Module V

How are climate, cultures and oceans all connected?

I love living near the ocean, and have been able to do so for most of my life. I have lived in Sitka and Anchorage, AK, as well as Boston and Cape Cod, MA. The only years I spent away from the ocean were during my time in the Peace Corps, in the landlocked country of Mali, Northwest Africa. I missed the seafood, salty air, beaches, sea birds, and swimming. It is easy for me to see why more than 50% of the world's population lives near the ocean. We benefit from this proximity by obtaining food, salt, transportation, and a sense of well being.

Part of my love of the ocean is tied to my love of swimming. I have swum in the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Sea of Cortez, Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea, as well as visiting the Bering Sea. Below are some maps from Google Earth with my swimming spots marked.

The reason that many of these places were warm enough for me to swim in even though some are at high latitudes is that they are in the path of some of the warm ocean surface currents, driven by the Easterly winds at the equator, and the Westerlies at higher latitudes. The Gulf Stream runs up from the equator past Massachusetts and Maine, and then due to the shape of the Atlantic Ocean basin and the Westerlies it heads over to Europe to warm them up as well. In the Pacific Ocean the Japanese (Kuroshio) current warms the waters of Sitka, bringing pottery shards and glass buoys along with it .

These ocean surface currents are also driven by the deeper thermohaline currents known as the ocean conveyor belt. In the Arctic ocean the surface water brought by currents such as the Gulf Stream cools and then sinks and flows into the ocean basins with most of it upwelling in the Southern Oceans. This water is nutrient rich, and provides food for sea life in the equatorial region.

During my undergraduate studies I was able to study in Woods Hole, MA for a semester at the Marine Biological Laboratory with some of the worlds leading scientists. One of the most shocking things I learned there was that climate change may shut down or change the ocean conveyor belt. The reasoning behind this is that is there is a large influx of fresh water into the oceans (from sea ice, ice caps, and permafrost melting) the Arctic Ocean may not work as an engine for thermohaline circulation. The cold fresh water would not sink past the warmer more saline water below it. If this were the case a new conveyor belt might start up somewhere else, or perhaps not at all. This would mean much less food for sea life near the equator and much cooler temperatures in the North Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Students are interested in Oceans because their cultures have evolved beside and upon them. The oceans are a source of food for most people and many other species on the planet. Many of my students come from cultures that still need a healthy ocean to survive, such as Tlingit, Yupik, Phillipino, and Samoan. Other students might be interested in oceans due to foods and sea creatures that they are fond of.

As pollution and climate change threaten the living creatures within it we are going to start seeing some drastic food shortages around the world. Current oceanic events, such as coral reefs dying, unexplained declines in sea otter, sea lion, and shorebird populations, and a huge trash vortex in the Pacific Ocean are very personal to these students and help to interest them in learning about science. To further pique student interest teachers can invite speakers such as native elders into the classroom to share their culture's need for a healthy ocean, and their current experiences with pollution and climate change. There are also great videos of elders speaking found on the teachers domain website, such as "Living from the Land and Sea" and "Warmer Oceans Affect Food Web". Teachers can also take their students on field trips to places such as the Alaska Sealife Center in Seward that teach about what is going on with the ocean and how pollution can damage wildlife.

Taking students' interest in the oceans to a further level we can start to teach them about the relationship between regional climates and the warm ocean currents, and how climate change might shut all of these currents down. The youtube video demonstrating the high specific heat capacity of water is fun and very interesting, and would be an easy demo to do in the classroom. The teacher domain interactive site showing ocean currents is very clear and easy to understand and would also work very well in the classroom. Using technology such as Google Earth, Youtube Videos, and interactive websites we make this information fun and exciting for students in the classroom.