Journal 5: Networking

Throughout my time volunteering through Zooniverse, I have not really had many networking opportunities because this is an online non profit organization full of millions of volunteers and researchers. But I have had different discussions and interactions with the other researchers that serve a purpose in the research. The biggest project I have been working on is called, “Killer Whale Count”, and I have to classify and count killer whales to determine if their predation is causing Steller sea lion declines. There was one discussion I had with a few other researchers and it was about this photo someone was classifying, and they made an observation of a puddle of blood next to the sea lions. The question was raised if sea lions fight amongst themselves. I mentioned that if it had been attacked by a whale, I do not think it would have the energy to drag itself back onto the rocks. We were wondering what the blood could be from. Another researcher said they suspect maybe it had been from something they ate like a fish. Because we weren’t there to see what actually happened when the photo was taken, we do not have an answer. But it was great that someone noticed that detail and started a discussion about it and got us all making different unique observations.

Another really interesting discussion I had with other researchers that were classifying this very unique photo taken. Keep in mind, a lot of the photos are from the same beach, but at a different point in time and from different angles. This one photo had a couple sea lions in the viewpoint but it also had what looked like a giant next up on top of a rock and a bird just sitting there watching the waves. This was honestly very cool to see because when classifying killer whales and sea lions a lot of the photos can look the same. So it was like a rare sighting. In the discussion we were all debating what kind of bird it was. And we came to the conclusion that it was a juvenile Bald Eagle!