Update 2!

 Welcome back! 

Update #2:

Beluga Bits - 
The project has reached 94% complete for the year with just over 2000 of the 43,715 subjects left to identify. 

With my session this time, I tried to identify belugas themselves and not the jellies also captured by the project. The process was much the same, except there was more rounds of questions to identify specific body parts on the whales. I identified over 50 images in one session and found the process a little easier than for the jellies. There is little ambiguity when there is a beluga or not and I think I am better at IDing parts of belugas than choosing between different jelly or jellyfish.

Orcasound - 
I am still am enjoying having this in the background. My problem is that I almost find it too soothing and worry I will not notice a cool clip to flag! So far, I have been sticking to the North San Juan Channel feed and hoping to catch the pod of orcas mentioned by the description there, but I haven't heard them yet. I do think I heard a few animal sounds this time, but no orcas yet.


    Time Logged

    October 17 - 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm

    October 19 - 12 am to 3:00 pm

    October 25 - 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm

FathomVerse - 
My train ride games continue! I finished training on jellies, pyrosomes, salps, octopus, squid, sea cucumbers, and shrimp. There are still more to train on, but I was finally able to try the expedition mode and ID the creatures I have trained on with pictures the community has not identified reliably yet. The process for the new pictures was basically the same, except there were several that had no animals or were unclear.

The game itself is simple but pretty fun. I poked around in the settings this week and discovered you can change the music from lofi tunes, to scientific outpost recordings similar to Orcasound. I didn't change the music because I have been loving the calming ambient music from the game in the background as I listen to an audiobook and ID animals on the train.

As I play I think there will be videos, images, and other neat things I can unlock after playing enough. I find the systems the designers use to make it feel like a game and less like a citizen science project interesting. If the game was more involved I think it would get in the way of the IDing, but as it is they struck a nice balance. 

Update 1 and Project Descriptions

This blog will chronicle my time working with several Citizen Science projects involving identification of aquatic creatures. Thank you for reading!

Project 1: Beluga Bits

For this project I will identify pictures of beluga whales and jellyfish. They are 91% complete with categorizing their dataset with 58,903 completed pictures after 868,726 classifications made by volunteers at the time of me writing this. The photos are taken during beluga season in July and August each year. I am planning on making time for one 30-60 minute session of IDing each week!

Project 2: Orca Sound

This project gives anyone access to the live feeds of 5 listening stations off the coast of Washington/Canada. You can choose which area to listen to and then flag points on the feed for scientists if you hear interesting activity. I am planning to listen several times a week during study sessions and record any activity I find here.

Project 3: FathomVerse

This is an app you can download for most smartphones that tries to gamify animal identification. You play by selecting 3 species of undersea creatures to look for and then going on a "dive" where you will find various pictures to ID as either one of your three selected animals. There are other pictures that may be a look-a-like or completely different animal. After each dive, you get some experience points as a reward based on how accurate your answers match with other players answers. The data created by the community of players is used by researchers to train algorithms to better identify these animals in the future.

Update #1:

Beluga Bits - My first BB session was spent identifying jellyfish. For each picture you rate the quality of the image, if the photo contains jellyfish, jellies, or both, if the photo has one or more jellyfish/jelly, and then finally what species is/are present. 

I submitted over 100 pictures in a 40 minute session. I will try to keep better track of the totals going forward, but did not consider that for this time until too late. The process of identifying the jellies and jellyfish was fun and easy to get into. It's very easy for me to think "I'll just do one more" and keep going!

Orca Sound - I have kept this tab open and active for most of my time doing school work this week. It provides a really pleasant background noise for me when I am trying to be productive and focus actually. Unfortunately, I have not heard any major activity yet. I once or twice flagged a moment where I thought I heard some marine life, but so far the noise has generally been boats passing and creating rhythmic drones that fade in and out from propellers every 20 minutes or so depending on the time of day.

I have spent most of my time listening to the "North San Juan Channel" feed because ethe description for it says Orcas pass by there October-March. Fingers crossed I catch them!

Time Logged

October 7 - 11:30 am to 12:30 pm

October 13 - 7:00 pm to 10:30 pm

October 16 - 11:00 am to 12:30 pm

FathomVerse - I have been playing this game while on my train ride to work in the morning and trying to make a daily habit. The gameplay is very simple and takes the form of guiding a little star shape along various paths of bubbles and tapping the screen to speed up along sections you have already explored or send out a pulse which will discover the pictures of hidden animals. Once you fond an animal picture, you can drag it to your collection for review at the end if you think it is one of the animals you are looking for or move on. It is very simple, pretty relaxing, and not a bad thing to do early in the Moring while listening to an audiobook for my train ride. 

The most interesting thing for me so far is that despite having played for over 2 hours, I am still in the "training" missions for most animals. I will not be able to go on "expedition" dives and ID unknown pictures until I complete the training for all animals. Hopefully by the next update I will be able to report on that!

Below is what the summary screen at the end of a dive is like.