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In the late 1990s, Julia Parrish started the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team or COASST. Julia says: "We train people to go out to their local beach and survey it. They are looking for birds that have literally washed in on the last tide. COASST offers people a chance to learn more about the birds. And that I think is the essence of citizen science." Learn more about Julia Parrish's work and how you might get involved. Cornell offers many projects. There's more at Wikipedia.org.
BirdNote®
The COASST Program
Interview by Todd Peterson
This is BirdNote.
[Sounds of ocean waves +calls of Glaucous-winged Gulls throughout]
In the late 1990s, Julia Parrish of the University of Washington started the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team or COASST.
Track 178 :15 In COASST, we train people to go out to their local beach and survey it ... They are looking for birds that have literally washed in on the last tide.
[Sound of waves]
You might think to yourself, well how many people actually would want to spend time going out and looking for bird carcasses? It’s got to be kinda messy and a little bit smelly.
Track 178 2:03 …I thought maybe we’d get 10, 15 maybe 20 people. We have almost 700 people in the COASST program now, and they collect data for us every month. … I think people do that because they are attached to where they live. … So COASST offers people a chance to learn more about the birds, about the natural history -- why they’re there, when they’re there, whether that’s something we should be concerned about or not. … Information, both local and regional, empowers people to want to know more and want to do more.
And that I think is the essence of citizen science… I think that last century was the century of academic science. I think this century is the century of citizen science.
If you’ve been wanting to volunteer as a citizen-scientist, we can help you get started, at our website, birdnote.org. Today’s show brought to you by The Lufkin Family Foundation. [waves]
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Sounds of birds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Glaucous-winged Gulls (3350) recorded by A.A. Allen.
Ambient by Kessler Productions.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2012 Tune In to Nature.org January 2012 Narrator: Mary McCann
ID# SotB-parrishj-03-2012-01-03