Jane Allin loves kayaking. A lot. She often spends up to four hours a day on the water when she鈥檚 at her home in Port Medway, a community on Nova Scotia鈥檚 South Shore about 30 minutes outside of Bridgewater.
Last year, the retired elementary school teacher and principal (who splits her time between Nova Scotia and Ontario) added an extra task to her paddles on the ocean. It all started when Jane鈥檚 husband came across an article in a local newspaper about a AV俱乐部 researcher looking for help counting jellyfish. Jane reached out and, before she knew it, was contributing to a region-wide study on jellyfish patterns, part of a broader effort to better understand feeding habits of the endangered leatherback sea turtle.
鈥淚t鈥檚 made me more curious,鈥� says Jane, who is now in her second year counting and tracking jellyfish. 鈥淵ou start with jellyfish, and you start finding other things you鈥檇 never noticed before.鈥�
Another South Shore resident, Judy Bowers, does her jellyfish counts from land. She and her husband walk the sea shore frequently, but it鈥檚 on Mondays that they do their count. He brings the measuring tape 鈥斅爐o track the size of beached jellyfish 鈥� while she takes the notebook and documents what they find.
鈥淏efore they were just little blobs on the sand,鈥� says Judy. 鈥淣ow I know what they are, and a bit more information about them. It makes our walks more interesting too.鈥�
Jane and Judy are two of more than 50 鈥渃itizen scientists鈥� across Atlantic Canada contributing their eyes, and pens, to Dal student Bethany Nordstrom鈥檚 master鈥檚 project this summer. Their collective efforts represent an engaging, community-based solution to the challenge of tracking the elusive jellyfish.
Understanding turtle feeding habits
鈥淓lusive鈥� might seem a strange phrase to describe a creature that pretty much everyone has seen on the beach at one point or another. But, as Bethany explains, jellyfish are notoriously difficult to research.
鈥淎 turtle, for example, you can put a tracker on it, follow it, get a sense of their migration patterns,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut jellyfish show up sporadically with little warning, and can disappear just as quickly.鈥�
There are many reasons why researchers like Bethany would want to better understand how and when jellyfish appear off our shores,聽from public safety (their stings can pack a small-but-mean punch) to environmental concerns (jellyfish are often an indicator species that helps illuminate different facets of ocean health). But Bethany鈥檚 particular interest concerns an annual visitor to the North Atlantic: the leatherback sea turtle.
Each summer, Atlantic Canada hosts one of the highest density of foraging leatherbacks in the North Atlantic, as the endangered turtles swim north from tropical waters specifically to feed on jellyfish. The leatherbacks have fascinated Bethany ever since she was little.
鈥淚 grew up in southern New Brunswick, just off the Bay of Fundy, and as a kid I was really obsessed with frogs and creepy-crawly things and also the ocean,鈥� she says. 鈥淪o when I found out there was a reptile that lived in the ocean and that was close to our waters, I was really excited and then became slightly obsessed with them.鈥�
After completing an undergrad degree in wildlife conservation at the University of New Brunswick, Bethany came to AV俱乐部 to study with along with Mike James, a Department of Fisheries and Oceans researcher who鈥檚 the leading expert in Canadian sea turtles. (Bethany also works in collaboration with the .)
Together, they identified the turtles鈥� prey field as an area worthy of further research. By studying the turtles鈥� main food source 鈥斅爅ellyfish 鈥� Bethany is hoping to learn more about their鈥� feeding patterns. In particular, she鈥檚 interested in the spatial and temporal patterns of jellyfish in Atlantic Canada, and what size jellyfish patches are required to attract and retain the turtles in a certain area.
Engaging the community
Which brings us back to Bethany鈥檚 jellyfish challenge: how do you study an organism that鈥檚 so difficult to track?
Part of her solution is to focus a portion of her efforts on a known leatherback foraging ground: an area of the ocean off the coast of Cape Breton where leatherbacks have been studied for over 15 years. She鈥檚 spending time there this summer using acoustic technology to try and determine just how many jellyfish there are under the waves. (The turtles dine on their prey at the surface, but they bring them up from the depths.)
鈥淏ut in order for me to look at jellyfish across the Atlantic Provinces, we quickly realized I wasn鈥檛 able to do it by myself,鈥� Bethany explains. 鈥淚 wasn鈥檛 going to be able to be out visiting 40 sites across the provinces on boats and beaches looking for jellies.鈥�
It was Dr. Worm who suggested using citizen science 鈥� a blanket term to describe involving the general public as active participants in scientific research. The idea was to find community members around the Atlantic provinces who would report back to Bethany about jellyfish they were seeing in their waters. Last summer, Bethany spent a couple of months seeking out volunteers. She did TV interviews, spoke with radio stations, and pitched local community newspapers for coverage.
鈥淎t first I was a little bit skeptical; I wasn鈥檛 sure who would commit to wanting to do these surveys,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut I couldn鈥檛 believe how many people responded and said they wanted to.鈥�
After a successful summer, many of the volunteers 鈥斅爈ike Jane and Judy 鈥斅爃ave returned for a second season of jelly-watching. Bethany mails each of them a jellyfish monitoring kit, which contains the data sheets to fill out along with rulers, gloves and a guide to different species of jellyfish. The volunteers are expected to fill out their data sheets weekly, and while they鈥檙e not required to report to Bethany each week, many do so.
Bethany also accepts info on jellyfish sightings from anyone, anytime, on what she calls her 鈥渏ellyfish hotline鈥� 鈥斅燼 jellyfish@dal.ca email address.
鈥淭here are so many people these days interested in getting involved in science,鈥� she says of her approach. 鈥淚 think a lot of it has to do with all the information coming out on climate change, and hearing about biodiversity crises and whatnot in the news. People are becoming more and more engaged and want to know what they can do to help.鈥�
Stings and other things
In the process of finding and organizing her volunteers, Bethany has become a go-to expert for journalists and others looking to learn more about jellyfish. That led to a bunch of interviews this summer when sightings emerged of Portuguese man o鈥� war in Nova Scotian waters.
鈥淭hey鈥檙e actually a siphonophore 鈥斅爐hey鈥檙e related to jellyfish, but belong to a different order,鈥� explains Bethany, who says she鈥檚 not surprised that the creatures 鈥� rare to our shores 鈥� garnered such attention, given their reputation.
鈥淭hey鈥檙e really pretty, but they are dangerous, so I see how people reacted in such a way. But it was important to do all these interviews because many people seemed to think that their stings are fatal, which isn鈥檛 necessarily true.鈥� (While the man o鈥� war鈥檚 sting is much more severe than your traditional jellyfish, deaths usually only occur in rare cases where the venom causes an allergic reaction.)
Bethany herself has yet to be stung by any sea creature, even the jellyfish she鈥檚 been researching for two summers. But as she looks ahead to completing her thesis over the next year, and ahead to what she hopes are further adventures in marine science, she鈥檚 optimistic that her work will have an impact on the sea turtles that first inspired her so many years ago.
鈥淲e have one of the largest foraging populations here in our Atlantic waters. It鈥檚 critical that we understand the habitat that they鈥檙e using and their requirements, so we can continue to protect this area for them.鈥�
Photo credits:
Beach photos: Danny Abriel
At-sea photo: Canadian Sea Turtle Network
Jellyfish photo: Derek Keats (used under Creative Commons license)
Leatherback sea turtle photo: Scott R. Benson, NMFS Southwest Fisheries Science Center (used under Creative Commons license)
Portuguese man 'o war photo: Sean Nash (used under Creative Commons license)