Ocean Sanctuaries

Liittynyt: huhti 6, 2017 Viimeksi aktiivinen: joulu 11, 2023 iNaturalist

Ocean Sanctuaries is a 501(c)(3) non-profit founded in 2014 to provide support for marine citizen science projects. We currently have the Yukon Marine Life Survey, Sharks of California and the Sevengill Shark Identification Project.

For more information, please see here: http://oceansanctuaries.org/wordpress/citizen-science-projects/

We invite all qualified divers in the San Diego area to submit photos to this project.

-->Note: some photographs/observations seen here may have been migrated over from OS's earlier database, but not by the original observer. In each case, we will identify the diver by name and add any relevant data from the original observation

Caution: the Yukon is considered an advanced dive. Therefore, before diving on the Yukon, please make sure you have the proper training and certification to dive the Yukon. Under no circumstances should any diver should exceed the limits of their highest SCUBA certification to obtain data for this project.

All photographs for this project can be taken externally--no ship penetration is required.

-->Note to all users: PLEASE use the following decimal format in the Map location of the Yukon (there are two fields for each Lat/Long number), so that we have uniformity of location for each sighting:

Latitude:

32.7888889

Longitude:
-117.28666

Background to the Yukon Project:

In 2000, the City of San Diego in collaboration with the San Diego Oceans Foundation (SDOF), purchased, cleaned and sank a 366 foot-long Canadian warship called the HMCS Yukon to create an artificial reef, a task at which has been spectacularly successful.

Sitting at the bottom of the San Diego coast at 100 ft., the Yukon attracts dozens of local marine life species and is becoming a revenue-generating attraction for tourist divers from around the world.

When this project started, both the SDOF and the local scientific community were curious to understand the effects of an artificial reef on local fish populations and surrounding marine life. A joint study was undertaken by SDOF and Dr. Ed Parnell of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and released in 2004.¹ Crucial to the study was data gathered by local citizen science divers to generate a baseline of marine life species on the ship.

Ocean Sanctuaries, San Diego’s first citizen science oriented, ocean non-profit is conducting a follow up study to the pioneering work of Dr. Parnell and colleagues.

Q: What are we looking for?

A: We are looking for high definition, close-up [macro] photographs of the marine life present on the Yukon. For now, we are only documenting invertebrates-–fish will come later. Just do your dive as you normally would and photograph marine life as you see it and submit your photographs here.

Note: you do not need to be able to identify the invertebrate you are submitting a photograph for: if you do not know the species, submit the photo anyway and experts here at iNat can help you get it identified.

References:

  1. Ecological Assessment of the HMCS Yukon Artificial Reef
    off San Diego, CA, Dr. Ed Parnell, 2004:

http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.dema.org/resource/resmgr/imported/S2R-2005-01-EcologicalAssessment-Yukon.pdf

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