About 6 or 7 years ago, I started creating a catalogue of species I’d captured during my diving holidays. I just wanted to know what I’d seen, whether I’d seen it before, where I saw it, etc.
Since joining iNat, I’ve been toying with the idea of uploading my entire catalogue. A primary reason is to get feedback and make sure I’d correctly identified everything. I don’t assume I’ve got them all right. As I get more confident in my identification, I also want to contribute more toward identifying other observations and become a more active and useful member. iNat is also much better structured than my own catalogue (I’m not a database builder), so it makes sense to put my observations into a proper frame of reference. Lastly, it adds my information to the overall body of knowledge here, which I think is a good thing.
My concerns are:
My catalogue currently holds about 3000 images. What is the community consensus regarding a new member loading this volume of information?
Some of my observations are up to 15 years old. Are there any guidelines on loading “old” observations?
I’d like to be able to share my finds with friends and family but I think they would need to register to be able to find and view the information. Is there a way for non-members to simply view information or is this discouraged due to the inevitable increased load on the system?
Bring it on! It will be a wonderful contribution. Fifteen years ago is “yesterday”! Not long ago, I uploaded my earliest natural history images…from 1969.
Just hoping you have good date and location information for the images.
I’m actually taking advantage of the cold weather to do exactly this, with photos dating back sometimes as much as 20 years, making me VERY happy that I’ve always georeferenced all my images, even before I realised it might one day be useful! It’s a great way to check not just for errors, but also for changes to taxonomy, while hopefully contributing something to the pool of knowledge.
Thanks for the very positive responses. I will initiate the transfer of information, though completion will be a long-term project. I’ll look at batch uploading. Might be useful to speed the process.
@gcwarbler - I’ve already started adding locality data to my catalogue at the region level (i.e. Raja Ampat or N Red Sea). If I get my old dive logs in order, I should be able to tighten that to specific areas (Misool or Elphinstone).
My most interesting findings are a group of observations from Oman that seem to match tropical Pacific species better than they do Indian Ocean species. That’s going to be an ongoing process of re-identification.
Looks like I have something to keep me busy now that I’ve retired.
