State Parks led a guided tour at Moonstone Beach in Cambria on Tuesday to find and share observations about the environment, all with the help of an app.
According to the California Academy of Sciences, iNaturalist is a community science platform that allows people to observe plants, animals, and fungi and learn about the organisms they see while contributing to biodiversity databases.
"To learn to monitor the populations and see how they are varying was really intriguing. We really enjoyed it,” said Kathryn Karako, San Luis Obispo resident.
"I think it would be a great opportunity to be involved in that. My iPhone will identify plants, but that's as far as it gets,” said Julie Dear, Morro Bay resident.
All you have to do is take a picture of an organism, upload it to the app, and once you upload, a list of suggested organisms will appear with descriptions.
"It was really fascinating because each of those links leads you to more information about the species,” Karako said.
Your pictures will also be uploaded to a database for researchers to analyze and use for conservation efforts.
State Parks held an event at Leffingwell Landing to teach people how to use the free app.
"We took pictures of sea stars, we saw four of those. Lots of crab. Loads of sea anemones and mussels,” Karako said.
For more information on the iNaturalist app, click here.
