Joe CapozziHow ‘citizen scientists’ can help track trash with the latest Lake Worth Lagoon Drift Card Study.
Calling all visitors to Palm Beach County’s waterways: Be on the lookout for hundreds of floating purple cards.
If you find one, you’ve stumbled onto a research mission involving citizen scientists and a study of how debris moves through inland waterways and accumulates on the coastline.
The 15th Lake Worth Lagoon Drift Card Study kicked off May 1 when volunteers deployed 320 bright purple cards made of thin biodegradable wood at eight different sites in Palm Beach County — from Burt Reynolds Park in Jupiter to Silver Palms Park in Boca Raton.
Another 240 cards, yellow and white, were tossed into the Indian River Lagoon from six sites on the Treasure Coast.
“We release these cards on a falling tide so they travel,’’ said Laura Jessop, community outreach programs and education manager with ANGARI Foundation, a West Palm Beach marine science nonprofit.
Researchers hope the cards, many decorated by students and children, will offer insight into the routes traveled by marine debris and where the watery trash accumulates. Enlisting volunteer scientists to collect the cards helps raise awareness.
“Lagoon Drift is important because it provides people with knowledge of where they live and it gives them an opportunity to look after and protect the environment that they reside in and recreate in,” Jessop said.
“This is a really good study that allows people to do that while contributing to science and providing us with valuable data,” she said. “It’s super important for us to look after the waterways.”
The ANGARI (ANNE-JAR-EE) Foundation drift studies started in 2017 as an extension to a Biscayne Bay study conducted by University of Miami scientists.
Cards in past ANGARI studies have been found as far north as New Smyrna Beach, as far south as the Hillsboro Inlet in Pompano Beach and in unusual spots like residential backyards not far from seawalls.
In the latest study, 22% of the 4-by-6-inch cards have been recovered and reported so far. The cards dissolve after three weeks in the water.
If you find a drift card while visiting the region’s shorelines and waterways, follow the instructions on the card:
- Note the specific day, time and location of where you found the card.
- Take photos of both sides of the card.
- Email it to lagoondrift@angari.org.
When you’re done, either keep it or toss it in the trash. Do not throw it back into the water.
Purple cards were also deployed at the C-17 canal in North Palm Beach, Manatee Lagoon in Riviera Beach, the downtown West Palm Beach docks on the Intracoastal Waterway, the C-51 canal that separates West Palm Beach and Lake Worth Beach, and the C-16 canal in Boynton Beach.
Check out ANGARI’s interactive dashboard and map to access data from previous experiments conducted from 2017 to 2025.
(Editor’s note: This story was published in partnership with the Lake Worth Beach Independent.)
