Fighting Ocean Pollution, One Research Kit at a Time

Ocean ecosystems are facing a gauntlet of threats, from rising temperatures to microplastics, but one of the leading causes of ocean pollution is largely out of sight: nutrients. Over the past 50 years, the growth of farming, aquaculture, and coastal populations has meant more nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus flowing into the ocean. 

Upward of 900 marine areas around the globe suffer from excessive nutrient enrichment, or eutrophication, which can lead to harmful algal blooms and low-oxygen dead zones that can wipe out marine ecosystems. Yet the full scale of the problem is unknown due to lack of data.

A two-year pilot project called GEM-in-a-Box aims to fill in the gaps through low-cost nutrient monitoring around the world, from Kenya to Malaysia to the Bahamas. GEM stands for Global Eutrophication Monitoring, and the initiative is led by the Commonwealth Blue Charter Action Group on Ocean Observation, in partnership with the Tula Foundation, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), and The Ocean Foundation.

In late September 2024, scientists from Southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Solomon Islands gathered at the Tula Foundation’s Quadra Island Ecological Observatory for a training workshop to test out the GEM-in-a-Box kit. Over five days, participants learned to measure ocean nutrients as well as other oceanographic indicators—dissolved oxygen, salinity, chlorophyll, conductivity, temperature, and depth—with easy-to-use instruments that come in one portable kit. 

While each GEM-in-a-Box kit costs around CAD $30,000, workshop participants will receive them for free at their home institutions, thanks to funding from DFO and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, lowering the barriers to monitoring and enabling high-quality data generation. This in turn will enhance regional understanding and decision-making.

Despite the chilly temperatures that greeted them on Quadra Island, participants—most hailing from tropical climates—enthusiastically got their hands and feet wet in the northeast Pacific to learn all they could about using the GEM-in-a-Box kits. The cold weather wasn’t the only new experience for many attendees; they were also treated to sightings of humpback and killer whales, Steller sea lions, and bald eagles.

“I was so inspired by their willingness to immerse themselves in the workshop, learn together, and share their experiences and challenges with their own work back in their home countries,” says Tula Foundation project manager Naomi Boon, who helped organize the training workshop. 

“It was really rewarding to hear from the participants just how much they need the equipment that is contained within the GEM-in-a-Box kits.” 

Eric Okuku is a case in point. A researcher with the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, Okuku traveled all the way from Mombasa, Kenya, where the population has grown 16-fold since 1950—from around 93,870 people to nearly 1.5 million—far outpacing sewage infrastructure. 

“Only one sewage system is working, and the efficiency is between 20 to 30 percent,” Okuku says. “That means that most of our wastewater is discharged into the ocean raw—so, not treated.” 

Waterways like Kenya’s Sabaki River also pick up soils and fertilizers on their journey from the agricultural interior to the coast, pumping tonnes of sediment and nutrients into the ocean, Okuku adds. The combination of sewage and nutrients is harming coral reefs, contaminating marine foods—from shrimp to snapper—and affecting coastal livelihoods. Combined with other threats, the picture isn’t pretty.

“We are talking about areas that are overfished and where climate change is already there,” Okuku says, “and then we add another stressor from pollution and this is how these ecosystems collapse.”  

Enter GEM-in-a-Box. Okuku plans to conduct monthly tests of three different nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, and silicate), in addition to other oceanographic conditions, at 15 sites along the Kenyan coast.

“Africa is a data-poor continent,” Okuku says, “and without data, the levels of how serious things are can never be known. And if they’re unknown, nobody will act.”

Sazlina Salleh has similar goals in her home country, Malaysia. A researcher and lecturer at the Centre for Policy Research at University of Science Malaysia, Salleh is concerned about the growing aquaculture industry off the coast of Penang, which—combined with changes in climate patterns—may have contributed to nearby algal blooms and fish kills. These events frequently occur during seasonal changes and have impacted the aquaculture sector in the region, Salleh adds.

“When I heard about the kit, we thought, Oh, we can get fast results to the aquaculture farms to help them come up with a solution,” Salleh says. “And we can convey this data to the authority that, Hey, look, this area needs to be managed properly. You can’t allow the increase of aquaculture without providing proper management and mitigation plans.”

Beyond local and national monitoring, the GEM-in-a-Box program aims to create a standardized global database to broaden our understanding of eutrophication and its impacts around the world. In the process, the project will help advance United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, along with the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

“Getting the data from the participants’ projects into a centralized repository and making it accessible to others is key,” Boon says. “This will allow us to make comparisons and to evaluate the impact of the kits.”

She adds that she’s hopeful that funding and training will extend beyond the two-year pilot project.

Expanding the project to neighboring countries and shining a light on eutrophication is the only way to tackle the issue, says Okuku. He compares it to plastic pollution, which didn’t receive the attention it deserved until a global campaign rose up to address it.

“Kenya has the best laws dealing with plastic because it is something that we see every day, something you can make noise about,” Okuku says. “Nobody can see sewage, but we are giving sewage a good look. Together, I hope we can fight pollution issues arising from eutrophication.”