Mote hosts second forum on how scientist and community partnerships benefit the marine environment
Thursday, Nov. 3, Mote Marine Laboratory hosted a public forum on science and society in Sarasota, focusing on case studies of Mote's volunteer citizen-science partnerships with their colleagues from Japan and featuring several efforts with recent successes and opportunities with citizen-science programs in Florida and beyond.
- One exciting announcement from the forum: A new SCUBAnauts International chapter for youth divers ages 12-18 is being planned at Mote in Sarasota. Details below.
“Mote was founded 61 years ago by Dr. Eugenie Clark. She always recognized the importance of engaging volunteers and the community in her research, and this is what this forum is about,” said Dr. Michael P. Crosby, Mote President and CEO. “One of Eugenie’s first grants at the Lab required her to collect some sharks for studies. At this point, she had done research on sharks, but she had never caught a shark by herself. So she went out, met a local fisherman, became very good friends and he volunteered his time to catch sharks for her research. From the very beginning, volunteers have been a key part of the success of Mote. Even today, as we have grown to five research campuses, at every step of the way, Mote has engaged in community partnership."
The forum on “Sato-Umi: Integration of Science and Community in Restoration, Monitoring and Sustainable Use of Marine Resources” was an outgrowth of a global study of science and society led by Japan’s Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN).
The forum highlighted three of Mote’s science-community partnerships to illustrate the concept of “integrated local environmental knowledge,” or ILEK — the valuable, combined knowledge of scientists and other key societal groups. Mote was an early leader many years ago in highlighting the importance of such knowledge transfers, and Mote is a model for implementing such interactions.
Prof. Tetsu Sato, leader of RIHN’s global ILEK project, described the various groups of people that need to, but sometimes struggle to, work together on environmental concerns: researchers, grassroots environmental groups, government and non-government organizations, businesses, community members, commercial and recreational fishers and many others.
“We are looking at sato-umi as a new model for a successful, human-ocean relationship,” Sato said. “We are looking for ways for humans to live harmoniously with the coastal environment. For this model to be successful, we need to use a bilateral transfer of knowledge, meaning scientists must share what they know with stakeholders such as fishers, community members and local policy makers, and those stakeholders must share their knowledge with scientists. This interaction between scientists and the diverse local people is what will drive results that will benefit everyone.”
Mote scientists shared some examples of science-and-society successes:
- Scallop restoration: To restore depleted scallop populations in Sarasota Bay, and study the best ways to do so, Mote is partnering with the local grass-roots citizen group, Sarasota Bay Watch, along with others such as Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Sarasota County, Bay Shellfish Co., local business leaders and most importantly, many volunteer citizen scientists. Jim Culter, Senior Scientist and Benthic Ecology Program Manager at Mote is heavily involved in this project. Mote and its partners are placing young scallops into the Bay, monitoring for recovery and working to improve environmental quality and expand community involvement.
Scallops are keystone species in many habitats. They serve as vacuum cleaners for the environment and they filter and keep the water column clean. Over the past few decades, scallop populations have significantly decreased because of events such as red tide, water pollution, storms, climate and human activities like boating and scallop harvesting.
The Mote science-and-society dynamic of this project is a major focus of RIHN’s global study In the global RIHN project. It investigates how Mote scientists exchange knowledge with local residents through a Community Based Shellfish Restoration Program focused on scallops in Sarasota Bay. About 20 Mote interns have contributed to this project, including Meghan Gordon who is a current Mote Intern. Since 2015, she has released 14 million scallop larvae and 1,600 adults and keeps the live community scallop nursery going.
- Environmental monitoring with citizen scientists: In the Florida Keys, Mote invites the public to report environmental changes through its C-OCEAN project (Community-Based Observations of Coastal Ecosystems and Assessment Network) and its BleachWatch program.
In coordination with the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS), C-OCEAN is designed to provide early detection and assessment of biological events such as coral bleaching, diseased or killed fish, sick or injured sea turtles, algal blooms, discolored water, and much more occurring in the Florida Keys and surrounding waters.
“This and many other initiatives at Mote are supported by Mote’s Protect Our Reefs plate, so everyone has this license plate on their car, right?” said Cory Walter, Projects Coordinator. “Honestly these programs help get the public involved, but also help us learn about what is happening in our waters. We can’t always be out in the field, so we rely on the public to be our eyes out on the water. As soon as we get a report of an unusual event in the water, we go out to survey the situation and see what we can do.”
The goal of the C-OCEAN is to help the scientific community better understand the nature and causes of marine events that adversely affect marine organisms, and assist ongoing research efforts to assess and monitor events as they develop. Understanding these events will help scientists and managers determine whether the events are natural or are linked to human activities.
Since 1997, C-OCEAN has received over 6,000 reports. From January 2016 to October 2016, C-OCEAN received a lot of coral disease reports.
Mote’s BleachWatch program provides early warnings of potential coral bleaching events in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Bleaching occurs when heat or other stressors cause corals to lose their zooxanthellae — the algae that give corals color and necessary nourishment. Corals that don’t recover their zooxanthellae will ultimately die.
With BleachWatch, Mote scientists and others help elucidate bleaching patterns and ultimately coral death by contributing data to Keys-wide reports by the Florida Reef Resilience Program.
BleachWatch averages 300 reports a season and there have been at least 500 trained volunteers to date. Three training sessions are given a year.
- New Sarasota-based SCUBAnauts International chapter coming soon: On Thursday, Crosby announced that Mote will host the first-ever Sarasota chapter of SCUBAnauts International, which guides young men and women, ages 12 through 18, along an exciting pathway for personal development by involving them in the marine sciences through underwater marine research activities such as special environmental and undersea conservation projects that builds character, promotes active citizenship and develops effective leadership skills.
One Mote-led SCUBAnauts International project is a partnership between Mote scientists, members of SCUBAnauts International, Combat Wounded Veteran Challenge and Gold Star Teen Adventures to help plant threatened staghorn corals in a special restoration site.
“Everyone who plants coral is a Mote volunteer citizen scientist that is not only helping us restore the coral reefs but helping us gather data and conduct the science that is essential to restore coral reefs,” Crosby said.
For all those interested in joining the Sarasota chapter, please fill out this Google Doc form.
Paul Foisy, President of SCUBAnauts International said, “When my family came across SCUBAnauts, our lives changed. It is a fantastic organization for kids and their adults that gives them the opportunity to work with scientific community in ways I never would have imagined.”
Paul’s daughter, Mia said,” I’ve been with this organization since I was 11-and-a-half years old. I started that young because my brother was involved. I would go to the meetings and sit in the back and once they got to the science presentations I thought it was just so cool, but I never really thought about what was under the water. After joining, I’ve learned so much more about how important our marine environment is and I love to be able to teach other kids how much the ocean affects our everyday life.”
Measuring impact of community involvement
Crosby; Barbara Lausche, Director of the Mote Marine Policy Institute, and Zoe Muzyczka, Mote Marine Policy Institute Intern did a study on how to measure what Mote scientists and volunteer community members learn from each other and the impacts of that.
In this study, Mote conducted baseline surveys as people started volunteering and then surveyed them after they had been engaged for a while to understand what they learned.
One of the major things Mote learned from the survey was about 10 percent of people who first started to be involved with Mote did not know what the status of general environmental quality of Sarasota Bay. After the second survey, everyone could answer what state Sarasota Bay is in, suggesting Mote helped people better understand all the dynamics that are influencing the quality of Sarasota Bay.
Another question that was asked was what impacts the health and population of scallops. On the initial survey, only 30 percent of respondents realized that red tide impacts scallops, but by the second survey, 60 percent of the people surveyed understood that red tide has a significant impact on scallops.
“Through this survey, and our initiative to engage our scientists with the public, we are able to raise awareness of the status of local scallop populations and Sarasota Bay in general, while conducting world-class research,” Crosby said.