As part of BMSC’s 50th Anniversary Celebrations (1972-2022), we are hosting the BMSC 50th Anniversary BioBlitz.
So far we have recorded over 14,000 observations and over 1500 species!
The BMSC is hosting a year long BioBlitz to find as many marine, aquatic, and terrestrial species as possible in the Barkley Sound area. That means we are looking for plants, fungus, bugs, worms, lichens, birds, amphibians, and more! We need your help to complete this list as it takes a community level effort to find every species that lives here.
A BioBlitz is a concentrated effort by citizens (like you!) and scientists alike to take pictures of as many species as possible in a defined geographic area over a designated time frame. These pictures are uploaded by the observer to iNaturalist.org. iNaturalist keeps track of every organism observed and generates a species list for a defined area. These lists can be compared to past and future species lists to track changes of species distributions.
You can follow their discoveries on the BMSC 50th Anniversary INaturalist Project web portal
Fifty years ago, intensive biodiversity sampling was conducted (1969 through the 1980’s).
The goal of the 2022 BMSC 50th Anniversary iNaturalist Project, is to record all observation of our wonderful biodiversity on iNaturalist.org. All observations made within the geographical region of Bamfield and Barkley Sound will be automatically included in the list of observations. We look to discover what species may now be missing or new to our region, compared to the surveys from 50 years ago.
On June 11 – 12, 2022, naturalist experts from variety of fields were hosted at the BMSC to conduct specialist-led walks for Bamfield Community members at Brady’s Beach and Pachena Bay.
On July 17, 2022, BMSC hosted an iNaturalist workshop – participants learned how to use iNaturalist with Dr. John Reynolds (Professor of Aquatic Ecology & Conservation at Simon Fraser University and Chair of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada at COSEWIC), and his graduate student, Celeste Kieran. They led a half hour iNaturalist tutorial, then explored the forest to discover the livings things around us, took pictures, and entered their observations into iNaturalist.
#BMSC50
