Course data and contact information

Official description (published in UW Time Schedule)

Expanded description

During the land component, this course uses short (day- to week-long) projects and field trips for 3 purposes. First, field trips and associated readings help you develop the broad societal (as opposed to scientific) motivation for your main research project. Second, short research exercises enable you to practice the methods and use the instruments that will be critical to completing your research at sea. Third, you will interact with local decision makers (like the members Marine Resource Committee) and see how scientific information is used to define and work toward marine sustainability.

The course also exposes you directly to sustainable practices and technologies, both on shore and at sea. You tour technologies that reduce environmental impacts in local island communities, experiment with similar technologies on the Beam Reach "sustainability ship," and propose and analyze improvements in both contexts. Finally, the course guides you through the formulation and implementation of a service project with stakeholders in the destination port. The project usually involves an exchange of information or technology between the Beam Reach students and the destination port community.

Course objectives

• assessment and improvement of sustainable technologies and practices, especially those that are common in marine settings and/or are utilized on the Beam Reach vessel;
• safe navigation and efficient operation of a sailing research vessel during a 5-week voyage in the Pacific ocean; and
• setting and achieving personal goals, cooperating within a small group, and acting as a leader.

Intended student learning outcomes

1. Develop working definitions of sustainability, science, and sustainability science
2. Be able to formulate a question that can be answered or addressed through scientific processes
3. acquire and retain new information from readings, oral presentations, and/or discussions
4. Make cogent reference to historical case studies in which human interaction with the ocean was (a) unsustainable and (b) sustainable
5. Be able to assess the sustainability of an activity or system through simple, quantitative analysis
6. Be able to use basic software tools for data analysis (including basic statistics), graphing, and written/oral presentation

Course format

Learning activities

• First day field ecology exercise "21 questions to conclusions"
• Group analysis of archived data
• Saturday self-guided field experiments
• Laboratory exercises
• Guest presentations and panel discussions
• Tour San Juan Island water system: salt water intrusion, rain catchment, and desalination
• Create 35 gallons of biodiesel from waste vegetable oil
• Seattle field trip: UW fuel cell project; Renton methane digester and fuel cell system; residential rooftop PV system with grid inter-tie
• Assess resource use during land component and propose mitigation of greatest impacts
• Develop a resource use plan for the sea component, including food, waste, water, and energy budgets
• Monitor resource use during sea component
• Propose and experiment with a technological or practical improvement to the Beam Reach "sustainability ship" (motivate with prospect of new ship design)
• Plan and realize an exchange of information and/or technology with stakeholders in the destination port

Learning assessment tasks (evaluation and grading)

1. faculty assessment of questions posed during ecology exercise and in short projects based on questions rubric; faculty assessment of inquisitiveness during field trips, group activities, and discussions
2. automatic (extra credit) grading of on-line quizzes designed by faculty and students to test comprehension of reading, oral presentations, and/or discussions
3. faculty assessment of short research exercises based on a scientific process rubric
4. peer and/or faculty grading of student analyses of sustainability case studies and technologies throughout the land and sea components
5. stakeholders, peers, and faculty judge implementation of the final service project, yielding a measure of overall mastery of sustainability issues

Course content

• Overview of global human population and resource use (emphasizing marine resources)
• Sustainable cases: Alaska halibut fishery
• Unsustainable cases: Easter Island; cod;
• Recoveries: grey whales; California sardines
• Population dynamics and carrying capacity
• Food chains; autotrophic and heterotrophic efficiency; persistent pollutants and biomagnification
• Potential guest scientists (representative sample, unconfirmed)
  • Alan Haynie, NOAA/PMEL (Natural resource economics basics; Pacific Northwest trans-boundary fisheries policy; sustainable fisheries in Alaska)
  • Eric Anderson, (Statistics basics; sustainability and statistics of salmon on the west coast)
  • Eli Holmes, NOAA/NMFS (Population ecology basics; stellar sea lion case study)
  • Ben Wilson, (Active acoustics; stellar sea lion case study)
• Introduction to life cycle analysis; calculation of ecological footprints
• Land technologies: solutions to salt-water intrusion (desalination and rainwater catchment); biodiesel production; sewage treatment and fuel cells; photovoltaics; wind, tidal, and wave power generation.
• Field trip: Vehicle Research Institute at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA
• Field trip: desalination and rainwater catchment systems on San Juan Island
• Sea technologies: wind power; photovoltaics; biodiesel; electric motors; high-efficiency propellers and regenerative braking; batteries and other storage devices; desalination technology; water conservation equipment; bio-degradation of food and human waste.

Text(s) and required materials

None. Readings will be available through the course web site and/or library at the Friday Harbor Laboratories.