The 'TaMOs' project - a scubadiver based monitoring at the baltic coast of Schleswig-Holstein

The recording of animal, plant and sediment distribution along the complete Baltic coastline of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany has not been done so far. The project is supported by the diving association of Schleswig-Holstein and one intention is to teach divers in seminars in the needed skills to achieve a complete detection of animals, plants and sediments. TaMOs aspires a close cooperation with the provincial environmental agency and for this reason it is necessary to obtain a nearly scientific standard. Such a high standard is needed to achieve comparability with scientific investigations performed by the environmental agency for evaluation of this geographically wide spread survey. The time consuming and expensive scientific studies can only be performed at certain areas at a certain time. Equal accuracy and reliability can not be achieved by a project like TaMOs, but this may not be necessary.

This project is not only supposed to address scientific experts. A further, maybe even more important goal is to show the variability of the Baltic Sea environment right next to our location. This documentation, performed by laymen for laymen during their spare time, is an opportunity to show the beauty of the marine environment. This can only be achieved by volunteers with their all year round support. The variability of the Baltic Sea ecosystem is part of dynamic processes that would be impossible to evaluate by a small group of people. As diving is a sport that is very closely related to nature, divers are the first to know about the changes. TaMOs provides now a platform to make these experiences public.

As part of TaMOs, the divers will be trained free of charge to identify animals and plants. This is supposed to teach the divers which animals can be determined by visual contact and which can't.  All participants will be able to determine species on their own after the course and can start right after the course. To support this, TaMOs provides an underwater writing panel with species names and everything necessary to record the abundance and distribution of the most abundant species in a standardized way for each participant.

Taking notes about plants and animals with a panel under water requires some skills. Not only that one hand is dealing with this panel, it furthermore is necessary to approach the animals slowly and very carefully to actually see the differences between species. It may be a good idea to take a picture during a dive for documentation, but this requires an additional piece of equipment. Given these challenges, TaMOs is only open to divers with DTSA ** (or equivalent) and above. This doesn't mean that you can not join the project at a later stage, but for the safety of our participants we need to ensure a certain level of skills.