b'FEATURE STORYIn your role as a staff scientist and program manager, how do you educate the public about environmental issues and continue the level of outreach Mote is known for?Tracy:We have many different educational programs,We wanted citizens and tourists to make healthy and our outreach takes a lot of different forms in orderdecisions when going to the beach. Since red tide is to be successful. This past year, the state of Florida dealtincredibly patchy, you might see its effects like respiratory with a couple of major harmful algal bloomsboth airritation at one location, but the beach a mile down the freshwater cyanobacteria bloom and a red tide bloom road is perfectly fine. And thats why this information occurring at the same time.portal is such a staple to keep everyone safeincluding the large number of tourists that visit us.This dual bloom was so intense it caused mass wildlife fatalities, made international news and caused a tidalOur efforts to get the public involved didnt stop there, wave of public outcry. Communication and outreach werethough! When I joined Mote, I quickly realized it was never more important than theyve been in the past yearreally important to give the people a voice in whats and a half.happening in their backyards.Our outreach took two forms. First and foremost, we hadWe worked with NOAA (the National Oceanographic and to educate the public on the real public health concernsAtmospheric Administration) and GCOOS (Gulf of Mexico that HABs create for our state. Then we had to empowerCoastal Ocean Observing System) on a joint project to them to help safeguard their communities by taking partdevelop a way to use a cell phone with a microscope. The in citizen science.outcome was a mobile app we called the HABscope. Communicating beach closures to the general publicIt allowed citizen volunteers to take a sample of water, became a top priority, and we needed a solutionplace it on a microscope slide, and upload a short video to quickly and efficiently inform our entire state ofof the magnified sample for rapid analysis of Karenia dangerous conditions. brevisthe prevalent organism in Florida red tide.To accomplish this, we used the Beach ConditionsThe app uses complex algorithms to evaluate the videosReporting System (BCRS) at VisitBeaches.org. Theautomatically calculating and reporting the concentration websiteand smartphone appallows trained citizensof red tide by its shape, size, and movement patterns. to report out on environmental conditions the generalIts pretty cool stuff and allows us to forecast where the public would want to know before visiting a beach inpublic might experience respiratory issues from exposure Florida. They report on parameters like the weather, windto blooms. speed, crowds, jellyfish, rip currents, and moreincluding red tide effects, like respiratory irritation, dead fish, andMoving forward, we hope to combine a lot of these water discoloration. citizen science efforts into the BCRS to expand our database and allow more educators and students to Data collected from beaches were uploaded twice acontribute. I feel like its a great opportunity to get more day and available to the entire public. The tool gave fulldata and to increase the general publics scientific literacy.transparency into our HAB problems in the state, and we went from 2,000 users to the 1.2 million we have today! My favorite part is that kids can contribute real scientific data to our causeand in doing sothey start imagining The BCRS wasand still isa critical part of our themselves as scientists too. My hope is that getting outreach to protect the public from events like children involved in our work helps increase the diversity harmful algal blooms.of participation in science.Whos Minding the Planet? 33'