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Poster Short Abstract

Study highlights the potential of Marine Citizen Science and cost-effective technologies in advancing coastal ocean observing. Challenges such as poor data documentation, limited access to affordable technologies, poor MCS coordination and motivation, especially in the Global South, hinder progress.

Poster Abstract

The coastal oceans, particularly in developing countries, remain largely unexplored, as most global efforts focus on open seas, resulting in significant data gaps in shelf and coastal waters. Citizen Science (CS) approaches, coupled with increasingly affordable technologies, offer a promising way to monitor the coasts by collecting extensive spatial and temporal data over shorter periods. This study reviewed 1127 marine citizen science initiatives (MCSIs) worldwide, emphasizing their contributions to environmental monitoring and coastal observing. Only 9% of the initiatives focused on environmental monitoring (physics, biogeochemistry, cross-disciplinary). Results revealed a continuing decline in new MCSIs globally since 2020 across all topics. The United States and global projects led in environmental monitoring MCSIs, while resource-limited regions had minimal representation. Temperature, Depth, Salinity, and dissolved oxygen were the most monitored oceanographic variables, and showed strong co-occurrences with other variables. Photography, low-cost sensors, and other oceanographic technologies were the primary tools used by MCSIs in environmental monitoring. Mobile apps and websites facilitated stakeholder connection, enabling data upload and access. However, data quality control methods were often poorly documented, affecting the trust in CS-generated data. The study recommends supporting under-resourced regions in adopting CS approaches for coastal observing to bridge the data sparse gap, as well as improving data quality documentation and adopting best practices. MCS has demonstrated a significant potential to complement existing coastal observing systems, as evidenced by examples from New Zealand, Tanzania, and the North-East Atlantic.