Monthly Margaret Pace Park Cleanup
Miami, Florida
January 26, 2025
Overview
On the morning of January 26th, 2025, The International SeaKeepers Society hosted our monthly cleanup at Margaret Pace Park in Miami. We were joined by 75 volunteers who received a quick background briefing on the area and some of the hotspots to search for trash before they grabbed gear and spread out around the park. It had been more than a month since our last visit to Margaret Pace, so we and our volunteers were hopeful we could make a significant impact. In addition, our volunteers were able to collect data to be shared with scientists on the most common types of trash through the use of Citizen Science app Marine Debris Tracker. After just two hours of hard work, we had removed more than 195 lbs of trash from the park, leaving behind a cleaner ecosystem for people and animals to enjoy. Many of our volunteers reported they saw extremely high amounts of cigarettes and discarded microplastics in the form of films, sheets, and wrappers. These microplastics, though they seem small and do not contribute large numbers to our weight total, are extremely important to remove as they inevitably break down over time into millions of tiny pieces of microplastic which can inhibit every living thing in the ecosystem. By reducing our plastic use and opting for sustainable alternatives, the park would not have nearly as much of these types of waste. We give a huge thanks to our volunteers for joining us and for their incredible work, and we look forward to hopefully seeing some of them at future events!
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, 55 percent of volunteers participated in using the app to record data.
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