Coast Watchers Citizen Science Program

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Lake Huron’s immense 6,170 km of shoreline is the longest of all the Great Lakes, and therefore cannot feasibly be monitored in detail by one agency alone. This is where the role of citizen scientists becomes crucial in recording changes to our coast.

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What is a citizen scientist?: "an individual who voluntarily contributes his or her time, effort, and resources toward scientific research in collaboration with professional scientists or alone. These individuals don't necessarily have a formal science background” (SciStarter.org, 2020). The success of the Coast Watchers program relies on these dedicated and reliable volunteer citizen scientists to remain successful and provide valuable long-term data set.

Since 2005, Coast Watchers has been a major program of the Lake Huron Centre for Coastal Conservation, designed to engage members of the community to take an active part in observing and improving the quality of our nearshore waters through individual actions. Community volunteers are trained to observe the coast, record qualitative and quantitative shoreline conditions, and take steps to initiate action when necessary, including beach clean-ups and habitat preservation.

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Coast Watchers volunteers have become the eyes and ears of Lake Huron’s coast. With Coast Watcher volunteers collecting information methodically and consistently along the lakeshore, it will be possible to track conditions and trends long-term, and complete actions towards resiliency and sustainability in the short-term.

94

participants

in 2020

165

participants

in 2021!

Coast Watcher Reports 2018, 2019, 2020

Click HERE to see the full 2020 Coast Watchers report