Marine Litter Citizen Science Research Agenda - An Expert Perspective on Advancing the Citizen and the Science in Citizen Science

Marine litter (manufactured solid waste) forms a serious threat to the marine environment and needs immediate action. Research shows us that marine litter is linked with huge financial costs, causes massive disruption to the environment, and harms wildlife. For example, over 690 species have been found to be impacted by marine litter. A recent review estimated that the collective social, environmental, and economic cost of one tonne of marine plastic alone can equate to $3,300-33,000. One effective way to help tackle marine litter is engaging the public through citizen science. Citizen science projects involve members of the public to help the scientific process, typically by recording and removing marine litter items found in different marine environments. For example, the Marine Conservation Society runs year-round events where members of the public remove and record litter items found on beaches, whereby over 11,000 metric tonnes of waste have been removed from the UK coast in 25 years. To maximise the benefits of these projects for science, the volunteers as well as the marine environment it is important to gain a clear insight into the obstacles and benefits of using citizen science. Such insight will then help develop clear step-by-step processes to maximise their benefit. Our research team has been involved in an ongoing UK-Brazilian project. Initial findings of this project identified the importance of placing equal importance to the science and the citizen scientists (the volunteers) to maximise outcomes of such projects. The quality and quantity of scientific data generated by citizen science is closely linked to volunteer experiences, motivations and continued engagement. We therefore need to better understand how to improve the quality of research conducted in this field and improve the experience of the volunteers involved in citizen science. To achieve these goals, we need to develop agreement amongst experts about how we can do this. To get the most meaningful outcomes we need to engage with a range of experts and active volunteers (the citizen scientists) involved in citizen science from around the world within different cultural, societal, political and environmental contexts. This will help maximise our understanding of successful citizen science projects for a broad context. We will engage with users (researchers and practitioners) of citizen science in two ways, first, using the team's connections, around 160 people from around the world will be asked to complete an online questionnaire (including users that run these initiatives and active volunteers). This will tell us more about how and why they use citizen science, what are the main obstacles they have encountered when using citizen science, and what they feel is needed to improve citizen science related to marine litter. Second, around 35 of the experts will be asked to attend a 2-day workshop where we will discuss the results from the questionnaire and have in-depth discussions about the step-by-step processes needed to improve citizen science. By using international experts in citizen science, we will be able to extend the work that we have already done and look at whether people in different countries face different challenges to those we see in Brazil and the UK and identify appropriate solutions. The areas that are identified through our international questionnaire and workshop will be developed into research priorities used to shape a research agenda for developing marine litter citizen science. This research agenda will be published alongside summary practical guidelines and used to support future activities into marine litter citizen science. This project will also allow us to link up the experts needed to take the research agenda forward. By conducting this project, we will be able to meet our overarching vision of understanding the practical ways in how citizen science related to marine litter can be advanced.