How to play

Meet the Pacific Ocean’s deepest ocean dwellers using ONC’s underwater observatories and video footage.

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Biodiversity in the Deep Sea

Test your fish knowledge in this six minute video.

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Fish ID Challenge

Story Map: Highlights from ONC's Spring 2024 Expedition

Engaging & inspiring the next generation of Indigenous ocean scientists, marine resource managers & environmental stewards.


ONC works with partners to deliver ocean literacy programs for K-12, post secondary and citizen science education. 

Ocean science and event hosting resources for K-12 students, educators and general audiences.


Discovering the ocean through science, Indigenous Knowledge and data exploration. 

Our modules, co-created with Indigenous community partners, that provide experiential learning for middle/high school students.


Modules

How our cameras, hydrophones and sensors allow us to see, hear and experience the ocean. 

Instrument Overviews & Lesson Plans

An ONC-hosted event for students and educators to learn about marine science careers and opportunities.

Ocean Science Symposium

ONC is a proud partner on many projects that bring ocean science and knowledge into the community.

Featured Projects

Ocean Sense Program

ONC’s educator resources include all-grade classroom activities with instructions, videos & other materials. 

Ocean Knowledge Cards

Educator Resources

Resources that help educators integrate ocean intelligence into curriculum. 

Educator Professional Development

Offering schools an interactive presentation on ocean science, Indigenous knowledge & data that helps us #knowtheocean 

Book a Visit

Thousands of young people across Canada are taking on the challenge as part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science.


#OceanDecade Challenge

Learn about the 7 Principles of Ocean Literacy through fun, hands-on activities utilising materials around your home.

Ocean Aware Challenge

Offering educators, students & the public the opportunity to connect with ONC at-sea maintenance expeditions & other field activities.

Ship2Shore Program

Youth Programs K-12

Coastal & deep-sea marine science courses & resources developed with universities, colleges & community groups.



This course focuses on topics involving human impacts on the ocean that are of particular relevance to society. 

Understanding the Oceans Course

Introduction to marine sensor technology including underwater cabled observatories & shore-based coastal weather stations.

Instrument Technology Course

Our valued citizen scientist community shares and contributes to data monitoring and collection programs.


Dive with us 2,300 metres below sea level at the Main Endeavour field.

Wiring the Abyss: Lab Activity

Play our ocean science observation game where volunteers help analyse ONC’s deep-sea videos.

Digital Fishers

Citizen Science Resources

Post Secondary Education

Learning

[Digital Fishers](https://data.oceannetworks.ca/DigitalFishers) is a crowd-sourced, ocean science observation game in which volunteers help analyze deep-sea videos—60 seconds at a time (no experience required!) By playing Digital Fishers you’ll help researchers gather data from video and unveil the mechanisms shaping the animal communities inhabiting the deep. 

Digital Fishers was developed by ONC together with the University of Victoria’s [Centre for Global Studies](http://www.globalcentres.org/) (CfGS) and funded by [CANARIE](http://www.canarie.ca/).

*We need your help for scientific observations.*

Our archives contain  thousands of hours of video footage recorded during installation dives and from underwater cameras installed across our subsea network. All this video needs to be studied, but our software has not (yet) become sophisticated enough to automatically identify a wide variety of animals and other features. It’s a daunting task for scientists to watch so much footage and describe what they see—but this is where you can help.

By playing Digital Fishers you can help scientists answer fundamental questions such as:
- What environmental factors influence the distribution of species in the deep?
- What is the biodiversity associated with deep-sea environments?
- How do species interact with each other and with their environment?





Play Digital Fishers

Becoming a Digital Fisher is easy. Simply visit the [project website](https://data.oceannetworks.ca/DigitalFishers) (login required), and watch a 60-second segment of video. The easy-to-use interface resembles the dashboard of a research submarine to give you the feeling of cruising about the ocean as you explore it from your computer. 

As you view you can describe what you see by selecting from the fields below the video screen. These fields include: sea life, water clarity, seafloor composition, and any other objects you see (natural or human made). There is also a comment field where you can add more information. Your “annotation” then gets attached to that video segment back at the ONC database.

Your annotation adds value to the raw video data and provides assistance to scientific users of the database. With a lot of visitors seeing the same footage, nothing gets missed, and researchers have a good idea of what is found in that video.

To progress through the levels of the game you have to complete a certain number of annotations (tags or descriptions) in order to gain “creature feature cards”. These cards tell you about an animal that lives in the ocean, which you may or may not see during gameplay. You need five cards to progress on to the next level. As the level increases so too will the complexity of your annotations as well as the number of annotations required per card. Each level also includes a tutorial showing you what to look for, so you learn as you go.

Digital Fishers, a win for scientists and citizen scientists. We invite you to give it a try!


**Contact information**<br />
For questions regarding Digital Fishers, or to request a new campaign or discuss using Digital Fishers in your classroom, please contact [Dr. Dave Riddell](mailto:riddelld@uvic.ca), Post-Secondary Education Coordinator