by Olivia Milloway
Sea to Trees is a podcast that tells the stories of the science happening in and around Acadia, from the rocky shoreline to the evergreen forests to the granite mountaintops.
![Two people crouch on the ground holding up a piece of rockweed to measure it with a tape measure. One person is standing up holding the rockweed slightly out of frame and another stands in the background watching.](https://schoodicinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Measuring-seaweed-scaled.jpg)
In this first season of the show, we’re exploring the ever-growing field of citizen science – the participation of non-scientists in research at any level – and how it can help answer questions about our changing world.
Maya Pelletier, the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellow in Science Research, calls a type of seaweed called rockweed “the van Gogh of the intertidal.” When the tide is low, the algae drapes across the rocks in the intertidal zone and creates green-brown contours that look like the artist’s famous brush strokes. Though rockweed is a harvested marine resource, there’s no coast-wide estimate of the state of rockweed on Maine’s coast. Could a citizen science project called Project ASCO help paint a picture of Maine’s rockweed?
This episode, we’ll talk again with Hannah Webber, Marine Ecology Director at Schoodic Institute, along with Ari Leach, a biologist at the Maine Department of Marine Resources. We squelch through the seaweed with citizen science volunteers, weighing, measuring, and counting rockweed. Visit the links below to learn more.
- Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park
- Project ASCO 2023 Volunteer Training
- Schoodic Notes
- Project ASCO
Sea to Trees is possible with generous support through The Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellowship, a partnership among Schoodic Institute, National Park Foundation, and National Park Service.