The Ocean Cruising Club, which makes grants to sailors to help foster adventure and conservation, has awarded its latest funding to a sailing family who is using their voyages to support citizen science of the oceans and marine environment. The award to Free Range Ocean and S/V Freeranger is to support its Ocean Citizen Science Project directory, a free platform through which people can find a project that interests them and then donate their time and experience to advance marine research—whether that’s offshore cruisers sampling for plankton, or inshore sailors studying water quality or more local flora and fauna.
In a media release announcing the grant, the OCC noted that “the 2022 UNESCO State of the Ocean report highlighted that ‘scientific knowledge illuminates the way to reversing the decline in ocean health, conserving marine life, addressing ocean aspects of climate change and using the ocean sustainably to improve people’s lives.’ Yet collecting data from our ocean is a vast, difficult and expensive task, one that Free Range Ocean says needs all hands-on deck to achieve.”
Free Range Ocean is a UK-registered nonprofit run by Larissa Clark and Duncan Copeland, two sailors whose careers in environmental justice, marine resource management, and conservation communications compelled them to start this project. In 2023, they purchased Freeranger, a 2005, Bruce Farr-designed 50-foot Beneteau, to begin fulltime cruising and sailing as a family with their two children. They left British Columbia in 2024 and began working their way south; as of February, they were near Puerta Vallarta, Mexico, and planned to head to Pitcairn Island in March.
From the outset, their goals have centered on a “journey with a purpose” to use science communications and outreach to advance understanding of the global ocean, offer Freeranger as a test bed for marine research innovations, and connect with local researchers and communicators in the communities they visit. Last year, they developed the Ocean Citizen Science Project directory to harness the collective knowledge and energy of people who love the water and sailing. Users can filter the projects by region, sea, topics of interest, species of interest, experience levels, times of year, participant locations (onshore, inshore, offshore, remote), and family friendly, so they can find the best project for them and participate in active citizen science projects wherever they are.
“At its core, citizen science means the collection and analysis of data relating to the natural world by members of the general public, typically as part of a collaborative project with professional scientists,” the OCC release says. “With an estimated 30 million recreational boats on the water, often in places that researchers only dream of accessing, there is plenty of people power in the boating community that could be leveraged as ‘citizen scientists’ to collect samples and analyze data that increase knowledge and understanding of our ocean and help to pinpoint effective solutions for a healthy future. Awareness of the challenges exists, but often boaters just don’t know where or how they can contribute, as projects can be hard to find.”
The Ocean Citizen Science Project Directory aims to help sailors find such projects and get involved with the ones that best suit their interests, expertise, location, and capacity. Among the dozens of projects listed on the directory are ongoing studies of ghost nets in the North Pacific, plankton surveys throughout the world, nurdle pollution worldwide, reef and coral studies in Hawaii, algae studies in the North Atlantic, and shark, whale shark, sea turtle, seahorse, mitten crab, and manta ray research.
On their website, Clark and Duncan emphasize the power of one: “In all our years working in the environmental space where the problems and challenges can feel overwhelming and hope is hard to find, we always remember a favorite quote that we can all relate to: ‘If you think you’re too small to make a difference, you’ve never been to bed with a mosquito!’ ’’
Beyond contributing to almost a dozen citizen science projects themselves, Freeranger is also used as a testbed and showcase for innovative and accessible research-based or green-operational technologies, and as a platform for local early-career researchers and storytellers in the countries they visit. Freeranger is also an “eco-champion” in the hall of fame for the scientist-led Discovery Yacht Program of Seakeepers International.
The OCC provides grants up to £5,000 in two categories—adventure and conservation—and this is the 13th such grant the organization has made since 2019. Other recipients have included adventure grants for a variety of inspired and intrepid voyages, and conservation grants that have focused on sailors conducting work on microplastics, marine debris, and the impacts of climate change.
Learn more about Free Range Ocean. Learn more about the OCC grant process.
February 2025
