Shore Science: Are You Ocean Literate?

By Terri Kirby Hathaway

Spending a summer day at the the beach is many people's favorite pastime - but does that mean you consider yourself an ocean-minded citizen? It may seem overly official, but it isn’t as complicated as it might sound. In 2005 a consortium of scientists and educators developed a list of seven essential principles to help students of all ages understand the ways they’re personally connected to the complex ocean system.

In short, ocean literacy is all about understanding the ocean’s influence on you…and your influence on the ocean. While we may be able to enjoy a day on the beach either way, a richer understanding of the ocean helps us communicate about it more meaningfully – and helps ensure that we can all make informed and responsible decisions regarding the health of one of our most valuable natural resources for many generations to come.

Whether you’re familiar with some of these principles or learning them for the first time, improving our ocean literacy can have a powerful impact on how we relate to the world around us. Above all, it’s important to remember that although our countries (and continents) can appear to divide us, the ocean will always be one large, contiguous body of water that ultimately connects us!

1. The Earth has one big ocean with many features.

Look at a world map or globe and notice that if you put your finger anywhere in the ocean, you can draw a continuous line through all the other parts of the ocean without lifting your finger. You can’t do that with land. The ocean basins are all connected, even though the continents are not. The ocean covers roughly 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, and holds 97 percent of all the water on Earth. Because of the amount of surface coverage by salt water, perhaps a more accurate name for our planet would have been “Water” instead of Earth.

2. The ocean and life in the ocean shape the features of the Earth.

The ocean floor isn’t a vast, flat plain as one might imagine. There are trenches, volcanoes, plateaus, fracture lines and mountains. In fact, the longest mountain range on Earth can be found on the ocean floor. The mid-ocean ridge spans nearly 40,000 miles, mostly underwater, and looks like the seam on a baseball stitching the world together. Tectonic activity at dynamic areas such as the mid-ocean ridge, sea level changes and wave activity are major factors in shaping our surface landforms.

3. The ocean has a major influence on weather and climate.

The links between the ocean and the atmosphere are undeniable. The ocean absorbs much of the solar radiation that reaches Earth, and then it loses that heat back into the atmosphere through evaporation. This process of heat transfer is what drives atmospheric circulation that causes weather around the globe. In fact, most of the rain that falls on land has been evaporated from the tropical ocean. The ocean has influenced, and will continue to influence, climate change because it absorbs, stores and moves carbon, water and heat.

4. The ocean makes Earth habitable.

A little refresher from past science classes – plants take in sunlight and carbon dioxide and make their own food, with oxygen as a by-product of this process of photosynthesis. While rainforests produce almost one-third of the oxygen in our atmosphere, marine plants also contribute almost 70 percent of the oxygen that we need to breathe!

5. The ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems.

The variety of living creatures ranges from the tiniest virus to the largest animal that has ever lived on Earth, the blue whale. Because the ocean offers a three-dimensional living space, life ranges from the surface, through the water column, down to bottom of the ocean. In fact, most of the living space on Earth is located in the ocean. Ecosystems supported by the ocean include coral reefs, hydrothermal vents and estuaries. Those important areas serve as protective nurseries for many seafood species, such as shrimp, blue crabs and flounder.

6. The ocean and humans are inextricably interconnected.

The ocean affects every living creature on Earth. It plays a role in national security, provides jobs, and transports people, as well as goods, around the world. Humans find the ocean a source of recreation, rejuvenation and inspiration. Roughly 40 percent of the world’s population lives within 50 miles of the coast, and many cultures around the world depend on the ocean for their livelihoods.

7. The ocean is largely unexplored.

From top to bottom, the ocean is the last and greatest unexplored ecosystem on Earth. So far, scientists have explored less than five percent of it, and we have better maps of the Moon and Mars than we do of the deep ocean – but with technology, that’s beginning to change. These days, scientists rely on satellites, buoys, unmanned submersibles and other high-tech tools to help gather information – and there’s almost unlimited potential for future underwater research.