Using iNat on cruise ships

General
22

Personally, I use iNat as an identification tool. I travel a lot and see different originalism and am curious about what they are, so I take pictures and submit them to iNat to see what they are. I am glad that my observations might be helpful to some scientific project, but that is not my primary purpose for submitting observations. It is just my own curiosity that I am trying to satiate.

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23

Ive done 2 cruises along the Great Barrier Reef, Brisbane to north of Cooktown, and 1 along the Kimberly coast of NW Australia, all on small ships of 50 - 60 passengers. On the Great Barrier Reef cruise the trip leaders talked about iNaturalist but had no idea how to use it. They used a “The Eye on the Reef” app. On the Kimberly cruise my bro-in-law was the only other user. I too walked the decks most nights looking for and recording moths and oterh insects at the ships deck lights.

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24

Hi, Megan. I did a small ship (122 passengers) Ushuaia–Falklands–South Georgia–Antarctic Peninsula cruise this year with a top-notch one-boat operator, Polar Latitudes, as part of a Victor Emanuel Nature Tours (VENT) birding group. Polar Latitudes was big on citizen science, but did not recommend the use of iNat. The initiatives they did organize were as follows:

  • whale reporting to Happywhale: 62 encounters (https://happywhale.com/user/37186;svy=121120)
  • half-hour pelagic bird surveys via eBird (a bit redundant in the face of near-constant seawatching by world-class birders from the VENT group, also recorded in eBird)
  • some not-very-systematic snow algae observations for an individual researcher
  • cloud surveys timed with satellite flyovers via NASA’s GLOBE Observer app
  • seaweed raft surveys as part of the Big Seaweed Search
  • Secchi disk plankton observations
  • A planned FjordPhyto plankton collection, but it was cancelled on account of Emperor Penguins (hard to compete with that)

The ship had (rationed) satellite internet, but I made no attempt to upload observations in real time. Almost all of my photos were taken with my big camera, not my phone, and I did not have access to them until we got home (nor did I have time to do anything with them). My favorite observation, though, turned out to be a quick snap with my cell phone: a pink comb jelly, Beroe undescribed sp.: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/279346338.

Let me know if I can tell you anything else. I’m happy to correspond further.

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25

Not exactly polar, but I used iNat on a cruise to Alaska in 2019. It was a small ship nature-oriented cruise. Shore excursions allowed for hikes and kayaking, often with naturalists and naturalists would point out wildlife from the deck when we were close to the shore. Since it was Inland Passage and Glacier Bay, We were able to have internet only intermittently.

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