Marine Biology is designed to inspire young adults to understand and care about the ocean, regardless of what occupation they pursue.  One of the main goals of my teaching has been to motivate students with authentic activities that are real contributions to the community and nature and that involve students with organizations outside the school.  My students have collaborated with Friends of the Winooski, the UVM Watershed Alliance, the Montpelier Conservation Board, the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Science, Operation Wallacea, and The Reef Environmental Educational Foundation to name a few.  I have always found that students are motivated to learn more and at a deeper level when they know their work is real and is available to the public.

The course is educationally innovative in that it is a hybrid course combining online learning and face-to-face learning.  Also, it is multi-school and multi-age with students in grades 9-12 in the same class.  The first half of the course will be primarily online but there will also be evening meetings and classes during this time.  During this time we will be learning about chemical and physical characteristics of water, ocean origins, ocean environments (rocky, sandy, estuarine, coral reef, open water, deep ocean, etc.), invertebrates, vertebrates, and plankton.  In the second half of the course, students will be reading and using the following books in their preparation for research in Bermuda: REEF Creatures Identification, REEF Coral Identification, REEF Fish Identification, REEF Fish Behavior by Paul Humann & Ned Deloach.    Students in this class are intimately involved with the ocean as they collect data while snorkeling or diving on fish species and their abundance.  They also make direct observations of marine invertebrates, coastal plants, and marine geology.  Hopefully with such a positive experience with their marine encounters students enjoy and understand the marine ecosystem and want to protect it.  Honduras has welcomed our fish research in that we are the only group collecting this sort of data at shallow depths.  Our data is available worldwide at the REEF website.

As our amazing planet continues to change over time, it becomes increasingly apparent how human activity has made environmental impacts. In the Marine Biology course, students will delve deep into Earth’s bodies of water and study geologic structures and how they impact the oceans. Students will investigate the characteristics of various populations, patterns of distribution of life in our aquatic systems, and ongoing changes occurring every day in our precious ecosystems.