The ocean produces half of Earth’s oxygen, supports millions of livelihoods, supplies billions of people with a vital source of animal protein, and absorbs excess heat and carbon dioxide caused by burning fossil fuels. Even the internet relies on underwater networks that span the salty depths.
A healthy ocean supports all 17 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, a set of objectives aimed at ending various inequities while addressing climate change and environmental degradation. And yet, investments in ocean-related sustainable development projects lag behind those in all other areas and it’s easy for inland communities to feel disconnected from the sea.
At Stanford, ocean researchers – including David Cade, Hannah Clayton, James Fahlbusch, Giulio De Leo, William Gilly, Jenny Grossman, and Fiorenza Micheli – are creating innovative and engaging projects and programs to broaden appreciation for the ocean and inspire action to protect it. These projects include a mobile tidepool, a historic fishing vessel outfitted with research equipment, and an ocean chemistry activity book in English and Spanish that anyone can access online.
“Oceans support life on the planet. I don’t think that you can expect to understand the planet without understanding the oceans,” said Gilly, a professor of oceans in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “They’re certainly an example of complex phenomena, and we need different, holistic ways of viewing those things in order to teach people about them.”
Welcoming students to the lab
David Cade, a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of associate professor of oceans Jeremy Goldbogen, started his career as a math teacher in San Francisco and Redwood City, California, schools.
Now, as a researcher in predator and prey dynamics of whales, he says that he wants to “be the kind of researcher who gives back,” Cade said. “Teaching feels like it’s the most important thing I could do.”
In 2015, Cade helped start an internship program at Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station on the edge of Monterey Bay that would pair researchers with students from Salinas High School, located about 20 miles northeast. The program – which is now led by Hannah Clayton, a biology PhD student in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and James Fahlbusch, a research assistant in the Oceans Department in the Doerr School of Sustainability – gives high school students a chance to observe scientists at work in the lab and get hands-on experience with marine science experiments and programs.
Clayton said, “We really focus on tailoring a project to the high schooler’s interest and needs. Postdocs get together and plan what projects they would like to get help on. Our interns might get to run tests on our tracking tags or do behavioral audits, which means annotating video footage of animals for what they’re doing.” Through this program, interns get to focus on skills they might use in a research lab in the future, such as coding, literature reviews, and collecting and processing data from the field.
During the five-month-long internship, five to seven teens assist in diverse research projects, which have included nuclear radiation’s effects on crabs, diseases in seagrass caused by human activity, and predator-prey dynamics, among other topics. At the end of the year, interns present their research in a symposium attended by their families and the Hopkins community.
Now that the internship has been going on for a decade, there is a special opportunity to evaluate how effective the program has been in preparing interns for future work in research. Cade also hopes to develop research experiences for teachers, which they can then share with their students. “Teachers are experts in their own fields, which I think could help researchers communicate their science to a wider audience,” said Cade.
Clayton, who is in the process of selecting students for the internship, wants to increase awareness of the program and make it easier for students across the Monterey region to participate. “At my core, if we can change someone’s mind about science and make it accessible to them where they thought it couldn’t be, that’s my motivation.”
Facts about the ocean
Coloring books and chemistry
Oceans act as a carbon dioxide sink, absorbing about a quarter of the greenhouse emissions from human activities. While this helps slow down climate change, the addition of massive amounts of carbon dioxide is changing ocean chemistry and making seawater more and more acidic – a process known as ocean acidification.
Ocean acidification has many consequences, but one significant effect is that increased acidity dissolves calcium carbonate, a compound that certain marine organisms – such as corals, shellfish, and certain plankton – rely on to build their shells and skeletons.
In 2012, Giulio De Leo, a professor of oceans and of Earth system science in the Doerr School of Sustainability, and his colleague Fiorenza Micheli, the chair of the Oceans Department and co-director of the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions, were studying acidification in ecosystems driven by upwelling, a process where currents carry cold and nutrient-rich deep water to the surface of the ocean. Inspired by their research, and with funding from the National Science Foundation, De Leo and Micheli collaborated with specialists at Hopkins and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute to develop the Ocean Chemistry Activity Book for 4th through 6th graders. Available in English and Spanish, the book familiarizes students with why and how ocean acidification occurs, how it affects marine organisms and ecosystems, and what people can do to mitigate its impacts.
“The activity book offers an opportunity to play and to learn at the same time. The ultimate goal is to spark curiosity about the potential impacts on marine life of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration – a complex problem with far-reaching consequences that it is still little understood outside of academia, much less so in K-12 education,” said De Leo, who is also a senior fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and a founding member of the new Stanford Center for Human and Planetary Health. “Our activity book helps not just with thinking about the direct impact of ocean acidification on calcifying species, but also to develop an appreciation of the potential consequences of these processes on the entire marine food web, as many marine species not directly impacted by ocean acidification depend on calcifying organisms for food or habitat.”
In addition to discussing the effects of acidification on coral reefs, the activity book helps young students to develop an understanding of how ocean acidification can also impact the local kelp forest ecosystem. Worksheets in the book include science experiments and illustrations for coloring, with a focus on making sure kids feel optimistic about future solutions and empowered to contribute to improving the situation.
De Leo said he enjoyed collaborating with Emily Hess, a Monterey Bay artist and scientific illustrator who joined the team to develop the activity book. “The traditional way for us to share our knowledge in science is publishing, which is a pillar of science. But thinking about how to reach out to younger generations is a fun crafting challenge, which is why I’m working with specialists for this.” He emphasized that the art and science connection at Stanford is strong and makes it possible to bring knowledge to people in a different way – through an emotional experience.
Though the processes that De Leo and Micheli study can be complex, they want to make their work accessible to all. “Knowledge is power. It can inspire the new generation and nurture their curiosity. Even if you live far from the ocean, understanding the ocean and interconnectedness of it is important,” said Micheli. This fall, De Leo and Micheli started working on other education modules for K-12 students, including a Minecraft simulation of the effects of ocean acidification off the coast of Italy’s Ischia Island. The project is funded by a Big Ideas for Oceans seed grant, and the team hopes to have the module operational in 2025.
Squids, cards, and famous ships
Oceans professor William Gilly has sent squids to schools and created lotería cards to educate students in new and engaging ways – and one of his grandest educational efforts yet has just set sail.
More than 15 years ago, inspired by a Massachusetts schoolteacher who suggested that Stanford send a Humboldt squid to their school, Gilly began the Squids4Kids initiative. The program sent large squid specimens to schools, museums, and other institutions to give kids a chance to dissect and understand the animals. However, when these large squid specimens became harder to come by, the project stalled. So, Gilly turned his attention to a lotería game that was inspired by Squid4Kids’ work.
Lotería is a Mexican card game that involves an announcer calling out cards and sometimes telling a story or verse about the image on it. Gilly was interested in using this bingo-like game to share stories and facts about marine life and used illustrations from the 18th and 19th centuries to make the cards. Gilly and his team debuted the game in 2017 at an annual ocean education event in Monterey known as Whalefest, and it’s been used for many years since.
Today, Gilly is working closely with the Western Flyer Foundation, an organization that has revived the historic fishing vessel that took writer John Steinbeck and marine biologist Ed Ricketts on a scientific journey to the Gulf of California in 1940. Gilly had a longstanding interest in the voyage, and in 2004, he and other researchers retraced Steinbeck and Ricketts’ trip on a fishing boat. It was on that trip that he met his wife, who is a Steinbeck scholar, and where his passion for linking science and humanities on the Western Flyer kicked off.
The foundation has recently launched the restored boat as a floating classroom in Monterey Bay, and it has already been part of a Stanford Sophomore College course. Gilly is contributing to the development of programs, and the foundation has outfitted the boat with scientific equipment, which will help students understand more about meteorology and oceanography.
Gilly is especially excited about bringing the context of Steinbeck and Ricketts’ work to the education that happens on the ship. He currently is looking at the book Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, which Steinbeck co-wrote with Ricketts, as a way to unlock the historical and personal context of Steinbeck’s other works like The Grapes of Wrath.
Opening ocean outreach
Jenny Grossman is a science education and outreach coordinator who runs a pop-up ocean outreach center called the Ocean Education Station at Hopkins. She works with interns from California State University, Monterey Bay, to educate visitors and help emerging scientists understand what Hopkins does and why they study the organisms they do. Grossman also brings a mobile tidepool to local schools to teach about their research.
The Ocean Education Station at Hopkins Marine Station features touch tanks, art activities, microscopes for observing the different life stages of marine organisms, and scientists eager to discuss their work. | Mark Shwartz
Grossman, who began her career in research, found her passion for science communication when she worked as a communicator in other institutions. She values how less formal education can reach people who may not read scientific journals. “When I see a switch flip for my audience, where they really understand something, that’s how I know I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing,” she said.
Her education outreach helps bring the ocean to those who can’t usually access it through their schools’ programs, focusing on Salinas, Watsonville, and Castro Valley. “I really focus on hands-on experiences and senses: sight, touch, sound – even smell, although I don’t recommend it,” said Grossman.
One of the most important parts of developing ocean literacy for Grossman? Connecting with the community. Grossman recalled regulars who come to her outreach tent when it’s set up at the station or at events, which helps build a relationship not only between her and the families but also between researchers and the public. “Over half of what I do is building that trust,” said Grossman. She tries to address timely topics like climate change and its impacts, and endeavors to show people how the ocean affects their lives in relatable ways. One popular topic is how oceans help with research into medicine, which directly affects some of the people she speaks with.
Grossman plans to continue her immersive educational outreach with the touch and display tanks and hopes to use more techniques, such as virtual reality, to continue to bring the ocean to her audiences at Hopkins and beyond. She said, “It makes people see that this – the ocean, and everything in it – is real and it matters.”
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Fiorenza Micheli is also the David and Lucile Packard Professor in Marine Science in the School of Humanities and Sciences.