19 October 2022
Matteo Vinci from OGS, marine litter data manager for EMODnet Chemistry , EUROqCHARM and other important projects on marine litter and plastic pollution, participated in the 6th edition of the Ocean Best Practices Workshop.
Specifically, on 14 October he took part in the session "Paving the way for best practices in citizen science (CS) for environmental plastic observations".
The main goal of this virtual global meeting, which took place from 5 to 19 October, was to lead the development of best practices and operational procedures, promote their documentation and disseminate them widely using the Ocean Best Practices System.
"For the integration of data from CS with official monitoring data carried out under European directives and other policy frameworks, it is essential that citizen science activities are linked to specific science projects or coordinated by NGOs. This ensures that data collection is carried out by trained personnel who are able to provide the right information by following the consolidated guidelines on the use of common vocabularies, official protocols and standards, as well as appropriate data policies that promote data findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability, while respecting copyright. Based on my recent experience with the EUROqCHARM project. I can confirm that citizens can provide high quality data to assess the distribution and composition of macro litter on beaches. However, for other types of marine litter, citizen science activities are mostly useful to raise awareness on this topic as even EU laboratories have difficulties to deal with more challenging types like micro-litter." Said Matteo Vinci at the session dedicated to this topic.
