Content order

[Diane Russo]

HI! I wanted to see what others are doing as far as how/in what order they teach Marine Bio. content. I use Castro & Huber for Honors and Karleskint for Regular.

This year (my 1st w/ this class) I did the history of marine bio. first, sea floor, water stuff (chemistry, salinity, etc), plants & seaweeds, inverts then vertebrates. But going through the animal phyla just ended up being like what I did with my previous bio. classes - just a parade of animals. They had no connection to the various marine habitats.

I want to change it up next year and go through more of the ecology - intertidal, estuaries, coral reefs, etc. And as we go through those habitats visit the aninmals found there.

Does anyone teach it this way? Have any suggestions or helpful hints for labs/activities????

Thanks a bunch! :)

[Mike Pilliod]

I use Introduction to the Biology of Marine Life by Morrissey and Sumich, 9th edition and pretty much go through it the way it is set up. Oceanography first, associations of organisms, phytoplankton, plants, heterotrophs/invertebrates, vertebrates, and then the ecosystems...estuaries, temperate coastal seas, coral reefs, open sea, deep sea, and the text ends with marine birds/polar mammals and a chapter on humans and harvesting resources.

This class is in the summer and is in totality 4 weeks, but one full week is scuba cetification and a trip to Key Largo's MarineLab for scuba, snorkeling, labs, class activities, etc...so I have about 3 weeks at 4 1/2 hours per day to cover what I want covered. It's not too bad, and really lots of fun. Here in NE Florida we have great access to estuaries and are just a hop, skip, and jump away from the Keys so it's kind of nice.

[Diane Russo]

Have you taken your classes to Merritt Island NWR or used the Marine Discovery Center in New Smyrna? I was thinking of using 1 of those for a field trip in the fall - since they have everything there. I would like to do some independent trips but I'm not sure where would be the best place to take students. I have seine nets, dip nets, plankton nets. It's been too long since I was out and about over on the coast!!!

Any suggestions?

[Mike Pilliod]

I actually let the MarineLab in Key Largo deal with the lab aspect of the course...that way I can just get through the "guts" of the course and then we do all the gooey wet stuff on our trip.

We focus a lot on scuba and how we can do science and scuba at the same time. We are looking at helping out a group that is doing some coral transplantation in the Keys to bolster growth. Likely we will have our own "garden" that we can measure each and every year so that will be cool.

[Michelle Whittaker]

That's the way I teach it - I subtitle my class Sand and Salt and "walk/swim/dive" from shore into the depths of the ocean. We discuss the different ecosystems - look at environment and adapatations needed by the plants and animals inhabiting the particular ecosystem. I integrate the bio/physics/chem as appropriate to where we are along our "walk/swim/dive". That way there is a context and basis of understanding when we talk about the physical surroundings and do an animal dissection, for example. We start in the sand grasses, proceed to the shore - muddy bottom, tidal zonations, rocky shores/tidepools, estuaries, riparian forests (we have an excellent example locally) etc. then go into the water. We navigate the globe north and south of our lattitude and east and west, looking at how ecosystems and organisms change as the water temp. and slainity change. We finish with ocean depths and if I have time - the albatross.
Seems to work really well and the class is always a big hit.

[Diane Russo]

That sounds really cool! I may "steal" the "walk/swim/dive" concept/approach!! :) Even I felt a little bored this year the way I did it.

What kinds of labs/activities did you incorporate?

[Debra Garcia]

I am teaching a fall semester marine science course for the first time next year so I am interested in seeing how others design their courses.