The hidden portion of the water cycle is revealed! It is under the seafloor! Students will use temperature data collected from two different sites in the Pacific Ocean to graph the water flow within the oceanic crust! Discoveries of how the water flows in and out of the seafloor will be made. Students will also […]
Part I What happened to the “sparkle” in the Mosquito Bay? Student groups will investigate the current hypotheses/claims as to why the Mosquito Bay has gone dark. Students will gather information from the internet to investigate claims/hypotheses about why scientists feel the dinoflagellates in the Mosquito Bay are no longer glowing. After the students have […]
Who put the sparkle in the ocean? This lesson explores bioluminescent dinoflagellates as a part of a unit on bioluminescence. Using web-based resources, student groups research dinoflagellates to uncover their cell biology, ecology, and significance. Students demonstrate their understanding through a creative, non-fiction story on a day in the life of their dinoflagellate.
Have you ever wondered why animals glow in the ocean? How does this benefit their survival? This unit will lead students through an introduction to bioluminescence with a beginning presentation, webquest, research, discussion, and Vine assessment. Students will then utilize near real-time data and analyze various articles to demonstrate claims and evidence regarding bioluminescence. Finally, […]
Students will study the causes and consequences of harmful algal blooms (HABs) by learning about nutrient cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous that contribute to phytoplankton growth through eutrophication. They will learn about the relative size and different types of plankton, design their own plankton, and create a class plankton food web for the Gulf […]
This lesson will encourage students to interact the Carbon cycle as a Carbon atom in a multi-modal format. During their analysis of the Carbon Cycle, students will be focused on the various forms the Carbon atom will be in culminating the predicting ocean acidification trends. Students will be completing a matching activity with the vocabulary […]
Is there a best way to communicate scientific data? In this lesson students will participate in a variety of activities to use storytelling to communicate complex data sets. The lesson starts with opinion polling, a group storytelling activity and ends with the students creating their own stories to describe a scientific data set and reviewing […]
Research programs at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) encompass the entire ocean, from the surface waters to the deep seafloor, and from the coastal zone to the open sea. The need to understand the ocean in all its complexity and variability drives MBARI's research and development efforts.