Shutterstock^11CITIZEN SCIENCE IS HAPPENING NOW!
Apps like “Dive Against Debris” and “Clean
Swell” are helping scientists gather data
on marine debris around the world – vital
information in the fight to combat this
serious issue.
Plastics and other human-produced
waste litter beaches all over the world,
reaching even the most remote areas, and
killing wildlife indiscriminately. The scale of
the problem is so huge that it is impossible
for scientists and conservationists alone to
even begin to tackle it.
However, new apps are now harnessing
the power of hundreds of thousands of
divers and other volunteers through their
smartphones, compiling data from beach
and underwater cleanups, turning every
volunteer into a citizen scientist. With this
information, organisations can track trends
in the composition of marine debris, and
can begin to design effective programmes
that tackle the sources of the problem.
The technology also helps the
volunteers, with advice, tips, information
on local cleanup events, and simple,
intuitive features for recording and sharing
their efforts on social media.
ICE, ICE BABY
In mid-July 2017, a 5,800-square kilometre
section of Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf,
an area nearly the size of the country of
Brunei, broke away from the main ice shelf
and fell into the Southern Ocean. It has
created one of the largest icebergs ever
recorded.
Roughly 12 percent of the Larsen C Ice
Shelf is now known to have broken away,
a fact which leads scientists to project that
the rest of the sheet may begin to collapse
quickly. It is now increasingly possible
that more rifts in the ice could form, which
would lead to more “calving” (icebergs
breaking away from the main shelf).
While this one massive icebergs will
not raise sea levels, once whole
ice shelves collapse in this way, the
glaciers that feed them flow into the sea
more rapidly, and this does cause sea
level rise. AD