Yukon Marine Life Survey

In 2000, the City of San Diego in collaboration with the San Diego Oceans Foundation (SDOF), purchased, cleaned and sank a 366 foot-long Canadian warship called the HMCS Yukon to create an artificial reef, a task at which has been spectacularly successful.

Sitting at the bottom of the San Diego coast at 100 ft., the Yukon attracts dozens of local marine life species and is becoming a revenue-generating attraction for tourist divers from around the world.

When this project started, both the SDOF and the local scientific community were curious to understand the effects of an artificial reef on local fish populations and surrounding marine life. A joint study was undertaken by SDOF and Dr. Ed Parnell of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and released in 2004.¹ Crucial to the study was data gathered by local citizen science divers to generate a baseline of marine life species on the ship.

Ocean Sanctuaries, San Diego’s first citizen science oriented, ocean non-profit is conducting a follow up study to the pioneering work of Dr. Parnell and colleagues.

Established in 2014, Ocean Sanctuaries encourages and supports citizen science projects which empower local divers to gather marine data under scientific mentorship and to increase our understanding of the oceans and its denizens.

Q: What are we looking for?

A: We are looking for high definition, close-up [macro] photographs of the marine life present on the Yukon. For now, we are only documenting invertebrates-–fish will come later. Just do your dive as you normally would and photograph marine life as you see it and submit your photographs here.

Note: you do not need to be able to identify the invertebrate you are submitting a photograph for: if you do not know the species, submit the photo anyway and experts here at iNat can help you get it identified.

References:

1. Ecological Assessment of the HMCS Yukon Artificial Reef
   off San Diego, CA, Dr. Ed Parnell, 2004:

http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.dema.org/resource/resmgr/imported/S2R-2005-01-EcologicalAssessment-Yukon.pdf menos ↑