Australasian fishes

Last year, a group in Halifax, Nova Scotia set up an iNaturalist project, World Oceans Week 2018, and is issuing a challenge once again to divers and others to contribute to the count for 2019.

This year, World Oceans Week runs from June 1-9. A new iNaturalist project, World Oceans Week 2019, has been set up to document a snapshot of the world’s ocean life during the days surrounding the U.N. Oceans Day (June 8).

The Australasian Fishes community can play our part to make this initiative a success. I strongly encourage you all to make a big effort to record new observations during the first week of June. As always, please upload your observations to Australasian Fishes but in addition, add them to the World Oceans Week 2019 project. Your observations will then be included in the World Oceans Week 2019 count. We can provide excellent information on our part of the world and showcase the strength of our Australasian Fishes community. The information below has been copied from the World Oceans Week 2019 project page.

Thanks everyone,
Mark 🙂

World Oceans Week project overview

In recognition of Oceans Week, a group from Halifax, Nova Scotia would like to once again challenge the global iNaturalist community to make this an opportunity to explore our coastal areas, our oceans, seas, rivers, and lakes. Observations of marine flora and fauna shared through iNaturalist will help fill gaps in temporal, spatial and taxonomic coverage around the world.

The objective of the World Oceans Week 2019 iNaturalist project is simple – we wish to encourage people to accept the challenge to record and share their own personal observations. From June 1-9 set aside time to explore our coastal areas, oceans and seas. If you don’t have an opportunity to visit these areas perhaps explore a local river or lake or use this opportunity to go through old photos and select images of plants and animals taken when on vacation at the beach.

On June 8th each year, we celebrate the ocean, its importance in our lives, and how we can protect it - World Oceans Day helps raise the profile of the ocean and inspire more involvement in helping to conserve this amazing resource we all depend on. During Oceans Week all around the globe events and activities are organized and all are encouraged to participate as it is up to each one of us to help ensure that our ocean is healthy for future generations.

For those of us who are lucky to live/play along the coast or work at sea or have opportunities to partake in ecotourism on the high seas we would like to encourage getting out and exploring nature. Recording and sharing our observations will help create research grade data for scientists working to better understand and protect nature. This is the vision of iNaturalist.

It is fitting that this Oceans Week challenge to share coastal and marine observations originates from Atlantic Canada as it was a group located in Nova Scotia, the Oceans Institute of Canada (OIC), located at Dalhousie University and led by its Director, Dr. Judith Swan, and supported and counseled by Haligonian, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, the founder of the International Ocean Institute, who first introduced at the United Nations (UN) Earth Summit in 1992, the concept of World Oceans Day (WOD) on behalf of the Government of Canada.

Oceans Week this year is June 1-9th.

For more information on the history of WOD see http://www.worldoceansday.org/history