The marine iguana, Amblyrhynchus cristatus, is the world’s only sea-going lizard and a native of the Galápagos Islands that is threatened with extinction. The species consists of 11 subspecies, each of which is unique and important for the survival of the species as a whole. Since the marine iguana is endemic, it is not found anywhere else on earth. If it is lost from the Galápagos Islands, then it is lost forever. They have amazing adaptations like absorbing their own bone matter to survive hard times, and they inspired the creation of Godzilla.
However, despite their coolness, marine iguanas face a complex combination of threats due to human activities. These threats include predation by introduced animals like cats, rats, and dogs; marine pollution from oil spills and other sources and climate change. Conservation authorities want to help, but the problem is that marine iguana colonies are very hard to reach, and so we have never been able to collect good estimates of how many marine iguanas are left and where exactly they can be found. Without this information, effectively conserving them is very difficult, and we might be losing important populations or even whole subspecies without realizing it.
Projects like “Iguanas From Above,” use drones to survey the marine iguana populations, “we can collect high quality images from which iguanas can be counted at a later stage.” This greatly improves the efficiency of the surveillance. Drones are also able to be sent from boats, which allows this work to be done with minimal disturbance to the delicate wildlife of the islands. As a result of this work, the project collected a huge number of images, and it would take our small team a long time to do all the counting solo. This is why they have reached out to regular individuals, such as myself, to help through their project on Zooniverse.
By joining in, people help out by making an incredibly valuable contribution to preserving the unique wildlife of the Galapagos Islands. Volunteers can help those in charge collect data on other species and interesting finds on the islands, and these results will be shared with other conservationists and scientists so that many endangered species can be helped. Creators of the project are confident that their Zooniverse “Ad” will give them reliable estimates of marine iguana population sizes, but to prove it they have promised to compare these counts with those from ground-based surveys, this will ensure that our work is scientifically rigorous. The information will be invaluable and a huge step forward in marine iguana conservation. It will “really help us to protect these amazing animals from extinction in a rapidly changing world.”
Speaking from my own personal experience: doing the project myself was quite tedious. However, that reality has made me respect the people who do data collection work way more. It really is hard work and it takes a lot out of a person. I spent my six hours going through over 500 photos and I maybe documented seven Iguanas. I know the drone photos are of the entire coast, but it was still disheartening. Initially I was very disappointed as I love these animals and I was hoping to see more pictures of them, but then I realized just how rare they are becoming and that became my drive to keep filing more and more photos. This work won’t do itself and these animals are relying on people like me to actually step up to the plate. It’s really sad to recognize how many species may go extinct because of human negligence and how much damage has been done to the planet. In the end, what I took away is that it really will take a Herculean effort to pull conservation jobs off, but that is why people need to start now and get ahead of the problem before the only way to see these animals will be in history books.