Each year, thousands of elephant seals come ashore on a rugged island off the coast of Santa Cruz to give birth, but for decades no realistic method could count the entire population in one effort. Then some scientists realized the internet might do the job. Beginning in August 2019, over 1,500 volunteers spent 212 days poring over images from drones of Año Nuevo Island, an endeavor that continued into 2020 and in the process tested something that scientists truly did not have the answer to: Could amateurs, from their living rooms, count wild animals as accurately as trained scientists? According to a study, “Accuracy and precision of citizen scientist animal counts from drone imagery,” published by PLOS ONE, those volunteers sorted through more than 90,000 images from drone flights over the island. The outcome of that effort was mixed.
A small island that needed thousands of extra eyes
