Middle Peninsula Master Naturalist Bill Blair collected high tide data during the 2018 Catch the King Tide mapping event. Photo by Karen Duhring.
Guinness World Record for Catch the King
Catch the King is a crowd-sourced citizen science project for mapping the highest tides of the year. The extent of this annual extreme high tide is where regular high tides are expected to be in the future due to gradual sea level rise. Data collected by citizen scientists is used to validate and improve a VIMS tidal flooding forecasting model. Thanks to the efforts of 722 volunteers in 2017, including many Virginia Master Naturalists, a Guinness World Record was recently awarded to the first Catch the King flood mapping event. A record-setting number of 59,718 survey samples were collected making it the ‘most contributions to an environmental survey’ under Guinness rules. The previous record was 10,000. Last year’s event in 2018 had fewer participants, which is why the first year’s event was the record breaker. Read more about the world record in this VIMS story. The third annual Catch the King mapping event is scheduled to take place this year on Sunday, October 27, 2019. More information and training sessions will be posted at the WHRO King Tide web site. Undoubtedly, Virginia Master Naturalists will once again help Catch the King Tide in coastal Virginia.
Catch the King is a crowd-sourced citizen science project for mapping the highest tides of the year. The extent of this annual extreme high tide is where regular high tides are expected to be in the future due to gradual sea level rise. Data collected by citizen scientists is used to validate and improve a VIMS tidal flooding forecasting model. Thanks to the efforts of 722 volunteers in 2017, including many Virginia Master Naturalists, a Guinness World Record was recently awarded to the first Catch the King flood mapping event. A record-setting number of 59,718 survey samples were collected making it the ‘most contributions to an environmental survey’ under Guinness rules. The previous record was 10,000. Last year’s event in 2018 had fewer participants, which is why the first year’s event was the record breaker. Read more about the world record in this VIMS story. The third annual Catch the King mapping event is scheduled to take place this year on Sunday, October 27, 2019. More information and training sessions will be posted at the WHRO King Tide web site. Undoubtedly, Virginia Master Naturalists will once again help Catch the King Tide in coastal Virginia.