Escalating Science Communication through Innovation

The world is full of uncertainty. Monumental challenges— including climate change, poverty, and war—are at the forefront of daily life and becoming ever more urgent. Key barriers to adaptation are limited resources, lack of private sector and citizen engagement, insufficient mobilization of finance (including for research), low climate literacy, lack of political commitment, lobbying from commercial interests, limited research and/or slow and low uptake of adaptation science, and low sense of urgency [1]. This article is a good news story focusing on a project that addresses at least three of these barriers: private sector and citizen engagement, low climate literacy and limited research and/or slow and low uptake of adaptation science. But it is not a great news story because there is much more work to do urgently. Most scientists disseminate their findings only to peers. About half of them do not perform public outreach at all, considering it to be ineffective [2]. The other half does minimal outreach, mainly focusing on school children.

More than 75% of all coral reefs on the planet are currently threatened by a combination of stressors including climate change, overfishing and destructive fishing, coastal development, pollution and damage. As they deteriorate, fish populations disappear, reefs provide less storm protection, they are less attractive to tourists and they no longer contribute to the formation of sandy beaches, which are in turn another protective barrier for coastlines and tourist attraction. Overfishing and pollution are serious immediate threats to many reefs; however, climate change is now the primary concern and will cause irreversible damage to reefs worldwide [3]. Crucial to the process of managing coral reefs is the incorporation of the human dimension into management at local, regional and international scale [4].

“Museums are places of conservation, education, and about protecting something sacred. We need to assign those same values to our oceans.”

Jason deCaires Taylor

Award-winning sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor was commissioned by the Museum of Underwater Art (MOUA) to create a series of eight sculptures known as Ocean Sentinels, located at John Brewer Reef, Queensland, Australia (Figure 1).

The Ocean Sentinels are made up of “the godfather of coral,” Charlie Veron, who has described 20% of all the corals on the planet, Professor Peter Harrison, the first person to record a mass coral spawning event in 1981, Jayme Marshall, representing the next generation of Indigenous leaders, Dr. David Vaughan, aqua culturist and pioneer of Plant a Million Corals, Giant Clam Man Dr. Richard Braley, Coral Ecologist Dr. Katharina Fabricius, marine zoologist, the late Sir Maurice Yonge, and school student Molly Steer, whose Straw No More movement to get people to stop using plastic straws has been adopted by 3000 schools (Figures 2&3).

Underwater art installations can have positive and negative impacts on people. Underwater art is relatively recent and a popular way for people to explore, learn and be inspired by the marine environment, science, education, art, management, issues and solutions. Underwater art has a huge appeal and “wow” effect on locals, visitors and tourists [5]. Science communicators such as Jacques Cousteau, Silvia Earle and David Attenborough have inspired millions of science students to learn, work or behave as scientists or conservationists. It is essential to make a scientifically based voice heard loud and clear, especially in times of crisis (epidemics, financial crisis, earthquake, new medications, etc.) and this can be done through professional communication [6]. Newlands et al. [7] found that there was no consistent voice and a narrative void for Great Barrier Reef water quality narratives.

We compared the communication reach of four of the individual Ocean Sentinel scientists, one artist and the Museum of Underwater Art (Table 1). The highest academic metric was 27,845 citations by Katharina Fabricius and the highest community metric was 90,049 on Instagram by Jason deCaires Taylor. Note the clear differences between scientists who have higher academic metrics and low to no community metrics and the artist Jason deCaires Taylor and MOUA who have high community metrics and low academic metrics (Table 1). Underwater art projects are generally very small, low impact, low risk facilities that have positive benefits on a variety of environmental, social, cultural and heritage values. Underwater art installations can have positive and negative impacts on marine plants and animals, increasing local biodiversity and providing convenient concentrations of marine life for observation by visitors [8].

Table 1:A comparison of two academic metrics (H-index, citations) and two community metrics (Facebook and LinkedIn) and an estimated global reach for scientists, artists and the organization associated with Ocean Sentinels. B- billion, M- million.

We have estimated the direct size of the Museum of Underwater Art audience as 1.2M and measured the indirect audience as 184M per event. These are large numbers compared to the measured academic audience of individual scientists of between 245 to 28,000 over a lifetime. The magnitude between science and art is potentially 40 to 6,500 times the impact. There is a huge gap and opportunity for academics to share their science in collaboration with artists and social enterprises using innovative projects and communication tools such as mainstream media, Instagram and LinkedIn to reach new audiences.

The field of science, marine science and conservation needs ocean sentinels, heroes, and role models. They can provide inspiration, and hope in a world where it’s easy to feel lost. A role model is proof that it’s possible to achieve our dreams. They inspire us to become the best version of ourselves and to act against local and global problems such as climate change and ocean health. Scientists and artists must do things differently and prioritize storytelling to foster understanding, prompt action and behavior change on global issues such as climate change.

1. IPCC (2023) Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. H Lee and J Romero (eds.,). IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, pp. 1-34.
2. Zaelzer C (2020) The Value in Science-Art Partnerships for Science Education and Science Communication. eNeuro 7(4).
3. Guldberg H, Skirving W, Dove SG, Spady BL, Norrie A, et al. (2023) Coral reefs in peril in a record-breaking year. Science 382(6676): 1238-1240.
4. Dean AJ, Gulliver RE, Wilson KA (2020) Taking action for the Reef?”–Australians do not connect Reef conservation with individual climate-related actions. Conservation Letters 14(1).
5. Smith A, Victory P, Caires Taylor J, Cook N, Cook K, et al. (2021) Museum of Underwater Art. Stages 2 and 3 Public Information Package Public Information Package.
6. Jucan MS, Jucan CN (2014) The Power of Science Communication. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 149: 461-466.
7. Newlands M, Mahony T, Bohensky E, Lubicz C (2021) Understanding the influence of media narratives on Great Barrier Reef water quality management (RP227). Technical report.
8. Smith A, Songcuan AJ, Cook N, Brown R, Cook, K, et al. (2022) Engineering, Ecological and Social Monitoring of the Largest Underwater Sculpture in the World at John Brewer Reef, Australia. J Mar Sci Eng 10(1617): 1-22.