Download Ocean Literacy Principles and Benchmarks

Pumping It Up: The Role of Marine Sponges in Our Ocean
Ocean Literacy Principles and Benchmarks
Ocean Literacy Principle #1: The Earth has one big ocean with many features.
Ocean Literacy Principle #5: The ocean supports a great diversity of life and
ecosystems.
Ocean Literacy Principle #7: The ocean and humans are inextricably
interconnected.
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Recognize that the ocean is an integral part of the water cycle and is connected to
all of Earth’s water reservoirs via evaporation and precipitation processes.
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Compare and contrast the relationships among organisms such as mutualism,
predation, parasitism, competition, and commensalism.
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Discuss how various oceanic and freshwater processes, such as currents, tides and
waves, affect the abundance of aquatic organisms.
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Compare and contrast the relationships among organisms, including predation,
parasitism, competition, commensalism, and mutualism.
Pumping It Up: The Role of Marine Sponges in Our Ocean
Vocabulary
Inextricably: from which one cannot extricate oneself; extremely involved with.
Interconnected: to connect with one another; to be meaningfully or complexly
related or joined.
Organism: any living biological entity, such as an animal, plant, fungus or
bacterium.
Abundant: present in great quantity; many.
Habitat: the natural environment of an organism.
Substrate: the substance acted upon by an enzyme.
Ecosystem: a system involving the interactions between a community of living
organisms in a particular area and its nonliving environment.
Stressors: an activity, event or other stimulus that causes stress.
Variable: something that is liable to change; inconstant.
Nutrients: any substance that nourishes an organism.
Symbiosis: a close relationship between two organisms of different species that
live together, often to their mutual benefit.
Buffer: to cushion, shield or protect.
Pigment: any substance whose presence in the tissues or cells of animals or plants
colors them; a coloring matter or substance.
Chlorophyll: the green pigment of plants and photosynthetic algae and bacteria,
essential to the production of carbohydrates by photosynthesis.
Incubate: to maintain at a favorable temperature and in other conditions
promoting development.
Extract: to get, pull, or draw out with special effort, skill or force.
Analysis: an investigation based on the properties of numbers.
Pumping It Up: The Role of Marine Sponges in Our Ocean
Guiding Questions
1. Marine sponges have several important roles in our ocean. Name and
describe one of them.
2. Which human actions have caused changes in near shore reef systems?
3. What are the consequences from the human stressors discussed in the video?
4. Describe the steps in the research project?
5. What is the purpose of Dr. Freeman’s research?
6. What is the main point the narrator is trying to state?
7. What do you think can be done to protect sponge and coral reef ecosystems
in the future?