- Marine debris litters beaches and underwater habitats across the globe, even in remote areas, where it harms hundreds of animal species, from corals to whales.
- Mobile phone apps have launched to encourage and assist volunteers in cleaning up marine habitats by facilitating the recording and sharing of their efforts via social media.
- Volunteers also become citizen scientists, as the apps compile data from thousands of clean-ups into global databases to permit analysis of trends in trash composition and distribution and to bring to light the damage being done by debris to marine creatures and systems.
Few people get to witness the breadth and wonder of underwater life, from coral to kelp to fish and sea anemones. SCUBA divers gain a unique view of not only the beauty but also the condition of underwater communities. Unfortunately, they are increasingly seeing non-biodegradable trash—mostly plastic but also metal, glass, rubber, cloth, ceramic, and cardboard— on reefs and other marine habitats.
According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), marine debris “injures and kills marine life, interferes with navigation safety, and poses a threat to human health.” Some animals become entangled in ropes or fishing gear; others mistake debris for food, which can damage their tissues or cause them to starve. Plastics degrade very slowly and can leach harmful chemicals into the ocean. Fish and shellfish consume the waste particles and chemicals and are then caught and sold in our fish markets, causing concern about harmful substances in our food.
A 2015 study calculated that 192 coastal countries worldwide generated 275 million metric tons (MT) of plastic waste in 2010, 5–13 million MT of which found its way to the ocean. Marine debris litters beaches across the globe, even those with little local human activity, as currents move trash across oceans.
Government agencies, such as NOAA, and environmental organizations coordinate volunteers through programs and clean-up events to help remove some of the waste from beaches and coastal waterways.
The annual International Coastal Cleanup (ICC), which took place September 16th, brings hundreds of thousands of volunteers to help clean the coasts each year. In 2016, more than half a million volunteers removed over 18 million pounds (over 8 million kg) of trash from beaches, coasts and waterways in 112 countries. Most trash is small—think cigarette butts, food wrappers and plastic straws— but volunteers have reported TV sets, toilets, bicycles, and refrigerators, as well as some specialty items like a tennis racket in South Africa, Christmas tree lights in Belize, and a blender in Jamaica.
These larger items are a big problem underwater as well, where they harm plants, corals and other structures yet remain invisible to most people. Underwater, “ghost” fishing nets and gear drift, tangle, and get caught on reefs, where they break or smother corals.
“Sea” your results through mobile technology
Mobile phone applications are now helping to encourage volunteers and use their widespread efforts to better understand the nature of marine debris. Two such apps are free to download for either Android or iOS systems.
- Dive Against Debris
In response to demand from concerned SCUBA divers, Project Aware designed a new app to make its Dive Against Debris (DAD) dive site surveys more fun and more useful. The new Dive Against Debris app aims to help divers to record and communicate marine debris found underwater, as well as its impacts on marine life.
Launched in 2011 and coordinated by Project Aware, Dive Against Debris (DAD) surveys aim not only to reduce the amount of debris found at dive sites. They also help build a global dataset of the types and quantities of debris found in the ocean, in order to show trends and advocate for change.
In 2015, more than 4,000 scuba divers participated in 454 DAD surveys at dive sites across the globe. They removed and reported over 32,000 kg (70,000 lbs) over 90,000 pieces of debris, over half of them plastic, and over 1,000 marine creatures either entangled in debris or dead. In 2016, divers removed more than 157,000 pieces of trash during 1,122 DAD surveys, as well as logging 1,624 entangled marine animals.
Some dive shops require divemaster trainees to complete a Project Aware reef survey during their training to ensure they grasp and care about the condition of their local dive sites.
Joanne Marston, Project Aware’s Campaign Manager, said in an email to Mongabay-Wildtech, “The app includes a list of common debris items and uses geo-location for quick and easy reporting. The data reported becomes part of a global dataset used by conservationists and scientists to help drive long-term change.”
“Divers bring their phones to the dive site,” explained Marston. “Once they remove trash and bring it to dry land, they sort, weigh, record and report the rubbish they have found onto their mobile device.”
A review of the new app by the Deeper Blue dive news platform wrote, “The new app is intuitive and easy to use, and includes a list of common types of marine debris, as well as the ability to use the smartphones’ inbuilt geolocation function to better report the whereabouts of the debris.”
The app makes it easier for divers to record the location, estimate the area surveyed, types and quantities of trash items found underwater, and any entangled or dead wildlife. It also makes clean-ups more like a game or competition by encouraging users to view their contributions to the global debris dataset, upload images of their hauls, and share their impact via social media.
“For surveys conducted in the same location and survey area, divers have the ability to duplicate core survey details from a previous approved survey,” said Marston. “This helps to quicken the process of data submission for our repeated surveys. Divers also like seeing all their surveys in one place – they are able to see exactly how much impact they are making to clean our ocean.”
Marston said, “Data collected by divers helps bridge a gap in knowledge of the types and quantity of marine debris found on the seafloor, as well as the impacts that debris has on marine life and habitats. Project AWARE works with a number of organizations and alliances to share the data we collect.”
- Clean Swell
Ocean buffs on land can generate marine debris distribution data through the Clean Swell app, created in 2016 by Ocean Conservancy (OC).
The Clean Swell app aims to encourage beach clean-up volunteers by highlighting the value of their efforts and making it easier to log the trash they collect. Volunteers participating in clean-ups input the amounts and types of trash they remove from a given beach or coastal waterway into the app by clicking on trash categories. The app compiles the information and can tally results for a given clean-up or user immediately, as well as show off their achievements (number of clean-ups, distance cleaned, weight of trash collected) to others via email and social media.
Like the Dive Against Debris app, Clean Swell converts user inputs into data on the amounts of each type of trash found and disposed at each clean-up site. The data are immediately added to the OC’s global ocean trash database, which makes data on debris trends available to researchers and policy makers.
The organizations hope that making clean-up a more fun and social activity will encourage more concerned citizens to clean trash from coastal and marine ecosystems, avoid tossing away single-use plastics, and feel ownership for their newly cleaned surroundings. For example, one user requested that the app add a place to record the brand of each item, so that the resulting data will show which companies produce the most commonly tossed items.
Such comments are welcome, said Project Aware’s Marston. “There are so many opportunities to scale up the app to help identify gaps in our knowledge of marine debris. For now we’ll seek feedback from our community on ways we can improve the data submission process.”