Themed Issues

Current occasionally publishes theme issues sponsored and funded by other organizations on topics relevant to marine education. Past themes have included ocean literacy, climate change, ocean acidification, and polar seas, among others. If your organization would like to sponsor a theme issue of Current, please and contact the editor at current@natlmarineed.org.

Ocean Literacy

The NMEA Special Edition, the Ocean Literacy Campaign Special Report #3, features the work of dozens of agencies and hundreds of individuals to bring ocean sciences into the mainstream of both formal and informal education. and includes the Ocean Literacy Scope and Sequence for Grades K-12 in the form of 28 conceptual flow diagrams, as well as resources that we hope will be informative as you begin to use the Scope and Sequence.

Climate CHange

The articles in this issue provide an overview of US GLOBEC, describe the four regional studies undertaken in the program and some of their results, and discuss three topics critical to the overall effort: new sampling technologies, modeling approaches, and data management. We hope this information will provide not only glimpses of the potential effects of climate change on our marine systems, but also insight into how science can address such a complex and important issue.

Ocean Acidification

This issue of Current highlights ocean acidification, a term used to describe the ongoing global scale changes in seawater chemistry caused largely by human combustion of fossil fuels. The articles in this special issue focus on multiple facets of ocean acidification, including threats to marine organisms, economic implications for fisheries and ecosystem services, and policy options for mitigating negative impacts.