Australian Microplastics Assessment Project (AUSMAP)
Overview
In association with the national academic group AUSMAP, Living Ocean has for several years been engaged in a citizen science project to assess the incidence of microplastic on our ocean beaches and waterways.
Little is yet known about microplastics, but enough to see that this looms as a major threat to ocean life and quite possibly human life as well. While discarded plastic breaks down over time into minute fragments – microplastic – washing down rivers into the sea, world-wide production of plastic is increasing exponentially.
A World Economic Forum report states, “In a business-as-usual scenario, the ocean is expected to contain one tonne of plastic for every three tonnes of fish by 2025, and by 2050, more plastics than fish (by weight)”.
Our citizen science team has carried out numerous onsite surveys, following scientific protocols supplied by AUSMAP, passing the results into a quality-assured central database used by microplastic researchers worldwide.
We now wish to build on this success, multiplying our efforts by creating several teams working in parallel, each having AUSMAP-trained leaders. This requires the purchase of additional research kits.
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The overall aim here is, by increasing the volume of data under study, to enable scientists to better understand the problem, so that effective mitigation steps can be proposed. Drawing on its nationwide citizen science program, of which Living Ocean is a part, AUSMAP has already seen some of its mitigation proposals successfully implemented by local Councils, including on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
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The benefit of this program is not restricted to production of critical scientific information. Just as importantly, the involvement of a larger cohort of citizen science volunteers will see greater awareness in the community. This increased awareness will drive demand for government to implement the mitigation steps required.
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Living Ocean was approved as an AUSMAP collaborator in 2018
Five members of Living Ocean have been certified by AUSMAP as team leaders
To date Living Ocean has conducted 17 microplastic surveys on Sydney’s Northern Beaches and the NSW Central Coast using AUSMAP protocols
AUSMAP protocols have been successfully incorporated into Living Ocean’s multi-level citizen science study of Careel Bay, in Sydney’s Pittwater, alongside macro plastic, seagrass and mangrove studies
AUSMAP won the coveted 2021 Australian Museum Eureka prize for Innovation in Citizen Science
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Australian Microplastics Assessment Project (AUSMAP)
Earthwatch
Total Environment Centre (TEC)
Coastal Environment Centre, Narrabeen
Macquarie University
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Dr Michelle Blewitt, AUSMAP
Dr Scott Wilson, Earthwatch
