This lesson provides an opportunity for students to learn about environmental problems in the oceans and how marine sanctuaries can help protect ocean habitats. Students will use National Geographic's Wild World Global 200 feature to learn about marine ecoregions and the environmental problems they are facing. They will read about the National Marine Sanctuary Program. Students will conclude by writing proposals to establish new marine sanctuaries.

Geography

Standard 14: "How human actions modify the physical environment"
Standard 18: "How to apply geography to interpret the present and plan for the future"

Two hours

• Computer with Internet access
• Writing materials

Students will

• read about marine ecoregions and list environmental problems these ecoregions are facing;
• read and answer questions about the National Marine Sanctuary Program; and
• write proposals for new marine sanctuaries in one of the marine ecoregions they have studied.

Hold a brief class discussion on environmental problems related to the oceans. Ask students to describe issues they're familiar with.

Have students go to National Geographic's Wild World Global 200 feature. There they will see a map showing regions of the world that the World Wildlife Fund has designated as the most critical areas for conservation.

Ask students to click on three of the marine regions, one at a time. To do this, they should click the water that has a darker shade of blue. For each ecoregion they select, a new browser window will open, providing a picture and information about that ecoregion. Ask them to look at the pictures and read the text.

Once students are finished reading the text for an ecoregion, ask them to list that ecoregion's "causes for concern," which are described at the bottom of the page. [Note: If computer access for your students is limited, print out several of the Wild World marine ecoregion pages, make several copies of each, and have students take turns reading these copies to get the information they need.]

Discuss the "causes for concern" that students have found, and list them on the board. Do they notice any patterns? They will probably notice that different parts of the earth's oceans face similar problems, although there are regional variations.

Have students read the text on the Welcome page for NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary Program. Make sure they understand that this page talks about marine sanctuaries in the waters of the United States, not in other countries. Ask them to answer these questions as they read:

• What is the purpose of marine sanctuaries?
• Are all marine sanctuaries alike? What are some differences?
• Why was the National Marine Sanctuary Program created? What event occurred just before Congress began this program?
• Why are marine sanctuaries particularly important?

Have students look at this marine sanctuaries map to see where established and proposed national marine sanctuaries are located.

Ask the class to think about the environmental issues they learned about while exploring the National Geographic Wild World map. Do they think any of these problems could be made better by the creation of more marine sanctuaries? Could marine sanctuaries around the world help all the problems they've read about? Why or why not? What might be their limitations? Are marine sanctuaries isolated or are they affected by environmental contamination and other problems that occur outside their boundaries? What difficulties might arise from trying to set up marine sanctuaries off the coasts of different countries? Would all countries want to cooperate in the same way?

Ask each student to focus on one region they learned about from the Wild World map and write a proposal for a marine sanctuary in that area. Their proposals should cover the following topics:

• Where the sanctuary will be located, and which country or countries would be involved
• How a sanctuary might benefit this area
• Who might be in favor of a sanctuary
• Who might be opposed to a sanctuary
• What the limitations of this sanctuary in protecting the marine species that live there might be
• What problems that begin outside the sanctuary might be difficult to control

Have students conduct further research to find out about the human uses of marine sanctuaries. They should go to NOAA's marine sanctuaries photo gallery, and click on individual sanctuaries. They should then scroll down and click on "People and the Sanctuary" to see a photo collection showing human uses of the sanctuary. Have them do this for at least two sanctuaries and create posters, multimedia presentations, or written reports illustrating the ways that people use the sanctuaries. This lesson is made possible by a generous grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Marine Sanctuary Program.

NOAA: Marine Sanctuaries Photo Gallery
NOAA: National Marine Sanctuaries Map
NOAA: National Marine Sanctuaries Program
National Geographic: Wild World—Global 200