Team 1B 2024: Marine Microbiome Alliance
The problem…
The marine environment is rich in microbial life responsible for producing half of the world’s oxygen and consist of ~4 gigatons of carbon – 4-times the biomass of all insect life. Researchers at The Marine Biological Association are starting to unpick the diversity and mechanisms behind the fundamental ecosystems service that they provide. But researchers struggle to communicate the importance and value to an audience beyond academia. Unlike their macroecologist counterparts, their topic of choice doesn’t have a fluffy, slimy or scaley mascot to immediately grab an audience’s attention. Rather, the microbiome is nebulous community of complex interactions and fluxes that is nearly impossible to wrap your head around over a 4-year doctorate, let alone a 2 minute chat at a school.
The challenge…
To find a method of communicating the value of the marine microbiome to a wider audience. We defined our objectives below:
- Keep it simple, stupid: The marine microbiome is a difficult topic to grasp, so we wanted to ensure our solution avoided any need for overly verbose language or complex concepts.
- Find our audience: We had a limited time-frame so we wanted to choose a specific audience which we can focus our solution on.
- Link to an existing ‘brand’: Utilise one of the microbiome’s ecosystem services already with a strong emotional response to engage with our audience.
The solution…
Our solution was for The Marine Biological Association to engage with local climate activists by attending their annual People’s Climate Summit. We chose our target audience as they are an already impassioned and vocal group who are likely to engage with the marine microbiome as they are important in drawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. At the summit, students and researchers will offer a 2-hour workshop consisting of a short talk communicating the importance of the marine microbiome’s role in carbon sequestration and regulating the marine environment. Followed by a creative competition, where attendees will be supplied with a blank placard and tasked with coming up with a snappy protest tagline involving the marine microbiome. The session will finish with a people’s assembly where the attendees can ask questions and speak with the presenters with the intention of generating objectives for The Marine Biological Association to address. The goal of the workshop is to establish a successful framework of engaging with climate-concerned individuals which can be used to hold similar events in coastal cities.
The nitty gritty…
To fund the initial workshop and support any spin-out activities the MBA will use pre-existing internal budgets for knowledge exchange activities as well as applying for the Outreach and Engagement Grant from the British Ecological Society.
The inspiration…
Generation Hope – Annual event organised by Natural History Museum and hosts Young climate advocates, artists, educators and scientists set to come together for free programme of events exploring our current planetary emergency.