9-12 Human Impacts: Sea Turtles

South Carolina Aquarium Online Curriculum > 9-12 Activities > 9-12 Human Impacts: Sea Turtles

Human Impacts

The South Carolina Aquarium, in partnership with teachers, has created this online curriculum for teachers to use with their students in the classroom. One of the curriculum themes for High School is Human Impacts. The activities teach concepts that build on this theme. All activities are based upon South Carolina Science Standards, and each activity contains background information, procedures, materials lists, standards addressed, assessments, curriculum extensions and resource lists. We hope teachers will enjoy this resource!

If you are a teacher planning to participate in our Human Impacts (Sea Turtle Emergency Room) School Program, we recommend completing 3 activities before your program. Those activities include: A Sea Turtle’s Life, Sea Turtle Diets and Sea Turtle Strandings. The most important activity being A Sea Turtle’s Life.

We have added at-home and virtual learning modifications to our recommended activities. Be sure to see how you can engage your students at-home and virtually with our activities!

Recommended Pre-visit Activity
♥ At-home and Virtual Options

Students will use a dichotomous key to distinguish between sea turtle species based on external characteristics. Then they will learn the life cycle of a sea turtle by plotting and analyzing navigation data.

Recommended Pre-visit Activity
♥ At-home and Virtual Options

The students will learn how each species of sea turtle is adapted to eating certain prey items by studying the different shapes of their mouths and their feces. They will understand the impact that marine debris has on sea turtles.

Recommended Pre-visit Activity
♥ At-home and Virtual Options

The students will learn what it means when an animal strands. They will learn why sea turtles strand by analyzing stranding reports and they will identify natural and human-induced causes of strandings. They will also learn ways they can help protect sea turtles.

Students will discover the science and technology used to research sea turtles by analyzing dive profiles.

Students will run an experiment to look at the threats sea turtles face during the different stages of their lives. They will look at natural threats to sea turtle eggs, hatchlings, juveniles and adults as well as human induced threats. They will also discover some things that they can do to help sea turtle populations.

Students will use real sea turtle data from the South Carolina Aquarium Sea Turtle Care Center to create a scientific poster that looks into one of the issues that sea turtles face.

Recommended Post-visit Activity

Students will learn about current patients in the South Carolina Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Hospital. They will also learn ways they can help prevent sea turtle strandings.

Recommended Post-visit Activity

What impacts do ocean plastics have on animals? How do macroplastics lead to microplastics? What are some lifestyle changes that could be made to reduce our litter, waste and overall ecological footprint?