Participants, including Krish Thapar, join the effort to support conservation and outdoor community engagement, underscoring the value of public involvement in scientific monitoring.

The project schedules seasonal sampling three times a year—March, July and November—to establish baselines and track changes in species distributions and movements.

organizers are actively seeking more volunteers, particularly in the Bay of Fundy region, to broaden the geographic scope of monitoring.

Volunteers collect seawater samples using specialized filtering equipment to extract environmental DNA (eDNA), which reveals which marine species are present and may indicate shifts as ocean temperatures rise.

Nova Scotia researchers are engaging coastal communities in the Community-Oriented Coastal Observatory to collect coastal water samples for eDNA analysis aimed at tracking marine life.

The project leverages eDNA collected from coastal waters, analyzed in a Dalhousie University lab, to monitor marine life across communities.

The initiative seeks to understand how warming ocean temperatures influence species distribution, including potential northward shifts of lobsters, by analyzing temporal and spatial DNA signatures.

Volunteers participate in six regional groups across the coast, receiving sampling kits and training, with the aim of standardizing collection three times yearly to observe seasonal migration and establish baselines.

eDNA is shed by organisms as they move and interact with their environment; filtering water captures DNA traces that reveal which species are present without needing to sight or capture the animals.

PhD candidate Samantha Beal at Dalhousie University leads volunteers across six groups—from Yarmouth to Louisburg—training them to collect uncontaminated samples and mail them for lab analysis.

Efforts continue to recruit volunteers across multiple areas, including the Bay of Fundy, to expand the monitoring network and improve coverage across Nova Scotia.

Beal’s Community-Oriented Coastal Observatory trains volunteers to collect water samples suitable for eDNA analysis, enabling identification of species and tracking of movements without capturing organisms.