Life in the Water

This collection of resources was developed for GCSE courses by Cape Farewell in partnership with the Nuffield Curriculum Programme. The Cape Farewell expedition has carried out a series of voyages of discovery in a sailing schooner to Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic. In one voyage scientists and teachers collaborated with a film maker to create these resources aimed at enhancing the teaching about aspects of climate change and its implications. Life in the Water examines the crucial place of plankton as part of the Arctic food chain, and as indicators of global warming. The video clips tell a story about a group of scientists as they collect plankton in the Arctic and return to the laboratory in Southampton where they record and analyse the data. The scientists discuss their work with teachers. The videos not only explore the biology and the topic of climate change but also illustrate how scientist collect and interpret data with a view to testing an hypothesis.

Video clips originally supplied on a DVD 

• Clip 1: The voyages
• Clip 2: Life in the water
• Clip 3: The hypothesis
• Clip 4: Measuring the oceans
• Clip 5: Analysis
• Clip 6: Recording plankton data
• Clip 7: Plankton and global warming
• Clip 8: Science – the Big Questions