Discussion Topic: What is Marine Pollution?

Subjects:

Geography, Environmental Science, Biology, Social / Political Studies, Language Arts

Objectives:

Practise your analytical skills and learn about the different aspects of marine pollution.

Prerequisite:

none

Material:

newspaper or magazine articles, information from the internet and/or the library (optional)

Time needed:

1 - 2 school lessons for the discussion
optional: a few hours to prepare the discussion by collecting and reading information about marine pollution

Procedure:

Get together in groups of no more than 5 students. Develop a definition for marine pollution by discussing the six scenarios below.

Drifting television sets Photo: French Navy (permission pending)	1.) A cargo ship hits an iceberg in the southern Atlantic and loses its freight of television sets.	Phytoplankton bloom in the Baltic Sea. Please note that this particluar bloom is not necessarily caused by input of fertilisers. Phytoplankton blooms occur naturally in The Baltic Sea during the summer. Source: ESA	2.) Agricultural fertilisers have been applied to wheat fields in Poland. Following strong rainfall events they are washed into the Baltic Sea. An algal bloom results.
Soda tin on the sea floor. Photo: Wolcott Henry / Marine Photobank	3.) A tourist group on a cruise in the Mediterranean throws their empty soda tins overboard.	Container ship with tilted cargo. Source: cargolaw.com (permission pending)	4.) Two container ships in the Taiwan Strait collide. One of them spills a load of sesame oil.
Pacific oyster reef in the North Sea. Photo: Achim Wehrmann / Senckenberg Institute	5.) The Pacific Oyster from Asia is brought to the Netherlands for cultivation in the North Sea. Its larvae escape and the oyster spreads all over the North Sea coast and settles on blue mussel beds.	Natural tar seep offshore Gaviota, California, in approximately 60-m water depth. Photo: Donna Schroeder / USGS	6.) Due to faults in the Earth's crust off the coast of California, natural oil seeps release more than 100,000 tons of oil each year into the Pacific.

You may find that some of the substances listed are quite obviously pollutants. Still - think about your definition carefully: exactly how does a substance or species turn into a marine pollutant?

Would your definition be different if you were one of the people below?

A) A kite surfer spending your holidays in Pucka Bay, Poland	B) A resident of Barcelona, Spain	C) A hotel owner in Antalya, Turkey	D) An environmental activist with a special focus on penguins in Antarctica	E) A member of the city council of Kaohsiung, a city on the western coast of Taiwan	F) A fisherman from the island of Sylt	G) A coast guard from Santa Barbara, California
Kite Surfer Photo: Tom Burke / Wikimedia Commons	Barcelona, Spain. Photo: Christina Klose	Antalya, Turkey Photo: Wikimedia Commons	Emperor penguins in Antarctica. Photo: Josh Landis, National Science Foundation 1999	Satellite image of the Kaohsiong area, Taiwan Source: NASA	Fishing boat in the North Sea. Photo: Thomas Badewien	US Coast guard and boat. Photo: Michael Anderson / US Coast guard