How can we do research in environments suffering from pollution that is difficult to see, wide spread, will last in geological timescales, and is affecting human and ecological health in unpredictable ways?
On the 5 Gyres SEA Change expedition, I’ll be testing #BabyLegs and other DIY scientific instruments to see how they measure up with the ones used by most marine scientists.
Created with baby’s tights, soda pop bottles, and other inexpensive and easy to find materials, #Babylegs can be used to trawl for floating marine plastics by hand or from a vessel.
The P.E.D. R.O.C. is a shoreline microplastic sampling instrument specifically designed to be used on rocky coastlines, a terrain which is very prevalent in Newfoundland.
By locating heat leaks, we unveil the potential for a Public Commons within the outdoor urban infrastructure of Churchill Square in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
We used a thermal flashlight to test for thermal, or heat, pollution from the effluent at the Holyrood Thermal Generating Station in Holyrood, Newfoundland.
A thermal flashlight measures temperature using a non-contact infrared sensor that “paints” surface temperatures directly onto the materials under examination: red for hot and blue for cold.
This project does science from the grassroots, where fishermen and women on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, create a research question, data protocol, gather data, and analyze data collaboratively with researchers.
The Monitoring Marine Plastics Project develops several low cost, open source, do-it-with-others (DIWO) technologies for observing ocean plastics designed specifically for the harsh weather and landscapes of Newfoundland.
