Our Education Manager Peta Knott recently had a whirlwind trip to a Potentially Polluting Wrecks workshop in Malta where she promoted our new citizen science project and made many new useful connections. Keep reading to find out more...

At the beginning of March, I was caught up in a whirlwind of last minute attendance at the third and final workshop for Project Tangaroa in Malta. This opportunity occurred suddenly when the Nautical Archaeology Society received funding for our Gathering information for citizen science monitoring of polluting wrecks project from Lloyd’s Register Foundation - who also funded the Malta workshop.

On my way to the airport on Monday 3^rd March 2025, I launched the project on social media and the posts were shared and liked widely across Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

By the time I turned up to the first day of the workshop on Tuesday 4^th March, a considerable number of people already knew about the project and were keen to hear about the results!

The NAS project meshed well with the Project Tangaroa workshop as both focus on data management relating to potentially polluting wrecks. It was great to be part of the discussion on this world-wide challenge.

At the workshop it was database central with delegates from around the world offering ideas on how to share data and help deal with the challenge of these heritage sites possibly polluting our ocean.

But as the workshop went on, and we heard from colleagues around the world, we realised that these wrecks weren’t going to potentially pollute our oceans, they were actively doing it already. The presentations and discussions were sobering stuff. However this wasn’t just a conference, it was a workshop, so we were going to have to come up with some practical solutions before we all went home.

But it wasn’t just about presentations and coffee breaks. As it was a maritime focused workshop, it was only natural to visit the local maritime museum. We wouldn’t have got as much out of it without the expert guides who gave our workshop delegates an insight to the vast maritime history of Malta through the museum's collections which contain items ranging from ship models and ancient anchors to modern navigation equipment (a mobile phone!) and refugee floatation devices (a kid's bouncy ball).

While we expected to visit the maritime museum, what was not typical was having a historically curated dinner!

The museum’s curator explained the historical background to each of our courses – a culinary and learning delight. We had peasant soup and traditional bread rolls followed by sea bass which was more expensive than lobster in the 1700s! And our meal was finished with a Victoria sponge nod to British influences on the island.

The third and final day of the workshop was all about audience participation and coming up with future solutions. The large paper and markers came out and allowed us to brain-storm our problems and opportunities and come up with creative statements to guide our way forward. One of the tangible outcomes was that we agreed that they could no longer be called Potentially Polluting Wrecks, they had to be called Actively Polluting Wrecks. Watch out for more outcomes including a truly collaborative manifesto to deal with this global challenge - coming soon!

Throughout the workshop, I was the main voice in the room promoting citizen science involvement in dealing with the challenge of potentially polluting wrecks. All the delegates had such different backgrounds and perspectives on this same issue. It was fabulous to hear about the many nuances of this problem and the many possible ways we could deal with it in the future.

As with most international conferences, you always come out with added benefits and connections that you never expected. I attended this Project Tangaroa workshop to join the PPW conversation and promote NAS’s new project and have come away with more information, useful colleagues and ideas for how to improve the Gathering data citizen science project. But I’ve also developed existing relationships, made new professional connections and have developed projects with far reaching benefits for NAS, PPWs, citizen science and underwater cultural heritage. It certainly was a worthwhile whirlwind workshop.

Thank you to Lloyd’s Register Foundation for financially supporting my attendance at the workshop and to Project Tangaroa and The Waves Group for allowing me to be an active participant in the discussions about the worldwide challenge of Actively Polluting Wrecks.