Many oceanographers engage with the public to raise awareness of climate change and ocean pollution. However, they may face criticism in such public engagement because of the pollution they cause themselves by not recollecting research equipment, such as drifters, from the ocean. Inadequately addressing this criticism could threaten the effectivity of their public engagement practices. In this study, we explore how oceanographers from Europe and the US experience this form of criticism, and which responses are effective. We use focus group discussions followed by a survey among members of the Dutch public with an interest in oceanography to investigate the problem, collect response strategies from oceanographers to address the criticism and determine the effectiveness of these responses at public engagement events. The results show that oceanographers have mixed experiences with how frequent they face criticism on the pollution by drifters and how serious they think the problem is. Most find it an adequate response to highlight that the scale of other sources of pollution is much larger than that of oceanographic research. However, the survey indicates that public support for this response is low, and that explaining how making drifters more sustainable and committing to also cleaning up plastic from the ocean are much more supported responses to the criticism.
Sleiderink et al. (2026) studied this question.