The Cyprus Marine and Maritime Institute
Interactive activity that introduces participants to the combined impact of microplastic pollution and overfishing on marine ecosystems through a citizen science approach. Participants explore a simulated marine ecosystem affected by microplastics and overfishing. They observe polluted water containing microplastics and attempt to remove them using simple filtration materials, realising that these pollutants are difficult to eliminate once dispersed. The activity then progresses to a fishing simulation, where participants remove fish under different scenarios (sustainable vs excessive) and observe how overfishing reduces the ecosystem’s ability to recover, especially when combined with pollution. Through this process, participants understand that multiple human pressures interact and amplify environmental degradation, highlighting the importance of prevention, sustainable practices, and the role of citizen science in collecting data and understanding environmental changes. Participants act as citizen scientists by observing clean and polluted water, forming a simple hypothesis, and testing filtration methods using different materials. They then simulate fishing at different intensities and record basic data, such as the amount of pollution removed and the number of fish remaining. By comparing results, they draw conclusions about the limitations of pollution removal, the impact of overfishing, and the importance of sustainable practices, following the steps of the scientific method: hypothesis, experiment, observation, and conclusion.