Housewives, schoolchildren, writers, techies. An army of 'citizen scientists' is helping gather data for scientific studies that track long-term changes in the environment.

It was a still and humid night. The sea was calm and the boat full of men armed with cameras, notebooks and binoculars. For an average young man, camping overnight in a small boat 50 kilometres from the shore, all for the sake of spotting a few birds, might not quite be the ideal night out. But this is how 26-yearold software engineer Anush Shetty and his associates spend their weekends. For the past year, they have been venturing out in small ferries to spot and keep a count of pelagic (living in open oceans and seas) birds.

Unknown to most, a small army of eco-warriors is slowly building up. They can be spotted skulking behind trees, stalking small animals in jungles, wading briskly through marshes, staking out the coast, hiking up a mountain or exploring an agricultural field.