Community Fishers: Citizen Science for Sustainable Coastal Marine Monitoring

Marine monitoring methods have evolved alongside advancing technology, permitting observations at a global scale. While remote sensing can cover vast areas of the ocean, in situ methods are necessary in order to spatially expand coverage to the water column and validate remote measurements. Citizen Science offers opportunities to broaden marine monitoring capacity, particularly in coastal regions which harbour 40% of the global population. Moreover, coastal communities are the keepers of regional knowledge as they often work and gain sustenance from their marine ecosystem year-round. This knowledge and activity, when combined effectively with modern technology and established scientific methods, can be utilised by communities and researchers to inform decisions and expand data coverage. Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) will present the “Community Fishers” citizen science program, which has been successfully partnering with Indigenous communities on the Pacific, Arctic, and Atlantic coasts of Canada. ONC’s role has been to support communities with funding applications, co-create appropriate sampling plans, provide accredited training to community members, coordinate instrument maintenance, and manage and report on collected data. The ideal program also includes a local “Youth Science Ambassador” to help operate and troubleshoot oceanographic instruments and promote ocean literacy. Minimally, a CTD instrument, including additional sensors, is provided, which transmits data wirelessly to a rugged tablet. A user-friendly mobile application has been developed to import and display the data and allow users to make time-stamped/georeferenced annotations. Data can then be transmitted to a world-class data management system that provides open access, quality control, automated post-processing, and visualization services. The Community Fishers program demonstrates a sustainable model that builds capacity in remote communities which has a huge potential to improve ocean monitoring.