Ocean Literacy

Ocean literacy is an understanding of the ocean's influence on you ... and your influence on the ocean.

The Ocean Literacy Challenge

Americans have been largely ignorant of the importance of the ocean in their lives. Ocean topics did not fit neatly into current national education standards and thus were largely ignored. Ocean scientists were not involved in education, and there was no consensus on what was important to include in classroom.

In 2002, the National Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEEs), National Marine Educators Association, National Geographic, NOAA, the Sea Grant College Program, the College of Exploration, UC-Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science, and other groups joined forces to help increase "ocean literacy" by:

• defining ocean literacy,
• identifying the Essential Principles (right) and supporting them with fundamental concepts, and
• aligning these these principles and concepts to National Science Education Standards.

See an archive of this work

Impacts

• Numerous special conferences are devoted to Ocean Literacy around the world
• This has become a model for other science literacy efforts
• Essential Principles are used as key messages in informal education products and programs
• Influence on content of elementary, middle and high school instructional materials on a global scale
• Influence on U.S. state curricula (Maryland, Michigan, Florida, California) and national textbooks
• College courses on Communicating Ocean Science are now taught in more than 20 universities in the U.S.
• Transformation of our thinking