At MERMAID, we believe that world-class coral reef monitoring begins with confidence. To help our global community of reef scientists and managers work more effectively, we are introducing a new way to practice and train: the demo project in MERMAID Collect.
Your safe space for exploration
We understand that before you head into the field, you need a place to practice, train, and test. Previously, many of you created temporary "test projects" to explore MERMAID’s features.
Now, you can create a dedicated demo project directly from your Collect page whenever you need one. Simply use the new project button to add a demo project for you to experiment with.
Practice without pressure: Explore the interface and trial new workflows without any risk to your official monitoring projects.
On-demand training: Because you can add or delete a demo project at any time, it serves as a flexible, self-serve tool for onboarding new team members or hosting workshops.
Focus on impact: By using the demo project for exploration, we ensure all your other projects remain a focused, active space for real-world monitoring data and results.
A more focused MERMAID experience
As part of our commitment to delivering standardized, auditable data, we are also optimizing how “test” data is handled across the MERMAID platform.
To keep our global datasets as accurate as possible, MERMAID now automatically identifies and marks inactive, empty projects as ’test projects’. This behind-the-scenes update ensures that only active, real-world monitoring data is available on MERMAID Explore and can be used for analysis and reporting.
What this means for you:
Transitioning to demo projects: We are phasing out the ability for users to manually mark a project as "test" via a checkbox. Instead, we encourage you to use the new Demo Project for all testing, practice, and training purposes.
Visibility in Collect: Your projects (whether they are active or marked as "test") will still be visible to you on your projects page in Collect. Nothing is being hidden from your personal workspace.
Global data integrity: Projects marked as "test" (either by you or by our automated system) are simply excluded from the MERMAID Explore dashboard and filtered out by default in the R package mermaidr .
This ensures that while you have the freedom to keep your test data, the global community can continue to rely on MERMAID for industry-standard coral health assessments.
Your data, your way
We are a community built together, and your data remains under your full control. While these updates are designed to make the MERMAID ecosystem more reliable, we are here to ensure the transition works for your specific needs.
Reach out to our support team at contact@datamermaid.org if:
You have a project marked as "test" that you intended to turn it into an active monitoring project.
You have feedback on how we can continue to make MERMAID the reliable standard for your reef monitoring.
You’d like a walk-through of the new ‘demo project’ functionality.
Access Collect and get started today.