British Science Week features PenguinWatch for its Citizen Science section March 10th - 19th

by AvastMH moderator

A very brief line to welcome everyone helping PenguinWatch as part of the British Science Week (BSW) from 10th to 19th March 2017!

We will feature more exciting news about BSW tomorrow. The PenguinWatch science team, led by Dr Tom Hart, hopes that 250,000 images will be classified during the week.

In the meantime a large penguin has been seen asking for your wonderful help in London! (Hint, an 'oyster' is the name of the regular bus and train tickets there, as well as a tasty shellfish) 😄

Posted March 5, 2017 12:07 AM
by AvastMH moderator

Message from the British Science Week

This British Science Week (10 – 19 March 2017), our citizen science projects are all things penguin-related.

Firstly, we have partnered with Zooniverse on a visual project to monitor penguins in over 100 sites. Penguin Watch is a partnership between the University of Oxford (Penguin lifelines), Australian Antarctic Division, Darwin Initiative, Quark Expeditions, and many more.

Their camera-monitoring program currently consists of 50 cameras throughout the Southern Ocean and along the Antarctic Peninsula, overlooking colonies of Gentoo, Chinstrap, Adélie, and King penguins. The cameras take images of the penguins year-round and are able to determine the health of the colony by obtaining nest survival rates while also observing novel behaviours, such as why and where penguins spend their winter months.

Why penguins?

Currently, there are numerous serious threats to marine predators in the Southern Ocean: namely climate change, fisheries, and direct human disturbance. However, despite over a hundred years of study in the region, we have little baseline information against which to measure change. As we move away from scientific bases, less data is available on populations of predators and, consequently, huge gaps remain in our understanding of the Antarctic ecosystem.

During British Science Week, we are aiming to get 250,000 extra interactions on Penguin Watch!

Posted March 5, 2017 5:27 PM
by AvastMH moderator

Count me in with counting penguins!

Welcome British Science Week PenguinWatchers 😄

Here are a few tips to get you going:
- Make sure you work through the short tutorial when you first join in. If you want to see it again there's a button for it at the top right of your classification picture
- There is a treasure trove of marking tips and hints, details about their lives, and some site names, in our Frequently Asked Questions section (FAQ) Frequently Asked Questions, or FAQ, section (click here) . Most popular is FAQ - 1st Obscured / Blurred / Dark images, but they are all helpful and will make your time with PenguinWatch more fun.
- How can you find your favourite pictures to show them off? Make collections. When you finish marking a picture you can click to say that you want to talk about it. The picture will appear with 'Collect' in the top left corner, just click that and make some nice collections to show to others. There are too many different hashtags, so Search is slowed. Only moderators are permitted to add them. Please ignore the comment box invitation to use a hashtag. Thank you.
Feel welcome to ask questions, the moderators are happy to help you so that you can help the penguins 😃

Posted March 5, 2017 6:08 PM
by AvastMH moderator

A super message from Grant and the Zooniverse Team to you splendid Zooniverse volunteers to help us chase that 250,000 target##

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Zooniverse Team no-reply @zooniverse.org
Date: Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 2:56 PM
Subject: Penguin Watch Challenge!
To: announcements @lists.zooniverse.org

Hi there,

We really need your help! The Zooniverse has yet again teamed up with the British Science Association to run a citizen science challenge during British Science Week.

This year we're asking you to count penguins! Our goal is to classify 250,000 images on Penguin Watch by 19th March.

If everyone receiving this email classifies just 3 images of penguins we would completely smash the goal and also finish all of the data on the project! This will help the researchers on Penguin Watch get on with analysing the data you provide, so they can figure out what is causing changes in populations of penguin nesting colonies in Antarctica.

I bet you can do more than just 3 images! Prove me right at www.penguinwatch.org.

Cheers,

Grant & the Zooniverse Team

Posted March 13, 2017 7:25 PM
by yshish moderator, translator

We've reached 250, 000 classifications made during our British Science Week challenge today already!!! Exactly 258,524 classifications have been submitted so far. And we've also made 5,000,000 classifications (exactly 5,005,814, cool, isn't it?). Thanks everyone, you are just amazing! But please, don't leave. There are still plenty of images to be classified and we couldn't do that without your help.

And there is another great new for you...

Today at 2pm of British time zone, there will be a LIVE event on Facebook run by our Penguinologists Tom and Fiona! Tune in and send them all those Penguin Watch questions that you've always wanted to ask...The link will be posted on here before the event. You can follow us on https://www.facebook.com/PenguinZoo

Cheers,

Zuzi

Posted March 14, 2017 11:53 AM
by yshish moderator, translator

Here is the stream: https://www.facebook.com/OxSparks/videos/1258907087520249/ or here: https://www.facebook.com/PenguinZoo/posts/612137428984817

😃 Enjoy!

Posted March 14, 2017 2:15 PM
by AvastMH moderator

The week is not yet quite over but just see how well you've done with the captured front page details below with 568,853 classified images!

Your work as citizen scientists has provided much needed details to Dr Hart and his team. This advances the very real science that helps protect these beautiful creatures. We hope that you have really enjoyed the project.

There are plenty more pictures to classify and so the work does not end here. You are very welcome to pop in to help us at any time. 😃

Posted March 19, 2017 10:03 PM