Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.

La Justicia Ambiental es el tratamiento justo y la participación de todas las personas, independientemente de su raza, color, nacionalidad o ingresos, en lo que concierne al desarrollo, aplicación y cumplimiento de las leyes, reglamentos y políticas ambientales.

The FISHstory lesson plan will prepare students so that they can participate in the SAFMC's citizen science project, FISHstory, on the Zooniverse crowdsourcing platform. Students will learn the basics of fish morphology, anatomy, and more! 

The Chalk It Up to Ocean Acidification worksheet provides background information, detailed instructions and more to accompany our Snack-Sized Science video.

Commercial trawling has a devastating effect on biodiversity in areas where it has been used. Large commercial trawlers have been historically decimating both marine environments and significantly decreasing stock levels to a level at which they are unable to recuperate. The impact on communities sitting on the seafloor, known as benthic communities is devastating, the primary culprit being drag trawlers with beams of up to 12 meters, and several beams often deployed at the same time. This lesson looks at the effect of commercial trawling on both fish stocks and benthic community biodiversity. Students will understand relative sizes and impacts of large-scale fishing operations, and devise a plan to reduce the impacts of trawling. Students perform percentage calculations and analyze graphs.

In everyday life, students can be unaware of the impact of their food choices on the environment. Therefore, it is essential that students are educated in their food choices. If students cannot link their food to where it comes from, they are unlikely to make sustainable choices in the future. “Go Fish” aims to encourage students to start thinking about fish in the ocean and how fish stocks can change for the better or for the worse. In the educational game, cards will be selected by chance, so some students ‘oceans’ may be more successful than others. Students will complete a fishing log to monitor events of the game and reflect on the events that cause a change. By playing this game, students can come aware of the negative and positive actions that can take place to encourage fish stocks or declining fish stocks.

A fishery is a geographic region that contains a population of aquatic species which are a natural resource that needs to be managed. This management requires people from different backgrounds and in different fields, such as stakeholders, scientists, fisherpeople, government groups, and citizens. The goal of managing fisheries is to ensure that the different fish populations will be sustainable and a resource for now and future use. It can be a difficult thing to manage since people in different roles will have different priorities. Students will re-enact a fisheries management meeting by adopting the roles of various stakeholders in Plymouth (commercial fishers, recreational fishers, environmental groups, citizens, scientists, etc.) and advocate for a certain policy based on their role as a stakeholder.

Seafood serves as a primary source of food and protein for many people across the world, and the economies of many nations are heavily influenced by fish stocks and fisheries management. While efforts are in place to manage fisheries in many places around the world, there are still risks associated with fishing on a commercial scale. Many fishing vessels are equipped to target specific species of fish, for example, cod, but the large nets and trawls used for efficiency have a downside. This downside is called “bycatch”. Bycatch is defined as any non-targeted species that are brought in accidentally within the catch. In this lesson, students will use the engineering design process to create an alternative to modern fishing nets to try and reduce the amount of bycatch. They will also practice data collection and review.

Global populations have for decades migrated more and more to coastal regions. This colonization of the coast has resulted in large areas of what was formerly rocky shores, salt marshes, and mudflats becoming built environment for people. What’s more, as sea levels rise more, coastal defenses are being put in place to protect towns and cities from the oceans. These coastal defenses are also replacing natural habitats that play a vital role in the life cycle of fish, including spawning locations, nurseries, and sources of planktonic food. This, in turn, is affecting the fish stocks in the oceans. During this lesson, students will gain a basic understanding of the idea that specific habitats are essential in the lifecycle of some species. Students will work through the engineering design process to build a ‘bio-block’ solution to make sea walls a more nature-friendly solution for flood protection.

For anyone looking to teach and learn more about biodiversity. This resource includes the basics of biodiversity to building solutions to foster and protect this element of our world.