24 Questions for Further Research and Exploration
For Discussion and Inquiry
1. What can we do individually and collectively to restore the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers?
2. How have the destructive assaults on marine ecosystems led to our current world crisis?
3. How many marine animals have become extinct and endangered? How many sea birds and sea mammals are currently endangered? Research initiatives or attempts (if any) designed to save these animals and restore their population.
4. What is being done to protect what remains?
Resources
Ocean Trek (PBS Learning Media)
Preventing Plastic Pollution (PBS Learning Media)
The Oceans: A Driving Force for Climate and Weather (PBS Learning Media)
World Ocean Day: “The United Nations Ocean Decade 2021-2030 is now underway and has given rise to hundreds of innovative Ocean Decade Actions to generate a veritable ocean knowledge revolution and revitalize the ocean through collective action.”
Reflecting on the Writers and Artists
- Select one of the writers or artists that interested you in this module. Research the artist’s/writer’s life further. Which themes of nature emerge? Is the writer/artist hopeful about the fate of nature? Given that many of the poets wrote their work over fifty years ago, what might they think of the situation with marine life today?
- Study the style of one of your favourite poets from this section. You could embark on a creative poetry writing (themes of the sea) and complement your poems with your own art images/photographs, or you could compile a collage of photographs or art images (from the public domain) that touch on an important theme connected to the seas/oceans.
- Compare and contrast three-five artists’ and poets’ description/portrayal of marine life (oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, ponds, etc.). How does each artist/poet present marine life? Is their vision hopeful? How are the artists/poets similar? What differences can you find?
- Focus on a favourite art image from this section and describe what you see in detail; pay close attention to various elements of art: subject and setting, lines, shape and space, colour, scale, proportion, and medium (e.g. painting, sculpture, photograph, etc.). What do you see in the painting? What makes you say that? Look more closely and jot down your thoughts and reflections. For more information, Heny M. Sayre (2 provides a more detailed discussion on writing about art here.
Idyllic Images vs. Reality
- Compare the idyllic art images presented in the images and research the particular geographic area. How has the area changed since the artist presented their work? How have the rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans changed? What would account for these changes based on your research?
- Research local initiatives to save freshwater lakes in Manitoba (and refer to the Lake Winnipeg Research Consortium). Your research can be presented in a forum or panel, complemented with art images and photographs.
- Write a speech, poem, narrative, or other form that best expresses your views about nature and the oceans.
Hope for the Oceans and Seas: Experiential Learning Project: Creative Self-Expression/Individuals Community Connections
Create a multi-modal project that is designed to raise awareness and empathy for marine life and the oceans/seas/lakes. Your realistic but hopeful message might inspire your audiences to take some form of individual or collection action. Your audience might be a community group, students, educators, and politicians. Your creative project could be expressed would include at least two examples of:
- A speech
- A descriptive or expository essay
- A collage of photographs that you took or that you found (connected to marine life/oceans/seas/lakes)
- A collage of artistic images selected from the public domain (or other appropriately sourced information)
- Poems about the sea/marine life/oceans
- A video (from YouTube or TikTok, for example) that could share your message
- A PowerPoint presentation with a summary of key points
- A hopeful message that motivates your audience to awareness, insight, and hopefully engagement
“The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet. Paddling over it, you may see, many feet beneath the surface the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only an inch long, yet the former easily distinguished by their transverse bars, and you think that they must be ascetic fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in the winter, many years ago, when I had been cutting holes through the ice in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed my axe back on to the ice, but, as if some evil genius had directed it, it slid four or five rods directly into one of the holes, where the water was twenty-five feet deep. Out of curiosity, I lay down on the ice and looked through the hole, until I saw the axe a little on one side, standing on its head, with its helve erect and gently swaying to and fro with the pulse of the pond; and there it might have stood erect and swaying till in the course of time the handle rotted off, if I had not disturbed it. Making another hole directly over it with an ice chisel which I had, and cutting down the longest birch which I could find in the neighborhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I attached to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and drew it by a line along the birch, and so pulled the axe out again.
The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones like paving stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water over your head; and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side. Some think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all in it; and of noticeable plants, except in the little meadows recently overflowed, which do not properly belong to it, a closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellow or white, but only a few small heart-leaves and potamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or two; all which however a bather might not perceive; and these plants are clean and bright like the element they grow in. The stones extend a rod or two into the water, and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, where there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay of the leaves which have been wafted on to it so many successive falls, and a bright green weed is brought up on anchors even in midwinter” (p.149).
Further Research on Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau is considered a leading figure in the environmental movements from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His philosophy emphasized living with, cherishing, and appreciating all forms of nature. Written in 1854, Thoreau’s famous book Walden is often cited by environmentalists today and explores the value of living with fewer material possessions while living “greatly” among nature. Like other transcendentalist poets such as Emily Dickinson, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau saw the divine in nature. Spiritual enlightenment could be found if individuals developed an awareness of their natural environment. In doing so, empathy for non-human life forms could evolve. Working toward individual and transformative active is activated through experience, awareness, dialogue, insight, and critical reflection.
You can read Walden in addition to selected poetry and journal reflections by Henry David Thoreau and identify 2-3 poems/passages/reflections that you find interesting. Expand upon the message/theme of the quote, and write your own reflections in the form of a paragraph or short essay. You can supplement your own reflections with your own art images, photographs, sketches, symbols, poems, verses, or related texts.
Henry David Thoreau’s Walden can be found here,
Thoreau’s excursions and poetry can be found here and here.
Thoreau’s journals can be found here.
Additional Texts:
Thoreau on Nature by Henry David Thoreau (Skyhorse Publishing, 2015)
Young, C.M. (1979). To See Our World (with an essay by Margaret Atwood and quotations from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau). GLC Publishers.
Ocean Wonders: Sea Myths, Legends, and Folktales
Explore and write about the ancient origins of mermaids, mermen, kelpies, nixes, and other mythic sea beings. What legends and myths are associated with them? You can develop your report into a PowerPoint presentation. Consider whether the legend, folk tale, or myth is rooted in some truth or reality about the seas and sea life
For information about mermaids, please open the links here and here.
For information about Inuit sea goddess Sedna please open the links here and here.
For information about Inuit myths and legends please open the link here
For information about Kelpies please open the link here
For information about Nixie please open the link here.
For information about myths and legends of the sea please open the link here
Shakespeare and the Sea
Sea imagery and motifs feature prominently in a number of plays by William Shakespeare. Plays such as The Tempest and Twelfth Night feature sea storms and sea wrecks that separate families and destroy lives. In a time of maritime travel and exploration, sea tragedies were a clear and present danger in Elizabethan England. Research the following quotations and describe their meaning. You can also read more of the context of each quote by reading the play.
Quotations
“Assure yourself, after our ship did split….I saw your brother, most provident in peril, bind himself…Where like Arion on the dolphin’s back, I saw him hold aquaintance with the waves.”–Twelfth Night
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from hand?/ No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, /Making the green one red.”- MacBeth
“Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wrecks.” –Richard III
“Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase.”–Hamlet
“Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end.”-Sonnet 60
“When we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive and grow big-bellied with the wanton wind.” -Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Full fathom five they father lies.”-The Tempest
“Hark, do you hear the sea?” –King Lear
“Lie where the light foam of the sea may beat the gravestone daily.”-Timon of Athens
A full list of quotations and explanations from the Royal Museums of Greenwich here.
The World Beneath the Waves
Write a report, letter, essay, or other form of creative expression that provides examples of the varied animal and plant life under the sea. You could download one of the historical scientific or artistic books about sea life and compare the writer’s observations about ocean/sea life with today. Which animals, for example, were once in abundance but are now endangered or even extinct? (Biodiversity Heritage Library)
Enchanted Islands and Rocks
Find poems or books about “enchanted islands” and write a review of one of these texts. You might already have a text that you wish to read and review, or access one of the examples listed below (most can be accessed through online sources such as Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive):
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)
The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne (1874)
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells (1896)
Angel Island by Inez Hayes Gillmore (1914)
Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954)
Concrete Island by G.D. Ballard (1973)
Foe by J.M. Coetzee (1986)
The Beach by Alex Garland (1997)
From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjon (2008)
The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara (2013)
Poetry and Related Texts
How has the sea been used to personify strength, mystery, and life? Why is the sea often connected with the feminine? Which poems stand out for you in this section?
A majority of the poems featured in this module can be accessed through the Internet Archive (an American digital library with the stated mission of “universal access to all knowledge”) and/or Project Gutenberg. Some of the world’s greatest literature is found on Project Gutenberg. In most cases, links to the poet’s collected work are provided. You are free to download individual/collected poems from these websites.
Emily Dickinson poems inspired by nature
Review: “A Poet of Solitude: Peder Balke’s Haunting Visions of the Arctic Circle” by Jonathan Jones (The Guardian, 2014)
