Episode 3: Citizens help scientists with the Sargassum Watch App with Lowell Iporac

In this episode we talk to Lowell Iporac, a PhD student at Florida International University. He is the communications manager of the International Sargassum Network (SargNet) listserv and primary manager of the citizen science project “Sargassum Watch”. Sargassum is a “hell of an accident” to Lowell. His PhD was focused on invertebrates in seagrass beds until Sargassum came along and now it is taking over his PhD. Listen to the episode to hear about:

- Sargassum as Golden Rainforest in the Sargasso Sea (6:00)

- Insects living in Sargassum on the shores (8:00)

- Citizen science app “Sargassum Watch” on Epicollect5 (app) to collect data on Sargassum levels on beaches (12:30)

- How sea turtle monitoring groups are collecting data on Sargassum levels through the citizen science app (13:00)

- The two levels of engagement possible through the citizen science app: “Full observation” and “snap pictures and go” (14:00)

- The different languages that the app is available in: English, Spanish and soon to come French (15:30)

- How the data from the citizen science project made it possible to see variability in timing and severity of Sargassum landings across the Caribbean. (16:00)

- How in the future, the data collected may help other scientists to fine tune prediction models (18:00)

- How the citizen science project could be expanded to offshore observations (22:00)

Learn more:

֍ Join the SargNet mailing list

֍ Become a Sargassum citizen scientists:

1. Download Epicollect5 for iphones

Download Epicollect5 for Android

2. Within the Epicollect5 download the projects Sargassum Watch (English) or Monitoreo de Sargassum (Spanish) if you want to collect full data sets or EZ Sargassum, Sargazo facil (Spanish) or Sargasse facile(French) to just snap pictures

3. Take pictures of the beach every time you visit even if there is none

֍ Use the data:

Sargassum Watch

EZ Sargassum

Monitoreo de Sargassum

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