Oceanography | September 2015
I have taught undergraduates and graduate students for over
20 years. And just as a parent would never admit to a favor-
ite child, I am loath to favor one set of students over the other.
However, I will admit to being particularly fond of a charac-
teristic trait of undergraduates rarely displayed by graduate
students—namely, the willingness to ask unfiltered questions.
Graduate students routinely ask me about mixing parameter-
izations, flow instabilities, Lagrangian dynamics, and most any-
thing else within a comfortable reach of a physical oceanogra-
pher. And then there are the questions from undergraduates.
Last week, in my class, Ocean and Atmosphere Dynamics, I was
describing recent changes in Arctic summer sea ice when a hand
shot up. Clearly engaged with the material, the student asked,
“I heard from a friend that the increased incidence of shark
attacks off the North Carolina coast this summer was due to the
cooling of waters at the poles. Is this true?” See what I mean by
unfiltered? And yet, I relish these questions as they give me a
toehold of interest with which to work. I like to unpack these
questions and see where they take the class discussion, which is
usually in a direction I had not anticipated at the start of class.
I enjoy these unfiltered questions for another reason: they
illustrate a curiosity about the ocean and an awareness that the
ocean is changing. But they also highlight considerable confusion
about what is changing and why. Since I started teaching under-
graduates, there has been a steady increase in the news coverage
on the ocean. Articles or news releases focused on ocean issues
such as sea level rise, plastics, the great ocean garbage patch, sea
ice loss, and acidification have been fairly commonplace for a
decade or more. But even though the news is commonplace, it
does not mean the information has been clearly communicated
or understood. As a case in point, consider the question about
the sharks off the North Carolina coast.
To simultaneously capitalize on student interest and provide
context on the modern challenges facing the ocean, oceanogra-
phers around the country have been revamping how they intro-
duce students to the study of oceanography. I have been par-
ticularly impressed by a course that a colleague of mine here
at Duke, Nicolas Cassar, has been teaching for a few years:
The Changing Oceans. This course takes a problem-based, rather
than a disciplinary, approach to the study of ocean sciences.
But what interests me the most about this course is that Nicolas
has the students interview, via Skype, authors of recent articles
focused on how the ocean is responding to human impact. The
students select the topics and the articles, and they ask the ques-
tions during the interview. Rather than learning oceanography
from a disciplinary framework, this course introduces oceanog-
raphy through the lens of curiosity. As I have learned through
the years, that curiosity rarely has disciplinary constraints. As an
added bonus, the class content and format, according to Nicolas,
have provided “fuel for interactive learning and critical thinking.”
The unfiltered questions from undergraduates are also inter-
esting to me because they allow a window into how the gen-
eral public perceives our changing ocean. This perception never
ceases to surprise me. Last spring at a reception for Duke alumni,
a Miami lawyer explained to me that he absolutely believed sea
level was rising, but he did not believe any of the “nonsense”
about global warming. When I asked him why he thought sea
level was rising, he quickly responded, “Because ice is melting.”
Deciding to stick with that line of reasoning, I asked him why
he thought the ice was melting. After a long pause, he told me
he would have to get back to me on that one. I am still wait-
ing. But I am also still wondering why the link between warm-
ing and sea level rise was not obvious to this individual and
whether as a community we can do a better job of communi-
cating these linkages.
The story about shark attacks and the one about the Miami
lawyer (a juxtaposition completely unintended but now appre-
ciated) converge with a suggestion for how TOS might facili-
tate communication to students and the general public on ocean
issues. I would like to suggest that TOS’s website serve as a reposi-
tory for the interviews conducted in Nicolas’s class and any other
such interviews of oceanographers both in the United States and
abroad. I also suggest that TOS create an FAQ page on com-
monly asked questions about the ocean. With TOS’s interest in
engaging early career scientists in our professional society, we
might consider this initiative a means for these scientists to edu-
cate the public about ocean sciences. At least it would be a start.
And for the perfect kickoff question, I have one about sharks!
If either of the two ideas above interest you, let me know
(susan.lozier@duke.edu). I am open to suggestions.
FROM THE PRESIDENT
M. Susan Lozier, TOS President
harks and
Miami Lawyers