Shark Spy is a citizen science project led by the University of Otago that invites community members, schools, and coastal residents to help build baseline knowledge of shark populations around New Zealand. Using baited underwater video stations that record one-hour clips, volunteers analyze the footage frame by frame to help identify shark species, count how many appear, and estimate their sizes. This fills critical gaps in data that fisheries and commercial operations often miss, especially around species richness, abundance, sex ratios, and movement patterns.
By volunteering, students can help inform shark conservation, management, and policy decisions, while gaining hands-on experience in marine science and video analysis. No prior expertise is needed—just curiosity, attention to detail, and a willingness to help scientists better understand how sharks use coastal ecosystems.
To generate a volunteer certificate confirming your service hours, you must have a Zooniverse.org account.
Go to zooniverse.org, sign in, and click ‘More Stats’. Use the drop-down options on the upper-right of the stats bar chart to filter to a specific time period and/or project of interest. Then click on ‘Generate Volunteer Certificate’ (the button to the bottom-right of your stats bar chart).
