HELP research seahorses and seagrass from the comfort of your home with a new conservation initiative.

The citizen-based science project, the Community Seagrass Initiative (CSI), has been set up to new and existing volunteers to help analyse thousands of underwater photographs of seagrass habitats along the South West coast via their computer.

The idea of the tool is to allow people to get involved with CSI’s research, without getting their feet wet.

The project covers 191 miles of the coast from Weymouth to Looe in Cornwall. The idea is to find out more about native seagrass and seahorses to help conserve their fragile eco-systems.

The group said their aim is to engage coastal communities with their special marine habitats to raise awareness and promote conservation.

People will get the chance to look at thousands of images taken from baited cameras and SCUBA diver surveys, using the Zooniverse research platform.

Volunteers for CSI will be able to take part in two different methods of analysis on the website - dive into seagrass density and check out commercial fisheries species.

Dive into seagrass density allows users to look at photographs to assess how much seagrass is visible in the shot, as well as report the presence of any other marine life or algae.

In check out commercial fisheries species, volunteers will be able to look at pictures taken at baited underwater cameras, so they can identify different species of fish, crustaceans and molluscs that are important commercially.

Seagrass beds can be important nursery areas for many commercial fish species, including pollack, herring, plaice, cuttlefish and scallops.

CSI said that seagrass is important because it is one of the world’s only marine flowering plants, which creates large meadows in shallow waters on sandy seabed. The meadows act like an underwater rainforest, providing shelter for all sorts of marine species, on an otherwise featureless seabed.

Mark Parry, Community Seagrass Initiative Project Manager, said: "Zooniverse is an awesome resource for groups of people collecting large amounts of data. It allows anybody to develop a project that asks the public to pick information from an image.

“When dealing with large amounts of information and looking at so many images it may take a small team like us weeks analyse them, Zooniverse asks lots of people to help so that many hands make light work. Zooniverse is simple and easy to use, anybody that is helping is making a massive contribution to the Community Seagrass Initiative.”

To get involved visit csi-seagrass.co.uk and click on the Seagrass explorer tab.

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e: catherine.bolado@dorsetecho.co.uk

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