“Record and share sightings of marine organisms using your smartphone. View these sightings online alongside those generated by other participants.”

Summary
Coastal Walkabout is an open access, dynamic, citizen science initiative which utilises smart phone technology and social media to engage and motivate local communities to gather scientific observations within the coastal, estuarine and near-shore environments. The approach seeks to integrate structured and unstructured survey data to leverage citizen, community, government and science engagement. The project is enabling data transfer amongst organisations regionally, nationally and internationally.

Coastal Walkabout is part of an overall vision which seeks to build a consortium-based fully Open Access citizen science network across Western Australia (and beyond) through the development of open philosophy, novel database technology and strong social engagement platforms. The vision includes a scalable Western Australian Citizen Hub consisting of three themes: coastal and near shore environments (“Coastal Walkabout”); terrestrial environments; and a school engagement theme (“Budding Scientists”).

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Organisation: Marine Ventures Foundation (USA), the Marine Conservation Ecology group at Duke University (USA) and the Murdoch University Cetacean Research Unit.
Point of contact: @CoastWalkabout
Project link: http://coastalwalkabout.gaiaresources.com.au/wordpress/about/