Oceans First celebrates the creativity and scientific curiosity of first year students at Dalhousie University. Oceans First is an academic journal. Only here the authors are first year university students. Specifically, those enrolled in OCEA 1001/1002: Conversations with Ocean Scientists I/II in the Department of Oceanography at Dalhousie University.

Throughout approximately 7 months, all students in the course bring a scientific paper through the entire peer-review process; they propose, draft, peer-review, edit and resubmit a paper. The ones published here are selected by the editorial board consisting of the current year’s teaching assistants (the associate editors) and the course instructor (the editor-in-chief).