Corresponding author: Christos Arvanitidis (
Academic editor: V. Smith
This paper discusses the design and implementation of a citizen science pilot project, COMBER (Citizens’ Network for the Observation of Marine BiodivERsity,
The Rio Earth Summit (1992) drew international concern to the global biological diversity loss and transformed the concept of biodiversity into a matter of public awareness and into an important issue in the political arena (
Perhaps, the major achievement after the Rio Summit was that it changed scientists’ views on ecosystem theory. The CBD (
Descriptive taxonomy and classification of living organisms has its origins in Ancient Greece (Aristotle) and in its modern format dates back nearly 250 years, when Linnaeus introduced the binomial classification system still in use today. After almost 200 years of flourishing, the discipline is confronted by serious problems primarily because of the aged system used for its administration: The rules and conventions for descriptive taxonomy date back to the nineteenth century and the corresponding nomenclatural codes (e.g. zoological, botanical) that were developed in the mid 20th century, have not been updated to embrace modern information technology. Only very recently, the old tradition of communicating taxonomic acts through printed paper has started being replaced by approaches allowing electronic means (such as online-only journals) to publish scientific findings, as decided for example by the International Botanical Congress in Melbourne in July 2011 (
Most of the ecological information and data are collected in the framework of temporally limited projects, simply because the collection costs are covered by the project funds. This trend commonly results in series of datasets that are predominately discontinuous or unevenly spread, geographically, temporally or ecologically. The latter becomes more obvious in the marine environment in which the collection costs are much higher than in the terrestrial realm due to the diverse and expensive floating means as well as the specific sampling gears and methods used. Several international projects which are targeted at continuous data collection from specific habitats have been launched in the last couple of decades. An exemplar project of this category is the NaGISA project (National Geography in Shore Areas;
COMBER (Citizens’ Network for the Observation of Marine BiodivERsity,
COMBER aims at engaging citizen scientists – that is, all persons interested in nature– in a coastal marine biodiversity observation network. It is currently operating in the Cretan (Greece) coastal environment with the potential to expand to the whole Mediterranean basin or any other European region. The activities have also been demonstrated in a few other coastal areas of the southern Aegean Sea. The basic characteristics of this pilot project are: (a) a web site which has been developed and functions as the main communication and promotion vehicle of the network, offering data-entry tools for collecting information which, at a later stage, are channeled to large data aggregators (e.g. GBIF) and publication media (e.g. PENSOFT); (b) a well-defined scientific hypothesis which has been formulated to be tested with the collected data; (c) a focus on fish species; (d) a suite of tools, such as a waterproof identification guide (see below), on-the-spot professional introductory lectures, underwater training, and demonstration of web site usage as well as data entry which are used to facilitate
The different categories of all the interested parties were identified during the design phase of the project: (a) a user is any person interested in participating in the activities of the project; this category includes people skilled to dive with a mask and a snorkel or certified SCUBA divers; (b) the main stakeholders identified so far are the diving centre instructors and owners, the directors of the tourist offices and the director of the Cretaquarium (HCMR); they were all approached and informed about the project, its activities and the potential it may create for the tourist industry and local markets; (c) the only industry involved is the tourist industry and its relevant markets which in this case are the services offered by the diving centres and by the Cretaquarium.
Potential participants were informed about the project through: (a) the website of the project; (b) an information desk in the Cretaquarium; (c) posters and leaflets which were distributed in the participating diving clubs and in the tourist information offices. Often, divers were approached directly before their dives in the diving centres and usually expressed interest in participation.
Fish species were chosen as a target taxon for the implementation of the pilot project since they are abundant and most frequently attract the attention and interest of the wide audience. The species observation and data collection was facilitated by usage of the commercial BIOWATCH underwater fish card (
Training of participants in data collection and data entry was implemented as short seminars given by marine scientists. The seminars were divided into three parts: (a) Before the dive, participants followed a short (~15min) introduction on the data collection protocol, including how to distinguish target fish species using the underwater fish card and correctly record the observations; (b) During the dive, each scientist accompanied maximally 3 participants to continue training in fish identification and data recording, thus ensuring maximally possible accuracy. During the first 10–15 minutes of each dive the scientists pointed out various fish species and helped the participants in correctly identifying them. After this initial period, participants were encouraged to continue the data collection by themselves, however, the scientists were available for help all the time; (c) After the dive, a short de-briefing and discussion of possible questions followed. Participants were then introduced to the website, created an account, completed their diving profile (e.g. diving level, number of total dives), logged dive information (e.g. location, depth, visibility, air consumption) and recorded the observed species. Finally, participants were asked to complete a questionnaire targeted at the experiences gained through participation and the perception of the project. The questions included can be roughly divided into five categories: (a) motivation to participate (5 questions), (b) perception on the continuation of the project (1 question), (c) willingness to pay for a similar service in the future (1 question), (d) project design and implementation (4 questions), and (e) suggestions and comments (4 questions).
COMBER uses Drupal (
The COMBER pilot project has been designed according to five fundamental principles: (a) Diving safety, ensured by involving two certified diving centres in the project which were responsible for the strict adherence to safety rules; (b) Simplicity: this principle refers to the underwater observation protocol and is extremely important, especially for non-professional recreational divers, because the diving process itself contains many elements requiring the divers’ concentration (buoyancy control, pressure equalising, air consumption, adjusting to swimming underwater, monitoring depth and dive time to calculate the dive profile and avoid dangers of decompression sickness and control of diving equipment). Therefore, an additional activity such as the observation and recording of the fish species and their relative abundance on the fish card definitely introduces an additional concern which may easily turn into stress. The data collection protocol has thus been designed in a very straightforward way to require as little effort from the divers as possible; (c) Efficiency: this principle refers to the accuracy of the data collected by SCUBA divers without experience in fish identification. The fishcard focuses on easily recognisable characteristics to identify fish species. Colour and patterns are the most easily used characteristics. However, due to the progressive absorption of wave lengths of the light with depth, most of the colours except for green and blue tones tend to disappear after ca. ten metres depth. Therefore, the briefing before diving focuses on body shape and colour patterns which are not lost, and the training is continued underwater by observing living animals. This transition is very important to train the divers in how to work most accurately and also to provide them with some sense where to search and in which habitats certain species are to be found; (d) Interdisciplinarity: many scientific disciplines are actively involved and interrelated in this experiment: taxonomy, ecology, statistics, sociology, economics, education; (e)Sustainability: all of the above interrelated disciplines serve the same dual goal: to involve citizen scientists in order to produce reliable data and information and to sustain these activities for as long as possible through the development of the relevant network, goods, and services.
The users/contributors of the COMBER activities and the project infrastructure are rewarded by: (a) a free BIOWATCH fishcard after their participation to the project; (b) the COMBER website, which – besides offering tools to keep an electronic dive log – provides facilities to upload annotated photos and discuss with other divers in a social networking environment and automatically accredits “contribution stars” to the divers according to their activity level (number of dives); (c) the association of their name with the information and data from the moment they submit their data, ensuring full credits for their work in any upcoming publication which uses these data.
The pilot project closely follows ViBRANT’s policy on the management of intellectual property. The concept of “Open Science” is adopted by COMBER as an overarching principle. In short, this concept implies the free/open software use under the Creative Commons movement. Clear documentation of the methodology used and of the data and results extracted is centrally placed in this concept. The intellectual rights of the information and data submitted by the user always stay with the user and allow him/her to get flexible rights for reuse. All the relevant statements and legal conditions regulating this policy are published on the web page of the pilot project. Any application, including software, source code, is free for use (GNU General Public License). Any other content uploaded on the COMBER web page, such as training courses, literature references and resources, images, videos, etc., are also distributed under a Creative Commons license and hence free for use by any user, provided that credits are given upon re-use of data.
The concept of the basic components of COMBER as well as the activities and information flow is shown in
Schematic representation of the basic components of the COMBER project.
During the two months of the project (July–August 2011), 48 users (excluding the four supervising scientists) participated in the project. Twenty of the users contributed data from more than one dive or snorkeling trip and thus expanded the sampling area to several other locations in Greece (
Map of observation sites:
Participants came from ten countries, with the majority (42%) coming from Greece, followed by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands (12% each). The majority (70%) of the participants held a basic-level diving certificate (PADI Open Water / Advanced Open Water, CMAS *), 12% held an advanced certificate (PADI Rescue Diver, CMAS **) and 16% held a professional diving license. However, half of the divers had an advanced diving experience (>30 dives), independent of their certificate. Most of the participants already had certain knowledge about marine organisms (72% declared they had advanced (36%) or basic (36%) knowledge about marine organisms, while 28% declared they had no knowledge at all). The genders were unevenly distributed (64% male, 36% female), but all age groups were present (21–55 years), with a slight dominance of 20–30 year old (39%) and 40–50 year old (30%) persons (30–40 years old: 18%, >50 years old: 13%). Two (independent) criteria can be applied to the profile data, each one separating the participants into two equally sized groups: I. age/profession: (a) a group of young (<30 years old) local participants, most of them biology students; (b) persons over 35 years old, mostly male, none of them pursuing a profession related to biology, but almost all of them with an academic education. They originate from various countries (thus many being tourists). Both the diving level and the knowledge of marine organisms were heterogeneously distributed in both groups; II. diving skills/knowledge of marine organisms: (a) a group which had little diving experience (<30 dives); 82% of these participants had basic or no knowledge of marine organisms; (b) a group of experienced divers (>30 dives); here 64% claimed they had an advanced knowledge of marine organisms.
During the dives, the experience in diving was a major factor contributing to underwater behaviour and data collection. Inexperienced divers (with <30 dives) moved slowly, needed more time to observe and identify the fish, asked questions more frequently and needed more supervising during their dives. The major factor which generally influenced their behaviour was the effort spent to control their buoyancy and equipment, thus it was harder for them to focus on diving and observing at the same time. Experienced divers moved in a more efficient way, they needed less time to observe and identify species and to collect information, they observed fish in different habitats (e.g. under rocks, in the water column above them) and needed much less supervising attention by the scientists. From the observations of the accompanying scientists, a general trend for increased quantity and quality of data with an increasing number of dives could be discerned, the validity of which is currently tested in ongoing analyses of all data.
The results from the questionnaires concerning the motivation for participation and participants’ perception of the project (answered by 25 users) can be divided into three broad categories: a) Identification process: The majority of the divers (64%) declared that some fish were easy to recognise but they had doubts about the validity of their results, while the remaining persons had no difficulties in identifying species. However, 90% of the participants found the short seminars before the diving helpful and claimed that by using the fish card only, they would have had problems to identify the species; b) Motivation: A large part of the participants (64%) had never participated before in any kind of volunteering work concerning nature conservation or observation. However, 28% are actively engaged in volunteer projects and 8% had already participated in similar projects but are not regularly engaged. Most of the divers participated because they appreciated the feeling of contributing and thus being useful for science and being part of an international network (48%) and because they like gaining new knowledge about nature (20%). Only a small percentage of them participated because their friends or dive buddies wanted to participate (8%) or simply out of curiosity (14%). The majority (84%) claimed they would continue contributing data on future dives, a minority stated that they were not interested, or they would like to but would probably lack motivation without instructors around (16%); c) Overall perception of the project: Both the project idea and its implementation were generally judged positively. On a scale from 1 (“did not like it”) to 5 (“liked it very much”), 96% rated both the project idea and its implementation to be good or very good, however, the implementation part was not always scored with full marks and participants provided valuable suggestions for improvement, most of them asking the organisers to: (a) offer more detailed introductory seminars about marine biodiversity and to make identification underwater easier; (b) provide online material (presentations, photos, videos, quizzes); (c) include more fish species and other taxa (e.g. sponges, mollusks) and (d) to better promote the website (through higher ranking in search engines, Facebook and Twitter). The project had a strong impact on the participants’ perception of biodiversity: 84% declared that they now see the underwater world with different eyes, only 16% claimed that the participation left no impression on them. This is reflected in the answers to the free-text questions concerning what participants liked most or what left an impression on them: 72% stated that they appreciated learning more about the marine life and that being able to differentiate species (and thus the greater diversity) made diving a richer experience. The actual diversity of life that they were not aware of before participation left a strong impression on many participants, but there was also a positive perception of experience of citizen science: divers were impressed by the difficulties of identifying species and data collection and thus the difficulties of conducting science and they felt a personal reward through their contribution to data collection. Overall, the project was highly appreciated and 80% of the participants declared they would be willing to even pay for a similar commercial course (e.g. a “marine biodiversity diver” course).
The major groups that were identified among participants were also reflected in their answers to the questions concerning the perception of the project. Of the persons who had no problems with the identification of fish, 63% had a good diving experience (>30 dives), while within the group of persons doubting their results, the experienced divers accounted for only 26%. Generally, the experienced divers also showed a higher willingness both to continue observations on their own (100% of the experienced divers and 71% of the non-experienced divers would like to continue data contribution), and to pay for a commercial offer (88% of the experienced, 78% of the non-experienced divers). Furthermore, people with an existing knowledge of marine life found the identifications easy, often had previously participated in volunteering projects and appreciated the ability to become a part of a scientific network and to contribute to science and knowledge creation. This group consisted of many local people, often young biology students; they expressed interest in more detailed seminars, in expanding the functionality of the website and in continuing the observations.
Tourism is among the most prominent economic sectors in Greece, with an average annual contribution of more than 15% to the GDP which shows a constantly increasing rate in the recent years, approaching the 20% in 2011. Greece welcomed over 19.3 million tourists in 2009, a number which was further raised in the following years (
Since international diving safety regulations do not allow for much variation in diving protocols, the diving process during the data collection is relatively homogeneous, despite a large variation in locations, habitats and species communities. On the other hand, there is a remarkable heterogeneity in divers’ attributes such as their skills, interests, expected rewarding, and repetitiveness of the dive, to cite a few among others. This mismatch between the diving process and the divers’ attributes may discourage many recreational divers, especially those who are at the beginners’ stage. The pilot project on the other hand, offers some positive arguments which, if correctly communicated, can be instrumental in increasing the number and frequency of the dives. This is simply because COMBER provides an alternative diving approach through which the divers can: (a) learn about the marine environment and its life; (b) contribute to the internationally recognised goal of marine biodiversity monitoring and conservation; (c) be rewarded for their involvement in the pilot project in multiple ways; (d) have fun in a team of other divers.
One of the most important lessons learned so far is that the supervising and guidance of the COMBER dives is instrumental for the success of the project. This guidance is implemented at all the three stages of the dive (before, during, after). The divers need some initial information on the pilot project before they start working underwater, such as the aim, the means, the expected results, the effort required by them, the target organisms, the way they have to work, the responsible bodies and people, and extra safety measures. All participants welcomed the guidance provided during the first ten to fifteen minutes of the dive in order to be introduced to fish identification and data collection in the field and to get an initial feedback on the accuracy of their observations. After this short period the divers generally seemed more confident with their identifications during the remaining dive time, although several of them usually kept requiring assistance. During the debriefing stage, the divers posed additional questions on some doubtful observations, on data entry through the web interface and on the continuation of their effort in the future. In most cases, discussions with the scientists and consultation of field guides allowed divers to critically assess and correct their own observations before entering them into the system, thus entering the “questioning” phase of their observation which is at the core of the scientific approach: seeking for the truth in their observations by using certain scientific criteria which in this case are taxonomic and, to a lesser degree, ecological characters. The latter has been specifically designed in order to avoid mis-observations leading to failure in the collection of reliable data, as has been observed in similar recent attempts (
The engagement of the broader community is a big challenge not only for the project itself but also for the marine biodiversity discipline in general. It can be broadly regarded as a significant trade zone between science, on the one hand, and society, industry, and markets, on the other. The cornerstone on which this trading zone must be built is the sustainability of the activities to both these ends. Economically healthy and sustainable activities may also serve the production and publication of reliable datasets (see also next paragraphs) needed for the study, monitoring, and conservation of the marine biodiversity while the latter also raises the concern of society for healthy and productive ecosystems.
The project has initiated the efforts in order to identify the major stakeholders and the industry and relevant markets involved. However, for the sustainability of the activities it is also important to identify the relevant target groups that may play a crucial role in the project. Taking into account the results of the questionnaire, the future expansion of the project should be developed into two different directions, aiming at two major target groups: a) a more commercially-oriented offer for experienced divers (both tourists and locals), with more comprehensive and detailed seminars, allowing them to obtain an internationally recognised diving certificate (“marine biodiversity diver”), and b) focusing on the development of local “nature clubs” which are targeted at motivated, nature-loving persons living in the area, allowing them to regularly contribute, to engage themselves in nature conservation and to meet other people with similar interests. This target group could include (biology) students, local (amateur) divers and members of other nature clubs (such as hiking or photography groups) or any other interested person.
Information and data must be corrected before they are subjected to scientific analysis and hypothesis testing. This process must also follow certain criteria based on specific assumptions. The basic assumption is that the fish species recorded by the professional scientist who is supervising the dive can be used as the first criterion to identify outliers in data collected by the divers. Additional criteria may be: (a) species which are not recorded by the scientists in any of the dives at a specific location should not be included in the datasets collected by the divers; (b) broad categories of depth or habitat (e.g. hard and soft substrates, seagrass meadows) can be another criterion following the same approach as above; (c) the same criteria apply also for the abundance classes records.
The next step after data cleaning is their use (and re-use) in testing the scientific hypotheses. This is still open to discussions within the ViBRANT consortium. However, the aim of the pilot project is to examine whether the data collected by the divers are suitable for biodiversity monitoring needs. Recent biodiversity measures, based on species relatedness such as the taxonomic distinctness (e.g.
One of the key general concepts of the ViBRANT project is to provide an e-infrastructure to facilitate maximum possible automation of the whole process of handling taxonomic data, from the collection through data management and analyses, to the stage of publication, indexing and preservation. The ultimate goal of the pilot project is to create the network of the marine biodiversity citizen scientists and also the electronic infrastructure needed for the uploaded datasets to be channeled to all interested parties, such as global biodiversity species registries (e.g. GBIF, OBIS, etc.), and published by electronic publication media, using advanced data publishing technologies. Such a technology was currently launched by the “data paper” project by GBIF and PENSOFT Publishers. According to the concept (see
The data paper concept and associated tools were launched to provide incentives for data collectors to publish their data in a proper way, that is: (a) through enriched metadata description, and (b) indexing and collation of the data themselves within large international infrastructure, in this case, the GBIF data portal. The data paper will provide an opportunity for data collectors to be credited for their efforts and will open perspectives for a future collaboration with data authors having published similar types of data.
One important feature of the IPT with far-reaching consequences for biodiversity data publishing is the option for an easy creation of Darwin Core archives. The Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) is an international biodiversity informatics data standard and the preferred format for publishing data through the (GBIF) network. The format is defined in the Darwin Core Text Guidelines. Darwin Core is no longer restricted to occurrence data, and together with the more generic Dublin Core metadata standard (on which its ideas are based), it is used by GBIF and others to encode metadata about organism names, taxonomies and species information. In addition, the whole set of data associated with the occurrence dataset, such as environmental measurement, habitat descriptions etc., can be deposited at the Dryad Data Repository (
The current volume offers two exemplar papers that demonstrate the data publishing workflow described above (
GBIF has initiated a community driven project called the ‘Nodes Portal Toolkit’ that should enable communities to deploy, maintain, and extend biodiversity data portals. The project should provide an easy way for communities to start web based biodiversity data information systems with a link to the GBIF infrastructure. The GBIF Nodes Portal Toolkit will be Drupal-based, as this will allow for the integration of already existing modules. This informatics platform will also allow community development of new modules with extended functionalities for web-based biodiversity data information systems. The first version of the Nodes Portal Toolkit will be built around Scratchpads, linking well with developments in ViBRANT. A second version will have extended functionalities, such as a tool for displaying geographical distribution maps of species, similar to what is currently displayed in the OBIS data portal. We expect COMBER to become in the coming years fully integrated with the developments in ViBRANT and the GBIF Nodes Portal Toolkit, offering interested parties a ready-made installation file allowing them to set up and deploy their own citizen-science portals without prior technical knowledge.
The authors are much indebted to the owners of the following diving clubs: (a) Happy Divers, Agios Nikolaos (Mr. Nikolaos Koutoulakis) and, (b) European Diving Institute, Lygaria (Mr. Michalis Kanakakis). Mr Michalis Papadakis (director of the Cretaquarium) is specially acknowledged for his courtesy to endorse part of the COMBER’s promotion and communication activity in the Cretaquarium. Finally, the divers who participated in this first phase of the project are specially thanked for their efforts and enthusiasm: M. Beekhuyzen, Donut Berrens, Lena Chatzigeorgiou, Alex Coxon, Michael Dahlmeyer, Chris Dekker, Elodie Delva, Felix Elbaz, Konstantina Evagelou, Klitos Giannakopoulos, Giorgos Gkourogiannis, Alexis Glaropoulos, Jaap Gouverneur, Kerry Gruendel, Clare Gruendel, Chris Hill, Cheryl Horton, Serina Kapsoritaki, Demosthenes Kartsakis, Artemis Katsadoura, Nikos Kazantzakis, Simon Kerslake, Maria Kourepini, Litsa Lambrini, Anastasia Lemetti, Charalambos Malimoglou, Manolis Maragakis, Giorgos Milios, Marco Molteni, Matteo Molteni, Virginia Moutlia, Sofia Petraki, Jason Petroutsos, Virpi Roponen, Elena Sarropoulou, Patricia Schneider, Michal Szpernal, Matevsz Szpevnal, Konstantinos Tsiboukas, Thanos Vasileiadis, Anita Westen, Michael Widmer, Shaun Wilson, Katrin Zdragka, mikee, janssen. This work was supported by the EU’s infrastructure project ViBRANT (Contract no. RI-261532).