SeaPaCS: Participatory Citizen Science against Marine Pollution

By Chiara Certomà, Università di Torino, Alessio Corsi, Università di Torino and Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale, Luisa Galgani, GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research and Università degli Studi di Siena, and Federico Fornaro, Raw-News Media Agency.

At the beginning of July 2023, as researchers and video-makers disembarked from the fishing boat ‘Paola Madre’ in Anzio harbour after a full fishing day documenting the presence of plastic in the central Mediterranean Sea, Massimiliano, a young fisherman, took them aside and said ‘Thank you, I felt an important person today’. This was one of the best signs that our citizen science project was working. Making people and their tacit knowledge, their visions, energies and collective imaginaries relevant is one of SeaPaCS project’s goals.

SeaPaCS is a six-month citizen-science project, run in the small coastal city of Anzio near Rome. The project aims to raise awareness of the consequences of marine plastic pollution on local biodiversity, and to encourage local citizens to adopt sustainability-oriented behaviours. It engages multiple citizen groups, from migrant fisherman cooperatives, sailors and divers, to students, scientists, and video makers, in investigating, discussing and generating transformative knowledge about ocean sustainability governance. SeaPaCS was conceived to answer two complementary research questions: 1) What are the microbes of the Mediterranean ‘plastisphere’ (the microbial community living on plastics and microplastics in marine environments, Zettler et al., 2013) and how do they affect local biodiversity? and 2) How can the experience of sea workers and lay citizens help reduce plastic debris and promote sustainable behaviours?

The health of our oceans and seas is a major concern in global environmental governance, and this is emphasised in the UN Decade for Ocean Science (2021-2030). In performing participatory science and citizen science, lay citizens can not only better appreciate the nature and implications of marine pollution, but can also contribute to scientific knowledge (using and inventing innovative forms of exploration and participation), supporting new understanding and contributions to social and natural scientific explorations.

As on of the SeaPaCS activities, we interviewed fishermen on board during their fishing practices, focusing on their perception of plastic pollution in the Mediterranean Sea in relation to marine life and their livelihood. We discovered that there is a strong concern about plastic pollution amongst fishermen, especially how it affects the quality of fish being caught, considering the high quantity of marine debris by-caught in fishing nets (reaching up to 70% of the total weight of the fished in winter season). Moreover, the fishermen reported that abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded fishing gear including ropes can cause major problems to navigation as these intertwine with the propeller, while plastic films could clog the engine cooling system, causing it to overheat. These damages can cost the fishermen thousands of euros, so plastic, they note, causes not only an environmental damage, but also an economic one.

Almost all the fishermen interviewed argued that marine litter caught in their nets could, in principle, be recycled, but complained that the lack of an eco-centre in the port of Anzio prevents this from happening.

Citizens were also actively involved in sampling microplastics and marine litter abord a sailing boat, using a professional Neuston Net – an instrument designed to sample sea-surface organisms (neuston) by towing it behind a boat for a specific amount of time and at a specific speed. The net filters large amounts of water as it is being towed, and the sample concentrates in a final collector filter called the ‘cod end’. By keeping track of the speed, the distance sailed, and by measuring the volume of water filtered, this instrument allows the number of organisms per volume of seawater to be determined. The Neuston Net is an established oceanographic sampling device now applied to plastic research with the same working principle: plastic fragments are collected in the cod end and their water concentration is calculated based on the parameters described. Back at port, citizens emptied the net’s cod end: the plastic fragments found were catalogued according to size, shape, and colour and, finally, put in small 2 mL tubes prefilled with a DNA preserving solution. These samples were later shipped to a laboratory for DNA isolation and sequencing, to understand what information we can retrieve on the organisms colonizing the plastic fragments’ surfaces. These genetic sequences are now being analysed. Knowing the composition of the microbial community residing on marine plastic debris is important in gathering insights into this ‘new’ pollutant, and on the wider impacts that plastic can have on biodiversity by carrying microbes, including pathogens, all over the seas and oceans from one place to another, posing risks to other organisms and ecosystems.

Besides the scientific data collected by citizen-scientists, SeaPaCS explored the general interest of citizens towards the health of our seas. The sea is generally conceived as a silent and undifferentiated landscape for economic initiatives where the geo-political will to power is exercised, but here we testified its appreciation as a giver of life, foundation of our climate and our Earth system. The sea-going people we interviewed expressed their concern for the fate of Mediterranean Sea and its incredible biodiversity which is severely under threat by the deadly combination of pollution, climate change, and the overexploitation of marine resources.

As one of SeaPaCS’s key goals is raising awareness about marine pollution, many activities have been filmed by the media agency Raw-News, who have been releasing documentaries on the project including the short film ‘In search of Plastic’ , filmed off the coast of Anzio. The visual documentation feeds critical geographers’ emergent work on how new hybrid assemblages are reshaping and re-signifying the ecological life-supporting systems by building upon the material-semiotic of more-than-human assemblages. The exhibition ‘Explorations in the Plastisphere’ proposes an unconventional perspective on one of the most pressing issues of our time, marine plastic pollution, by visually investigating the new hybrid ecologies emerging on plastic-colonising organisms (biofilms, organisms including phyto- and bacterioplankton and other compounds), and the complex ecosystems that have evolved to live on microplastics, and various anthropic debris in marine environments (including relicts, ghost nets, infrastructures, and polluted sites).

One of our volunteers is also a Youtuber who has released videos about the project. One of the videos is a tutorial on how to build a DIY microplastic sampling device called ‘LADI’ (Low-Tech Aquatic Debris Instrument). This open-source prototype, built according to the specifications of its inventor, the CLEAR project, will be built in other specimens for the sailing schools of the Italian Naval League, a partner of this project. Thanks to this fairly inexpensive device, pupils of the sailing schools will be able to sample marine litter while sailing (details and visual documentations available here.

Work is in progress in the SeaPaCS’s team and we expect to have new visual documentation, analysis of interviews and of the water samples in the next few months. Information will be available on the project website with follow up initiatives ready to engage new participants.

About the authors: SeaPaCS project, supported by the European funds of the IMPETUS4CS project, is coordinated by Chiara Certomà (DIGGEO@ESOMAS laboratory, Università di Torino) and co-coordinaed by Federico Fornaro (Italian Naval League Anzio) and Luisa Galgani (Biological Oceanography Division of GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and Università degli Studi di Siena, Italy, DBCF).

How to Cite

Certomà, C., Corsi, A., Galgani, L., Fornaro, F. (2023, 10 October) SeaPaCS: Participatory Citizen Science against Marine Pollution Geography Directions. https://doi.org/10.55203/PVMN1364