How to Use FathomVerse in the Classroom
- FathomVerse

- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 2 days ago

Consider incorporating FathomVerse in your classroom and help advance ocean science! You can choose to use one of the existing lesson plans from our partners, or reach out to our team fathomverse@mbari.org to create a new resource that can be shared with other educators. We have additional resources (FathomVerse Dashboard, Animal Icons, Videos, and promotional materials) that can be integrated with your lesson plan as well. If you’d like to dive deeper, connect with us on social media @fathomverse and join our Discord community for all the latest updates and chances to share your feedback. Onwards and downwards!
FathomVerse Educators Working Group — Interest Form
We're building an Educators Working Group to bring together teachers, informal educators, and anyone working with students who wants to bring FathomVerse into their classrooms and programs. As part of this group, you'll help shape how FathomVerse is used in educational settings—sharing what works, giving feedback on classroom resources and lesson plans, and connecting with other educators doing similar work. In return, you'll get early access to new features and materials, a direct line to the FathomVerse team, and a community of educators who are excited about ocean science! Sign up here: https://forms.gle/z2E6yMM8A9KgMFBXA
Classroom Resources
Lesson Plans and Activities from our Partners
Identifying Ocean Animals with FathomVerse - developed by Dr. Deanna Soper, Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Dallas, to engage students in exploring animal diversity and identification.
Guess that Ocean Animal - 5E Lesson Plan developed by educators during the 2024 EARTH Workshop
Exploring the Deep Bit by Bit - online course from the Monterey Bay Aquarium for Grades 6-8
Extreme Sea - online course from the Monterey Bay Aquarium for Grades 7-12
SciStarter Event Recipe Card - instructions for how to facilitate a 1 hour activity introducing new players to FathomVerse
Additional Resources
FathomVerse players can input their unique player ID (visible on the FathomVerse settings page) to see a summary of their achievements and contributions to the FathomVerse. From the Dashboard webpage, you can click “print report” to print or save a copy. In the printable version, educators can use this information to track student progress by seeing players’:
Dive Time: Indicates your student’s total time spent identifying animals in FathomVerse.
Daily Annotations: Shows when your student played.
Your Discoveries: Allows you to see your student’s overall scientific contribution to labeling previously unlabeled data.
FathomVerse Agrees: Number of images that have reached consensus, due in part to your student’s label.
FathomVerse Disagrees: Number of images that have reached a different consensus than your student’s label.
Awaiting Consensus: Number of images that your student has labeled that haven’t reached full consensus from the community yet.
The sum of these indicates the total number of contributions your student has made to labeling expedition data.
Animal Mission Score Table: Allows you to see your student’s accuracy in identifying the different animal groups (coming soon to the printable version).
Ideas for using FathomVerse + the Player Dashboard in the classroom:
Animal Morphology Lesson:
Have students select an animal of interest, complete training for that animal in FathomVerse, and search for that animal group in expeditions (available after 3 training dives).
Play FathomVerse (and potentially incorporate other resources) to learn how to identify their chosen animal group. Students can report on how they distinguished the animal from other groups.
Educators can use the Dashboard to see the student’s accuracy in identifying that animal group as well as the dives completed with that animal.
Extra Credit Points:
Play FathomVerse to earn extra credit points! Educators can verify their student’s contribution by looking at the daily annotations graph on the Dashboard printout.
Check your student’s discoveries to see their direct contributions to ocean discovery–every time “FathomVerse agrees” your student has made data available for scientific study!
Volunteer Hours
Play FathomVerse to participate in community science. Every action taken by FathomVerse players helps to improve and train machine learning models, increasing our annotated global datasets to discover all ocean life. “Dive time” on the player dashboard reflects spent identifying animals in FathomVerse.
Ocean Animal Icons
Silhouette images contributed by MBARI and FathomVerse to PhyloPic. Our original animal icons are open-source!
Videos
FathomVerse Gamifies Ocean Exploration to Train AI and Discover Ocean Life (2 minutes)
About the game. FathomVerse is an interactive game that empowers players to train AI to identify ocean animals, accelerating deep-sea discoveries and advancing ocean science with every player’s contribution. MBARI researchers Kakani Katija and Giovanna Sainz explain how FathomVerse is enhancing ocean exploration through gaming and AI training.
Explore the Depths with FathomVerse (2 minutes)
Introduction to FathomVerse with Dr. Kakani Katija, where she dives into why we are making a video game to improve AI for ocean life and contribute to marine research.
Welcome to FathomVerse | Game Walkthrough (8 minutes)
Follow along as we share a walkthrough of the game and all its features.
FathomVerse demo for students (55 minutes)
October 2024 – Skype-A-Scientist chatted with the FathomVerse team about how students can participate in this unique community science game. ASL interpreter.
Using Fathomverse in the Classroom (45 minutes)
August 2024 – Skype-A-Scientist chatted with the folks from MBARI about how you can use this program to teach about the deep sea in your classroom!
Dive into the FathomVerse with MBARI Principal Engineer Kakani Katija! | EducOCEANal Gaming (60 minutes)
We joined our fronds at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to play FathomVerse and celebrate the release of the game in early May!
Deep Sea Exploration - 360 | Into Water (6 minutes)
Dive into the midwaters off the coast of California with bioengineer and National Geographic Explorer Dr. Kakani Katija. This immersive video shares the process of how we researchers collect images and videos of the deep sea.

