MERMAID -- the Marine Ecological Research Management AID -- is a collaboration between the Wildlife Conservation Society, the World Wildlife Fund and Sparkgeo.
MISSION: To develop field-ready technologies for scientists that accelerates the transformation of data to decisions to save coral reefs.
VISION: A world where coordinated and collaborative scientific information is used for rapid evidence-based decision making to protect and manage coral reefs.
Dr. Gabby Ahmadia is working on linking science to action to support coral reef conservation. She strives to put data and information in the hands of the people who actually make decisions (and usually aren’t scientist!)
Dr. Emily Darling is a coral ecologist inspired to help field scientists access cleaner data faster.
Megan McDaniels studies coral reefs and mangroves and is passionate about communicating marine science.
Kim Fisher helps conservation scientists collect, manage, and use data to implement their visions and conserve nature.
Nasser Olwero is a conservation information systems scientist who works on making information available and usable for conservation decision making.
Dustin Sampson works alongside organizations to help create awesome applications for collecting, analyzing and reporting on their data.
MERMAID is an online-offline web application for coral reef data collection. Our mission is to allow coral reef scientists to efficiently collect clean coral reef monitoring data. Users can register, create profiles and join projects with their teams as they collect field data offline through common transect methods. We believe that clean, standardized monitoring data, processed quickly and stored centrally and securely, can transform and accelerate coral reef conservation.
Have you ever spent hours, days or months trying to compile different Excel spreadsheets? Have you lost track of which was the correct version? Have you made mistakes in data analyses because of spelling errors (i.e. misspelled or inconsistent fish names)? Have you ever joined a new project and immediately been tasked with tracking down old data? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then MERMAID might be your solution!
MERMAID is a online-offline web application with a vision to revolutionize how coral reef scientists collect, clean, and collaborate with data.
MERMAID supports some of the most commonly used coral reef monitoring methods for both fish surveys and benthic transects:
In the coming months, we plan to add new survey templates, like a rapid bleaching assessment template using roving observer quadrats. Also in development is the ability to add custom fields to survey methods, so that you can collect data in addition to what the survey method requires. Stay tuned!
MERMAID is designed for coral reef scientists from NGOs, universities, and governments, and it is accessible to anyone! It is free to use and is built on open-source technologies.
Online, MERMAID data is stored in a PostgreSQL database hosted by Amazon Web Services. Data are added or retrieved from the database via an API (Application Programming Interface) that allows access based on a user's permissions. Only users who have permission to access a project's data (see below, Who can access my data?) can do so.
All data access is project-based. When you set up a project, only users you add to a project can see the data in that project. For each project’s users, you can choose one of three types of access:
For statistics, MERMAID will keep a simple count of how many users, countries and sites are contained within MERMAID’s database.
Yes. After you have collected and submitted transects in a project, you are able to export your information as a .csv file for further analyses in Excel or R.
In the coming months, we are developing a reporting area where users can make simple graphs and summaries of their projects. Stay tuned!
For quality control, MERMAID produces basic summaries of transect observations, including total fish biomass and percent cover of benthic attributes, at the bottom of each transect entry page.
Stay tuned! We're working hard on a full User Manual. Follow us on social media for updates, or fill out the form to Subscribe for Updates.
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