Ocean Education Activities

	jump to other activities... Ocean Links Net Gain, Net Effect The Great Round-Table Debate Ocean Inventory: Gifts From the Sea Create a "Flow Chart" Survey a Shoreline Assess Your Pollution Potential Monitor Marine Migrants Conserve a Flyway
Create a "Flow Chart"

Enrich the above activity by investigating what you give the ocean in return. Start by creating a "flow chart" that reveals how water runs from your home or school out to sea.

• Water, also known as H2O because of the two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in a water molecule, flows from land to sea through the path of least resistance. Every day, the average Canadian sends about 400 litres of waste water - each drop containing billions and billions of water molecules - down the drain. For the purposes of this activity, narrow your focus and follow the path of just one molecule.
• Discuss, as a class, the fact that water, once used by humans, is often polluted with used motor oil, old paint, and other hazardous wastes that can have a devastating impact on aquatic habitat (see Assess Your Pollution Potential).
• Discuss what happens to sewage from your school, home, and community once it goes down the drain. A typical path, if you live in the country, might begin with a septic tank. In most towns and cities, sewage flows through a long maze of pipes to a purification plant, although many communities skip this step. Whether or not wastes and germs are removed before water is pumped into rivers, lakes, or the ocean itself, a lot of contaminants remain. Freshwater then flows through a serpentine network of streams, ponds, marshes, lakes, and rivers that merge into a single drainage basin, which empties into a salt water body such as the Atlantic, Pacific, or Arctic ocean. Finally, vast, surging ocean currents carry this water to distant shores.
• To plot the journey from your drain to the open sea, study maps of your community and region - preferably topographical maps - plus the map of global drainage basins and ocean currents on this page. Contact your municipality to obtain a map of local sewer routes, which you will need to trace the passage from your school to a purification plant or waterway.
• Once you have investigated your oceanward route, create a flow chart on a long sheet of paper - drawing and labelling the path a single water molecule would take from drain to sewer to purification plant, tributary, major river, drainage basin, sea, and around the globe on ocean currents. Label the latitude and longitude coordinates of places in the world where your water molecule might end up.
• Extend this activity by highlighting on your flow chart places where humans and wildlife might be positively or negatively affected by the absence or presence of contaminants coming from your school and community.