Beyond formal ocean education: cultivating marine stewardship and care for the ocean through coastal access and shoreline experiences

Ocean Literacy (OL) is conventionally defined as ‘an understanding of the ocean’s influence on you and your influence on the ocean’. The OL framework has been broadly applied to inspire pro-ocean actions and promote societal behavioral change toward better marine stewardship. However, the concept has been criticized for excluding those without access to formal ocean education and for overlooking experiential learning and informal knowledge systems. Although informal learning experiences cannot replace formal ocean education, we argue that they should not be overlooked as meaningful opportunities for the public to learn about and develop a sense of care for the ocean. Using a case study approach, we collected qualitative data through in-depth interviews with coastal users recruited from public access points in Rhode Island, U.S. Our findings show that coastal access offers opportunities to acquire knowledge about the ocean, cultivate positive dispositions toward the marine environment, develop competencies to engage in actions that support pro-environmental outcomes, and nurture habits that promote marine stewardship. This study highlights the importance of understanding the ocean access needs of diverse groups and their attitudes toward the marine environment to develop more inclusive strategies that cultivate stewardship and improve the management of public saltwater blue spaces.