{"id":258,"date":"2025-08-13T14:42:28","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T14:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yachtersworld.com\/?p=258"},"modified":"2025-08-13T14:42:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T14:42:28","slug":"the-ocean-citizen-science-being-carried-out-on-yachts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yachtersworld.com\/?p=258","title":{"rendered":"The ocean citizen science being carried out on yachts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liveaboard cruisers Larissa Clark and Duncan Copeland on how sailors can get involved with ocean conservation and citizen science projects<\/strong><\/p>\n

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There is a fierce and surprisingly passionate debate unfolding on the deck of Freeranger<\/em>, our 50ft Beneteau. The question at hand is which weight to use: the big one or the small one?<\/p>\n

All around us, other boats are not wasting their time. It\u2019s the first day of coho salmon season in the glassy waters of British Columbia, and everyone else is bobbing joyfully in the midday sun, hauling fish out of the sea with jubilant ease. Cries of \u201cFish on!\u201d echo across the sound. The salmon are biting. The FOMO is real.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019re not here for the fish, and this isn\u2019t a conversation about fishing tackle. We\u2019re here for science. Citizen science, to be precise. And the debate is about a Secchi Disk \u2013 a simple white disk on a measuring tape \u2013 and our comic inability to make it behave.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the current isn\u2019t cooperating. Our Secchi Disk is meant to sink smoothly until it vanishes from sight, thereby allowing us to log the clarity of the water and contribute a tiny pixel of information to a planetary picture of ocean health. But instead, it\u2019s being carried sideways like a drunk jellyfish, and everyone has a theory about how to fix it.<\/p>\n

Our son, Eden, has observed all this with the detached cynicism of a seven-year-old boy. \u201cWe could just start fishing instead,\u201d he suggests, clutching his lucky lure. \u201cThen tell them how big our fish was. That\u2019s data too.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not wrong, and we\u2019ll do that later. But right now we\u2019re determined to get this right.<\/p>\n

This Secchi Disk reading is the first of many small contributions we plan to make on our voyage around the world \u2014 a grand experiment in turning family travel into something scientifically meaningful.<\/p>\n

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Larissa Clark, Duncan Copeland and family are doing their bit for ocean science<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Citizen science<\/h2>\n

Fast forward 10 months, and we\u2019re in the UN biosphere reserve at Fakarava Atoll, French Polynesia, where the Secchi Disk project has by now become so routine that our primary-aged kids lower the disk with practiced flair and log data into the app without adult intervention. It\u2019s one of over a dozen projects we\u2019ve taken part in since leaving Victoria, Canada, in July 2024.<\/p>\n

At the beginning, it was all about adventure. To sail off into the big blue yonder. And yes, we wanted our kids to learn from the world, rather than just about it. To swim with sharks and taste fresh mangos and get unreasonably excited about sea cucumbers. But over our decade of planning, another idea started to take shape.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve spent our careers at the sharp end of environmental justice, marine resource management and conservation communications. It became increasingly clear that we couldn\u2019t just sail past the many challenges the ocean faces.<\/p>\n

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A small microscope on board brings home-schooling science lessons to life<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Plastic pollution, acidification, overfishing, loss of biodiversity, sea temperature rises\u2026 Yet it\u2019s also a place filled with solutions \u2013 or at least, the potential for them. But what\u2019s needed is data, lots of it. So an idea slowly took shape: what if, instead of just observing the world as we sailed through it, we could do a little bit more. We wanted to journey with purpose and, if we could, encourage others to do the same.<\/p>\n

Enter citizen science \u2013 a phrase that sounds like something dreamed up by an underfunded government initiative but is, in fact, a rather beautiful idea. At its core, it means regular people contributing to real science. In our case, cruisers.<\/p>\n

Measuring, sampling, logging, photographing, submitting and analysing data \u2013 all helping researchers build scientific knowledge which will, says UNESCO, illuminate the path to reversing the decline in ocean health, conserving marine life, addressing ocean aspects of climate change and using the ocean sustainably to improve lives.<\/p>\n

Article continues below\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

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What you need to know to sail across the Pacific<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/header>\n
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Coffee in hand, I gaze out from our cockpit across the flat lagoon of the palm-fringed coral atoll in Fakarava.\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n