The SeaLabs citizen science initiative is setting sail for another exciting year. Fresh from winning the Ocean Tribute Award 2025 at boot Düsseldorf, the Spanish ocean activists are expanding their fleet, forging new research collaborations, and preparing for another ambitious transatlantic campaign in 2026 with the World Cruising Club.
Award-Winning Citizen Science
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“Winning the award is giving us an extra push to keep improving our project and make it more accessible to global sailors,” says Project Manager, Luise Wagner, who is at the helm for knitting the SeaLabs network with partner organisations.
The award recognises innovative projects that combine marine conservation, research, and community engagement and is provided by the German Ocean Foundation. For the SeaLabs project, which runs under the umbrella of the NGO Ambiente Europeo, the award is not just an honour—it’s a testament to the passion and the strength of this volunteer-driven sailing community effort.
The Spanish team has started working closely with the German Ocean Foundation on expanding the citizen science approach to other watersport activities this year.
A Growing Fleet, a Global Mission
As the World Cruising Club will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers) - the SeaLabs team aims at equipping 20 yachts for each race - the ARC+ and ARC fleets - with mobile water quality sensors. Together, these crews will collect one of the largest citizen-led in-situ datasets ever gathered during a single transatlantic season.
SeaLabs aims at crews who can collect ocean data in areas far off coastal reach while crossing some of the world’s most iconic sailing routes.
Amazing crews and ongoing collabs - ARC boats continue sampling during their world ocean cruises
The SeaLabs team is delighted by the continued enthusiasm of ARC sailors. Some of last year’s crews are still sampling and submitting data nine months after setting sail from Gran Canaria in November 2024. This long-term commitment is inspiring the organisers to build deeper connections with sailors well beyond the Atlantic crossing.
The farthest samples to date were collected in Bonaire, in the southern Caribbean — more than 3,100 nautical miles from the ARC’s departure point in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. “We hope to receive our first datasets from the Pacific from boats that have carried on through the Panama Canal this year,” explains Luise Wagner from SeaLabs.
Others have returned to European waters but continue to contribute. Among them is skipper Peter Borzucki aboard Sun Cloud, who is currently sampling while cruising the Croatian Adriatic.
He has crossed the Atlantic twice since departing from Las Palmas last year with changing crews. “Taking samples for understanding how the ocean chemistry changes while covering hundreds of nautical miles is quite interesting to many of our charter guests”, explains Borzucki who uses the pH sensor for also monitoring the drinking water aboard. “It´s a handy little device which keeps reading quite accurate results even after many months of use.”
The Norwegian family aboard the catamaran Yggdrasil, part of the ARC+ 2024 fleet, has sailed far across the globe. Along the way, they’ve enjoyed incredible adventures during their world tour, discovering spectacular diving and hiking spots in the South Pacific. They’ve shared videos of swimming alongside sharks and manta rays — all while continuing to collect samples with their SeaLabs kit.
“We’ve even used the data for the kids’ schoolwork, which has been a lot of fun,” says Yggdrasil sailor and mother Anicke Brandt-Kjelsen. She has since joined the SeaLabs advisory board as a volunteer, lending her expertise as a chemist to support the team remotely.
From her base in the Canary Islands, project manager Luise Wagner coordinates SeaLabs’ activities and celebrates the positive momentum. “We’re grateful for the new volunteers who dedicate their free time and resources to take on crucial roles in our team,” she says.
The volunteer network is as diverse as the oceans they study — from marine biologists, data scientists and engineers who provide technical guidance and manage communications, to active sailors who connect via Zoom, sometimes even while underway on their own voyages.
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At the same time, SeaLabs organizers have relied on close collaboration with the Living Ocean Society, an Austria-based NGO that runs summer programs using SeaLabs kits and provides crucial feedback on logistics and device improvements.
Ocean activist Mirjam Teicht has trained more than 20 crews on the SeaLabs kit and is developing a calibration guide for pH measurements. “We want to provide more tutorials and educational materials for our test crews that they can use off-grid. This helps ensure the sensors maintain their highest accuracy,” she explains. This summer, her pilot program focused on determining the optimal frequency for recalibrating the pH probes and GPS localisation accuracy.
The Living Ocean Society ran a series of coastal tests in the Mediterranean this summer. As Mirjam Teicht explains: “We aim to understand why some signals appear off-chart and how to adjust them.”
The SeaLabs project is providing a wide range of opportunities
For the SeaLabs team, the pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together, with new insights emerging each year.
As Ambiente Europeo Director Daniel Rolleri explains: “While we don’t draw conclusions or make statements about climate change based on our data, we do help close the gap for marine scientists through our collection efforts. The impact of citizen science in providing in-situ results for large-scale data models is now being recognised.”
SeaLabs is also in contact with the European Marine Data Network (EMODnet), which is keen to integrate the test data into its modelling once validated.
More Local Engagement in the Canary Islands – Whale-Watching Tourists Join Seawater Testing
In 2025, SeaLabs launched a year-round testing programme with marine biologists from Ocean Explorer, a whale-watching operator based on the volcanic island of La Palma in the Canary Islands. Alongside monitoring whale sightings and contributing to animal identification records, the team now also measures key water quality parameters throughout the year — helping to track changes in the marine environment over time.
Marine biologist Saskia Schmöle from Ocean Explorer: “Our team helps to improve calibration procedures and runs field tests with various sensors while we make tours with island visitors. Our boat clients love to take water samples with the SeaLabs kit to make an impact while on vacation”.
Looking Ahead
The network of ocean-going researchers is expanding year by year. Since 2022, more than 80 kits have been distributed to blue water boats, resulting in over 1,200 test samples collected to date.
As the initiative moves into 2026, SeaLabs aims to further expand its impact. “The goal is to make ocean data collection accessible to a wide range of watersport enthusiasts. We really want to leverage this opportunity,” says Frank Schweikert from the German Ocean Foundation, who mentors the SeaLabs team in Spain to help them reach a wider audience.
Thanks to the ongoing feedback from ARC test crews, the ocean activists are now positioned to develop an all-in-one app for watersport enthusiasts. This platform could support the deployment of thousands of sensors across coastal and open-ocean locations. Not only sailors, but also divers, surfers, paddlers, and local coastal communities would benefit from vital nautical information.
How to support SeaLabs
To manage the running costs of this volunteer-driven project, crews are asked to cover the return shipping of the sensors to the Canary Islands once their test series is complete. Skippers who continue sampling may keep their sensor on board for as long as they sail, provided they send in their data regularly.
SeaLabs kits are provided free of charge for citizen science testing. For skippers who wish to use the sensor privately – for example to monitor fresh water quality aboard – the kit is available for purchase at €100 per unit.
Donations to support the SeaLabs project are accepted via the website of Ambiente Europeo. ambienteeuropeo.org/donaciones/
Click here for how to register for the SeaLabs ocean data collection.
Crews will be selected based on their skills, commitment, background knowledge and support in sensor shipping.
Project’s website: ambienteeuropeo.org/sealabs/
Contact the volunteers at this email: [email protected]