October 19 Tooter.Pub
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
www.aquatutus.org Since 1955; now in our 64th year of diving safety & fun October 2019 Since 1958... a publicaon from the Aqua PROGRAM for November 14 General Meeting Tutus Diving Club a non-pro"t organizaon established to promote Water Safety and to Member’s Photo & Video Sharing Night further the sport of SCU(A Diving. MEETING SCHEDULE General Club Meeting: First Thursday of Every Month at 7:30 p.m. (except December, no meeting). Social at 7:00. Board of Directors Meeting: Third Thursday of Every Month at 7:00 p.m. (except December, no meeting) Location: Share your own photos, videos, or interests Ricky’s Sports Theatre & Grill 15028 Hesperian Blvd. At our November meeting, we will have our second 2019 Member’s Night where San Leandro, CA 94578 club members can share their photos, videos, & interests. You can present any- thing that is dive- or marine-related, that you think other members might enjoy … it UPCOMING CLUB HIGHLIGHTS doesn’t necessarily have to be your own product. ** General Meeting in November is on If you wish to share, please contact Jenn at [email protected] so that Nov 14 ( NOT November 7) ** we can plan the event. If you can email or otherwise get your images/videos to her, November 2-3: Urchin removal with Wa- please do so. If not, please come early so that we can offload your images/video termen’s Alliance, page 12. from a flashdrive onto our laptop. Unless you ask us not to, we may use some im- November 9-11 : Veteran’s Day weekend ages for the report in our newsletter. dives. We ask that you keep your planned segment to less than 5-8 minutes . You can December 7 : Club Holiday Party, page 7. narrate your segment if you wish. Segments will be shown by the order of sign-ups Dec 20-Jan 4 : 6th Annual Cozumel Holi- to Jenn, so contact her ASAP . If we run out of time at the meeting, we will defer day Trip, page 17. remaining segments to early 2020 . For a complete listing of club activities visit Meetup or ATDC Event Calendar . Reminder ...The November General Meeting See more event details on page 5. will be on November 14 (NOT November 7) IN THIS ISSUE Entertainment Report ........................ 2 Board Elections at November 14 Meeting General & BOD Meeting Minutes…. 4 -5 Club dive report & Holiday Party … 6 - 7 Arnie’s Tech Tidbits, Pt 6 …....… 8 - 12 Travel, Training, Events ............. 13 –18 Club contacts & useful links ..…......…19 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Elections for the Board of Officers (BOD) will be held at the November General Meeting . Please con- Thank you presenters and newsletter con- tributors for making this Aqua Tooter possi- sider volunteering yourself or nominating someone that you have spoken ble this month: Alan Throop, Gayle Hudson, with who might want to volunteer. There are more specific descriptions of Linda Phillips, Debbie Driggers, Arnie War- the officer duties on page 18 . shawsky, Kari Klaboe, Alison Young, Lind- Serving on the BOD is fun; it gets you involved with the club and the gen- say Martin, Liliana Wang. eral dive community in the Bay Area; it looks great on your resume; and it Thanks to Steele’s Discount Scuba for gives you a great sense of participation and accomplishment. sending member candidates to Aqua Tutus If you have interest or questions, please talk to any of the officers at the Diving Club. Steele’s is located at: next meeting who have nametags or contact them at the emails that are 5987 Telegraph Avenue Oakland, CA 94609 listed on the last page of the newsletter. (510) 655-4344 We need a president .. It only a couple of hours per month! 1 | The Aqua Tooter October, 2019 The iNaturalist platform is both a website and an app that’s ENTERTAINMENT REPORT designed for people to take photos of organisms they find in By Alison Young (graphics & photos: from Alison’s program, except where noted) Editors Note: At our November General meeting, Alison Young, from the California Academy of Sciences, spoke about their Citizen Science program, an interesting app called iNatu- ralist ( https:// www.inaturalist.org/ ), and about nudibranchs. Using iNaturalist , anyone can photograph a given spe- cies .. of any animal or plant .. get it identified, logged into a world-wide network of profes- Linda Phillips sional and citizen scientists, nature, to share their observations with others, to get help with have your data used to track identifications, and to explore what other people are seeing that species, and contribute to natural history research. It’s a anywhere in the world. Using iNaturalist allows people to turn research-grade science tool that is operated by National Geo- their photos of nature into data, since it creates the same kind graphic and Cal Academy. It’s available for free on-line and as of information that a museum specimen has: the location, the an app for your phone. date, who found it, and the “evidence” is the It was an interesting and informative program. She showed photograph. iNaturalist beautiful local nudibranchs that I haven’t seen before! Anyone has artificial intelligence can join Alison’s tidepool outings (see upcoming dates at the which will give you sug- end) where you can find and identify nudibranchs and other gestions on the identifi- species and join the citizen science program. It would make a cation of what you pho- fun club outing; if anyone wants to schedule an event with her; tographed, and once contact Alison at [email protected]. you upload your obser- Many thanks to Alison for speaking with us. Her report follows. vation, other people in the iNaturalist community can help con- firm, refine, or correct that ID. Once an identification has been confirmed by ⅔ of the people suggesting an identification, that observation can become a “Research Grade” observation. Research Grade observations are shared with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF for short) , which is a big database of species occur- rence records, including museum specimen records and eBird records, and is often used by scientists who have questions about how species distributions are changing. One facet of the Citizen Science program at the California Academy of Sciences aims to engage people in documenting biodiversity along the California coastline. Alison and her co- director run two coastal projects: long-term monitoring at the Pillar Point reef where volunteers monitor a suite of species and work to build a species atlas using iNaturalist, and Snap- shot Cal Coast, an annual 2-week event in the beginning of The California Academy of Sciences has a highly active re- search program, and their scientists work around the world to document where species occur, to discover new species, and to understand the relationships between species. The scien- tists often make specimen collections as “evidence” for these species occurrences. When starting the Citizen Science program at the Academy, Alison and her co-director wanted to engage people in this type of science - the science of natural history - and have peo- ple participate in this process of ex- ploring, observing carefully, and docu- menting biodiversity everywhere. But they didn’t want people to collect specimens and send them to the Academy - so instead, they use iNatu- ralist to have people record what they’re finding. 2 | The Aqua Tooter October, 2019 June that mobilizes people from the Oregon border to the Mex- they are related to, and ico border to document coastal biodiversity. This program is talked about the two types of funded by the California Ocean Protection council who is inter- nudibranchs: dorids and ested in using these data to inform management of California’s aeolids . The easiest way to marine protected areas, and supports a research scientist in tell these two groups apart is the Citizen Science Department at the Academy to analyze the to look for a visible plume of data, look for trends, and to compare what’s happening inside gills - dorids have them, ae- and outside of these MPAs. olids don’t! There is a huge diversity of nudibranchs you Most people participate in Snapshot Cal Coast by making find along the coast here in observations in tidepools or along beaches, but the Academy the Bay Area, and even in would love to have the bay itself, and Alison showed us photos of the more com- more subtidal obser- mon and inter- vations (hint, hint!). esting nudi- Getting lots of people branch species excited about and in the area. interested in docu- menting coastal and Alison ended marine biodiversity her talk by cir- not only gathers lots cling back of data, but it also around to iNatu- means you’re bound to find things you weren’t expecting to find ralist and show- - like the Dendronotus orientalis nudibranch one of the Acade- ing some other my’s volunteers and her high school-aged daughter found un- useful features of the platform, like being able to keep track of der a dock in San Fran- all the species you have cisco Bay, which was not personally seen, explor- only a new record for ing other people’s ob- California, but for all of servations globally to North America! This nu- find species you’re in- dibranch had only previ- terested in or learn ously been found in Asia more about what can and the high schooler got be found at places to be the author of the you’re interested in, and paper letting the scien- how to help other peo- tific community know ple identify what they’ve about this new find.