Seaweek resources
Seaweek is New Zealand’s annual national week about the sea. It is coordinated by the Sir Peter Blake Marine Education and Recreation Centre (MERC) and includes a wide range of events, activities, competitions and opportunities for action. It usually runs for a week from the end of February – early March.
Seaweek 2026 will take place from 28 February–8 March.
With 75% of New Zealanders living within 10 km of the coast, marine science need not be limited to just 1 week, marine contexts can link to many different science concepts. This resource provides a sample of the Hub's marine resources. Use the related Topics and Concepts tabs on the right side of a page to find an even wider variety of teaching resources.
Below is a selection of unit plans and other teacher support materials that we have grouped under possible teaching topics.
Read this 2025 Ministry for the Enviroment report about the state of our marine and coastal environments in Aotearoa and see how you can use this wealth of information to engage with local curriculum.
Healthy Seas – Healthy People
Red tide
A spectacular red tide (non-toxic) of Noctiluca scintillans at Leigh, near Cape Rodney in New Zealand.
Articles:
Kaimoana in the Hauraki Gulf includes the video: Testing for toxins in kaimoana
Activities:
Investigating toxins and bioaccumulation in marine food webs and related interactive: Bioaccumulation in the sea
Human impacts on the sea
Ecosystem overfishing
Large-scale fishing operations resulting in overfishing disturb the ecological balance of marine ecosystems.
‘Fishing down the food web’ means fishing for smaller and smaller fish because the larger ones are fished out.
Articles:
Videos:
Activities:
Citizen science project: Marine Metre Squared
Habitats and ecosystems
New Zealand’s marine environment
In this video, Dr Candida Savage, from the University of Otago, talks about how New Zealand’s pristine habitats are like ‘natural laboratories’. This is because they offer good opportunities to study naturally functioning systems and to learn more about what different habitats may have been like before human impact.
Articles:
Young Ocean Explorers episode topics: harbours, kelp
Interactive: Marine ecosystem
Activities:
Mātauranga Māori and the moana
Articles:
Reviving toheroa (this includes the video Toheroa: Rejuvenating a Delicacy)
Love Rimurimu – an ocean of potential for seaweed (includes the interactive Love Rimurimu – planning pathways)
Awhi mai awhi atu – kuku restoration (includes the video Mussel ropes)
Activities:
Estuaries – a Māori perspective (includes the video Kaitiakitanga)
Environmental thinking and planning with ecosystem-based management (EBM)
Sea creatures
Articles:
Sea stars (includes 2 interactives: dorsal view and ventral view of sea stars)
Before and after
This before and after shot of the work of the Mussel Reef Restoration Trust to create new seabed mussel reefs shows very promising results.
Young Ocean Explorers episode topics:: rays, crayfish, orcas, triplefins, Sandager’s wrasse, dolphins, kelp, turtles and sharks
The ocean’s chemical and physical processes
Ocean salinity, temperature and density
Salinity and temperature of the ocean rise or fall (indicated by arrows) in response to rainfall, evaporation and solar radiation. These properties affect seawater density, causing water to sink or rise (indicated by arrows).
Articles:
Activities:
The ocean and climate change
Ocean carbon dioxide around New Zealand
Data from cruises around New Zealand has been used to map CO2 in surface waters. This will be combined with satellite data to create a more accurate picture.
Articles:
The ocean and the carbon cycle (includes the video Southern Ocean carbon sink)
Student activity: Ocean acidification and eggshells
Ecosystem services
Mussels includes the videos: Revive our Gulf and Mussels filtering water
Aquaculture
Articles:
Department of Conservation marine infographics
The Department of Conservation and the Science Learning Hub have collaborated to create a series of interactives that feature many of DOC’s marine infographics.
Building Science Concepts
Building Science Concepts: Life between the tides is a partial replication of Building Science Concepts Book 21:
Life between the tides – interactive
Changes on the beach – activity
Building Science Concepts: Tidal communities is a partial replication of Building Science Concepts Book 22:
Tidal communities – interactive
Beach visits – habitats and food webs – activity
Māori mō te ara o Hinekirikiri – kuputaka – glossary article
Teacher support materials
Find out more about marine education and Seaweek in these resources below
Online professional development
Are you planning for Seaweek or a marine topic? We have it covered in our recorded professional development webinars:
Monitoring the moana – participatory science methods shares a range of tools for measuring environmental conditions and biological communities.
Moanamana – taking action to protect our oceans hear how students are taking action for their marine environment.
Diving into marine resources, join us and Steve Hathaway from Young Ocean Explorers, as we introduce some exciting marine teaching and learning resources.
Seaweek 2016 focuses on marine content and planning.
Seaweek 2015 focuses on the nature of science and teacher ideas.
Unit plans
Topic planners: Marine resources – food webs, adaptation, marine habitats, marine biodiversity.
Education research and classroom experiences
Articles:
They’ll have it now
Gail Thomson, Associate Principal at Swanson School, and her students use resources from across the Hub to explore the effects of temperature and salinity on ocean currents and water density.
Literacy links
These Connected articles provide a brief synopsis of the original jounal article, associated teacher support material and links to the digital resources on TKI. They also provide a wealth of related Hub content and activity ideas – wrap-around resources to deepen or extend student thinking and learning, practise content vocabulary or prompt inquiry.
Citizen science
Using online citizen science opportunities as a way to deepen student learning and engagement is easier than you think.
Litterati and Litter Intelligence are two citizen science projects that ask people to photograph, geotag and classify litter.
Marine Metre Squared supports communities to monitor their local seashore. In Sediment and seashores – monitoring Otago Harbour, explore how it was used by another PSP project.
Use Spyfish Aotearoa to discover, count and identify fish species that live within our marine reserves.
Floating forests – did you know that kelp forests are one of the most biodiverse habitats on Earth. This citizen science project wants to understand more about how kelp forests grow and change over time.
Observing fish
This image illustrates the potential difficulties with classifying fish.
The two fish at the top left are both blue cod but they are at different stages in their lifespan. Some species, such as the banded wrasse (the two images at the top right) can vary in colour. Observation is also impacted by factors such as lighting as shown in the bottom two images, which are both of a scarlet wrasse.
Useful links
Visit the Seaweek website to find local events, competitions and more.
Visit one or more of the Hub’s Pinterest boards below for more resources:
This classroom module for marine biosecurity is designed for years 5-8 to help them understand the role they play in protecting our coastlines. It is provided in both Google Docs and as printable PDFs so that it's easy for teachers to use. Part 3 uses the Marine Metre Squared project.
Listen to this podcast collaboration between RNZ’s science and environment podcast Our Changing World and New Zealand Geographic, Voice of Tangaroa that explores the state of our oceans.
