Sampling the Sea

Sampling the Sea (STS) will consolidate and display Monterey Bay Aquarium’s data on fisheries at risk in Google Ocean; STS will engage GLOBE students across the planet to provide data about the fish available in their markets and about their weekly fish consumption; STS will encourage the sharing of student provided fish-market photography through ePals; STS will gather the GLOBE data, aggregate this and provide data visualizations back to GLOBE classrooms through Google Earth. Students will then analyze these graphs to learn the results of their data collection effort; STS will link global student data to data on fisheries at risk. This will enable classroom investigations into the environmental impacts of consuming these fish and the alternatives for sustaining the fisheries.
From ocean to market

Sustaining ocean fisheries will take end-to-end cooperation embracing consumers as well as producers. Protein from the oceans supply nearly twenty-percent of the food protein for the planet. In many regions, this level is closer to fifty percent. Because of overfishing, scarcity is often not reflected in consumer price, and so consumers may not know that their food sources are in danger of disappearing. Better information about sustainable fisheries helps consumers choose fish that are being sustainably caught and avoid those that are not. Informed consumers who are concerned about the future of their favorite foods can also become ambassadors for sustainable fisheries. In many developing nations where fish consumption represents not only a major protein source but also a major income source, half the population is younger than twenty-five years old. These young consumers need to be come engaged in the global dialog about the condition and future of harvesting protein from the ocean.