ORCA's Whale Education Month Lesson Pack 1: Marine Litter
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ORCA’s Whale Education Month
Lesson Pack 1: Marine Litter
Photo Credit: Vberger/Wikimedia Commons
Learn more about one of the biggest threats facing
our wildlife today – marine litter.
Your students will investigate this huge threat
through the ORCA Whale Education Month materials,
games and activities, and what they can do to help.
Registered Charity Number: 1141728
1
ORCA’s Whale Education Month
Marine Litter – What Is Marine Litter?
Welcome!
This teacher’s pack aims to educate and inspire students around the UK about the wonderful world of whales,
dolphins and porpoises, and the threats that they face. Included in this pack are all the resources needed to deliver a
fun, scientific class about the threat of marine litter to marine wildlife, with the hope of raising awareness of the
importance of conservation. ORCA’s Whale Education Month is running from the 1st – 31st October 2018, to coincide
with World Animal Day on the 4th October.
About ORCA:
ORCA are a UK based whale and dolphin conservation charity, dedicated to the protection of whales, dolphins and
porpoises (collectively known as cetaceans) and their habitats in UK & European waters. We and our volunteers help
protect these inspirational animals in a number of ways; by educating the general public through our Your Seas
programmes onshore and our Wildlife Officer programmes offshore, through our Marine Mammal Surveyor Training
Courses across the country, and, once trained, through our volunteer surveyors working on ferry and cruise ship
routes monitoring vulnerable whale and dolphin populations. We freely share our data with governments and other
research institutions. Our work is all about creating safer places for whales and dolphins, ultimately promoting the
health of the wider marine ecosystem.
ORCA provides whale and dolphin workshops for schools, as part of the ‘Your Seas’ educational programme. Being
based in Portsmouth, there is never enough time to visit as many schools as we’d like. This teacher’s pack will
provide the same engaging presentation and educational activities to students, whilst allowing teachers to be
trained and able to deliver the content themselves.
For more information, please visit our website www.orcaweb.org.uk
We believe that it’s extremely important for children to learn about the fascinating wildlife in our oceans and we
believe that those who are taught about the negative impacts of litter on our environment at an early age are more
likely to have a responsible attitude towards this, and other environmental issues, when they’re older. Through
these presentations, games and activities, children will learn about why marine litter is so harmful to wildlife and
what they can do in their everyday lives (no matter how big or small) to help minimise this threat.
There are three lesson packs;
1. Marine Litter – What is marine litter?
2. Marine Litter – How does marine litter harm wildlife?
3. Marine Litter – What can I do to help?
The below information is for the Marine Litter Pack 1 – What is marine litter?
Keep in touch!
We hope you enjoy taking part in ORCA’s Whale Education Month, and if you have any questions, please do not
hesitate to contact us;
info@orcaweb.org.uk, 02392 832565, ORCA, Brittany Centre, Wharf Road, Portsmouth, PO2 8RU
If you or your school uses social media, the hashtag is #WhaleEducationMonth and our Twitter
handle is @ORCA_web
2ORCA’s Whale Education Month
There are a wide range of different materials, activities and games provided for ORCA’s Whale Education Month.
How does the pack work?
We have provided a PowerPoint presentation about Marine Litter – What is marine litter? for you to deliver to your
class. Notes for the presentation are below. Integrated into the presentation are slides with suggested activities.
The individual activities are in this document. We have also provided you with separate documents with the activity
sheets on (for ease of printing). It is up to you as to how many activities to integrate into the lesson.
Once you have delivered the presentation and activities, you can print off the certificate to proudly display in your
classroom!
Each lesson lasts approximately 45 minutes.
Contents:
Activity Page Number
Teacher’s notes for the PowerPoint Presentation: Marine Litter 4
Activity Sheet: Land or Sea? 7
3Teacher’s Notes: Presentation 1– Marine Litter: What is marine litter?
1 Introduction:
Today, we will be learning about marine litter – one of the many dangers that whales,
dolphins, and other marine wildlife faces in the ocean.
This presentation has been provided by ORCA, who are a UK-based whale and dolphin
conservation charity. The charity’s aim is to have oceans alive with whales and
dolphins!
2 Ask the class: What words come to mind when you think of whales and dolphins?
Beautiful, intelligent, acrobatic, cute…..these words come to mind.
*This would be a good point to show the ORCA Introduction Video*
3 But despite being beautiful and intelligent creatures, they are in danger and under
threat.
Ask the class: What threats do you think whales and dolphins face in the wild?
4 Activity Sheet: Harry the Harbour Porpoise Maze [takes less than 5 minutes]
5 [click to reveal each threat]
- Bycatch – getting caught in fishing nets (unable to get to the surface to
breathe, they drown)
- Overfishing – we take many fish out of the oceans for us to eat. But there’s
not much fish left for the whales and dolphins to eat
- Whaling – Some countries in the world do still hunt and kill whales to eat, for
example Iceland, Norway and Japan
- Habitat loss – We destroy the homes of many whales and dolphins. For
example, in the Yangtze River in China, humans have built on the river bed and
river sides, there is a huge amount of ship noise and there is so much fishing
that there are not enough fish for the Yangtze River Dolphin to eat. The
Yangtze River Dolphin became extinct in 2007. Ask the class: Does anyone
know what extinct means?
Answer; There is none of that animal living on the planet. The moment
of extinction is the death of the last individual of that species.
- Getting hit by ships – just as animals crossing the road get hit by cars (foxes,
badgers, deer), large whales (for example the fin whale) also get hit by ships,
causing injury and death.
- But one of the biggest threats is marine litter, which we will be talking about
today.
46 But what is marine litter? [click for each bullet point]
• Marine litter is any manmade object lost, discarded, disposed of or abandoned
that enters the sea.
• It may enter the sea from a ship, or from land when washed out to sea via
rivers, streams and drains.
• Humans dump more than 100 million tonnes of rubbish each year into the
world’s ocean
100 million tonnes is the same weight as;
- 20 Titanics!
- 500,000 blue whales!
- Advanced activity: What is the heaviest thing the class can think of? Research
how much it weighs and how much 100 million tonnes’ worth would be.
• Marine litter is entirely due to human activity, and therefore it is down to us to
stop it!
7 But where does marine litter actually come from?
Activity Sheet: Land or Sea [takes approximately 5 minutes]
This activity starts to help students think where the litter actually comes from. We have
provided you with some suggested answers on page 7.
8 This slide follows on from activity 2.
Ask the class: How many items do you have on land and how many on sea?
Many people think that marine litter comes only from the sea (for example being
dropped over the side of cruise ships and ferries, or fishermen dropping their nets into
the sea).
But the shocking fact is that most of the litter that ends up in the sea is actually from
the land – 80%!
Every small piece of rubbish we drop on land eventually ends up in the sea. The wind
can blow it into the streams, rivers and drains and the rain washes every tiny bit of
litter into the streams/rivers/drains and where do these end up? In the sea.
Here are some pictures of examples of where marine litter comes from, how many did
the students get?
- Balloon releases – 70% of our world is sea so it’s likely that balloons released
into the air end up in the sea rather than landing on land.
- Landfills – a lot of landfills are located on river banks or near the sea. When
there is a high tide, high winds or flooding, all of the rubbish gets washed or
blown into the sea/river.
- Overflowing rubbish bins & dropping litter – After a sunny day on the
beach/park I am sure this is a familiar sight. But when the wind blows or the
rain starts this rubbish easily ends up in the sea.
- Cigarette butts – often end up in drains, which flow into the sea. Cigarettes
are also full on very harmful chemicals which also end up in the sea and harm
our wildlife
- Toilets - Also, all of the plastic that gets put down the toilet – cotton buds &
face wipes for example, end up in the sea because they do not get filtered out
in our sewage system.
59 Activity 3: [takes approximately 5 minutes]
See following slides for activity.
10 All of these things are the top 9 items found on beaches in the UK.
Can you put them in order?
This data was collected by the Marine Conservation Charity on beach cleans in
September 2017.
11 This slide follows on from activity 3.
Answers revealed.
Advanced activity: Can your students work out where these items might have come
from and how they ended up on the sea and then eventually on the beach?
12 Ask the class: What do most of the items we’ve talked about today have in common?
[click to reveal bullet points]
• They are made of plastic
• Plastic is a man-made material that is made out of a combination of chemicals
• Plastic is not a natural material so it’s not like an apple core which rots away
very quickly back into nothing.
• Plastic never goes away, it stays in our environment forever
• So it is very harmful to our environment and the animals that live on our
planet
13 This is the first lesson complete. Lesson 2 looks into how this marine litter harms
wildlife.
Thank you for taking part!
All activity sheets with answers are below, but they are also provided as separate documents for ease of
printing.
6Activity: Land or Sea?
Where does litter found in the sea come from? List as many as you can think of that come from the land or the
sea.
Land Sea
People leaving rubbish on the beach. When the tide People dropping rubbish off ships (fishing vessels, cruise
comes in, it washes it away into the sea ships, ferries)
Dropping litter on the street, which can wash away in
the rain into drains/streams or blow into the sea/rivers Fishermen throwing nets into the sea
when it’s windy
Cigarettes on the floor, being washed/blown into
drains/rivers and then into the sea
Balloon releases
Down the drain/toilet
Overflowing rubbish bins
Drainage going straight into the sea
7Thank you for taking part in
ORCA’s Whale Education Month!
If your school would like to fundraise or donate to help us
continue our vital research and education work, please visit
our website www.orcaweb.org.uk
Thank you for your support.
8You can also read
