Citizen Science

Christiansted

Have you ever donated your time to helping scientists collect data? No, well here are a few citizen scientist projects that we in the Virgin Islands or in fact anywhere can participate in.

The Annual Christmas Bird Count has been going on continuously for over 100 years and takes place all over North America, Central America, the Caribbean and parts of South America. Volunteers dedicate one day out of the year to collect information on bird species and numbers observed. Teams go out and cover specific areas in order to reduce overlap but anyone can participate even those who just want to count the birds congregating in their back yards or around their feeders. All the data collected is compiled by regional directors and put onto the website for anyone to search. This year the count will happen December 15 and there should be notices in the newspaper about how to volunteer.

Domino players at Cramer Park

Shark Count is a project that is collecting data from people who are either diving or snorkeling or swimming in open water and encounter a shark. The information collected will be used to help protect the sharks and provide more information about the populations and their density. To find out more about this program and to sign up go to https://www.sharksavers.org/en/our-programs/sharkscount/

A view of Buck Island from shore

Marine Debris Tracker NOAA has a program and an app that you can add to your phone to track garbage that floats on to shore or that you see in the water. Garbage in our waters is a global problem that affects everything from navigation, to fish, to birds caught in nets and mono-filament and even to our economy. Right now it is Coastal Clean up week and teams have been out all over the island collecting garbage off our beautiful beaches. Just noticing that there is garbage is the first step in eradicating it. If you would like to get involved in helping out and to get the app go to http://marinedebris.noaa.gov/projects/seamdi.html

Cramer Park beach

Here's a fun one that takes just a few minutes

Test your Quarter apparently not all quarters are created equally. Now that states are allowed to mint their own there has been some controversy concerning the fairness of a quarter. If you toss one in the air it should land heads up just as often as it lands tails up. These guys want you to test your quarters and report the findings to them after learning what they are all about http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2013/08/citizen-science-testing-fairness-of-us.html

View from the top of Blue Mountain...very hazy day.

and this one anyone who lives on this island can do

National Cockroach Program all you have to do is collect, label, and send in all those dead ones you find laying about. Amazingly people do study cockroach's as they can reveal a lot about evolution and migration. Did you know that American cockroach's hitchhiked here from Africa? Check it out

http://phe.rockefeller.edu/barcode/cockroachproject.html

Rescued baby Mongoose

Caribbean Lionfish Response Program all it takes to be a lionfish spotter is to carry around a marker that consists of a length of orange flagging attached at one end to a metal washer and at the other end to a cork. If you see a lionfish drop the marker and contact Fish and Wildlife or any of the local dive shops.

Cramer Park

There are tons of other projects going on around the world and you might be able to locate some in your area...just google “citizen science” and explore the possibilities.

See ya next week.

Not going to write about...

Things i'm not going to write about today include Chucky Hansen's rape comments which can be found at the St. Croix Source or the Daily News on-line. It is unfortunate that she did manage to bring unwanted negative publicity to the island of St. Croix.

i'm not going to write about the shooter at the Navy Yard. If you read my blog you already know that i am not against gun ownership but i do support stringent licensing regulations and back ground checks.

Getting a gun shouldn't be easier to do than getting a license to drive a car. A new report came out today at the American Journal of Medicine claiming that countries with less guns are safer. The question asked was do guns make a nation safer?

http://www.amjmed.com/webfiles/images/journals/ajm/AJM12080.pdf

i'm not going to write about Syria and chemical weapons except to say the weapons inspectors are going back. The UN report just released says “Sarin” was used but it does not claim to know who fired it.

i'm not going to write about the recent revelations from the FISA court regarding the fact that telephone companies since 2006 who received court orders did not challenge the law despite there being a mechanism to resist. Qwest is the only one that did prior to 2006.

i'm not going to write about the Colorado 1000 year flooding event or the Mexican floods and those 40,000 stranded tourists and 1,000,000 impacted Mexicans from a two storm convergence. i spend a lot of time out doors and a life time of observation tells me something is terribly wrong.

And what about that law passed in the Dodd Frank bill that requires publicly traded companies to reveal CEO compensation(includes pay, stock options,bonus, pension and incentive pay) and relate it to all their workers(including part-time and overseas workers) median pay. Business groups want to exclude overseas workers but the SEC is not going for it. Apparently the average multiple of CEO compensation to workers median pay is 204% according to Bloomberg up 20% just since 2009.

Or how about the fact that in 2012 according to recently released FBI statistics violent crime declined 1.8% while property crimes increased 0.03%. Seventy-four percent of the arrested were males and most of that was because of drugs, alcohol, and theft. More were arrested for drugs than for any other crime. And here is one we all should note...in 2012 69.3% of all the arrests were white, 28.1% were black and the remaining 2.6% were other races.

Scotland is looking at waves and tidal energy in a bid to get all its power needs covered by renewables by 2020. Oh if only we in the VI had such vision.

And the jelly fish are out in force...so far not so bad here but around the world there has been an explosive growth of jelly fish plagues. Thirty thousand square miles off southern Africa is a swarming mess of gooey, stinging blobs. Once here we had a bloom that went from Cane Bay all the way to Carambola 1.8 miles. Luckily the day of our swim the jellies that were out(they looked like dice with three black spots) didn't sting but boy were they weird to swim through for so long. i can't imagine that on a daily basis.

And to close...there are 1500 newspapers, 1100 magazines, 9000 radio stations, 1500 TV stations, and 2400 publishers owned by 6 corporations. Where do you get your info?

See ya next week

Pillars of Peace...hey St. Croix

There are loads of other people writing about the 9/11 anniversary that can do it much more justice than i can so instead i'm going to focus on the report that came out yesterday that was written by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Publishing the Global Peace Index for the past 7 years has been a primary focus of the institute but in addition this year they have published a Pillars of Peace report that can be read at http://www.visionofhumanity.org/sites/default/files/Pillars%20of%20Peace%20Report%20IEP.pdf

i've skimmed and read most of the report and came away with an additional affirmation in my belief that working for peace and peaceful environments works for all of us economically, culturally and in cases of disaster.

The Pillars of Peace report creates a bench mark by which countries can measure their resilience during social upheavals and or their overall aspects of social development. Today, we on St. Croix, are facing economic upheaval that has the potential to lead us into more conflict. If we ignore certain aspects of the eight pillars we could find ourselves impacted negatively. But if we attack our problems from all angles not just the economic one we may find ourselves in a place where we can honestly say we live in paradise.

The Eight Pillars

A Well Functioning Government

Sound Business Environment

Equitable Distribution of Resources

Acceptance of the Rights of Others

Good Relations with Neighbors

Free Flow of Information

High Levels of Human Capital

Low Levels of Corruption

were found to be mutually reinforcing in both positive and negative aspects. If one pillar becomes too negative it can upset the balance. No one pillar can be viewed in isolation because they all interact all the time. We have some tippy pillars on St. Croix and if we don't recognize that they all need to work together we could be in for a rougher ride than we thought.

Over the past seven years the Institute has been able to show that peaceful societies enjoy greater economic benefits, higher income levels, stronger social cohesion, and higher educational attainment. According to the report countries with higher levels of peace were also able to absorb shocks to their society and recover more quickly. Those that were less peaceful suffered longer and recovered more slowly.

Benefits flow from establishing peaceful environments. According to Galtung “cooperation for mutual benefit creates an environment where individuals and society are in harmony.” “Pillars of Peace is the first study to use statistical analysis to identify the factors associated with peaceful societies.”

The first pillar a well functioning government includes rule of law, government effectiveness and the citizens voice and accountability. On St. Croix we have these things but maybe we are lacking too much in the effectiveness and accountability categories. The intricacies of all these aspects also interact with the free flow of information and the acceptance of the rights of others which are also pillars. I don't think we are that strong in the acceptance dept. either which means so far our tippy pillars could use a bit of strengthening.

“A sound business environment is crucial to peace and prosperity. Infrastructure, the quality of employment opportunities, business sophistication and innovation, and the level of regulations applied to business all should work in tandem to further a peaceful society.” Our infrastructure and the quality of our employment opportunities could use some TLC.

Equitable distribution of resources, another pillar, Some of the institutes analysis said that those countries that have had the lowest declines in their peacefulness also had greater equality in terms of land distribution and acquisition, but that this was not a defining criteria for all countries. This is a touchy subject and I'm not going to attack this one here.

Good relations with neighbors this is more a group thing and we do have good relations with those other islands that surround us.

High levels of human capital relates to our skills, knowledge, and behaviors. Apparently the lack of opportunities for youth could be seen as failure of the community to educate. “Health and education tend to increase social cohesion.”

Low levels of corruption hmmmmmmm

The report is long at 68 pages but the conclusions are that if a country strives to balance the eight pillars of peace they may also be able to weather economic, cultural and natural disasters that send nations into conflict locally and on a broader basis. Would we as a community find this daunting? i don't know but its certainly something to consider.

See ya next week

Caribbean Waterbird Census on St. Croix

Otherwise known locally as the CWC count. Although you can't see them in this picture there are birds out there. Wilson's Plovers chattering and running around, very upset that we had invaded their domain.
Least Terns, the few that still haven't flown south, are in the air very angry and vocal about the fact that we had to walk through their loafing area to check the water point. Sandpiper's that are transiting through on their migration and Ruddy Turnstones one of which was still in his glorious breeding plumage.

The idea behind the Waterbird Census is to document waterbirds and their wetland habitats on a regional basis. Participants choose important wetlands to monitor on their islands and set up schedules and teams of observers. The goals of the program, sponsored by the Society for Conservation and Study of Caribbean Birds, is to learn more about status, distribution, and abundance of waterbirds. Ultimately these surveys will lead to more conservation and management of the wetland habitats for the birds that frequent them and give researchers valuable information.

So this morning myself and a partner went to four wetlands on St. Croix. We counted the birds we found there from GPS points that had been established three years ago which was when the census began. We do the census according to standard scientific criteria so that other researchers can duplicate our work or use the information we have gathered in other regional studies. We were repeating counts this morning that we did last week. One other team was also out recording birds at Great Pond and will be out again tomorrow at Southgate. They have a much harder time of it as their wetland areas are much bigger and take longer to survey, plus i don't think they could have avoided the deluge unless they aborted.

A friend of mine asked me if i'd label the pics but instead they are listed here.The first two pictures were of the Mt. Fancy wetland but the following three are of the Coakley Bay wetland and the last two are Lowry Hill north and south ponds. We did Coakley first, Mt. Fancy next, then the Lowry Ponds.

This morning we were out there trying to beat the 100% chance of rain forecast. You can't survey the birds when its raining because they hunker down and your binoculars and scopes fog up. We looked up the time the sun rises and got there before it. The first wetland is a bit of a chore to get into so we wanted to be real quiet so as not to disturb any of the birds. We pulled it off, set up and started counting. We were able to complete Coakley before any rain drops started coming down. On the drive to the next one it let loose.

Mt. Fancy beach which wasn't included in the census had a lovely variety of shorebirds and i saw my first Sanderling of the season there. The rain had subsided again and we were able to crank out this wetland and lolly gag along the beach with out getting wet. It wasn't until we got to the Lowry Hill ponds that the deluge really began. Luckily we were still in the car and just waited it out until we had a window of opportunity.

i'm sure you are thinking what pond when you look at this green photo...but this is a pond that is so over grown you can barely see in. Last week it had sandpipers, a green heron, common gallinules, two nests and enough water to make it worthwhile for birds. This morning it was practically deserted and what was once water was now just mud.

This pond...Lowry Hill North had a moorhen family and a lonely Least Grebe. All in all we managed to do our counts, get muddy, get wet and feel good about completing the census on time. i know i'm cheating by putting this up but it is what it is.
See ya next week.