Zooniverse Goes Live!
Just in from Penguinologist Dr. Tom Hart…
“Today is the start of a really exciting project. The Zooniverse is a citizen science platform that allows volunteers to participate in real science. A team from Zooniverse has spent the last six months building a tool that takes researchers timelapse imagery and displays it to interested members of the public. This allows volunteers to click on penguins and help us to extract data from the imagery. It’s called Penguin Watch – check it out here! http://www.penguinwatch.org
We hope that you will join us in sorting some of our 200,000 plus images of penguins into something that can make a difference to their conservation.”
With the Zooniverse, volunteers identify adult penguins, chicks, eggs, and other wildlife in timelapse photographs. It’s as easy as clicking a mouse. Afterwards, you can discuss the image or the project with other volunteers or the research team. You can even share your favorite photos with friends, using social media buttons.
About Tom Hart
Tom Hart traveled to the Gould Bay emperor penguin rookery with ALE guests in 2013. He is a junior research fellow at Oxford University and runs Penguin Lifelines a project that uses long-term monitoring in the field and genetic analysis of penguin feathers to get a complete picture of how populations are changing; to identify threats to penguins all around the Southern Ocean; and to work out strategies to mitigate those threats.