As it is British Science Week we will be asking our pupils and parents to take part in a Citizen Science project online. The project is named ‘The Plastic Tide’ after the charity that is running it. Plastic Tide is  an organisation  made up of ocean, science and technology enthusiasts committed to  working out ways to clean up our oceans of marine litter and plastic. Ocean waste is having a huge impact on wildlife, as many of our  sea creatures are eating litter and plastic and getting trapped in plastics, which is harming them and the food chain – which could even include us!

The project  works by asking members of the public to tag images of the coast that contain pieces of litter. During British Science Week, we want you to help  tag some of 250,000 images. You only need to spend 15 minutes  clicking on pieces of litter in beach  images to help the project. This will help to create a machine learning algorithm that can automatically detect, identify and monitor marine litter in images supplied by armies of drones surveying beaches.

To get started, go to: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/theplastictide/the-plastic-tide 

or you can access the Citizen Science project on The British Science Week 2018 webpage. You will need to register to take part, choosing a username and password which you will need to sign in, before you tag the images. Instructions are provided on what to do and how to identify the different types of plastics.

Each tag you provide will help the algorithm to detect thousands, even hundreds of thousands more litter items. This algorithm will be  freely available for scientists, companies, governments, beach clean organisations, to understand where, what type and when litter builds up on our coastlines. This will help millions of marine animals.

Thank you for taking part.

Miss Brooks