In an effort to address the issues of remote access and efficiency in assessing populations of remote wildlife, this paper describe a methodological innovation that combines VHR imagery, the power of citizen science (i.e. crowdsourcing) and wildlife ecology, to determine potential presence and true absence of the iconic Weddell seal across the entirety of fast ice around Antarctica. Named, “Satellites Over Seals” (SOS), our objectives were: 1) conduct a ‘search area reduction’ which makes the effort of enumerating seals even more efficient; 2) develop a novel citizen science method for efficient review of large swaths of Antarctic fast ice; 3) determine the accuracy of ‘the crowd to detect seal presence and absence; and) provide recommendations for adapting the method to other remote systems and wildlife populations.

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