The MINKA Citizen Science Observatory is a community-based platform dedicated to the environmental data collection, gathering data of coastal areas of trained volunteers, currently about biodiversity, through geolocalized images uploaded by citizenry. The photos are validated by means of a three stages process certified by experts toward the taxonomic identification; eventually the confirmed species and genera are available to users through data information facility infrastructures, such as Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Since 2021, more than 140,000 observations at research grade level with over 2,500 species have been catalogued just in the Catalan coast, of which more than 90% are from the marine environment. Minka is hosting events such as BioMARatò, a friendly competitive event monitoring marine biodiversity between Girona, Barcelona, and Tarragona. From April to October 2023 the BioMARatò recorded 1,440 species of which 34 invasive, 40 included in regulations, directive annexes and international agreements, like the undulate ray (Raja undulata, Lacepède,1802) and the devil fish (Mobula mobular Bonnaterre, 1788) categorized as endangered by the IUCN. The fiddler crab (Afruca tangeri Eydoux, 1835) observed in Catalonia for the first time, penetrating deeper into the Mediterranean. These data collected in the Barcelona urban coasts allowed to update the marine biodiversity information system of the local council, the Barcelona City Biodiversity Atlas implementation with three layers: fish, mollusks* and crustaceans*. Substantiating that citizen science promotes the science-policy–society linkage for a participatory management system or community-based management. Recently MINKA has been included into the UN Acceleration Actions for SDGs platform due to the contributions to the Agenda 2030, SDGs 11, 14, 15 and 17 considering this important capability of work with and for stakeholders. The MINKA Citizen Science Observatory, at now, is implementing the essential biodiversity variables (EBV) with essential ocean variables (EOV) contributing to SDGs as an important source for new and non-traditional data (Chandler, M. et al, 2017; Fritz, S. et al., 2019

2024 Ocean Decade Conference - Ocean Decade Week, Delivering the science we need for the ocean we want, 8-12 April 2024, Barcelona

Peer reviewed