(Click on this image to see the full slide deck.)

"ScienceOnShore (SOS), a successful pilot marine science program created by the New York City Department of Education (DOE) in collaboration with Kingsborough Community College (KCC), engages youth in Ocean education through hands-on Ecolabs. This educational initiative was inspired and motivated by the Ocean Literacy movement which seeks to encourage the inclusion of a marine environmental science curriculum into educational institutions both locally and globally.

"SOS is a hands-on, inquiry-based marine science program for fifth graders, students 10–11 years old, who, unfortunately, attend one of the vast number of elementary schools nationwide that have no science laboratories. A single science lab on a college campus will not be able to meet the needs of the more than 1000 public elementary schools in NYC without access to science labs. Therefore, SOS hopes to establish Ecolabs located at three different locations along the more than 500 miles of NYC shoreline.

"The [article linked below] contains a description of the SOS program, along with a sample lab activity that can be replicated in similar locations. SOS EcoLabs enable students to explore, understand and appreciate their own natural marine environment. The ultimate goal of the SOS program is to promote Ocean Literacy by making climate change marine environmental science an integral part of the science curriculum in NYC’s K–5 schools."

March 2026 DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-98145-6_4 License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In book: Ocean Literacy: The Foundation for the Success of the Ocean Decade, Volume I (pp.43-51)

Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham Editors: Teresa J. Kennedy

Access the full ScienceOnShore (SOS) slide deck as presented by Thomas Greene and Blanca Ching at Kingsborough Community College (KCC) here.