Monthly Morningside Park Cleanup

Overview

On the morning of December 14th, 2024, The International SeaKeepers Society hosted our monthly cleanup at Morningside Park in Miami. We were joined by 50 volunteers who received a quick briefing on the area as well as their materials before setting out throughout the park. Morningside’s shores are currently undergoing wide-scale construction and expansion efforts, so we focused our areas of emphasis to the wider park rather than the shoreline near the water. Our volunteers were also 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. Despite the majority of our findings being smaller and lighter plastics, our team of volunteers successfully collected and removed more than 67 pounds of trash from all over the park. They even managed to find some crazy trash such as barrels of gasoline and pieces of discarded boat engines. We had a great turnout and despite the slight location change in the park, we were very happy to have made a difference in keeping our Miami parks pristine and healthy. We give a huge thanks to our volunteers for joining us and for their incredible work and 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, 46 percent of volunteers participated in using the app to record data.