Seafarer science

Today we received an interesting email from Richard Kirby,  a UK plankton scientist and the leader of a new free Citizen Science project for sailors – www.secchidisk.org http://www.secchidisk.org  asking us to display their poster to publicise the project among sailors. The success of the project depends entirely upon awareness among sailors around the globe and so our help is important to them.

Scientists fear that the population of phytoplankton in the world’s oceans is being affected by rising sea temperatures, with a paper published in the journal Nature in 2010 controversially suggesting that it had declined by as much as 40% since the 1950s due to climate change. If this is the case it would have damaging consequences for every aspect of marine life, say researchers. Project leader Dr Kirby’s request is to spread the word, to help them understand how life in the oceans is changing. Sailors are asked to take readings whenever they can, but to avoid taking measurements in estuaries. The data they collect will upload automatically onto the Secchi Disk database once they return to port and get a network connection.