Meet Dr. Jessica Meir, a NASA Research Scientist & Astronaut, by reading an interview with Forbes Magazine describing how she got her start as a marine biologist.

Students review a video showing how the ocean is warmed by solar energy. This is the first video of a four-part series on the water cycle, which follows the journey of water from the ocean to the atmosphere, to the land, and back again to the ocean.

This NASA visualization shows sea surface salinity observations (September 2011-September 2014). Students review the video and answer questions.

In this activity, you will use an inexpensive spectrophotometer* to test how light at different visible wavelengths (blue, green, red) is transmitted, or absorbed, through four different colored water samples.

Students will identify and describe the relationship between watersheds and phytoplankton distribution. 

This StoryMap lesson plan allows students to explore ocean circulation patterns as they relate to the world's ocean garbage patches using NASA ocean currents data. Students will investigate the forces that contribute to ocean circulation patterns, and how debris, especially plastics, travel from land to the garbage patches. 

This mini lesson engages students by watching a NASA video related to seasonal chlorophyll concentration as it relates to net radiation using NASA's Aqua satellite. Students will examine the model and answer the questions.

Students analyze and compare satellite data of Ocean Chlorophyll Concentrations with Sea Surface Temperatures, beginning with the North Atlantic region, while answering questions about the global patterns of these phenomenon.

In this lesson, students investigate and identify various phytoplankton using images that were previously taken with a compound microscope.  Credit:  This lesson is modified from a lesson of the same name created by The Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education&nbsp

This lesson is taken from NASA's Phytopia: Discovery of the Marine Ecosystem written in partnership with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science with funding from the National Science Foundation.