Broadening the community of nudibranch enthusiasts through multilingual educational programming to increase climate advocacy engagement

Abstract

Abstract Environmental literacy and advocacy for environmental protections are essential components of responsible stewardship. For coastal communities, stewardship requires knowledge of ocean processes and the biological communities living within these ecosystems. While many studies highlight difficulties in engaging American audiences in environmental concern and stewardship due to hyper‐individualistic societal values, tidepooling is one recreational pathway to coastal community engagement that strengthens sense of place, and therefore, responsibility to protect natural resources. We sought to broaden the tidepooling community to include more diverse voices through a participatory science program with inland city‐dwelling, multilingual, and non‐English speaking adults. Using nudibranchs as an environmental ambassador, we developed a curriculum to build bridges between the existing amateur naturalist community, residents from diverse demographic communities, and local advocacy organizations. Here, we evaluate how this program addressed environmental literacy through a shared interest in nudibranchs and collective engagement in coastal natural resource protection. We provide recommendations for future implementation of this program, including how to emphasize its dual goals in improving environmental literacy and belonging to a community focused on environmental stewardship.