In a climate change scenario, it is important to aware youth for the need to protect marine species biodiversity and to ensure its sustainability. The project EduMar/EduSea (Educate for the Sea) is underway in Portugal aiming to educate students (elementary and middle school) for the preservation of the sea and its resources through citizen science. More than 300 students participated in a set of interdisciplinary science activities focusing on learning the causes and consequences of climate change in intertidal rocky shores ecosystems and acquiring skills to identify and report on site a set of bio-indicator and common rocky shores species. We will share our experience with such young citizen scientists and the best practices learned for future design of similar projects. At the National Museum of Natural History and Science (University of Lisbon, Portugal) students learned how to identify and register the target species using the iNaturalist/Biodiversity4All app installed in a tablet. At the Avencas Beach (Portugal) using the tablet and the app, they recorded those species, gathering data to help researchers better monitoring coastal marine biodiversity and understanding how climate change may affect it. 56% of the data gathered corresponded to misidentifications. Students were many times unable to distinguish species if they have similar shapes. Alongside with the importance of data validation by specialists, this highlights the need of investing more time explaining how different species can be identified. Data collected by students, and validated by specialists, compared with previous observations at Avencas showed very consistent results, indicating that this practice may contribute with relevant data for marine biodiversity monitoring in Portugal.

--

Citizen science,Rocky shores,Marine biodiversity,Climate change,Youth