SUFB 380: Broome Community Seagrass Project with Fiona West

Seagrass monitoring projects are crucial to the overall health of coastal systems as seagrass beds all around the world are habitats of great biodiversity...and biodiversity make habitats more resistant to degradation. Unfortunately, monitoring projects are hard to start and maintain because it's difficult to find people to do the work on a consistent basis and it's difficult to find money to pay for the program. In comes community programs, or Ocean Citizen Science Projects.

Fiona West is the manager of the Broome Community Seagrass Program in the Kimberley Region of Northwest Australia. Her program has been in place for 11 years (that's a lot of data) that functions based on the work of citizen scientists (locals and tourists) who want to take care of the environment in this part of the world. The program is part of the Seagrass Watch program, an international program that provide citizen science programs with protocols and analysis support for their region.

Fiona describes how the program works and how the Aboriginal People and the Australian government have bee working together to establish a great program monitoring trends in this part of the world. 

Listen as Fiona speaks passionately about Broome Bay and the people who protect it.

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This episode was brought to you by Octo (Open Communications for The Oceans). Check out their recent MEAM (Marine Ecosystem And Management) issue helping inform the Marine Science and Conservation field around the world.

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