Keeping the Great in Great Bay

Summary:

In the fall of 2015, a group of duck hunters contacted the Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership (PREP) asking for help removing debris from the shores of New Hampshire’s Great Bay. PREP reached out to the Stewardship Network: New England, based at the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, whose mission is to mobilize volunteers to care for and study our lands and waters. Seeing an opportunity to use technology to collect debris data, the team partnered with Shane Bradt of UNH Extension’s Geospatial Technologies Training Center to provide training to citizen scientists who were then deployed along the shores of the Great Bay Estuary to help map the debris. The team hosted a volunteer training workshop on April 11, 2016 in Stratham, NH, recruiting volunteers from across the region who had access to small boats, smart phones, and were interested in mapping marine debris along the shores of Great Bay. Volunteers surveyed 10 of 13 assigned zones over the 6-week survey period, and emailed data files to project staff, who could track which shoreline zones had been completed. The results of the mapping efforts lead to several clean up efforts, coordinated by a variety of organizations, including the town of Durham, NH, The Gundalow Company, the Great Bay National Wildlife Refuge and the Great Bay Gunners.