4Ocean

Case Study: Maureen Hannan

4Ocean states on its Facebook page that its mission is to be a business leader in creating a
sustainable future for our oceans by actively cleaning our oceans and coastlines through local
clean-ups and global efforts. (Emphasis mine.) The companys business is selling bracelets, and
its philanthropy is mobilizing beach and offshore trash cleanups. The company posts regular,
consistent content across multiple channels. While more than half of 4Oceans posts put the
spotlight on the bracelet product, the rest shed light on site-specific beach cleanups and other
relevant ocean-protecting initiatives. The case study presented here is an attempt to use key
features of text-, image-, and video-based microblogging to educate (both locally and globally)
about 4Oceans vital cleanup mission.

Twitter: The Worth of a Single Beach

While the company routinely documents its cleanup activities on Twitter, efforts to teach through
Twitter could be combined systematically with individual local beach cleanups. For example,
according to the companys blog, they recently did a cleanup on Eleuthera Island (Bahamas) for
World Oceans Day; however when I searched on Eleuthera beach cleanup on Twitter, only the
following results came up. Why was 4Ocean absent? Twitter could be used in a three-phase
effort, first connecting (through follows and re-tweets) with coastal environmental leaders and
teachers in the locale of an upcoming cleanup. In the second phase, the real education is done,
tweeting out environmental facts and quiz questions about the local coastal areafor example,
rare species found there, why the shoreline is a unique ecology, how the habitat is being
threatened, what the impact of similar coastal cleanups has been. (Tweets should @mention the
identified community leaders and educators and use an event hashtaglinks to the website
should provide fuller details, as well as offering an opportunity to register as a volunteer for the
cleanup.) Finally, on cleanup day, a small corps of volunteers should be enlisted to document the
cleanup (using the hashtag), inserting facts about how the pollution has affected marine life, any
marine life encountered, and the types/amount of trash removed from the beach.

This idea enhances community and K-12 education by leveraging a local environmental
volunteering eventthrough both info tweets and quizzing in advance and live microblogging
the day of the cleanup. Whereas traditional methods of environmental education present this
problem as a global one, trashed ocean waters are seen in this case through a hyper-local lens.
One hundred-forty characters at a time, K-12 students and the community at large can learn
about local habitats at risk, local flora/fauna, and local beach cleanup impacts. Also, rather than
education being offered as a broadcast-style lecture, tweets are crafted with individual
community leaders/educators in mindpeople who can help share the message in classrooms
and with civic groups, garner recruits, and live-tweet the work. The result is a community more
knowledgeable about its own stretch of coastlineand what individuals can do to care for it.

Instagram: Competing to Save the Reef

Cleanups such as the one 4Ocean sponsored in Key Largo protect reef ecosystems threatened by
tourist trash that ends up endangering live reefs. Unfortunately, though, the threatened wildlife is
not visible from the beach, and many of the cleanup efforts result in lackluster photos of people
gathering or posing with beach trash. Its great to show the thousands of pounds of trash
removed, but why not balance it with education on whats at stake: the colorful, diverse species
that depend on the reef? An Instagram photo contest could be announced and shared through
community partners such as the Rainbow Reef Dive Center. The goal of the Instagram
underwater photo competition would be to spread knowledge, through images, about the value,
uniqueness, and fragility of a local coastal ecosystem like Rainbow Reef. A quick look at the
Instagram account of the Rainbow Reef Dive Center shows there are already avid underwater-
dive photographers in the Key Largo community who are using Instagram. Dedicating a hashtag
such as #saverainbowreefwould allow the photos to be easily assembled and judged. Rules
would stipulate that the caption for the photo must explain accurately how and why that species
of wildlife is being put at risk by coastal trash. The prize might be an underwater GoPro or some
other item coveted by dive photographersit would be awarded in person at the cleanup event.

This idea educates residents by organizing local diver-photographers to share their understanding
of the ecosystem that non-divers do not get the chance to see. As with the Twitter initiative, the
microblogging event is part of the preparation/anticipation for the actual cleanup event.
Community members would get to see in a fresh waythrough the images and captionsthat
beach trash threatens local reef infrastructure. Also, since Instagrammers tend to be savvy
hashtag users who also feed the photos into their Facebook accounts, the user-generated image
microblogs would have a far wider educational reach than any direct effort through the 4Ocean
account alone. The benefits of this image-based microblogging include a greater understanding
of the link between beach cleanup efforts and reef survival.

Snapchat: Name this Trash

One things for sure: Ocean trash can be pretty weird. Because trash that gets swept out by the
tides undergoes a sea change of breakdown and barnacles, its often hard (and sort of
fascinating) to try to guess exactly what it once was. One final microblogging initiative 4Ocean
could undertake is to build a library of 10-second videos of divers, sailors, and beachcombers
encountering mysterious-looking pieces of ocean trashand ask followers to try and identify
what they once were. The name this trash initiative could offer, in its answers, more
information about the impact that type of trash has on ocean wildlife. The Snapchat video-
microblogging effort might do well by targeting young adults as its education focus (since so
many Snapchatters are in the 18-24 age group). For cleanup areas that are also college towns,
4Oceans daily name this trash snap or story could raise awareness among the student
population of the importance of making sure trash doesnt get left on the beach.

While bizarre-looking trash items are not in and of themselves educational, there is a certain
shock value in zooming in on human garbage that has become an eerie-looking part of an ocean
habitat. Video microblogs can capture unexpected juxtapositions that get people to ask questions
or alter their perspective. Maybe the students thought they knew what ocean garbage looked like:
plastic water bottles and shopping bags, maybe? But a 10-second pan of barnacle-encrusted soup
cans and childrens toys integrated into a reefscape might be jarring enough to prompt attitude
change and action. For some, that action may be simply picking up their own litterfor others, it
may be participation in the next cleanup event.