Abstract
Climate change, overfishing, marine pollution and other anthropogenic drivers threaten our global oceans. More effective efforts are urgently required to improve the capacity of marine conservation action worldwide, as highlighted by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021–2030. Marine citizen science presents a promising avenue to enhance engagement in marine conservation around the globe. Building on an expanding field of citizen science research and practice, we present a global overview of the current extent and potential of marine citizen science and its contribution to marine conservation. Employing an online global survey, we explore the geographical distribution, type and format of 74 marine citizen science projects. By assessing how the projects adhere to the Ten Principles of Citizen Science (as defined by the European Citizen Science Association), we investigate project development, identify challenges and outline future opportunities to contribute to marine science and conservation. Synthesizing the survey results and drawing on evidence from case studies of diverse projects, we assess whether and how citizen science can lead to new scientific knowledge and enhanced environmental stewardship. Overall, we explore how marine citizen science can inform current understanding of marine biodiversity and support the development and implementation of marine conservation initiatives worldwide.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Integrative research perspectives on marine conservation’.
Highlights
Climate change [1], overfishing [2], marine pollution [3] and an increasing list of other anthropogenic drivers threaten our global oceans
As the survey was one of the first to conduct such an assessment of marine projects, it was impossible to construct an accurate estimate of the total number of marine citizen science projects globally; this study provides a baseline on which to develop further metrics
The projects are assessed under three group sizes (G1, Group 2 (G2), Group 3 (G3))
Summary
Climate change [1], overfishing [2], marine pollution [3] and an increasing list of other anthropogenic drivers threaten our global oceans. Citizen science can provide robust science and high-quality data that can be used for policy and decisionmaking [8,9] more cost-effectively than traditional forms of science [10,11] It can improve public science literacy through participant learning [12,13] and sharing of knowledge among wider social networks [14]. Participation in marine citizen science enables communities to engage with the ocean, and inform themselves (and potentially their wider social networks) about issues including marine species redistributions [15], seafood harvesting [9], marine plastic pollution [16], cetacean conservation [17] and marine environmental planning [18], among others. Community-based citizen science efforts can enable more rapid implementation of research results into policies and management [19]
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