Catch the King 2024: Another Record-Breaking Year for Community Science
Wetlands Watch is thrilled to announce that this year’s Catch the King (CTK) event was a tremendous success. Between October 17 and 20, 187 volunteers—a 52% increase from last year—collected more than 22,800 high-water marks using the Sea Level Rise app. That represents a remarkable 67.9% jump from 2023, demonstrating the growing momentum of this annual, community-led effort to document “sunny day” flooding during king tides.
Norfolk alone logged over 5,000 data pins thanks to 46 dedicated volunteers, including top mapper John Huffman with an impressive 716 submissions. Other regions, from Virginia Beach and the Eastern Shore to York County/Poquoson, Middle Peninsula, Hampton, the Northern Neck, and Williamsburg/JCC, also contributed anywhere from hundreds to thousands of GPS points. This robust set of data shows just how mobilized coastal Virginians are when it comes to understanding climate change impacts.
Beyond mapping floodwaters, CTK volunteers joined forces with organizations like Old Dominion University’s “Measure the Muck” project, which collected 327 water samples in Norfolk and the York River watershed to analyze nutrient and bacterial loads, including “forever chemicals” (PFAS). Joe Barnes, a Tide Captain from ODU, also organized a marine debris clean-up that removed 879 pieces of trash (totaling 16.5 pounds) from Lafayette Park and Kayak Launch, highlighting how flooding can carry a host of pollutants and debris into our waterways.
Wetlands Watch continues to share data collected by volunteers with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) to help validate flood prediction and sea level rise modeling. View the 2024 data on the VIMS website here. Every pin dropped in the Sea Level Rise app strengthens our collective ability to predict and plan for the “normal” floods of tomorrow, which king tides already preview.
We want to thank the many groups that helped make this year such a success–the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, ODU’s Environmental Ethics class, The Williams School, VT’s Biosystems Engineering students, HRSD / AECOM, WHRO, Butterfly Village Master Naturalists of the Peninsula, Middle Peninsula, and Northern Neck, Master Gardeners of the Northern Neck, Friends of the Rappahannock, Lynnhaven River Now, and the Elizabeth River Project.
Wetlands Watch is hosting an arts contest through Catch the King this year, titled “Waves of Tomorrow: Artists Respond to Rising Seas.” Cash prizes for juror-reviewed “Best in Show” submissions will be awarded for high school and college categories, with a deadline for submissions on January 1st, 2025. Submissions may include visual work (sculpture, photography, drawing, painting, etc.) and written work (poems and short stories). Please reach out to josie.shostak@wetlandswatch.org for more information on submitting your artwork. Only days remain in the contest!
Looking ahead, Wetlands Watch encourages anyone interested in future training events and volunteer opportunities to sign up for its Catch the King Newsletter and join the “Help Catch the King Tide!” Facebook group.
Catch the King 2024 would not be possible without the generosity of its supporters and sponsors, including the Environmental Defense Fund, AECOM, and the Virginia Lakes and Watersheds Association. Wetlands Watch extends its heartfelt thanks to every volunteer who contributed to this year’s record-breaking data collection—and invites the entire community to join us again for an even bigger and better Catch the King next year!