Cleaner Coasts

[Music plays and the Maths inside, UTS, AAMT and CSIRO logos and text appears: Investigating the maths inside, Cleaner Coasts]

 

[Image changes to show a rear view of Denise Hardesty looking at the ocean]

 

Denise Hardesty: I ask questions all the time.

 

[Image changes to show Denise’s face looking into the distance]

 

I’m always wanting to know why? How does something work? What makes it tick? I love to be outside.

 

[Image changes to show a rear view of Denise looking at boats on the ocean]

 

I was very inquisitive. I still am and it’s super fun.

 

[Image changes to show close up of Denise smiling and text appears: Denise Hardesty, Research Scientist CSIRO]

 

Hi, I’m Denise Hardesty, I’m a Research Scientist for CSIRO and I work on marine debris.

 

[Music plays and the image changes to show math equations on a water background and text appears: #MATHEMATICS]

 

[Image changes to show a close-up of Denise talking to the camera]

 

We’ve been asking questions all around Australia and also internationally.

 

[Images move through of three researchers on a sandy beach taking notes, beach debris, five researchers in conversation and then conducting a transect of the beach]

 

We are asking how much trash gets out there on our coastline? Where does it come from? What are the impacts on wildlife? And importantly, what can we do to stop that debris or litter from going from land out into the ocean?

 

[Images move through of gloved hands measuring a dead seabird, a researcher noting data, gloved hands measuring a dead bird’s beak and a close-up of noted data on a clipboard]

 

One of the things that’s critically important in the work that we’re doing, is really identifying, what’s the effect of this plastic, of this litter that’s lost in the environment. What’s the effect on the wildlife?

 

[Images move through of gloved hands holding a dead bird on a laboratory table with a ruler and a scalpel, the dead bird being dissected, organs of the dead bird and two scientists looking down]

 

What’s the effect on sea turtles, on sea birds? What’s the effect on cetaceans, whales and dolphins? Are animals getting tangled up in the trash and the litter and the fishing line?

 

[Image changes to show Denise talking to the camera by the ocean]

 

Are they mistaking it for food and eating it? Those are some of the questions that we are asking of the data that we are collecting.

 

[Images move through of researchers holding a tape and conducting a transect of a beach walking from the shoreline to the vegetation and the camera zooms in on two of the researchers at work]

 

Basically, we go out and we survey from the waterline up into the backshore vegetation.

 

[Image changes to show Denise talking to camera and then image changes to show the researchers with a large plastic bag, examining litter]

 

And we do that because we’re going to find different types of things, different amounts and sizes of items down near the water where we might find small things, versus way back up in the vegetation where that trash or litter can be trapped.

 

[Images move through of Denise talking to the camera, researchers preparing tape to conduct a transect, a researcher collecting litter and another researcher taking notes]

 

What we do on our transects is, we have two people walking either side of a metre tape, so that we know exactly how far we go. One person looks at one metre of ground, the other person looks at the other metre of ground.

 

[Image changes to show the researchers in conversation and then the image changes to show Denise talking to the camera]

 

So, it’s a two-metre-wide swathe down from the shoreline up into the backshore vegetation.

 

[Image changes to show a researcher picking up and measuring a piece of marine debris and then the image changes to show Denise talking to the camera]

 

There can be a lot of local variation between areas and to be able to capture that and to understand that we need to have at least three replicates.

 

[Camera zooms in on Denise’s face as she talks]

 

And the reason we have three replicates is we can actually do some statistical analysis with that and we can look at the differences there.

 

[Image changes to show researchers measuring pieces of marine debris on a paper marked with a size chart and then recording data on a piece of paper]

 

So, that minimum number of three is really critical. We have a size chart and we actually record the size of ten different items that are found along the transect.

 

[Images move through of researchers walking along the beach, three 4WD vehicles driving along a beach, a female researcher in a boat, and a researcher collecting seaweed]

 

So, we’ve surveyed almost 200 different sites around the entire country and we’ve carried out those surveys about every 100 kilometres around the entire coastline.

 

[Image changes to show a pristine beach and then the image changes to show a rear view of researchers walking along the beach]

 

It’s a lot of surveys and it’s more than 600 different transects at those different survey sites.

 

[Image changes to show the Gulf of Carpentaria and then the Nullarbor Plain highlighted on an Australian map]

 

There’s a couple of parts of the Australian continent that we just simply were not able to survey. One was in the very top end at the Gulf of Carpentaria and that’s because there really are no roads or ways to get there. And the other place is across the Nullarbor in the south.

 

[Image changes to show two males wearing snorkels, in a waterway with a fishing net collecting debris from the water]

 

And frankly there are some areas that just weren’t safe, just weren’t accessible, that even by boat, we couldn’t get in there to survey those sites.

 

[Images move through of Denise talking to camera, a male using computer and a female holding notes next to him, a close-up of the male and female, and a graph on the computer screen]

 

But importantly, because we have surveyed all the other areas, we can use our models to make projections and predictions of how much debris would be in those unsurveyed areas and that’s a really critical piece.

 

[Image changes to show the male and female looking at the screen and then TJ Lawson in an office speaking to camera and text appears: TJ Lawson, Research Technician, CSIRO]

 

TJ Lawson: GIS stands for Geographic Information System. And that is basically a computer system that’s used to store, analyse and most importantly, visualise data that’s related to a position on the earth’s surface.

 

[Image changes to show TJ walking across a laboratory towards Denise and then the image changes to show a close-up of Denise smiling and talking and then the image shows TJ listening]

 

GIS was really important in this project. At each of the sites we got GPS location for our site access.

 

[Images move through of TJ marking GPS coordinates on a chart, TJ taking notes, TJ’s face as she works, Denise holding a piece of marine debris and TJ talking to the camera]

 

We also got GPS locations for our start and end of each transect and we used that to have a look at distance to the closest roads, the population within five, ten, 25 and 50 kilometres of that point, so we could analyse the effect of population on the amount of rubbish at a beach.

 

[Image changes to show litter being removed from a sieve with tweezers and then the image changes to show TJ talking to the camera]

 

We had a look at the closest train station as a proxy for access to the beach. We sampled every 100 kilometres and we did this because that gives us a random, stratified approach to our sampling.

 

[Images move through of TJ pointing to a map of Australia on a computer screen and tracing the coastline with her finger]

 

We didn’t want any bias in there because we didn’t know what was there. We picked a starting point and we just did it 100 kilometres regardless of what was there, we went there.

 

[Image changes to show TJ holding a GPS device and then the image changes to show TJ talking to the camera and then the image changes to show TJ pointing to the coastline on an Australian map]

 

At each site we took a GPS location. I put that into a GIS and created this map and it shows all of our survey sites around the coast where we could get to at 100 kilometres apart.

 

[Image changes to show Chris Wilcox talking to camera and text appears: Chris Wilcox, Research Scientist, CSIRO]

 

Chris Wilcox: My job is basically to turn data into understanding.

 

[Image changes to show a rear view of Chris walking down a corridor, entering into an office and sitting at a desk]

 

And if you think about it, data is just numbers, it’s not information. Information is actually the understanding of the patterns in that data and that’s my job.

 

[Image changes to show Chris using a computer then image changes to show a box with a seahorse symbol on it and letters “NFRD” and then the image changes to show Chris looking at a map]

 

What we are really trying to understand is, how much waste is on Australia’s coast? So, we measured that at a whole bunch of places but really that just gives you numbers at spots along the coast. And for people to visualise that, we tried to turn that data into essentially a map.

 

[Image changes to show close-up of Chris talking to the camera then image changes to show a map of Australia as a ribbon plot with coastal photographs and photographs of coastal debris around it]

 

And the best way to think about that, I think, was to make a picture like a ribbon plot. So, how bright the ribbon is along the coast of Australia tells you how much debris is there.

 

[Images move through of Denise looking at the ribbon plot on a computer screen and Denise entering data]

 

Someone should be able to look at a picture and immediately understand what you are talking about without any words or numbers on that page.

 

[Image changes to show a box plot on the screen and then the image changes to show a close-up of Chris talking to the camera]

 

You can think about box plots in that way. So, it’s quite clear a box plot if one box is higher than the other, that’s a difference and so you need some labels to understand a difference in what. But that’s the basic idea, you want people to immediately understand that.

 

[Image changes to show a person with tweezers removing sea grass from a sieve and then the image changes to show Chris talking to the camera]

 

I use angles and geometry.

 

[Image changes again to show three lines forming into a triangle]

 

I use what’s called vector addition, which is, if you’ve got something going this way and something going this way and you add them together, that tells you that the joint product goes this way.

 

[Images move through of windy ocean waves, researchers collecting debris on the beach and then a person holding a leaf over a sieve]

 

So, if you want to think about wind for instance, pushing things, that’s how you work out where the thing would go, from those trajectories.

 

[Image changes to show researchers collecting debris from the beach and then the image changes to show Chris speaking to the camera.]

 

So, all the tools that you are learning at the moment, I see every day in my work.

 

[Image changes to show Denise walking down a corridor and into a laboratory]

 

Denise Hardesty: One of the things I love about science and one of the things I love about the job, is that I am always learning. My maths skills are getting better.

 

[Image changes to show a female using a microscope then image changes to show Denise outside talking to the camera]

 

My skills of observation are getting better. The thing that I’m better at than anything, is at being wrong. Carrying out science and asking questions means being wrong.

 

[Image changes to show Denise using a microscope and then the camera zooms in on a female using tweezers under the microscope]

 

Taking risks, figuring things out, you are always sorting and figuring things out in lots of different ways. So, it’s a really dynamic area. We’re asking lots of different questions and we make a lot of mistakes but that’s what keeps it interesting as well. We all use math all day long, every day in all these ways that we’re not even thinking about.

 

[Image changes to show Denise outside talking to the camera]

 

Gaining maths skills now will serve you so well, not only now, in the future and it becomes an unconscious part of your life in being able to do things in a coordinated and effective way.

 

[Music plays and the Maths Inside logo and text appears: Investigating the maths inside, Maths Inside is a project led by University of Technology Sydney, and funded by the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training under the Australian Maths and Sciences Partnership Program, The aim of Maths Inside is to increase engagement of secondary school students in mathematics, by using rich tasks that show the ways it is used in real world applications, To find out more about this project and other AMSPP resources, please go to http://dimensions.aamt.edu.au, Maths Inside 2016 except where otherwise indicated, the Maths Inside materials may be used, reproduced, communicated and adapted free of charge for non-commercial educational purposes provided all acknowledgements associated with the material are retained, Maths Inside is a UTS project in collaboration with CSIRO and AAMT]