Connecting with Nature in Unexpected Places
Aquarium of the Pacific’s Naturalist Program volunteers share results of wildlife sightings made during the City Nature Challenge and Snapshot Cal Coast
Woolly sculpin (Clinocottus analis) Credit: Sean Ono
August 1, 2025
Nature provides health benefits for all of us, and you can find nature throughout cities when you look for it. Even in the presence of concrete sidewalks and tall buildings, nature can still be found. During the tenth anniversary of both the City Nature Challenge (CNC) and Snapshot Cal Coast, the Aquarium encouraged people to join their project called “AOPcitsci” and add their observations. The iNaturalist app, available for iOS and Android devices, is a way for people to catalog their photos of wildlife that they see.
The City Nature Challenge took place during the week of Earth Day (April 25-28, 2025), and it aims to remind people who frequently spend time in the city that nature is all around us. Snapshot Cal Coast encourages people to observe coastal biodiversity. The Aquarium held a bioblitz on June 29, 2025, at Pelican Cove in Rancho Palos Verdes as part of it. During these events, participants could join multiple bioblitz projects held in local communities. A “bioblitz” is an intense period of biological surveying in attempt to record all living species within a defined area over a specific period of time.
Mule fat shrub (Baccharis salicifolia) Credit: Sean Ono
For the 2025 City Nature Challenge, the Aquarium’s Naturalist program volunteer leads hosted several different bioblitz events. The areas surveyed by the Aquarium team included: the Sage Hill habitat at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Laguna Laurel Ecological Reserve in Laguna Beach; and the San Joaquin Marsh in Irvine.
Overall, there were nine total Aquarium team participants, 568 observations were made, and there were 307 different species of plants and animals. The top three animals observed included the Eastern fox squirrel (Sciurus niger), the Western fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis), and the California towhee bird (Melozone crissalis). The top three plants observed included the mule fat shrub (Baccharis salicifolia), the coastal prickly pear cactus (Opuntia littoralis), and the California sagebrush shrub (Artemisia californica).
Spiny brittle star (Ophiothrix spiculata) Credit: Sean Ono
During the Pelican Cove bioblitz, ten observers added 1,144 observations to the same iNaturalist project #AOPcitsci. Two of the animals seen during the day were the woolly sculpin (Clinocottus analis) and the spiny brittle star (Ophiothrix spiculata).
One of the birds identified during the City Nature Challenge was the red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus). Credit: Sean Ono
The CNC began in 2016 as a friendly competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco to see who could document the most wildlife in their cities. Run by the community science teams at the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the CNC has bloomed into an international event with over 80,000 participants making over two million observations.
The Snapshot Cal Coast survey, also started in 2016, is an annual, statewide effort to document coastal biodiversity that takes place up and down the California coast over a two-week period, focusing on intertidal zones in Marine Protected Areas. In partnership with USC Sea Grant and other partners, the Aquarium has been collecting data at Pelican Cove in Rancho Palos Verdes since its launch.
The Aquarium hosts bioblitzes throughout the year. Using the iNaturalist mobile app, Aquarium community scientist volunteers take photos of what gems—plant or animal—are seen at these events. These volunteers survey the area, and the observation data such as the number species observed, the number of observations, the number of participants, and even the geographic range of coverage, is looked at. If you are interested in cataloging your observations in your local community, you can check out this page where you can learn more about the Aquarium’s Naturalist Programs and how you can get involved.
