A good understanding of the role and function of the ocean seems to be of paramount importance in recent years, constituting the basic tool for the promotion of healthy and sustainable marine environment, and a target area of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In this study, the content knowledge of elementary school students (grades 3-6) in regards to ocean sciences issues was examined. A structured questionnaire was administered to 1004 students participating in a cross-cultural study from three Mediterranean countries (Italy, Croatia, and Greece). The results of the study indicated a rather moderate level of knowledge in the total sample, while slight differences were recorded among the three countries revealing common knowledge gains and misconceptions. Rasch analysis was applied to further evaluate the validity of the results, while the influence of certain demographics on students' knowledge level was also investigated. This study concludes with a discussion of the implications on national curriculum development in elementary education level, in order to promote ocean literacy and to ensure protection and conservation of the Mediterranean Sea.

Even though the ocean is a defining feature on Earth that regulates climate and provides oxygen, food, and jobs, students still have low to moderate marine and ocean literacy knowledge. Ocean literacy is an understanding of the ocean’s influence on people and people’s influence on the ocean. It is an emerging need necessary for ensuring the sustainability of the ocean and its resources. The UN has declared a Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, and one of the priority research and development areas is ocean literacy. Unfortunately, marine science and ocean literacy topics are poorly represented in school curricula across the world. This study presents the level of marine knowledge in a sample of primary school students before and after different themed non-formal educational interventions and the effect of non-formal educational activities on students’ knowledge. These activities led to significant increase in the knowledge level three weeks after they were performed, indicating the retention of gained information. Performed educational activities and knowledge transfer from graduate level to primary school level significantly increased the level of students’ knowledge, and consequently ocean literacy, and revealed some of the learning misconceptions. Results of this study show that there is a need for an integrated approach to the teaching of Ocean Literacy starting from the early grades by combining teacher’s professional development, strengthening ocean-related topics in school curricula, and promoting non-formal educational activities.

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Ocean Literacy (OL) has been defined as an understanding of the ocean’s influence on people and their influence on the ocean. The OL movement was born in the US and its framework consisted of seven essential principles and 45 fundamental concepts; it is now largely accepted worldwide for use in both formal (schools and universities) and non-formal (research institutes, aquaria, museums, etc.) education settings. Based on this framework, marine scientists and educators developed the “Mediterranean Sea Literacy” (MSL) guide adapted to the specificities of the Mediterranean region, presented here. The MSL principles (7) and concepts (43), serving as guidance for research, education, informed decision-making, and improved citizens’ lifestyles, aim to contribute to environmental protection, conservation, and restoration of the Mediterranean Sea as well as to help to achieve a blue innovative and sustainable economy.

In recent years, ocean literacy has become a global movement that connects the human dimension to the ocean and intends to be an incentive for positive change in people’s behavior. As multiple initiatives on ocean literacy have arisen, a comprehensive understanding of this topic is required to better engage the broader society. In the present study, we applied a combination of bibliometric analysis and science mapping to a dataset of scientific publications on ocean literacy between 2005 and 2019, obtained from Web of Science and Scopus databases. In order to represent the development of the field, analyze the level of collaborations and uncover its thematic areas, we first used bibliometric analyses to describe the field’s main features, including indicators of growth and research collaboration. We then used science mapping techniques to build collaboration networks among countries and institutions, and to identify research communities. Lastly, we performed co-word analysis to reveal the underlying thematic areas and their evolution. Our results reveal a slow-growing number of publications and a promising trend for collaboration among authors, countries and institutions. Education and science were identified as the two major thematic areas on ocean literacy showing that, over time, issues related to these themes have gained more attention among researchers. These findings confirm that ocean literacy is gaining more acknowledgment within the scientific community but still faces considerable limitations to its dissemination in sectors like the blue economy and in regions such as Latin America and Africa. Promoting cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary cooperation among research institutions, marine education networks and the industry is critical to support this purposeful movement and represents an urgent challenge.