1. Brainstorm with students their understanding of protected habitats.

Ask students: What protected places have you visited? Prompt students with answers that include nearby state parks and nature preserves, well-known national parks, or city parks. Ask: What are some of the rules for people who visit these areas? Answers may include not littering, not removing any natural items, staying on the path, etc.

2. Define Marine Protected Areas, or MPAs.

Explain to students that parks and their rules exist in order to preserve habitats, organisms, and resources. Tell students that the need to protect habitats, organisms, and resources is not limited to land. The ocean needs to be protected, too. Areas in the ocean are being set aside as sanctuaries for the same reasons that parks were created on land: to protect habitats, organisms, and resources. These ocean sanctuaries are often called Marine Protected Areas, or MPAs. MPAs can have different rules of use. This means that people can use them in different ways, depending on an MPA's assigned level of protection. The strictest type of MPA is called a "no-take" reserve, which means that fishing of all types is not allowed. In many ways, the rules on "no-take" reserves are very similar to the rules for terrestrial parks.

3. Students compare the percentages of protected land and ocean.

Write numbers for the total land area of Earth, 148,647,000 km2 (57,392,928 square miles), and the total ocean area of Earth, 331,441,932 km2 (127,970,445 square miles), on a corner of the World Physical MapMaker Kit. Ask: Is there more land or water on Earth? Explain that the ocean covers 71 percent of Earth's surface, whereas land only covers 29 percent.

Have students estimate the percentage of each surface type that is protected and record their predictions. Ask: What percentage of Earth's land do you think is protected? What percentage of the ocean do you think is protected? Write student guesses on the board and then provide them with the actual percentages. About 13 percent of land, globally, is protected. However, less than 2 percent of the ocean is protected as a "no-take" reserve.

4. Students visualize the amount of protected area on the World Physical MapMaker Kit.

Have student volunteers tape cut out circles, or draw circles using a compass, on the map in order to visualize the amount of land and ocean set aside in reserves. Explain that these circles represent the total amount of land and ocean that is protected in the world. The size of these circles will differ based on the size of the World Physical map that you choose to use.

Tabletop Map

Total Area of Map: 682.5 in²

MPA: draw a circle with a 1 inch radius

Land: draw a circle with a 3 inch radius

MegaMap

Total Area of Map: 11,781 in²

MPA: draw a circle with a 5 inch radius

Land: draw a circle with a 12 inch radius

Label the circles "MPA" and "Protected Land," and shade them blue and green, respectively.

5. Discuss the importance of protecting the world's ocean.

Ask: How did our predictions compare to the actual amounts of protected land and ocean? Point out that even though the ocean is larger than the land, far less of it is protected. Ask: Are you surprised by this? Why or why not? Discuss why protecting the ocean matters. Remind students of the importance of protecting organisms, habitats, and resources, as well as positive and negative impacts that humans can have on the ocean.

Extending the Learning

Have a class brainstorm session of ways that different groups might be affected by the creation of a "no-take" MPA. Record all student responses on the board. Have students consider fishermen, tourism business owners and tourists, environmental groups, community members, politicians, and organisms. Ask: Which groups would be in support of the idea? Why? Circle these stakeholders in green. Ask: Which groups would be against? Why? Circle these stakeholders in red. Some groups may be coded both red and green. Tell students that the creation of an MPA is typically a complex process because of all of these competing interests.

Tips & Modifications

MODIFICATION

For Step 4, older students can calculate the size of the circles by measuring their maps and using ratios to calculate the circle size using the data in Step 3.

TIP

Laminate the individual sheets of the MapMaker Kit map so you can re-use it for several years.