Expanding and Evaluating Rescue a Reef's Outreach Activities

In response to an increasing need to improve public education and foster stewardship for the conservation and restoration of our valuable coral reef ecosystems, the University of Miami developed the Rescue a Reef (RAR) citizen science program in 2015. The centerpiece of this program are the citizen science restoration expeditions that allow participants to gain hands on experience with coral restoration and directly interact with coral scientists. To expand the RAR’s existing coral restoration activities, this study implemented and evaluated the efficacy of the following new avenues of public outreach: educational restoration expeditions, hands-on citizen science activities, and virtual reality restoration expeditions. The results indicate that expanding coral conservation outreach activities beyond the citizen science restoration expeditions is effective in increasing participant knowledge levels and addressing current RAR program limitations. Implementing these alternative outreach avenues maintained the educational benefit of the traditional citizen science restoration expeditions while also sustaining participant satisfaction, reaching bigger audiences, and lowering staff and funding requirements. However, it is necessary to shift the messaging of these events to place less emphasis on the process of coral restoration and more on the threat of climate change to coral reefs and the actions individuals can take to combat it. To better serve the program goals, the findings of this study recommend implementing a strategy to host a variety of outreach events in conjunction with the traditional citizen science expeditions.