Getting the most out of citizen science for endangered species such as whale shark

Araújo, Gonzalo; Ismail, Aziah; Mccann, C; McCann, David P.; Legaspi, Christine; Snow, Sally; Labaja, Jessica; Manjaji-Matsumoto, Mabel; Ponzo, Alessandro

doi:10.1111/jfb.14254

Cited by 17 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whale sharks move far and wide, with a recent study highlighting their international movements between the Philippines and Malaysia [5,39]. The seasonal movement and feeding plasticity of whale sharks, that also involves behavioural shifts, suggest the whale sharks are highly capable of adapting to new food sources available [7,39]. Ephemeral pulses of primary productivity are patchily distributed in the tropics and thus, the ability to adapt behaviour to capitalize on a foraging opportunity is essential [7,22].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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In-water observations highlight the effects of provisioning on whale shark behaviour at the world's largest whale shark tourism destination

et al. 2020

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The whale shark is the world's largest fish that forms predictable aggregations across its range, many of which support tourism industries. The largest non-captive provisioned whale shark destination globally is at Oslob, Philippines, where more than 500 000 tourists visit yearly. There, the sharks are provisioned daily, year-round, allowing the human–shark interaction in nearshore waters. We used in-water behavioural observations of whale sharks between 2015 and 2017 to understand the relationship between external stimuli and shark behaviour, whether frequency of visits at the site can act as a predictor of behaviour, and the tourist compliance to the code of conduct. Mixed effects models revealed that the number of previous visits at the site was a strong predictor of whale shark behaviour, and that provisioned sharks were less likely to exhibit avoidance. Compliance was poor, with 93% of surveys having people less than 2 m from the animal, highlighting overcrowding of whale sharks at Oslob. Given the behavioural implications to whale sharks highlighted here and the local community's reliance on the tourism industry, it is imperative to improve management strategies to increase tourist compliance and strive for sustainable tourism practices.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In-water observations highlight the effects of provisioning on whale shark behaviour at the world's largest whale shark tourism destination

et al. 2020

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“…Animal biometrics, especially image-based individual re-identification, has recently gained extensive attention due to the availability of large volumes of wildlife image data gathered via automatic game cameras and citizen science projects. The benefits of automated re-identification methods are evident as they allow valuable data for conservation efforts to be obtained, for example, accurate population size estimates and novel information about animal migration and behavior patterns (Araujo et al, 2020;McCoy et al, 2018). Compared to traditional methods such as tagging, which may cause stress and change the behavior of the animal, image-based re-identification offers a non-invasive technique for monitoring of endangered species (Norouzzadeh et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

NORPPA: NOvel Ringed seal re-identification by Pelage Pattern Aggregation

Nepovinnykh¹,

Chelak²,

Eerola³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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We propose a method for Saimaa ringed seal (Pusa hispida saimensis) re-identification. Access to large image volumes through camera trapping and crowdsourcing provides novel possibilities for animal monitoring and conservation and calls for automatic methods for analysis, in particular, when re-identifying individual animals from the images. The proposed method NOvel Ringed seal re-identification by Pelage Pattern Aggregation (NORPPA) utilizes the permanent and unique pelage pattern of Saimaa ringed seals and content-based image retrieval techniques. First, the query image is preprocessed, and each seal instance is segmented. Next, the seal's pelage pattern is extracted using a U-net encoder-decoder based method. Then, CNN-based affine invariant features are embedded and aggregated into Fisher Vectors. Finally, the cosine distance between the Fisher Vectors is used to find the best match from a database of known individuals. We perform extensive experiments of various modifications of the method on a new challenging Saimaa ringed seals re-identification dataset. The proposed method is shown to produce the best re-identification accuracy on our dataset in comparisons with alternative approaches.

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“…While citizen science has now become highly relevant in the terrestrial conservation world (Lloyd et al, 2020), in contrast, Marine Citizen Science (MCS) is still highly underrepresented (Sandahl & Tøttrup, 2020; see however Bruce et al, 2014). This is despite the call for using site-occupancy models in the field (Issaris et al, 2012, Lauret et al, 2021 and the development of new technologies (e.g., underwater cameras, smartphones) that can generate a considerable number of observations that would otherwise not be feasible through conventional research (Araujo et al, 2020), and the resulting benefits and prospects for marine conservation (Kelly et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen science indicates significant range recovery and defines new conservation priorities for Earth's most endangered pinniped in Greece

Adamantopoulou

Karamanlidis

Dendrinos

et al. 2022

Animal Conservation

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Conservation actions for endangered species often require detailed data over large temporal and spatial scales, which are usually hard to obtain from traditional scientific surveys that operate at localized scales. In contrast to the terrestrial conservation world where citizen science has become nowadays a highly-relevant and useful tool to overcome such difficulties, Marine Citizen Science is still highly underrepresented. Using a dataset of 20 years of citizen science data and appropriate statistical modelling we developed a methodological approach to monitor the presence of the endangered, notoriously-elusive Mediterranean monk seal Monachus monachus. We used sighting data collected in Greece from 2000 -2020 and fitted dynamic occupancy models that allow inferring range dynamics while accounting for species imperfect detectability to estimate species occupancy.Occurrence of Mediterranean monk seals of all age categories combined, and pups separately, increased during the study period. Mediterranean monk seal occurrence increased also spatially: the distribution of the species in Greece increased by approximately 12.5% for seals of all age categories and by approximately 185% for monk seal pups. Most of 2 this distribution (i.e., 67 and 72% of the distribution of seals of all age categories and of pups respectively) was located within the boundaries of the network of protected areas in the country. These results indicate a significant range recovery of the Mediterranean monk seal in Greece over the last two decades and facilitate the prioritization of conservation actions for the species in the country. We demonstrate how occupancy modelling and citizen science can be used to evaluate the distribution of an endangered species and become a highlyrelevant and reliable tool in marine mammal conservation. We advocate the increased use of citizen science in the conservation of the Mediterranean monk seal in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

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Getting the most out of citizen science for endangered species such as whale shark

Cited by 17 publications

References 23 publications

In-water observations highlight the effects of provisioning on whale shark behaviour at the world's largest whale shark tourism destination

In-water observations highlight the effects of provisioning on whale shark behaviour at the world's largest whale shark tourism destination

NORPPA: NOvel Ringed seal re-identification by Pelage Pattern Aggregation

Citizen science indicates significant range recovery and defines new conservation priorities for Earth's most endangered pinniped in Greece

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