong indicator for the ecological status of the ecosystem.
The "Marine Creatures" project is part of a bigger EU (H2020) project called Nautilos, which aims to develop a new generation of sensors and samplers for physical, chemical and biological essential ocean variables. Additional features such as macroplastics and litter are also being investigated. Citizen science and public awareness are a significant component of the Nautilos project.