European Marine Education Monitoring Network

Surveys

Students undertook a number of surveys trialling the protocols and methodologies from intertidal rocky shore through to a variety of sandy shore surveys. Details of the surveys and links are given below. We will publish any findings later.

Mobidic

Developed by Cimar in 2006 Mobidic brings school groups on to the shore to undertake a transect survey. Students are invited to create a shore profile and identified key species using quadrat analysis. Mobidic works now with 10 schools and 3 other groups in Portugal, involving more than 400 students, and has already a website and database with more than 30 surveys from schools, presentations in Science Fairs and several other activities.

Shore Thing

In the UK the Marine Biological Association has developed the Shore Thing project that engages 16 to 18 year olds and voluntary groups in rocky shore surveys. The national project feeds monitoring data back on climate change and non native indicator species. To date 1000 plus students and volunteers have conducted over 90 surveys at 46 sites around the UK coast. We have a dedicated website (www.marlin.ac.uk/shore_thing) where surveyors can upload their survey records directly on to our database, download resources including our e-newsletter and keep up to date with news and events. The survey is a transect survey and then a timed species search looking for a set of indicator species.

Nagisa - www.nagisa.coml.org/about

The NaGISA Project is a Census of Marine Life field project with 8 regional offices and currently over 128 sampling sites along the near shores of 51 countries. Using global standards to answer local questions NaGISA members (researchers, managers and students) are producing the worlds first near shore habitat specific global census. The survey uses representative quadrats and removes material on a 0.25cm quadrat for analysis in the laboratory.

Litus - www.iopan.gda.pl/rbdo/mekodb/litus/

The School used protocols developed by IO PAS and their Litus survey for sandy shores. LITUS means "the beach" in Latin, it is also the name for international research project to investigate the influence of industrial and recreational activity on the functioning of sandy littoral (shallow water and beach) In the context of LITUS project, the beach is the zone between lowest and highest water mark. Students undertook a number of sand surveys including searching for sandhoppers, sieving for macro fauna and taking physical measurements and making a shore profile.