Come join us for some summer fun! In 2020, the Long Island Sound study launched their first ever coastal bioblitz community science event and it was a huge success so it is now becoming an annual event. What is a bioblitz? A bioblitz is a biological survey that anyone can do by recording as many living species (plants and animals) as possible in a designated area. This bioblitz will be in coastal areas but is not limited to marine or aquatic organisms- plants, deer or anything we see in the surrounding landscape can be logged. We will be uploading our data to the Nature Initiative iNaturalist account. The goal is not to count the number of individuals but to see how many different species we can find. This helps scientists from partnering organizations to better understand the ecological community and biodiversity in our estuaries. Last year, over 500 people logged a total of 7,111 observations and 1,637 species!

Our group will be heading to West Meadow Beach to see how many different plants and animals we can identify! We will be joined by specialists from the LI Invasive Species Management Area (LIISMA) as well.

 

WHAT TO BRING/FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS:

• Clothing: long pants, high socks, long sleeves, sneakers/closed toed shoes- there will be ticks and poison ivy off the path!
• Sunscreen/sunglasses
• Hat/bugspray
• Water bottle