Light is our usual method for observing on land, but water quickly absorbs light making it less useful in the ocean. On the other hand, sound in water can travel long distances before it is absorbed to the point where it becomes inaudible. For this reason sound is frequently used to "see" in the ocean, as when scientists map the sea floor.
In this activity students work with sound and light data. In the process they come to appreciate that several factors affect the speed of sound --salinity, temperature and pressure -- and learn how to calculate sound intensity at a distance from the source. By plotting sunlight intensity versus depth in the ocean students learn that light is quickly absorbed in water.
Students also read graphs, make calculations, and interpret both. They view two videos and may listen to underwater sounds (see reference section below for a link to a sound gallery). They read a short article on the changing soundscape in the ocean in modern times. These activities provide an engaging, varied look at sound and light in the ocean.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Spat, What's That? is a lesson on intertidal organism life cycles which explores how different life cycle stages are vulnerable to stressors like predation, ocean acidification, and habitat loss.

This class is jointly sponsored by the MIT Museum, Massachusetts Bay Maritime Artisans, the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s Center for Ocean Engineering, and the Department of Architecture. The course teaches the fundamental steps in traditional boat design and demonstrates connections between craft and modern methods. Instructors provide vessel design orientation and then students carve their own shape ideas in the form of a wooden half-hull model. Experts teach the traditional skills of visualizing and carving your model in this phase of the class. After the models are completed, a practicing naval architect guides students in translating shape from models into a lines plan. The final phase of the class is a comparative analysis of the designs generated by the group.
This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

In our new Species at Risk (SAR) education kit, each lesson addresses a species at risk through an Ocean Wise conservation initiative. Students will learn about the humpback whale and climate change, the killer whale and ocean pollution, the great white shark and bycatch, the hawksbills sea turtle and plastic pollution, and the sea otter and loss of kelp habitat, plus ways to take action to protect them! Equipped with the proper knowledge and tools, students will acquire an impactful learning experience to empower them to become ocean champions and stewards for species at risk.

The Earth’s ocean and its interconnected systems depend on marine species to maintain the efficiency and balance of the functioning of their ecosystems. Their role in the ocean has a direct impact on its health and our own. And yet, every day, thousands of animals fall victim to anthropogenic threats imposed on the ocean by human activity. It is going to take a deep, transformational change in humanity’s consciousness and behaviours regarding our oceans to ensure the protection of species. We believe this is possible by providing climate and conservation education to our youth to raise awareness on the interconnectedness between our lives and the ocean, and the importance of the role that each species holds on our planet.

View the video ̢ĺŰĺĎSquid Spawning̢ĺŰĺ to learn about the short life of the opalescent squid. Complete additional activities to further investigate the habitats and adaptations of squid and their relatives.

For more than twenty years, people have been feeding a large group of friendly stingrays at a place in the Cayman Islands. In this video, Jonathan travels to Grand Cayman to meet up with the famous marine artist and researcher Dr. Guy Harvey who is studying the relationship between humans and stingrays. He even shows Jonathan how to hold a stingray safely in his arms. Please see the accompanying study guide for educational objectives and discussion points.

In this activity, students research various topics about ocean health, e.g. overfishing, habitat destruction, invasive species, climate change, pollution, and ocean acidification. An optional extension activity has them creating an aquatic biosphere in a bottle experiment in which they can manipulate variables.

Assignment #1 Student-led discussion of articles from the literature
We assign one or two groups of two or three students to each of four or four or five topics related to climate change, and provide each group a set of related articles from the literature on their assigned topic. The group will lead a one-hour, in-class discussion on the topic, with up to a dozen students and one instructor in each discussion. In preparation for the discussion, the discussion co-leaders must collectively write a set of "Reading Questions" about each assigned article, which help readers focus on the key points made by the articles and can serve as points of discussion. The other students participating in the discussion must read the articles with the aid of these Reading Questions and annotate the portions of the articles that address the Reading Questions. We (instructors) evaluate the Reading Questions written by the co-leaders (they receive a shared grade for these), and we also check the annotated articles turned in by the other discussion participants to ensure that they prepared to participate in the discussion (they receive individual grades this). Discussion co-leaders each receive a grade for the quality of their discussion leadership.

The purpose of this assignment is in part to help students prepare for their final writing assignment by requiring that they read a set of articles closely enough to help other students discuss and understand the key points, and get feedback about their level of understanding, up to a month before the final paper on the topic is due. The immediate outcome that we expect from this assignment is a demonstration that students can read the assigned articles critically, identify and articulate the key points, and help engage other students in a discussion about the articles, including conceptually important or difficult aspects of them.
Assignment #2: Final writing assignment

For this assignment, which follows from the previous one, students are asked to:

locate two or more significant additional articles that relate closely to the articles on which they based the discussion that they co-led; and
write a 8-12 page (typed, double spaced) overview of the history and current state of our scientific understanding about the topic(s) covered by the set of discussion articles, based on the articles themselves plus relevant material presented in class or in assigned reading. In particular, wherever justified by the source material, students should try to include the following in the narrative:

initial observations/evidence;
initial hypotheses posed to account for initial observations/evidence (including external forcings and feedbacks);
subsequent observations/evidence that have confirmed or disproved earlier hypotheses;
technology that made making observations/gathering evidence possible and led to breakthroughs in understanding;
scientific controversies and how they played out historically or are currently playing out;
current understanding and remaining uncertainties.

The outcome should be a written demonstration of the student's ability to analyze and synthesize a set of articles from the literature and supporting materials provided in class to describe the history, current state, and unresolved aspects of our scientific understanding of an interdisciplinary aspect of climate change.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

A Student’s Guide to Tropical Marine Biology is written entirely by students enrolled in the Keene State College Tropical Marine Biology course taught by Dr. Karen Cangialosi. Our goal was to investigate three main aspects of tropical marine biology: understanding the system, identifying problems, and evaluating solutions. Each of the sections contains chapters that utilize openly licensed material and images, and are rich with hyperlinks to other sources. Some of the most pressing tropical marine ecosystem issues are broken up into five sections: Coral Reefs and Diversity, Common Fishes to the Coral Reef, Environmental Threats, Reef Conservation, and Major Marine Phyla. These sections are not mutually exclusive; repetition in some content between chapters is intentional as we expect that users may not read the whole book. This work represents a unique collaborative process with many students across semesters authoring and editing, and therefore reflects the interests and intentions of a broad range of students, not one person’s ideas. This collaboration began with contributions from KSC students in the 2017 semester and includes work from the 2019 class, as well as new content and editorial work from 2017 & 2019 alumni. We look forward to future editions of this book. Enjoy exploring the rainforests of the sea through our collaborative project and please share with those who care!

Studying life on the seafloor beneath Antarctica's thick ice is a major challenge for ecologists. Learn about a new device that can reach those icy depths in this video segment adapted from WomenInAntarctica.com.

Changing ocean chemistry could have a disastrous impact on shellfish and fisheries in Puget Sound. The Suquamish Tribe is working with partners to inform the public about this problem while they elicit support for research and monitoring the issue.

This interactive map allows the user to explore projected alterations of land surfaces in coastal communities, based on different scenarios of sea level changes over time.

This is a multi-step, interactive tool for users to identify potential risks (to people, buildings, infrastructure, contamination, land) for selected coastal areas in the US, using scenarios of water level rising (as a result of tides, sea level rise, and storm surge) from 0-10 feet. Tool provides local, regional and national resources as guidance for managing risk.

Students use a table-top-sized tsunami generator to observe the formation and devastation of a tsunami. They see how a tsunami moves across the ocean and what happens when it reaches the continental shelf. Students make villages of model houses and buildings to test how different material types are impacted by the huge waves. They further discuss how engineers design buildings to survive tsunamis. Much of this activity setup is the same as for the Mini-Landscape activity in Lesson 4 of the Natural Disasters unit.

Students consider the history and development of the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty, with a focus on extraction of natural resources from the ocean. Sustainability of a single resource is investigated in detail.

Perhaps best known for its role as the antagonist in the film Jaws, the Great White shark is probably the world‰ŰŞs most feared animal, and easily the most fearsome of the sharks. In this video, Jonathan travels to Mexico to meet a Great White up close and personal. Nothing can prepare him for the sheer size and strength of a fully grown Great White shark! He learns how white sharks are being studied and how they react to both people and sea lions. Please see the accompanying study guide for educational objectives and discussion points.

When manatees were first seen by Columbus, he thought they were mermaids..but he had been at sea for a long time! Today these gentle marine mammals are threatened by loss of habitat and collisions with boats. This video segment explores the endangered manatees of Florida and their struggle to survive, as well as some of the people who are working to save them. Please see the accompanying lesson plan for educational objectives, discussion points and classroom activities.

This video presents a brief introduction to an alternative energy source - ocean thermal temperature conversion (OTEC).

This resource is a collection of climate change-related graphs for teachers to use in their classrooms, with links to the source articles and an explanation of how to guide students through reflecting on and learning from the graphs.

In this activity, student teams create a knowledge map of the essential characteristics or factors of a planet with a habitable climate, identifying range of inputs, outputs and variables of a planetary environmental system. Identified characteristics are compared to extreme environments on Earth, such as the Antarctic or the Sahara desert, and are used to consider the real life challenge of searching for life in extreme environments. The resource includes a student data sheet, questions, teacher's guide and scoring rubric. This is Activity B of two activities in the first module, titled "Temperature variations and habitability," of the resource, Earth Climate Course: What Determines a Planet's Climate? The course aims to help students to develop an understanding of our environment as a system of human and natural processes that result in changes that occur over various space and time scales.