The Semester at a Glance
Foundations of Oceanography
The history of ocean exploration, the origin of the oceans, and how we map the seafloor.
Origins of Life & a Habitable Ocean
How photosynthesis in the ocean built our oxygen atmosphere, and why the ocean is the cradle of life on Earth.
Seawater Properties & Circulation
Salinity, density, and temperature — and how those properties drive currents, the global conveyor belt, waves, tides, and El Niño.
Marine Geology & Coastal Processes
Ocean basins, seafloor sediments, and how coastlines form, erode, and change.
Marine Life & Ecosystems
Plankton to megafauna, coral reefs to the deep sea, and the food webs that connect them.
Humans & the Ocean
Fisheries, pollution, acidification, and conservation — plus your final project.
Welcome to Oceanography
Welcome aboard. This class is about the ocean itself — how it formed, how it moves, what lives in it, and why it quietly runs the climate you live in. If you've ever wondered why tides happen, what's actually down in the deep sea, or how a current thousands of miles away ends up on your local weather report, this is that class.
We move through a unit at a time — the basics of the field, the physical properties of seawater, circulation and climate, marine geology and coastlines, marine life and ecosystems, and finally humans and the ocean — and you'll keep a running field notebook the whole semester so the class stays connected to real data and real places.
You don't need any prior science background coming in. Show up, get curious about the water, and ask questions — that's the whole deal.
What this class is, how it's graded, and what a normal week looks like.
Watch →A quick tour of the site so you always know where to click next.
Watch →How to read a temperature, salinity, or oxygen profile and log it in your field notebook.
Watch →Course Documents
Grading, expectations, and how the semester is laid out.
📝The recurring water-column & species log you'll fill out all semester.
🗺️Every ocean layer, current, and circulation concept covered this term. One page. Print it.
⭐ Print this outA Note About AI
- Generate course images
- Build the interactive tools and field-notebook templates
- Format and layout lesson content consistently
- Draft activity instructions and rubrics
This is a class about observing and understanding the real ocean, so I use AI to help build it — go ahead and use it too, especially to explore questions that go beyond what we cover in class. The line is between using AI to learn and using it to skip learning.