Save The Waves vs Project Monarch Science

The Save The Waves Mobile App crowdsources data from coastal users who identify key coastal threats like illegal development, plastic pollution and poor water quality. Using smartphone technology, users snap a photo of the impacted site that is geotagged by the phone’s GPS. This data is shared with on-the-ground practitioners, coastal agencies, and protected area managers in our coalition. With our larger community, we can identify and reduce threats in surf ecosystems across the globe, empowering our local communities to be active stewards in the protection of surf ecosystems.

Project Monarch is an effort to leverage recent advances in tracking technology, that have enabled the development of the world’s smallest tracking devices, to track Monarch migration. The tracking devices on the monarch butterflies transmit at the same frequency as Bluetooth which means that everyone with a smartphone is carrying around a receiver in their pocket! This revolutionary approach can potentially create the largest wildlife tracking receiver network in the world, but only if members of the public download and use the free Project Monarch app. These data will allow scientists to track the movements of monarch butterflies in detail never previously imagined. We will see how monarchs utilize key stopping points along migratory routes and learn more about the speed and direction of migration, helping identify the most important sites for habitat conservation and restoration. Ultimately, this technology can help guide conservation planning and lead to increases in monarch populations.