Marine Citizen Science and Marine Voluntourism in the Ocean Decade

The ocean is our largest ecosystem, covering over 70 percent of the earth’s surface, and essential to life on earth. It shapes our weather, regulates our climate, generates more than half of the oxygen we breathe and provides us with food, livelihoods and recreation. Unfortunately, our natural and cultural marine environments are facing major threats from climate change, unsustainable extraction of marine resources, pollution and habitat destruction and alteration. Effective actions to address these threats are reliant on a sound understanding of marine ecosystems, and critically, that policy and decisions are informed by science. Marine research is costly due to the sheer size of the ocean, the resources required, logistical considerations and the limits on how much scientists can achieve alone. Marine voluntourism and marine citizen science projects provide significant and cost-effective opportunities for scientists and governments. The benefits include assisting to address gaps in knowledge, increased data collection and monitoring capabilities, ocean literacy through a more informed and engaged public, stewardship, enhanced social capital, and ultimately, global citizenship and wider political support for protection of our ocean. The empowerment participants gain from voluntourism and citizen science more generally can also enable the development of bottom-up solutions to problems.

Marine voluntourism and marine citizen science programs are being conducted in a wide range of marine environments around the globe, from coastlines to shallow waters, estuaries and the open sea. Marine voluntourism and citizen science programs have typically focused on biodiversity and invasive species survey and monitoring; pollution, including litter clean-ups; and, the monitoring of the natural environment or its use, such as marine protected areas, coastal erosion and water quality. Also emerging is a growing interest in maritime cultural heritage citizen science. Although interest and participation in marine citizen science is rapidly expanding around the globe, marine citizen science is underrepresented in the literature in comparison with terrestrial citizen science. The focus of the marine citizen science literature to date has been on the marine natural environment, with fewer examples of marine voluntourism and maritime cultural heritage citizen science activities, despite the growth in participation and interest in both of these activities. This research topic aims to address this underrepresentation of marine voluntourism and citizen science. This research topic is particularly relevant in the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030 (the Ocean Decade), which seeks to connect people to our ocean and change humanity’s relationship with the ocean and embrace a participative and transformative approach to addressing key challenges to the health of our ocean. Marine voluntourism and citizen science, therefore, have the potential to play an influential role in achieving Ocean Decade outcomes.

The scope of this Research Topic includes, and is not limited to articles presenting examples of:
- successful marine voluntourism projects and marine citizen science programs;
- studies of the benefits of marine citizen science;
- marine citizen science data quality and robustness;
- examples of the contributions marine voluntourism and citizen science have made to policy development and change;
- case studies of marine voluntourism and citizen science;
- the social and economic impacts of marine voluntourism on local communities and the social impacts of marine citizen science.

We would particularly encourage contributions relating to marine voluntourism and citizen science focused on marine and coastal cultural heritage. Contributions are invited from researchers, practitioners and marine voluntourists and citizen scientists. The manuscript types we are interested in receiving include original research, perspectives and reviews.