The document describes the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX), which took place over 20 days aboard the R/V New Horizon. The expedition was led by graduate students from UC San Diego and aimed to explore areas of high plastic concentration in the northeast Pacific ocean. Researchers studied plastic abundance and distribution, microbes, phytoplankton, zooplankton, fishes, seabirds, and ecotoxicology. Outreach was conducted through volunteers onboard and onshore, as well as social media platforms like blogs, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube at little to no cost. The expedition helped raise awareness of plastic pollution issues and engaged over 55,000 people online.
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Practical Research 1 Lesson 9 Scope and delimitation.pptx
Using Social Networking Tools for Low-Cost, High-Impact Outreach: The Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX)
1. Using Social Networking Tools for Low-Cost, High-Impact
Outreach: The Scripps Environmental Accumulation of
Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX)
Miriam C. Goldstein
Alison M. Cawood, Mario C. Aguilera, Annie Reisewitz, Lara Dickens
8. The Scripps Environmental Accumulation
of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX)
• 20 days on R/V New
Horizon
• Designed & led by
graduate students
– UC Ship Funds
• Collaboration with
nonprofit Project Kaisei
10. SEAPLEX Objective:
Find and explore high plastic areas in the NE Pacific
• My own work: Plastic abundance
& distribution; fouling
communities
Photos: Andrew Titmus
11. SEAPLEX Objective:
Find and explore high plastic areas in the NE Pacific
• My own work: Plastic abundance
& distribution; fouling
communities
• Microbes (Meg Rippy)
Photos: Andrew Titmus
12. SEAPLEX Objective:
Find and explore high plastic areas in the NE Pacific
• My own work: Plastic abundance
& distribution; fouling
communities
• Microbes (Meg Rippy)
• Phytoplankton (Darcy Taniguchi)
Photos: Andrew Titmus
13. SEAPLEX Objective:
Find and explore high plastic areas in the NE Pacific
• My own work: Plastic abundance
& distribution; fouling
communities
• Microbes (Meg Rippy)
• Phytoplankton (Darcy Taniguchi)
• Subsurface zooplankton (Jesse
Powell)
Photos: Andrew Titmus
14. SEAPLEX Objective:
Find and explore high plastic areas in the NE Pacific
• My own work: Plastic abundance
& distribution; fouling
communities
• Microbes (Meg Rippy)
• Phytoplankton (Darcy Taniguchi)
• Subsurface zooplankton (Jesse
Powell)
• Midwater fishes (Pete Davison
and Rebecca Asch)
Photos: Andrew Titmus
15. SEAPLEX Objective:
Find and explore high plastic areas in the NE Pacific
• My own work: Plastic abundance
& distribution; fouling
communities
• Microbes (Meg Rippy)
• Phytoplankton (Darcy Taniguchi)
• Subsurface zooplankton (Jesse
Powell)
• Midwater fishes (Pete Davison
and Rebecca Asch)
• Seabirds (Andrew Titmus)
Photos: Andrew Titmus
16. SEAPLEX Objective:
Find and explore high plastic areas in the NE Pacific
• My own work: Plastic abundance
& distribution; fouling
communities
• Microbes (Meg Rippy)
• Phytoplankton (Darcy Taniguchi)
• Subsurface zooplankton (Jesse
Powell)
• Midwater fishes (Pete Davison
and Rebecca Asch)
• Seabirds (Andrew Titmus)
• Ecotoxicology (Chelsea
Rochman)
Photos: Andrew Titmus
17. SEAPLEX Objective:
Find and explore high plastic areas in the NE Pacific
• My own work: Plastic abundance
& distribution; fouling
communities
• Microbes (Meg Rippy)
• Phytoplankton (Darcy Taniguchi)
• Subsurface zooplankton (Jesse
Powell)
• Midwater fishes (Pete Davison
and Rebecca Asch)
• Seabirds (Andrew Titmus)
• Ecotoxicology (Chelsea
Rochman)
• Cetaceans (Josh Jones) Photos: Andrew Titmus
18. Three outreach challenges
1. Creating and disseminating material
• Time very limited
• Bandwidth $11/MB!
2. Shoestring budget
• No funding beyond ship time
3. Finding an audience
• Schools out for the summer
19. SEAPLEX Online Outreach Strategies
1. Communications volunteers
• On the ship
• On shore
2. Communications tools: pre-existing, low-
and no-cost online applications
3. Communications strategy: social
networking with online science community
20. Communications Volunteers: On the ship
• Teacher At Sea: Lara
Dickens
• SIO Communications’
Mario Aguilera
• Project Kaisei
Karin Malmstrom
• Separate, complementary
communications effort
Doug Woodring
21. Communications Volunteers: Onshore
• SIO graduate student
Alison Cawood
• Posted to blog
• Interacted with
public in real time
• The rest of the SIO
Communications Office
32. Cost of Online Tools
Item Application Cost
Blog: FREE
Blog Wordpress.com
Domain name: $10
Twitter Twitter.com FREE
Photos Flickr 100 MB/month: FREE
Videos YouTube FREE
Mapping Google Maps/Earth FREE
Official Website In-house IT Not free
33. Total Cost of Online Outreach
People’s time:
Item Application Cost
Blog: FREE
Blog Wordpress.com
Domain name: $10
NOT FREE
Twitter Twitter.com FREE
Up to TK photos: FREE
Photos Flickr
Unlimited: TK
Videos YouTube FREE
Mapping Google Maps/Earth FREE
Official Website Though SIO IT Dept. Not free
34. Communications strategy: utilizing the
online science community
1. Began blog & Twitter
before departure
2. Built relationships in
existing online science
communities
3. Made material as
interactive as possible
36. Lessons Learned & Next Steps
Lessons Learned
• Pitfalls of “live from the
field”
• Better coordination internally
and with collaborators
Next Steps
• Blog ongoing laboratory
work
• Communicate eventual
results
Photo: Sam Hodgson, Voice of San Diego
37. Many Thanks
UC Ship Funds
Project Kaisei
Scripps Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation
Association for Women in Science - San Diego
Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence
Michael M. Mullin Graduate Student Fellowship in Biological Oceanography
Scripps Director’s Office
Lyn & Norman Lear
National Science Foundation
SEAPLEX Science Project Kaisei Steve Diggs NOAA Southwest
Mario Aguilera Doug Woodring Penny Dockry Fisheries Science
Rebecca Asch Annie Crawley Jim Dufour Center
Pete Davison Karin Malmstrom Rose Dufour Dick Norris
Lara Dickens George Orbelian Peter Franks Mark Ohman
Jesse Dubler Lisa Gilfillan Cheryl Peach
Matt Durham Sorting Volunteers Lucina Gonzalez Greg Rouse
Josh Jones Patrick Cheng Phil Hastings Steve Bennett
Jesse Powell Chris Gawad Amy Hays Scripps
Meg Rippy Erin Reed Brian Hentschel Communications
Chelsea Rochman Marci Rosenberg John Hildebrand Scripps Collections
Timothy Stillinger Ashey Salas Capt. Wes Hill and Scripps Development
Darcy Taniguchi Summer Strutt crew of R/V New Scripps Web
Andrew Titmus Horizon Operations
Dimitry Abramenkoff Eunha Hoh Ship Scheduling
SEAPLEX Faculty Bruce Appelgate David Hyrenbach Office
Advisor: Alison Cawood Tony Koslow Shipboard Technical
Jim Leichter Dave Checkley Mike Landry Support
Steve Constable and Kara Lavender Law Beth Simmons
team Skye Moret Annie Townsend
Paul Dayton Peter Niller Eric Wolff
38. SEAPLEX Stats
• SEAPLEX website viewed in 114 countries
• Blog has received more than 55,000 views
• Twitter has 640 followers
• Scripps YouTube ranked 9th most viewed
non-profit channel during SEAPLEX
• Lots of traditional news coverage worldwide
• SEAPLEX scientists have given >12 public
lectures since August
39. Trade winds and westerlies (jet
stream) drive the oceanic gyres
- Huge public interest, few facts
- Algalita, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, additional literature observations
- Huge public interest, few facts
- Algalita, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, additional literature observations
- Huge public interest, few facts
- Algalita, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, additional literature observations
- Huge public interest, few facts
- Algalita, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, additional literature observations
- Huge public interest, few facts
- Algalita, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, additional literature observations
- this is our science
- we knew we wanted to communicate & do outreach component
- but we knew there was also a lot of public interest in this issue
- great opportunity to get public/students involved in oceanographic research
- this is our science
- we knew we wanted to communicate & do outreach component
- but we knew there was also a lot of public interest in this issue
- great opportunity to get public/students involved in oceanographic research
- this is our science
- we knew we wanted to communicate & do outreach component
- but we knew there was also a lot of public interest in this issue
- great opportunity to get public/students involved in oceanographic research
- this is our science
- we knew we wanted to communicate & do outreach component
- but we knew there was also a lot of public interest in this issue
- great opportunity to get public/students involved in oceanographic research
- this is our science
- we knew we wanted to communicate & do outreach component
- but we knew there was also a lot of public interest in this issue
- great opportunity to get public/students involved in oceanographic research
- this is our science
- we knew we wanted to communicate & do outreach component
- but we knew there was also a lot of public interest in this issue
- great opportunity to get public/students involved in oceanographic research
- this is our science
- we knew we wanted to communicate & do outreach component
- but we knew there was also a lot of public interest in this issue
- great opportunity to get public/students involved in oceanographic research
- this is our science
- we knew we wanted to communicate & do outreach component
- but we knew there was also a lot of public interest in this issue
- great opportunity to get public/students involved in oceanographic research
- chose online methods because 1) summer 2) no budget 3) my past experience
- first thought: someone whose specific job was to coordinate communications efforts
- School not in session, so why not a teacher at sea?
- Mario ended up coming too
- Also a lot of communications through Project Kaisei, but separately conceived & Doug will talk about it at TIME
New media tools used to tell the story will the research team was at sea: Google earth and maps, wordpress blog, facebook, twitter, flickr, and js-kit, a social networking system for commenting
Everyone did 1 blog entry per week - ended up being updated 2-3 times daily
The highest day was still Aug 8 with 2,700 views.
Total views as of 55,000
Low bandwith only allowed the crew to use twitter onboard.
The crew would tweet observations from sea, pictures and the Scripps Communications team would retweet as well as tweet excepts from the SEAPLEX blog.
640 followers
Gotta go where people are, so SIO Communications used Scripps Facebook
- Nice because got people subscribing to other SIO stuff too
option of linking twitter & facebook status.
Flickr: Posted SEAPLEX pictures to Scripps’ flickr page. Created a SEAPLEX pool of images on the site to visually tell the science story.
- FULLY INTEGRATED WITH WORDPRESS.COM - EASY TO POST TO BLOG
Posted 1 video before they departed – an interview with Chief scientist and faculty advisor Jim Leichter
During SEAPLEX we received status as the week’s 9th most viewed non-profit channel
- DEFINE PLAYLIST/CHANNEL/ACCOUNT; better pics
After two months, the video now has more than 7,000 views.
This is by far our BEST YouTube video success story.
YouTube:
Scripps Oceanography Channel
Posted pre-SEAPLEX and post-SEAPLEX video
FIX IMAGE, make bigger.
People were asking where we were, this showed it. also got across ocean size!! Eric did it through google maps - very easy interface, no programming required. Project Kaisei had a snazzy iPhone app.
Later moved into Google Earth through SIO Communications working with Google. Used Geo RSS feed from Google maps to fed daily blog posts to Google Earth’s expedition layer. Also have the SEAPLEX video on Google Earth’s Explore the Ocean layer.
All new media tools were linked through/connected to the SEAPLEX expedition website located on the Scripps Oceanography website.
Able to recycle template from other expeditions, but NOT free. Still, important to have official resource.
Newsroom goes hi-tech: Scripps Communications adds an online newsroom to the SEAPLEX website. It includes news releases, FREE downloadable videos and high-res images.
Clearinghouse for SIO-related SEAPLEX resources
The new media approached used during the research cruise fed traditional media. Many broadcast and print reporters used the blog posts, tweets to report on the expedition while at sea.
More than 200 clips, international coverage, radio, tv, print, web.
CNN
ABC National News
BBC
Bloomberg, Reuters, AP
We had a great peak in web views following the SEAPLEX news conference. The day after was especially successful...SEAPLEX Website:Aug 27 -- 1,235 viewsAug 28 -- 3,072 viewsAug 29 -- 2,075 views
SEAPLEX Blog
http://seaplexscience.com/
Aug 27: 1,484 views
Aug 28: 1,818 views
The highest day was still Aug 8 with 2,700 views.
Total views as of 8:51 am Sept 2 55,311
- in our case we were lucky: issue with big public interest; and i had previous involvement with online outreach
- but this is not necessary - online world moves fast & is driven by personal interaction. it is never too late to get involved.
How well did it work? Engaged new followers, fans in Scripps science. Hundreds of media requests and news stories were publish before, during and after the expedition. Scripps Communications office continues to coordinate media requests with SEAPLEX scientists.
Facebook:
850+ Page Fans
Flickr:
Scripps Oceanography PoolTwitter:
300+ Followers
We had a great peak in web views following the SEAPLEX news conference. The day after was especially successful...SEAPLEX Website:Aug 27 -- 1,235 views – SEAPLEX news conferenceAug 28 -- 3,072 viewsAug 29 -- 2,075 views
SEAPLEX Blog
http://seaplexscience.com/
Aug 27: 1,484 views
Aug 28: 1,818 views
The highest day was still Aug 8 with 2,700 views.
Total views as of 8:51 am Sept 2 33,311
- vector wind speed - see big calm spot
- UC Ship proposal funded, so that is where we went