The Plankton Project

The Plankton Project was started in 2023 by Elizabeth Beston in order to collect information about marine plankton around the coast of Norfolk and to share that knowledge with others. Since then, over 100 plankton surveys have been done in the area, with more than 130 taxa added to local records. In addition, several talks, workshops, social media posts and events have enabled thousands of people to see the wonders of the microscopic pelagic world.

Since then, the 2024 Plankton Manifesto (Ocean Stewardship Coalition)¹ has recommended that more plankton data is required for research, that citizen science could be a part of assessing plankton information, and that plankton literacy amongst the general public (especially children) should be increased. With this in mind, The Plankton Project plans to grow over the next three years with 3 new goals:

1. Enable other citizen scientists to survey nearshore plankton from coasts local to them, by providing training, methodology, a free and online identification guide, community support, and a dataflow to the NBN Atlas.
2. Increase plankton literacy amongst the general public, giving people of all ages access to information about pelagic organisms and their ecology, encouraging them to take care of the ocean, and inspiring future marine scientists and microbiologists.
3. Provide researchers with observations, images and measurements of Norfolk plankton for analysis by building an open and online library of data