Evidence of citizen science contributions to coastal and marine conservation outcomes: A synthesis across projects

Amidst the wicked problems the marine conservation field is facing, we are also equipped with an old but newly powerful tool that may yet help track and address these problems, in the form of citizen science. From... [ view full abstract ]

Amidst the wicked problems the marine conservation field is facing, we are also equipped with an old but newly powerful tool that may yet help track and address these problems, in the form of citizen science. From crowdsourcing apps that allow beach visitors to track marine litter in Chile, to intensively trained volunteers identifying beached birds, to community science projects co-created by fishers in Micronesia, coastal and marine citizen science as a field is burgeoning in scope, scale, and diversity of projects around the world.

In this presentation, we examine multiple cases of the wide range of marine and coastal citizen science programs, documenting the ways each project contributes scientific information used for conservation research and natural resource management, as well as educational, community development, and policy outcomes.

We synthesize the experiences and lessons across cases to identify, 1) the circumstances  under which citizen science is effective for marine and coastal conservation (e.g, which ecosystems, human communities, conservation needs, kinds of research questions), 2) the key considerations in designing marine and coastal citizen science programs, and what strategies and approaches have been effective in addressing them?, and 3)lessons for the future of marine and coastal conservation, and the role of citizen science?  An overarching lesson from these cases is that citizen science can be a unique and effective approach to addressing conservation science questions, but should be thoughtfully designed and applied to carefully evaluated situations; citizen science is not a silver bullet, nor is it a one-size-fits-all endeavor.