First sighting of European green crab in inland Washington confirmed

September 2, 2016

Crab Team volunteers discovered the first confirmed sighting of a European green crab along inland Washington shorelines while conducting their regular monthly monitoring earlier this week.

Volunteers at Westcott Bay, on San Juan Island, discovered the large adult male in one of their Fukui traps (the larger of the two types we use). Because the crab was an adult, it is believed that it washed in to the area as a larva in 2015 or 2014, possibly ...

2
SEP

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Protocol In Focus: Why Do We Use Two Types of Trap?

One strength of the Crab Team protocol is that it enables us to confidently compare findings among different sites, and track changes over time – even if different people are doing the sampling. With sampling on this scale, even the small steps can be important to what we learn from the data. The Protocol in Focus will allow us to expand on these details, and offer an opportunity to see all the behind-the-scenes planning that goes into methodology!

Some volunteers have noticed that the Fukui traps are more often ...

7
JUN

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Building Citizen Science with Volunteers as Partners: Part 3

The field of citizen science has grown explosively over the last decade, benefitting from excellent PR, Presidential shout-outs, advances in big data, and, not least, a Web 2.0 world replete with hashtags, networks, and crowdsourcing. It turns out people love doing science in their spare time! The historians remind us that, actually, what we call citizen science is not a recent invention (e.g. Audubon Christmas bird counts date back to 1900), but the current ...

13
MAR

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Building Citizen Science With Volunteers As Partners: Part 2

2015 was a pilot year for Crab Team monitoring. This is the second of two post in which, Natalie White, an undergraduate in the UW Program on the Environment Capstone Program, shares her work to understand the volunteer experience during our pilot year. In a third post, we’ll fill you in on how we’ve responded to this information, and what we learned by listening.

In the previous post, I told you a little bit about my project ...

17
FEB

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Building Citizen Science With Volunteers As Partners: Part 1

2015 was a pilot year for Crab Team monitoring. Here, in a series of two posts, Natalie White, an undergraduate in the UW Program on the Environment Capstone Program, will share the work she did to understand the volunteer experience during our pilot year. In a third post, we’ll fill you in on how we’ve responded to this information, and what we learned by listening.

With the official 2016 program launch upon us, now is a great time to ...

10
FEB

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Protocol in Focus: What Is “Haphazard Sampling”?

One strength of the Crab Team protocol is that it enables us to confidently compare findings among different sites, and track changes over time – even if different people are doing the sampling. With sampling on this scale, even the small steps can be important to what we learn from the data. The Protocol in Focus will allow us to expand on these details, and offer an opportunity to see all the behind-the-scenes planning that goes into methodology!

Almost every volunteer has had the question: When we measure crab size, ...

15
JAN

0

Green Crab Monitoring

The Crab Team Welcomes You to 2016!

Happy New Year!

While the weather outside the Crab Team offices makes us happy that it is not yet time to start monitoring this year, we are all hard at work getting ready to launch the 2016 monitoring season – starting with this fantastic new website – made possible by Robyn Ricks, Marcus Duke, MaryAnn Wagner, and the communications team at WSG!

Building on the success of 2015

Last year was a very successful pilot year and we are much indebted to our ...

4
JAN

0

Green Crab Monitoring