Adventures to be had.

I believe life should be nothing but a series of adventures, and I do not think all these adventures need to be jumping out of planes or diving through ocean caves (although these once in a life time adventures are obviously pretty special!). I believe any time you do something new, that is an adventure! Therefore, everyone can have adventures, often! Throughout my blog I will explore many different types of adventures (however small) I have experienced, hopefully inspiring you to do the same.

The first is becoming a citizen scientist!
Citizen science is when members of the public help scientists collect and analyse data. You probably have not heard of citizen science before (I hadn’t until I completed my honours thesis on the topic last year), which is odd considering citizen science has actually officially been around since 1900, when members of the public started to collect bird data in the UK. Citizen science has become increasingly popular in the last decade or so for a number of reasons including the necessity to collect larger amounts of scientific data (particularly environmental data), the development of technology particularly smart-phone apps which make citizen science participation easier and most importantly because people are realising how much fun it is to be a citizen scientist!
There are lots and lots and lots of different types of citizen science projects all over the world. So many that I am almost 100% certain you will find one (or a hundred) that you are interested in. There a projects that do not even require you to leave your computer seat- including online projects where you help identify species from different photos such as the ‘explore the seafloor project’ (http://exploretheseafloor.net.au/). However, the real fun (and adventure) is when the projects get you out of the house and immersed in nature. There a simple projects such as taking a photo of a landscape (google- photopoint monitoring posts), projects where you spend the day identifying the biodiversity in a particular area (google- bioblitz) or if you are up for it you could spend your next holiday being a citizen scientist! I am not sure about you but tagging sharks in Fiji or helping monitor sea turtles in the Maldives does not sound like a shabby holiday. There are many companies that can organise these types of holidays for you including Projects Abroad. This is just an extremely short list of the almost endless varieties of citizen science projects, so get on your computer and type citizen science projects into Professor Google to see what other options you have.

Not only is citizen science an adventure… well actually multiple adventures depending on how many projects you get involved in, you will also learn something new, meet interesting people, be helping science and maybe even enjoy it so much you could decide a new career path!

Keep posted for the next adventure…