Ocean Literacy Principle 7

The ocean is largely unexplored

The ocean is vast, deep, dynamic, and difficult to access. Exploration helps us understand ocean systems, discover new habitats and organisms, and improve knowledge of how Earth works.

Guiding question: Why is the ocean difficult to explore, and what do we need to discover more about it?

NMEA grade band: Grades 6–8

Other grade bands are in preparation.

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Teach this principle Explore the concepts

At a glance

What students should take away

Students should come away understanding that much of the ocean remains difficult to observe, exploration depends on specialized technology and collaboration, and maps, data, and models help people understand what they cannot observe continuously.

Key ideas

Much of the ocean remains difficult to observe and understand.
Exploration produces new knowledge about ocean places, processes, and life.
Repeated observations help scientists understand how the ocean changes over time.
Ocean exploration requires collaboration across many disciplines and communities.
Specialized technologies allow scientists to explore environments people cannot easily reach.
Data, maps, and models help scientists combine observations and understand the ocean system.

Teach this principle

Why this matters

Ocean exploration is an active process of asking questions, observing difficult-to-reach environments, comparing change over time, combining expertise, and turning measurements into usable knowledge.

Start with an inaccessible place
Student task
Use the Mariana Trench or another deep-ocean environment and ask why people cannot simply travel there and look around.
Ask the class
What makes this place difficult to observe directly?
Listen for
Depth, darkness, and pressure limit direct human observation and require specialized tools.
Teaching resources
Explore the Mariana Trench Technology extends ocean observation
Select observing technologies
Student task
Ask which tools could investigate its depth, shape, water conditions, geology, and organisms.
Ask the class
Which tool would answer your question, and what would it measure?
Listen for
Different tools collect different observations; the tool must match the question and conditions.
Teaching resources
Open Marine Science Card Technology extends ocean observation
Combine the evidence
Student task
Show how observations from satellites, ships, sonar, sensors, submersibles, and different scientific disciplines can be combined into maps, datasets, and models.
Ask the class
Why combine observations from different tools and people?
Listen for
Combining expertise and measurements connects evidence across places, depths, and times.
Teaching resources
Connect the Evidence in the Knowledge Graph Explore a Changing Ocean Dataset in WebGIS Exploration requires collaboration and communication
Ask what remains unknown
Student task
Let students identify a question that would require additional observations or exploration.
Ask the class
What further observations would help answer your remaining question?
Listen for
A clear question guides additional or repeated observations to investigate what remains unknown.
Teaching resources
Open Marine Science Card Explore a Changing Ocean Dataset in WebGIS Exploration creates new ocean knowledge

Check understanding

If scientists wanted to understand a place 8,000 metres below the ocean surface, what would they need to observe and which tools would they use?

Explore the concepts

Exploration creates new ocean knowledgeExploration and repeated observation reveal ocean places, processes, organisms, and changes that cannot be understood from a single visit or instrument.

Exploration reveals ocean places, processes, and life.

Ocean exploration helps scientists investigate the seafloor, water column, organisms, physical processes, chemistry, and changing environmental conditions.

New observations can reveal previously unknown habitats, species, behaviors, geological features, resources, and connections within the ocean system. Exploration can also improve understanding of human impacts and generate discoveries useful to medicine, engineering, energy, and other fields.

Underwater rock formations representing ocean places still being investigated

Examples and vocabulary

Applications include mineral and biological resources, medicines and cancer research, and energy from tides, waves or ocean temperature differences. Long-term observations also track low-oxygen areas, sometimes called dead zones, alongside temperature, noise and other changes.

Open Marine Science Card

Repeated observations show how the ocean changes.

Scientists do not only explore new places. They also return to places and collect observations over time.

Repeated measurements help reveal changes in temperature, circulation, sea level, chemistry, noise, ecosystems, species distributions, and other ocean processes. Long-term observations help scientists recognize patterns, test explanations, and improve predictions.

Explore a Changing Ocean Dataset in WebGIS

Connected concepts in other principles

Exploration requires collaboration and communicationUnderstanding the ocean depends on people with different expertise, experiences, responsibilities, and ways of knowing working together and sharing information.

Many disciplines and communities work together.

Ocean exploration brings together biology, chemistry, geology, physics, engineering, mathematics, computing, data science, and many other disciplines.

Scientists also work with technicians, vessel crews, educators, students, Indigenous and local knowledge holders, communities, governments, environmental organisations, and international partners to collect, interpret, fund, regulate, and share ocean information.

Ocean data and discoveries must be communicated accurately and made accessible so scientists, decision-makers, educators, and communities can use them.

People develop relevant skills through careers and hobbies as well as formal science. Government bodies fund and regulate research, while community and environmental groups raise awareness. Young people can work with these groups or scientists, join virtual expeditions and communicate questions or proposals to officials.

Examples and vocabulary

Ocean-related skills include engineering and mathematics as well as film, photography, architecture, fishing and boating. Different roles contribute to documenting discoveries, operating equipment and communicating evidence.

Connect the Evidence in the Knowledge Graph

Connected concepts in other principles

B2 → P6 · E6

Technology extends ocean observationOcean conditions make direct access difficult, so scientists use specialized technologies and connected data systems to observe places people cannot easily reach.

Extreme ocean conditions make direct exploration difficult.

Depth, darkness, pressure, temperature, salinity, distance, waves, and currents create conditions that make direct human exploration difficult, expensive, and sometimes dangerous.

Many ocean environments cannot be visited safely or observed continuously by people. These physical challenges explain why specialized technologies are necessary.

Explore the Mariana Trench

Specialized technologies observe places people cannot easily reach.

Scientists use research vessels, submersibles, remotely operated vehicles, autonomous underwater vehicles, sonar, satellites, sensors, drifters, buoys, observatories, and other technologies.

Some tools observe enormous areas from above. Others map the seafloor, travel through the water column, remain underwater for long periods, or collect samples and measurements in extreme environments.

New methods and technologies also support research into ocean organisms, resources, energy, geology, and physical processes.

Wetsuits, SCUBA and human-occupied submersibles extend human access underwater, each with different depth, duration and safety limits. Robotic vehicles can collect observations without carrying people.

Sonar uses sound to measure distances and locate underwater features. Combining acoustic measurements with position data helps map the seafloor across large areas.

Remotely operated vehicle used for deep-ocean exploration

Data, maps, and models combine many observations.

Ocean observations from different instruments can be combined in maps, data systems, and computational models.

These systems help scientists investigate places and processes that cannot be observed continuously. They connect observations across depth, distance, and time, while online access allows scientists and the public to participate in remote or near-real-time exploration.

Better ocean knowledge supports decisions about biodiversity, resources, hazards, climate, and sustainable use.

Bathymetric model created from seafloor observations

Combine Ocean Observations in WebGIS

Connected concepts in other principles

C4 → P5 · B9

Teaching resources

Start here

Ecoregion

1. Investigate why exploration is difficult

Use the Mariana Trench to discuss how depth, pressure, darkness, distance, and remoteness limit direct human observation.

Opportunity

2. See how scientists investigate the unknown

Use Marine Science to connect questions and discoveries with observations, evidence, technology, and collaboration.

Opportunity

3. Discover an unexpected ecosystem

Use Thermal Vents to show how exploration revealed deep ecosystems supported by chemical energy rather than sunlight.

Tool

4. Turn observations into usable knowledge

Use WebGIS to compare mapped observations and model-based datasets and discuss what they reveal about places people rarely visit directly.

Explore this principle with the platform

WebGIS

Compare bathymetry, time-dependent datasets, and model-based layers to investigate how observations become maps and where more evidence is still needed.

Open

Knowledge Graph

Trace links among deep-ocean species, unusual habitats, exploration opportunities, scientific disciplines, and the systems people are still trying to understand.

Open

Cards

Use cards such as Marine Science, Thermal Vents, and Whale Fall to discuss discovery, tools, and hidden ecosystems.

Open

Featured Species

Species

Mariana snailfish

Mariana snailfish helps explain this principle because it lives in one of the deepest and least accessible habitats on Earth, where exploration is still revealing how life survives.

Species

Blind shrimp

Blind shrimp helps show that exploration often reveals ecosystems that would be unknown without submersibles, sensors, and deep-sea observation.

Species

Kaup's arrowtooth eel

Kaup's arrowtooth eel helps connect deep-ocean habitats to the challenge of observing mobile animals in dark, high-pressure environments.

Featured Ecoregions

Ecoregion

Mariana Trench

Distinctive: This trench includes the deepest known parts of the global ocean and remains difficult to access directly.

Connected to the global system: It helps explain why depth, pressure, darkness, and remoteness make the ocean hard to explore.

Ecoregion

Rainbow Vent Field

Distinctive: This hydrothermal vent system hosts unusual chemosynthetic life in a deep, extreme environment.

Connected to the global system: It shows that exploration continues to reveal ecosystems and energy pathways that were once completely unknown.

Ecoregion

Monterey Canyon

Distinctive: This deep submarine canyon is close to shore but still reveals difficult-to-observe deep-ocean processes and species.

Connected to the global system: It helps explain that even ocean places near people can remain scientifically challenging and discovery-rich.

Featured Cards

Opportunity

Marine Science

Marine Science illustrates the principle by showing that discovery depends on observation, evidence, and continued investigation.

Opportunity

Thermal Vents

Thermal Vents illustrate the principle because deep exploration revealed ecosystems powered by chemistry rather than sunlight.

Opportunity

Whale Fall

Whale Fall illustrates the principle by showing how rare discoveries in the deep sea can reveal unexpected food webs and ecological stages.

Sources and curriculum alignment

Grades 6–8 conceptual alignment: Adapted from NMEA Ocean Literacy Scope and Sequence under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Adapted from the NMEA Grades 6–8 Principle 7 CFD (2021, handbook page 57). Source notes distinguish the original concepts from qualified adaptations. Classroom tasks and platform links are Blue Biome teaching suggestions.