Wednesday 3 April 2019

The return of JellyWatch



March 20, 2019 by Kim Fulton-Bennett, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Are jellyfish populations increasing around the world? Like the weather, jellyfish blooms are something that many people talk about, but few people do anything about. One exception would be MBARI's Steve Haddock, a marine biologist who has been studying jellies for more than two decades. Haddock recently rolled out a new and improved web site (jellywatch.org) that allows citizen scientists around the world to report jellyfish blooms.
Haddock first set up the JellyWatch site about 10 years ago, in an attempt to use citizen science to find out about jelly blooms worldwide. Designed by Haddock and two summer interns, the original JellyWatch site was a joint effort by MBARI and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
As Haddock explained at the time, "People have been talking about jelly blooms increasing around the world, but we don't really have a lot of data on this. So it's hard to know how localized these events are. That's why we created this website. The idea is that everyday people can get involved in a real ocean research project. Their eyes are important instruments in this study."
The jellywatch.org site was quite popular; by March 2010 it already had observations from every continent except Antarctica. For years it allowed people from all over the world to report and share jellyfish sightings, as well as photos and observations of other transient ocean events.
Unfortunately, due to difficulties with funding and website hosting, the JellyWatch site went dormant in 2018. But just this month, Haddock rolled out a new and improved JellyWatch site, funded in part through a grant from the National Science Foundation.

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