The Educational Oceanography Layer of the Finding Nemo

In 2003 Pixar produced Andrew Shanton’s script of Finding Nemo. This film tells of the journey of a clown fish, named Marlin, across the ocean to locate his son, Nemo. Along the way he encounters numerous different dangers, marine environments, and organisms. He is not alone on his journey across the vast ocean, for most of his journey he is accompanied by a forgetful tang fish named Dory. Throughout the course of the film these two turn into close friends and bring out the greatest in each other, all in an effort to discover Marlin’s son, Nemo. This was a excellent achievement for Pixar, but is there any truth to the movie? Can this journey be produced, and are the environments, organisms, and dangers precise for their journey? Also, must this film be shown for educational purposes in schools? I think that this movie can serve as a extremely good educational tool. There are numerous excellent elements of this film and there are numerous points that can be expanded upon for classroom discussion. Also, I believe that this movie would be very best suited for middle college classes among the grades of second and eighth.

There are several elements of Locating Nemo that hold accurate to details of oceanography and have supporting evidence from researchers. Going in order of appearance, the position and depth of the coral reef is appropriate. Coral reefs lay within the photic zone in the prime 50m of water and are practically constantly positioned close to a drop off point. This is due to the fact the drop off creates agitation in the water, enabling nutrients to flow throughout the reef, also becoming positioned in the photic zone enables the corals zooxanthelle to absorb light for photosynthesis. The subsequent main educational point is the songs of Mr. Ray. Mr. Ray is the scientist manta ray, when he requires the children off to the drop off, he sings of the zones of the ocean. He sings each of the zones appropriately and in order. Mr. Ray sings, “Lets say the zones, the zones, lets say the zones of the open sea! The epipelagic, mesopelagic, bathypelagic, abyssopelagic, all the rest are to deep for you and me to see!” As you can see in the graph, all the layers are in the appropriate order.

This might be a tiny much more in depth than a sixth grade class will go, but it can be a broad topic that they could explore much more in depth later. Next comes Marlins epic journey across the ocean to find his fish-napped son Nemo. While this journey is long, it is attainable. If the fish is not eaten, it has the capacity to swim across the ocean and when it finds the East Australian Existing, it would be effortless for him to ride the existing to Sydney. This is journey can be confirmed by other small fish that make the very same journey. The yellow Chaedontidae, is a tiny fish that makes its way to the EAC in order to ride the warm quick flowing existing south in the course of the winter months (1). In the film the EAC is depicted as a rapidly, warm, narrow current flowing just off the coast of Australia. This is the right depiction of the existing, because if warm water currents are identified at the best of the ocean, and they are fast and narrow.

Ultimately whilst Dory and Marlin are in the EAC they meet a group of sea turtles. Sea turtles are identified to rid by means of the EAC due to the fact they do not swim extremely rapidly and the present offers them a good increase. When they exit the EAC Marlin asks Crush the sea turtle how old he is, and Crush replies, “I am 150 and still young.” Although most will reside to be about 50, some species of sea turtle can reside to be far more than 150 years old. Despite the fact that there are several very good educational points throughout Finding Nemo there are also a handful of scenes that do not match and are good for the story, but have no truth behind them.

A single key flaw is Dory’s capability to read the words on the mask. Despite the fact that tests have been done to show that fish can find their way by means of mazes to acquire food, there have been no tests that show fish have the potential to study. The second is that when the mask falls down the trench, Dory and Marlin could not have swum down to the bottom to get the mask. The stress at that depth would have crushed their bodies. Also the anglerfish is only found in the trenches of the Atlantic Ocean. Lastly when the blue whale eats Dory and Marlin, they would have been digested, not shot out of the whale’s blowhole.

As you can see, the film is not one particular hundred % right in all elements. It is designed to be a comedy for a younger audience, so the whole film could not be academically correct. Even although there are scenes that are not backed by evidence, I believe that there is sufficient very good info that is supported, to justify the scenes that are not precise. This film might not be a excellent movie to show for educational purposes to high school or college oceanography classes, but for the starting learners this film can be a excellent educational tool. It is precise adequate to clearly convey key environmental, geographical, and marine life concepts even though still keeping a entertaining enjoyable movie. The balance between fiction and non-fiction will maintain middle school learners interested, whilst nonetheless teaching them key concepts of oceanography.