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Dive into California's marine protected areas! Classify sea stars and other organisms to help scientists and managers better understand California's marine biodiversity
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About Explore Beyond the Shore
California’s marine protected areas (MPAs) are ocean and coastal areas with special protections to help conserve and protect marine ecosystems and wildlife. As MPAs are predominantly underwater, monitoring them and their effects can be challenging.
By leveraging the power of community scientists and machine learning technology this project aims to identify and extract classified images of organisms from underwater videos for contribution to biodiversity databases such as GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility). Ultimately, these observations will integrate with ongoing efforts by the California Academy of Sciences and MPA managing agencies to use community science data to better understand and monitor biodiversity across California’s coast and MPAs.
The first phase of this project is focused on sea stars!
Brightly colored and popular amongst locals and visitors alike, sea stars are an important species for ocean and coastal ecosystem health. In CA over 20 species inhabit kelp forest ecosystems inside and outside MPAs. Unfortunately, since 2013, sea star populations have dramatically declined due to a mysterious disease and unusually warm ocean conditions. One key ocean predator, the Sunflower Sea Star experienced a loss of over 5 billion animals within its range and this event contributed to big ecosystem imbalances especially in crucial kelp forest habitats. Understanding the distribution and abundance of sea stars in California waters is a critical for their recovery and kelp ecosystem balance.
Your help is needed to understand where and what kind of sea stars are found along California's coast to help researchers understand where sea stars are and how they are recovering.