SeaCleaner: Focusing Citizen Science and Environment Education on Unraveling the Marine Litter Problem

Abstract

The Pilot Project “SeaCleaner” is a citizen science and educational project, developed by the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Italian Research Council (CNR-ISMAR). Since 2013, it has involved environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), volunteers, five Italian Marine Protected Areas surrounding the Pelagos Sanctuary, and so far more than 50 high school students within the Italian program for “work-related learning internships.” The project aims to overcome the lack of current data on marine litter—a gap of knowledge that cannot be ignored any longer, according to the last European Union's ambitious Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD)—by building an app for Android devices, which is easy to use and, at the same time, methodologically sound and comprehensive. This should enable a continuous census (in time and space) for supporting the proper management and removal of solid waste (through scheduled campaigns, etc.). The project has multiple effects: (1) to prompt students to broaden their scientific knowledge on topics not strictly related to scholastic curricula, making them aware of current environmental problems and teaching them how to solve them; (2) to engage an increasing number of volunteers in marine litter monitoring activities; and (3) to contribute to a common protocol for data acquisition, useful for both environmental and scientific purposes, helping scientists to overcome the lack of current data on marine litter.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Debris Survey in Coastal Areas: Long-Term Monitoring Programme to Study Spatial and Temporal Accumulation of the Dynamics of Beached Marine Litter

“…In the present study the Phantom 4 PRO v2 quadcopter [51] was used. It is a commercial UAV suitable for this type of application, thanks to the good resolution of the camera (5472 × 3078 pixels, which, flying at 6 meters above ground level allowed us to reach the theoretical value of 0.16 cm/pixel-with perfectly flat ground and in the best conditions-and, in our case of not perfectly flat ground, 0.18 cm/pixel), the compactness of the aircraft, and flight stability.…”

Citizen Science, K-12 science education and use of technology: a synthesis of empirical research

“…With regards to the psychomotor domain (manual or physical skills) [e.g., Kraiger, Ford and Salas, 1993], five studies in total document positive learning outcomes in students' scientific practices and inquiry skills resulting from the participation of students in CS projects [Buchanan, Pressick-Kilborn and Maher, 2018;Koomen et al, 2018;Musavi et al, 2018]. In addition, in the study of Merlino et al [2015] students managed to master informatics solutions skills and in the study of Zárybnická, Sklenicka and Tryjanowski [2017] the students improved their technical skills (i.e., machining and material processing, how to process project documentation). Last, five studies reported positive behavioral learning outcomes, and specifically an increase in students' engagement in the scientific process [Chen and Cowie, 2013;Condon and Wichowsky, 2018;Herodotou et al, 2018] whilst, one study reported on the benefits that may arise in students' social skills [Cornali, Pomatto and Agnella, 2017] and one study reported on a positive intended behavior of students' towards biodiversity [Kelemen-Finan, Scheuch and Winter, 2018].…”

Solutions and Integrated Strategies for the Control and Mitigation of Plastic and Microplastic Pollution

“…However, information on (micro)plastic pollution was limited until recently, with 73% of Chilean students not recognizing the problem of microplastics [79]. However, there is a trend for increasing interest in this environmental problem supported by (a) free massive open online courses (e.g., MOOC on Marine Litter) or lectures and activities (e.g., TechWild; The Oceans Nova Scotia) [19,33,80]; (b) media (e.g., BBC’s Blue Planet II; National Geographic’s “Planet or Plastic”) and apps (e.g., The Marine Debris Tracker, SeaCleaner) [81,82]; (c) beach clean-ups, useful in awareness and remediation (e.g., Great Canadian Shore Cleanup) [83,84]; (d) and inexpensive but valuable citizen science that could help map marine litter [79,85].…”