MARINE 100G The Ocean Around Us

Our Oceans Around Us provides an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the importance of our oceans as the driver of our climate, source of sustenance, and a focus of domestic and international political, economic and legal tensions and negotiations. It includes physical and biological process in the ocean which raise questions for ocean management in New Zealand and internationally, allowing real-world debate about the future of the ocean realm.

The course is built around five key themes, each of which has four one hour lectures followed by a two hour dialogue session, where issues raised in the lectures are discussed and students are encouraged to participate in the discussions.

MARINE 100 is a core course for the BSc in Marine Science.

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the role of the ocean as a critical driver of global natural processes sufficiently well to be able to describe these processes accurately to another person.
2. Use underpinning knowledge of ocean physical structure and processes (e.g., such as ocean currents and mixing dynamics, coastal geomorphology, and ocean chemistry) to accurately label diagrams of these structures and processes, and provide an explanation to whanau and peers of how they will be affected by climate change.
3. Demonstrate an understanding of how energy and nutrients move through ocean food webs and be able to explain how this differs between tropical and temperate oceans.
4. Describe major latitudinal patterns in marine ecosystems and the processes driving them.
5. Demonstrate an understanding of coastal dynamics (i.e., the processes operating at the interface between land and sea) and be able to describe how these processes variously shape the margins of our oceans.
6. Identify the wide range of resources provided to humans by global oceans and be able to list the major resources, including ecosystem services and their various categories.
7. Understand and explain the varying human perspectives and resulting approaches to owning and managing our oceans, including those of Maori, sufficiently to be able to describe how their own personal perspectives may differ from those of other cultures.
8. Formulate advanced personal viewpoints on key issues in relation to the future of our oceans. 
9. Establish a knowledge of key sources of quality information and data for informing an advanced insight into issues relating to the ocean realm. 
10. Demonstrate basic skills in assessing, interpreting and presenting scientific data and scientific concepts. 
    

'A great mix of information and learning outcomes, the course was well structured and laid out with fresh guest lecturers coming often to shed more personalized examples!'

'The teacher–student communication was very good which really helped. Staff were always prompt to answer questions which allowed me to confirm and solidify my knowledge of the course content.'

'The lectures were entertaining and engaging. The practical was very good fun also.'

For details of course offerings, refer to Digital Course Outlines

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