It’s Time We Give Ocean Literacy the Spotlight

By Lindsey Neuwirth, Stony Brook University Marine Conservation and Policy Graduate Student

I hoisted myself up into the big yellow lifeguard stand. After about ten minutes of diligently watching the people in the water, a young boy with tears in his eyes approached me holding a nest of neon orange fishing net. I motioned to my coworker to replace me momentarily while I addressed the boy’s concern.

Once I was on ground level, I noticed the boy appeared to be only 7 or 8 years old. He handed me the tangled net and stated, “It’s stuck”. Looking closely, I realized that the neon orange strings of the net were tightly woven around a brownish red body with small claws poking out.

With little faith that the crab was still alive, I grabbed a pair of scissors and quickly removed the netting from around its body. We both smiled as the crab’s legs wiggled ever so slightly. 

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The young boy then looked up at me and said, “Can we put it back?”

I nodded yes and walked with him down to the water to release the crab. I felt content knowing that such a young boy had compassion for an ocean creature in need.

As I got back on the lifeguard stand, I watched the same little boy walk down to the water with the left-over pieces of neon fishing net and throw it right back in, letting the waves bring it back out to sea.

In shock, I began to question my previous appraisal of the boy’s action in caring about marine life. Realizing his young age, I took back my judgement. The rest of the day I was left to think about my educational relationship to the ocean growing up.

When did you first know the ocean was in danger?

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This question plagues my mind since that day. Despite growing up on the South Shore of Long Island, I do not recall ever being formally taught about the importance of the ocean and all it inhabits. As I went on to become an ocean lifeguard, I saw with my own eyes the lack of knowledge and overall respect the public has for this great body of water that sustains life on this planet. But maybe it’s not their fault.

While some students, like myself, have been lucky enough to have had marine science incorporated into my educational curriculum, across the globe, there is a lack of formal ocean education in schools. An ocean literacy study in Croatia displayed that elementary school students were only able to correctly answer 50% of questions asked about marine topics. With more than 70% ocean covering Earth’s surface, that number needs to be higher. The Journal of Environmental Education highlights research conducted with high school students from Texas, Ohio and Florida, where 21% of the students were completely unaware that urgent oceanic problems exist. Similarly, because of the dismissal of ocean sciences from the 1996 National Science Education Standards, most of the United States often ignores ocean topics in K-12 curriculums. That should not still be the case 16 years later.

The ocean, a source of food, jobs, and medicine regulates our climate and supplies over half of the oxygen we breathe. It is the foundation for human existence. And yet, few people sense the serious urgency about declines in global fish stocks, increasing numbers of threatened species, major habitat loss, pollution, and rising ocean temperatures. The threat is very real: As world-renowned naturalist David Attenborough stated in a 2019 interview with Prince William, "We have to recognize that every breath of air we take, every mouthful of food we take, comes from the natural world. And if we damage the natural world, we damage ourselves.” He went on to warn, “We are now so numerous, so powerful, so all-pervasive, the mechanisms that we have for destruction are so wholesale and so frightening, that we can actually exterminate whole ecosystems without even noticing it.”

Recently, efforts have been made to increase ocean literacy among young people. Multiple organizations such as Ocean Wise, NOAA, and UNESCO, produce curriculums and materials to educate people about why ocean resources are worth protecting from the numerous threats they face. The Ocean Conservation Trust has also been successful in educating students with virtual reality to give them an inspiring experience of what life underwater is like. Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS), co-founded by Safina Center Junior Fellow Jasmin Graham, has created a free K-12 shark science education hub, and supports women of color in marine science and conservation.

Such programs are a great start to providing resources to the public, but there is still little-to-no push by many school boards to promote these lessons in the classroom.

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If students are presented with a solid foundation of ocean knowledge at an early age, the next generation could be filled with a new wave of Sylvia Earles. Or at the very least, they can learn how to make sustainable decisions and learn how their actions can affect marine ecosystems. Seventy two percent of the high school students from one study in Texas, Ohio and Florida, said they would change some aspect of the way they live in a way benefitting the marine environment after being formally presented an ocean literacy lesson.

When I think about the day I helped the young boy save the crab, I realize why he had such compassion for the small creature, but no regard for throwing the net back into the ocean. He was an animal lover. He felt sorry for the crab and wanted to help it. Children learn such actions from an early age through interactions with pets and animals through life experiences. But no one taught him about the thing that was hurting the crab. No one educated him on how plastic pollution in the ocean will go on to endanger other marine life. Schools, especially public schools, can change behaviors by changing how they educate students about our oceans.

David Attenborough also wisely said, “No one will protect what they don’t care about, and no one will care about what they have never experienced.” Younger generations need to be educated on the importance of our oceans in order to care about them. The first step to properly engraining ocean literacy into educational curriculum is action. Action by schools. Actions by educators. As times are changing and our environment is changing at an even faster rate, the curriculum taught in schools needs to keep up. To do so, teachers need proper workshops to spark passion, awareness and urgency. The educational material exists, it just needs to be implemented, expanded, and diversified to meet the needs of many students.

As society approaches irreversible environmental degradation, it is of the utmost importance to equip the next generations with the proper educational background to combat the oceans fight against human overexploitation. Ocean literacy provides a platform to do this through spreading knowledge on how students can make ocean friendly decisions that will positively impact the future of marine ecosystems.