One of the greatest challenges facing society today is protecting and restoring biodiversity in the oceans. Join Dr. Nancy Knowlton, director of ScrippsŐs Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation as she describes how CMBC research activities are helping us rise to this challenge. (59 minutes)
Join Paul Dayton, co-author of the recent Pew Oceans Commission report on Ecological Effects of Fishing, for an eye opening view of the profound consequences fishing can have on marine ecosystems and the types of protection and restoration needed to improve these critically stressed environments. (48 minutes)
Travel with Scripps marine biologist, Dr. Jeffrey Graham, to swamps, jungles, and isolated islands where he probes the world of air breathing fishes and asks the question, why breathe air? (53 minutes)
Join Jerry Bode and Warren Smith as they recount the fascinating history of the geological collections at Scripps. (57 minutes)
Plankton Lab online (developed for remote learning during COVID-19 pandemic); students will explore plankton samples from three different locations in San Francisco Bay, identify organisms, and characterize the main differences among the locations.
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This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"Every year, over 9 million metric tons of plastic waste enter the ocean and can harm its ecosystems. When it comes to marine microbes, most of the current research has focused on those that directly colonize the plastic particles. But plastic also leaches chemical additives into the water, which could impact planktonic microbes as well. So, researchers tested the impact of leachate from polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a common plastic, and zinc, a plastic additive, on a natural planktonic community. Some microorganisms, including both bacteria and eukaryotes, were impaired by exposure to plastic leachates. Photosynthetic microorganisms, the base of the food web, were particularly strongly affected, showing declines in photosynthetic efficiency, diversity, and abundance. Other important and normally highly abundant bacterial groups were also negatively impacted. In contrast, microorganisms that thrive in nutrient-rich environments, copiotrophs, dramatically increased in relative abundance..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.
This article provides an overview of the geography, characteristics, and life of the Arctic and Southern Oceans.
This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"Oil spills have devastating effects on the environment, and thousands, of varying size, occur each year. Spilled oil can be removed from the environment in numerous ways, such as with the use of dispersants to break up oil slicks on the water surface. But while oil spills themselves pose well-known threats to marine life, the methods used for oil cleanup can also have unintended consequences. To examine these effects, researchers recently investigated how treatment of oil with dispersants produced synthetically (Finasol) and by bacteria (rhamnolipid) impact microbial communities and their ability to break down oil from the subarctic Atlantic Ocean. They found that cold-loving bacteria initially dominated the bacterial communities when both dispersants were used, but some key species of bacteria that specialize in breaking down aromatic hydrocarbons, which are the major and most toxic components of crude oil, became abundant over time in only the presence of rhamnolipid..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.
In this exercise students work with light, temperature, and phytoplankton biomass proxy (chlorophyll a concentration) data to;
Become more skilled in reading and interpreting semi log graphs, temperature profiles, and time series plots.
Practice unit conversions.
Gain an understanding of k, the attenuation coefficient for nondirectional light.
See how the depth of the photic zone and the surface mixed layer varies seasonally at temperate latitudes and how this relates to seasonal phytoplankton productivity dynamics.
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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!
This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"The deep sea is an incredibly harsh environment. The freezing cold and crushing pressure make operations in the deep sea difficult and expensive. However, as we build more deep-sea infrastructure, the need to understand the corrosion of these installments grows too. To close this gap, researchers recently examined 10-year-old deep-sea mooring chains and the surrounding environment. The rate of corrosion was much higher than expected from abiotic factors alone, and the corrosion type, localized deep pitting, also indicated microbial corrosion. Compared to the surrounding sediment, the chains had a distinct microbiome dominated by sulfur-cycling bacteria. Modeling the metabolism of the chain microbiome suggests it is generating energy from the reaction between metallic iron and elemental sulfur. Such metabolic strategies may be particularly important in low-energy environments like this..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.
Students will be able to identify the functional roles that organisms play in ocean ecosystems. How do human-induced changes in ocean conditions affect biodiversity, and thereby the health and resilience of a coral reef? Students explore and discuss the direct and indirect impacts that ocean acidification can have on species, food web dynamics, ecosystem function, and commercial resources. At the end of this unit the students should be able to articulate how changes in ocean chemistry can create negative outcomes for humans who depend on living ocean resources.
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Students will read and summarize an article that details scientific studies on behavioral changes of gray whales. Discussed are their feeding behavior, migratory behavior, and breeding patterns in the Pacific. Students will examine the whales' responses and discuss in small groups how the responses relate to climate change. By interpreting potential links between gray whale behavior and changed ocean conditions, students will be able to infer the ecological role that gray whales play within a community and an ecosystem. Students will summarize the main concepts, scientific evidence, data and observations cited, and justify why gray whales can be considered "ecosystem sentinels."
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Students will review current ocean pressures related to overfishing and human impacts on ocean ecosystems. By examining data collected in relation to the presence of marine reserves, students will explore long-term strategies for protecting ocean resources. Students will review scientific data to assess biomass, biodiversity, and reproductive success of fishery stocks in a marine protected area (MPA) and propose a location for the establishment of a marine reserve in the Channel Islands, California.
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Students are introduced to the concept of geoengineering, "the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system, in order to moderate global warming" (The Royal Society). The goal is for them to leverage their acquired knowledge from previous units in physical oceanography, ocean chemistry, biodiversity, and ecosystem ecology to evaluate the validity and/or the risk of geoengineering (systems thinking). Current and future generations will be required to make informed decisions on whether they support strategies that result in irreversible changes in Earth's carbon cycle.
(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.)
This nonfiction article, written for students in grades 4-5, explores blue whales, their food chain, and their home in the Southern Ocean. Modified versions are available for students in younger grades.
This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"Fresh water flows from rivers to estuaries and then to the sea, creating a salinity gradient as it meets the salt water of the ocean. While this salinity gradient is likely to have profound effects on the organisms that call these habitats home, its impact on microbial communities is far from clear. To fill this gap, researchers recently used genomic, transcriptomic, and geochemical data to examine microbial variation in both benthic and planktonic environments along a river-to-sea continuum. They observed a distinct increase in osmoregulation-related gene expression with increasing salinity and noted a prevalence of phosphate-acquisition activities among microorganisms inhabiting the freshwater zone, likely resulting from phosphate limitation, while carbon-, nitrogen-, and sulfur-cycling processes became dominant in brackish water, due to higher nutrient levels. In these brackish waters, photosynthesis was mainly conducted by cryptomonads in the water column and diatoms in the sediment..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.