The DIY method: How citizen scientists can help with groundbreaking research

For the first time in some years, I don’t have a plan to travel. With this nourishing cycle of investigation, expectation and adventure at a standstill, I’ve been looking for ways to expand my experience and cultivate awareness of the world without leaving home.

I get on the treadmill in my garage and watch a slice of morning sun illuminate the narrow width of my driveway. Light transforms the chilly air, revealing a sea of tiny winged insects, bits of pollen, grains of ash or soot, sawdust from a neighbouring construction site, and the delicate luminous scrawl of a spider's web. The world is in motion, evidence of change is everywhere and, as I push myself to run, I breathe it all in. The small space of my backyard is filled with information and, with time on my hands, I can’t help but take notice.

Back in February, when I had no idea that stepping beyond my doorstep would soon mean breathing through a mask, I spent an hour in an inflatable boat straining phytoplankton from freezing seawater in the Antarctic Peninsula. The day is silent and foggy and our voices mingle with the cries of a few Adélie penguins and the occasional crack and boom of a calving iceberg.

Flat and mysterious, the ocean is the colour of pewter. A scattering of tiny krill squiggle through my reflection as I stare down into the depths, tracking the descent of the Secchi disk. Like a black and white CD on a line, the disk indicates the level of light penetrating the dense salt water. A pricey digital gizmo called a SonTek CastAway reveals further information about the pressure, temperature and salinity of the depths.

My fellow passengers on the Hebridean Sky, a vessel run by Polar Latitudes, are from all over the world. On the boat, our small crew hails from Singapore, the United States, Germany and Argentina. We all know a bit about phytoplankton, but less about its vital role in the vast interconnected web of the natural world. Bluntly put, these microscopic floating plants provide 50 per cent or more of the oxygen on Earth.

“Every second breath you take, you can thank the phytoplankton,” says Annette Bombosch, education coordinator for Polar Latitudes, from the stern of the bobbing boat.

We are participants in a particularly dramatic example of a citizen science opportunity, in which the sound of a distant exhalation is likely signalling a passing humpback whale. We fill small, brown bottles from the surface, adding a preservative stain called Lugol's solution. More concentrated samples are collected by dragging a net slowly through the water for 10 minutes and filtering out the phytoplankton with a handheld pump. Though we have less than two cups of water in our sample, the pumping requires effort and we all take a turn. The resulting brownish substance on the white filter is folded into what someone jokingly calls “a Phyto Taco” and dropped into a test tube.

Back on the ship, we meet our phytoplankton under a microscope. One is rounded at the ends and sports a spiky crown of tiny hairs; another is shaped like a fountain pen. Bombosch suggests we think of the phytoplankton universe as an “invisible forest”. She attributes this description to Allison Cusick, a PhD candidate back at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego whose work we are aiding. 

Determined to chart the effects of melting glaciers on coastal ecosystems, Cusick needs long-term data, but distance, logistics and funding has kept her from making regular trips to Antarctica. To fill in the gaps, she created Fjord Phyto, a partnership of education and research that capitalises on the regular routes of cruise ships and uses travellers like me to convey the crucial data needed from one of the most distant and fastest-warming regions on Earth.

At the end of the season, these samples will make their way by ship, auto and airplane back to California. Just like me. With a certain sense of attachment to our collected samples, I have this idea that I will drive south from my home in Los Angeles to catch up with them again in Cusick's lab. The spread of the coronavirus has changed everything. I get back to the States, but the phytoplankton do not.

“2020 is going to be a year of mysterious productivity,” Cusick said when we first spoke back in March, a week after the California shutdown began. The hurried efforts to shut down her lab mimicked the scramble to clear the samples from our ship in Ushuaia, Argentina, and also the rush on toilet paper and pasta in my local supermarket.

Confined to the boundaries of home and yard as the pandemic spread, Cusick studied computer coding while I joined my fellow humans in binge television watching, added the verb Zoom to my vocabulary, and scanned through the internet proliferation of sourdough recipes and TikTok dances. In these unusual times, the human need to consume and share information (for better or worse) is on full display. Taking a look at positive ways we might use this connection is heartening.

“I just go to the case studies that show and demonstrate the power of the crowd and the knowledge of collective contribution,” Cusick says. “Weather forecasting started because people had rain gauges in their backyards. The people in Flint, Michigan, started testing their own water. Something was off, and the city wasn't doing anything about it. It was a social justice issue.”

The coronavirus is a more nefarious microscopic cohabitant of our planet, but it shares with phytoplankton an ability to illustrate the effect of our global interconnectedness. Everything and everyone affects everything and everyone. A trickle of fresh water into the Antarctic convergence may not ring an alarm bell until you also begin to understand that large phytoplankton prefer colder, saltier water. In addition to providing much of the air we breathe, these chunky phytoplankton are at the base of a complex food chain that links all the way up to penguins and whales.

“There would be no whale watching anywhere else in the world if you didn't have the polar regions where they go to feed,” Cusick says.

At least 50 per cent of our oxygen and whales: that's a lot of responsibility for a tiny floating sea plant. I'm a little in love with the phytoplankton right now. An urge to protect these minuscule organisms guides me to make sustainable choices in my own life and look for ways to encourage others to do the same. This conscious work helps balance my fear of the virus and grounds me in the world.

“When you collaborate with people who aren’t scientists, you gain a whole community of people who are invested in the project,” Cusick says, explaining the ongoing value of participatory science.

Citizen science offers the general public an opportunity to participate in groundbreaking research and investigations. With thousands of ongoing projects, getting involved doesn't require a trip to the white continent. Many projects offer a chance to participate from home, making it an ideal activity for these strange days. Log on to the Globe Observer app, for example, and help confirm Nasa satellite cloud observations on your lunch break. You might count birds or insects, play games on your phone that help identify fish or plants, or scan the night sky for stars. Numerous coronavirus-related projects are working to create a large picture of how the virus is affecting us emotionally as well as physically. A comprehensive database of participation opportunities is available at scistarter.org.

To learn more about Fjord Phyto, visit fjordphyto.ucsd.edu.

As we each look out at the world from our small corner of it, our observations not only broaden the field of data, but also, through the act of careful attention, they create a necessary bond to nature and to each other.

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