Mission CorSeaCare

To prove that every citizen has a role to play in safeguarding our natural marine heritage, the Mare Vivu Association has taken on the challenge of setting up a vast one-month scientific and educational mission in a sailing kayak to travel the 1,000 km of Corsican coastline and raise awareness of marine species and plastic pollution: the CorSeaCare Mission. This mission is an operational summary and the culmination of a whole year of experimentation and preparation, mobilizing more than fifty stakeholders from various backgrounds. During the CorSeaCare mission, Mare Vivu will apply all the actions and tools that have been invented and tested throughout the year to collect data on the topics addressed during a month-long adventure at sea.

Through this sustainable development project, which is based on technological innovation and low tech, the aim is to invent, implement and then pass on innovative solutions to enable the general public, and especially the younger generation, to reclaim their natural marine heritage and become aware of current and future issues.

Main results of the project:

The CorSeaCare project combined a scientific and an educational component through two main strands:

Scientific component

For a month, a team of 10 people traveled around Corsica to collect essential environmental data:

Monitoring of marine litter: 40 transects at sea were used to map pollution and feed the IFREMER database, in partnership with Prof. François Galgani.
Bioacoustic analysis: Collection of data on noise pollution and cetacean census with the CNRS of the University of Toulon.
Studies on plankton and microplastics: First large-scale sampling around Corsica, carried out in partnership with the STARESO station.
Census of marine and coastal biodiversity: Use of the BioLit and OBSenMer applications to georeference species.
Monitoring of pollution in biomedia: Unprecedented study on plastic residues used in wastewater treatment plants.

The study revealed new areas of waste accumulation (Macinaggio, Pino, Galéria) and highlighted pollution within the Scandola Nature Reserve itself, where more than 3 kg of waste was collected.

Educational component

Awareness-raising activities were carried out throughout the mission:

Conferences and traveling screenings on environmental issues in the Mediterranean.
Beach clean-ups and categorization of waste, with data recording on the Surfrider Foundation platform.
Educational workshops and activities: activities for children (plastic art, “Eco-Lanta”), awareness-raising in day camps, campsites and town halls.
Zero-waste tutorials: making natural mosquito repellents, recycling textiles into bags, tawashi.
Training in participatory science via applications such as OBSenMer, BioLit, Tela Botanica (etc.)

Thanks to this expedition, CorSeaCare has raised public awareness, trained new stakeholders and contributed to the enrichment of scientific knowledge on marine pollution in Corsica.