Food from the Sea: Biodiversity, Culture, and Justice

This program incorporates Greener Foundations. Greener Foundations is Evergreen’s 2-quarter introductory student success course, which provides all first-year students with the skills and knowledge they need to thrive at Evergreen. First year students will get 14-credits from this program, and 2-credits from a Greener Foundations course. In order for first year students to complete registration, you will also need to register for the Greener Foundations sections specifically designed to work with this academic program using CRN 10077. 

The world's oceans are the last habitat where the majority of food products are wild rather than cultivated, though climate change is rapidly altering the oceanscape. Cultural preferences in marine food consumption vary widely throughout the world and the biodiversity of oceans is being strongly impacted by differences in local taste as well as by the pressures of global supply chains. Is mariculture a solution? What are the social and ecological costs of mariculture? What role do big food companies play in shaping the sea/food system? Are wild catches sustainable for feeding a world population? How are the ethics of animal sacrifice implicated? How can standards for sustainable aquaculture include labor rights and humane conditions for aquacultural workers? From indigenous foodways and food justice, to the biodiversity of marine organism consumption for food (and oil and clothing), this program will explore the complex food and biodiversity oceanscape from high-technology multinational corporate systems to agroecological food sovereignty movements.

As part of interrogating the food systems that exist, we will participate in a small local scale food system and participate in feeding the community. Students will have the opportunity to pursue applied learning through projects involving the Flaming Eggplant mutual aid kitchen and collaborations with the campus food bank.

For students interested in the Food & Agriculture curriculum pathway, this program will provide foundational credits towards advanced work. For students pursuing the Environmental Studies curriculum pathway, this program is considered exploratory, giving students the opportunity to explore topics related to the further pursuit of Environmental Studies.

This program will be a hybrid offering. Portions of the program will be offered online (lectures, discussion and seminars), and students will need adequate internet and computing resources (access to Zoom and Canvas) to participate in the online learning component. These online hours will constitute about 50-75% of the synchronous learning hours per week. Asynchronous learning hours will include homework assignments, readings, recorded lectures and film screenings. The other major portion of the hybrid learning experience is planning to incorporate field trips, outdoor and laboratory work for an integrative hands-on learning experience. These in-person experiences are contingent upon the appropriate safety approvals and there will be changes/accommodations for safety and for students who are unable to participate in-person work. The labs and food preparation sessions will be 2-3 hours each. Student participation in stewardship of the Shellfish Garden will require night-time work sessions at the Evergreen Beach. Daytime field trips would be all-day trips, three times during the quarter, pending authorization.