Citizen Science Show

Bron Powell has spent years paddling through the winding channels of the Macquarie Marshes, drawn again and again to the raw wildness of the wetlands. The turning point came during the floods between 2020 and 2022, when the Marshes burst into life. What had always been a special place suddenly became extraordinary. Guiding a group of birdwatchers through the flooded landscape, Bron watched birdlife fill every corner of the water. One moment that stayed with her was a great crested grebe gliding past with a chick riding on its back while another chick struggled to keep up behind, pulled along in the parent’s wake because it had grown too big to fit on board. Scenes like that convinced Bron she wanted to bring more people into the Marshes by kayak.More Informationhttps://www.facebook.com/MarshesToursIf you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts.Leave us a review and share this show with your friends.It really helps us to reach more citizen scientists, like you.Contact the ShowWe are always looking for more guests to tell us about interesting citizen science projects, research and events.You can email us at: info@citizenscienceshow.com

Matt West has spent much of his life wading through the cold mountain streams of northeast Victoria in search of a frog few Australians will ever encounter. The spotted tree frog, Litoria spenceri, is small enough to sit on a thumb, yet its survival has become one of the most complex conservation challenges in the country.The spotted tree frog inhabits granite boulder streams stretching from Lake Eildon in Victoria to Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales, breeding in fast-flowing waterways between 300 and 1,100 metres elevation. Males grow to about 35 millimetres, females to 50. Their colouring ranges from bright green with gold flecks to mottled brown. In stable environments they can live for well over a decade. Stability, however, has become increasingly rare.Photography Credit: Michael Williams. It's a Wildlife.More Informationhttps://wildresearch.com.au/https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/768810-matt-westhttps://www.zoo.org.au/https://australiantroutfoundation.com.au/https://www.nativefish.asn.au/https://taungurung.com.au/https://www.ddac.net.au/If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts.Leave us a review and share this show with your friends.It really helps us to reach more citizen scientists, like you.Contact the ShowWe are always looking for more guests to tell us about interesting citizen science projects, research and events.You can email us at: info@citizenscienceshow.com

Pascal van Erp has spent years descending into waters most people will never see, uncovering a hidden layer of destruction far removed from the image of pristine marine environments. Beneath the surface, he regularly encounters lost fishing gear—nets, lines, and cages that continue to trap and kill marine life long after they have been abandoned. This reality led him to establish Ghost Diving, an organisation that has grown into a global network of seventeen chapters and more than five hundred volunteer divers.The organisation’s expansion has never been forced. Instead, technical diving teams from around the world approach Ghost Diving, motivated to apply their advanced skills to environmental work. This organic growth has led to strong chapters in countries such as Korea, Germany, the United States, and the Netherlands. Other regions, including Australia, remain without a chapter simply because no local team has yet stepped forward.The work itself demands a high level of expertise. Pascal emphasises that removing ghost nets is both complex and dangerous, requiring divers trained in deep diving, decompression, and managing multiple tasks simultaneously. In these operations, diving must become second nature so that the focus can remain entirely on the removal of hazardous debris.More Informationhttps://www.ghostdiving.org/https://www.ghostdiving.org/our-mission/https://www.ghostdiving.org/chapters/global/https://www.ghostdiving.org/chapters/https://www.ghostdiving.org/partners/https://www.ghostdiving.shop/

Eight years ago, Jason Iggleden was working as a builder, swinging tools and searching for something that would make him want to jump out of bed each morning. He still works in construction today, but back then he was looking for a shift in direction. Almost on impulse, he bought a drone and decided to create an app. There was no detailed business plan, just a desire to build something meaningful and help people along the way. That decision would end up reshaping his life.He launched what became known as the Drone Shark app. It was expensive to develop and eventually too costly to maintain, and it is no longer available in the App Store. In the early days, Jason flew drones each morning with a couple of his carpenters, trying to capture footage for the app. Progress was slow until someone suggested Instagram. He barely knew what the platform was at the time. Once he began posting there, momentum built quickly. Audiences connected with the footage, his live commentary evolved naturally, and a global community began forming around his aerial view of Bondi.What started as simple ocean filming soon became something more detailed. Jason began noticing individual animals and recurring behaviours. He gave them names—Alex the seal, Homer the hammerhead, Nelly the grey nurse shark with scoliosis, Sunny the sunfish, and Dolly the dolphins. Naming them helped audiences form emotional connections. Instead of seeing an anonymous shark, viewers saw a character. That shift, Jason believes, encourages people to care.More Informationhttps://www.youtube.com/@DroneSharkApphttps://www.facebook.com/dronesharkapp/https://www.instagram.com/stories/dronesharkapp/https://www.mdpi.com/about/journalshttps://sarahhatherley.com/portfolio_page/shark-bait-teaser/If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts.Leave us a review and share this show with your friends.It really helps us to reach more citizen scientists, like you.Contact the ShowWe are always looking for more guests to tell us about interesting citizen science projects, research and events.You can email us at: info@citizenscienceshow.com

Gary Taylor has always felt most at home in the bush. Long before native bees became his focus, he was a child wandering through scrub and creek beds, watching everything that moved. His father shaped that way of seeing. He spoke about trees, spiders and insects as if they were old friends. Nothing was to be squashed or dismissed. Every creature simply wanted to get back to its companions. That quiet respect settled into Gary early and never left.In a patch of bush he calls his bee paradise, Gary noticed a large male Stenotritus with a reddish tuft at the end of its abdomen. Australia’s Stenotritidae are found nowhere else in the world, and with only a small number of known species, the difference stood out. After sharing photographs with Dr Megan Halcroft, he was connected with entomologist Terry Houston. The following season, specimens were collected and subjected to months of detailed measurement and description. The result was confirmation of a new species: Stenotritus taylori. Having an Australian native bee named in his honour remains one of Gary’s proudest achievements.More Informationhttps://ausemade.com.au/blog/If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts.Leave us a review and share this show with your friends.It really helps us to reach more citizen scientists, like you.Contact the ShowWe are always looking for more guests to tell us about interesting citizen science projects, research and events.You can email us at: info@citizenscienceshow.com

Dr Nerida Wilson has dedicated much of her career to understanding some of Australia’s most unusual marine life. As manager of Seadragon Search, she has brought together genetics, photography and citizen science to reveal new insights into one of the country’s most iconic underwater species.Although seadragons are displayed in aquariums around the world, they are found only in Australian waters. Nerida’s research even led to the extraordinary discovery of a new species, the ruby seadragon. The first evidence did not come from a diver’s sighting but from an unusual string of DNA letters that failed to align with known species. That anomaly proved to represent an entirely new seadragon.Seadragon Search emerged from genetic fieldwork. While collecting small tissue samples, Nerida and her team photographed each animal to ensure they did not resample the same individual. They realised that every seadragon carries unique markings. Weedy seadragons can be identified by their spot patterns, while leafy seadragons display distinctive bars and stripes. Today, artificial intelligence helps narrow down possible matches, but a human reviewer makes the final confirmation.More Informationhttps://seadragonsearch.org/If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts.Leave us a review and share this show with your friends.It really helps us to reach more citizen scientists, like you.Contact the ShowWe are always looking for more guests to tell us about interesting citizen science projects, research and events.You can email us at: info@citizenscienceshow.com

Each spring, Bron Powell returns to a vast inland wetland in north-west New South Wales, drawn by reeds taller than a person, restless bird colonies and the quiet pulse of water spreading across flat country. The Macquarie Marshes have become both her workplace and her teacher, a place where kayaking and conservation meet in practical and purposeful ways.Bron first discovered the Marshes nineteen years ago after moving from the Blue Mountains to Dubbo. She had only vaguely heard of them. With almost no public access, she could glimpse little more than reeds from the roadside, yet even that partial view was enough to spark something deeper. She had always considered herself an environmentalist. Once kayaking entered her life, the connection felt inevitable. Through volunteering and later working with National Parks, she began exploring further, building knowledge season by season until guiding others through the wetlands became the natural next step.The site was Ramsar-listed in 1986 for its international importance. In flood years, tens of thousands of Straw-necked Ibis nest shoulder to shoulder in extraordinary colonies. Spoonbills, egrets and herons join them. Migratory birds arrive from as far as Russia and Japan, while nomadic Australian species track water across the continent. Even outside major floods, Magpie Geese and Brolga breed here when conditions allow. It is a system that expands and contracts with rainfall, usually retaining a semi-permanent watery core, though the 2017 to 2019 drought pushed it to the brink.More Informationhttps://www.macquariemarsheskayaktours.com.au/https://www.nature.org.au/https://healthyriversdubbo.com/https://www.flow-mer.org.au/area-pages/macquarie-river-and-marshesIf you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts.Leave us a review and share this show with your friends.It really helps us to reach more citizen scientists, like you.Contact the ShowWe are always looking for more guests to tell us about interesting citizen science projects, research and events.You can email us at: info@citizenscienceshow.com

Two hundred years ago, South Australia’s coastline was edged not just by sandy beaches and rocky headlands, but by vast shellfish reefs stretching for thousands of kilometres. In South Australia alone, native oyster beds extended roughly 1,500 kilometres. Nationally, they spanned an estimated 8,000 kilometres—almost twice the length of the Great Barrier Reef. Today, less than one percent of those ecosystems remain intact.Manny Katz is working to bring them back.Manny serves as Director of EYRE Lab, an environmental charity focused on restoration ecology, and he runs a dive shop in Whyalla. Through tourism, diving, and the Reef Ramble podcast, he connects communities with marine science. At the centre of his work is a commitment to rebuilding reefs that once filtered the sea, sheltered marine life, and stabilised coastlines.More Informationhttps://www.eyrelab.org/https://www.facebook.com/eyrelabIf you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts.Leave us a review and share this show with your friends.It really helps us to reach more citizen scientists, like you.Contact the ShowWe are always looking for more guests to tell us about interesting citizen science projects, research and events.You can email us at: info@citizenscienceshow.com

The green parrot is endemic to Norfolk Island, found nowhere else on Earth. It is a medium sized member of the Cyanoramphus group, with vivid green plumage and a red patch across its forehead. Two years ago, surveys estimated around eight hundred birds. That number dropped to six hundred the following year and now sits at roughly two hundred. Even more alarming, recent years have seen no successful nesting.One species particularly close to Abi’s heart is the Norfolk Island Green Parrot. She lived on Norfolk Island about a decade ago while serving as Natural Resource Manager in the national park. The island sits in the South Pacific between Australia and New Zealand and is home to around fifteen hundred residents deeply connected to their environment.Abi Smith has spent twenty five years working to protect Australia’s most threatened wildlife, and she remains steadfast in her belief that extinction is not inevitable. As founder and CEO of the Threatened Species Conservancy, her focus is clear: turn science into action and ensure no species is left behind.More Informationhttps://www.tsconservancy.org/https://proofsafe.com.au/https://www.facebook.com/ThreatenedSpeciesConservancyhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/threatened-species-conservancy-inc/https://www.instagram.com/threatenedspeciesconservancy/If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts.Leave us a comment and share this show with your friends.It really helps us to reach more citizen scientists, like you.Contact the ShowWe are always looking for more guests to tell us about interesting citizen science projects, research and events.You can email us at: info@citizenscienceshow.com