It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.
It is genuinely baffling to me, in a very kind and positive way, especially coupled with the local news continually going several shades of 'wtf, this thing is a roaring success again and we don't quite get why'. They've already quadrupled their capacity for simultaneous clicks and it's still nowhere near enough and there's just... Bewilderment.
I think people want to help the environment in small but tangible ways, which is hard right now because of.. well... because of The Horrors. And being able to say 'wow! I helped this creature cross a dam' makes you feel good.
I also think that most people can relate to a small, helpless creature trying to get from one place to another and there's a FUCKIN WALL in the way.
But to come back to point 1- Citizen Science fills a hole in the soul that wanted to go out on adventures and discover things when we were younger, but the study of it was hard or we didn't have the money or our schools were garbage. But you don't have to have a degree to do things like... press a button or download and use an app, or count or transcribe notes.
Anyways- here's some Citizen Science links if the Fish Doorbell makes you feel happy and you yearn for more ways to help scientists do stuff:
Foldit (folding proteins)
Fathomverse (sea animals)
Project Monarch (butterflies)
Bioblitz, an event where citizens identify as many species in an area within a period of time
Species Watch (animal species)
BOINC’s Compute for Science
Zooniverse is a website that hosts information on many citizen science projects
Label trees in aerial photos
Count cells in fossils and modern leaves
Digitize Atmospheric Data
Count penguins
US-based Citizen Science Database
eBird (bird identification)
Merlin (bird identification by sound)
iNaturalist (nature identification)
MapSwipe (collaboration between several Red Cross organizations and Doctors Without Borders, update vital geospatial data)
Smithsonian Archives Transcription Center
