International Coastal Cleanup Day 2024

Overview

On the morning of September 21st, 2024, The International SeaKeepers Society hosted a site cleanup at Morningside Park as part of the celebration of International Coastal Cleanup Day (ICC) 2024. ICC is a global cleanup effort spearheaded by Ocean Conservancy, with 60+ cleanups occurring in Miami-Dade County, organized by Volunteercleanup.org. We were joined by 20 volunteers who quickly spread throughout the park following a site briefing and background information on ICC efforts all around the world. Many cleanups in honor of ICC Day were hosted all over South Florida, so we give a huge thanks to our volunteers who decided to come support us among many options. South Florida has been exposed to rampant king tides in recent days, leading to a massive amount of trash washing up particularly near the waterline along Morningside and plenty of other coastal parks. Throughout the morning, our volunteers were able to collect data to be shared with scientists on the most common types of trash using citizen science app Marine Debris Tracker, with the most common types of debris collected being plastic fragments and bottle caps. After three hours of hard work, we gathered our volunteers and weighed all the trash collected, and together our volunteers removed more than 108 pounds of trash from the park. We give a huge thanks to our volunteers for joining us, and we hope to see them at some of our future cleanups!

Marine Debris Tracker is a data collection app that allows the general public to contribute to an open-date platform and scientific research by recording the different types of litter, specifically plastic pollution, that they find in either inland or marine environments. Marine Debris Tracker was developed by the University of Georgia’s Jambeck Research Group, which SeaKeepers worked with in 2021 when the Jambeck Research Group collaborated with Ocean Conservancy to assess Miami’s plastic waste management, known as a Circularity Assessment Protocol. SeaKeepers again assisted the Jambeck Research Group’s Circularity Informatics Lab in 2022 with another Circularity Assessment Protocol in the Florida Keys. The researchers of the Jambeck Lab use the Marine Debris Tracker app to record their data, and with citizen scientists also using the app, more data can be collected in different areas. Using Marine Debris Tracker at our cleanups involves community members in creating a bigger picture of plastic pollution and provides the means for new scientific findings to be generated as well as for effective local legislation to be informed. SeaKeepers is excited to be incorporating this app at our cleanups and continue our mission of coastal education, protection, and restoration. In this cleanup, 15% of volunteers participated in using the app to record data.