Sea stars are punks

Actually, scallops may be the punks of the seafloor. Sea stars are more just everywhere.

I've just spent some 45 minutes classifying image after image of the seafloor, marking scallops, sea stars, crustaceans and fish. Oh, and lots of nothing and lots of "other." This is one of the projects available on Zooniverse, a citizen science portal, where people can classify galaxies, African savannah animals, cancerous cells, and sea creature images. I'm starting work on a project related to Zooniverse, and I wanted to get a taste of what it is like to be one of the citizens.

Classifying galaxies is something I've already spent time doing in my life. And seeing lots of lot quality images of them. I'm good, as far as galaxies are concerned.

But sea creatures...now that is new. At first, I thought I was going to quit on my first image. The tutorial image was so clear, my first actual image was....like a dust storm. And the field guide provided didn't actually tell me what a sponge looked like, although the tutorial image claimed it contained one. And fish...sometimes hard to see.

And the punky scallops. Some are dead - a hole in the shell, maybe with white shells. Some are not. And some, I have no idea. They are just being difficult.

Finding a fish or crab is pretty exciting.

Rarely is an image totally empty of life.

After a few images, I got more comfortable with the uncertainty of maybe having it wrong. Other people were going to see these same images and add to what I said. Subtract from it, maybe. My mistake wasn't going to single handedly kill the scallop population. My eating habits, might. But not my classifying.

And now, an image with a fish is pretty exciting. And without a fish, my brain is more able to coast through the marking and measuring of creatures. In the back of my mind I'm thinking about eating sea creatures, about fishing, about sea stars in general. It is an interesting process.

Citizen science is pretty cool stuff. Whether it is nearly a million people classifying images more accurately than computer programs, or people going out counting birds per square mile, or inmates studying slow-growing mosses.