Radio Program
Our regular Science and the SeaTM radio program presents marine science topics in an engaging two-minute story format. Our script writers gather ideas for the radio program from the University of Texas Marine Science Institute's researchers and from our very popular college class, Introduction to Oceanography, which we teach to hundreds of non-science majors at The University of Texas at Austin every year. Our radio programs are distributed at to commercial and public radio stations across the country.
When you’re cruising along in an airliner, one of the last things you want to hear the captain say is, “Sorry, folks, we’re about to hit a little turbulence.”
But while turbulence in the sky is not a good thing, turbulence in the oceans is. It’s good for the organisms that live there, it’s good for the planet, and it’s good for us.
For fishing fleets in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the biggest threats to success is the annual “dead zone” -- a region off the coast of Louisiana where fish and shellfish all but disappear.
Yet the dead zone isn’t really dead. In fact, it teems with life. Unfortunately for the fishing fleets, though, it’s of the microscopic variety. It kills or chases away the bigger life by using up all the oxygen.
In the summer and fall of 2006, large numbers of dead fish, crabs, and other organisms washed up on the beaches of Oregon and Washington. They had died of suffocation -- there wasn’t enough oxygen in the water to keep them alive. And the culprit could be our changing climate.
As the last ice age drew to a close, thick sheets of ice that covered high northern and southern latitudes began to melt. Over several thousand years, that caused sea level to rise by around 60 or 70 feet.
But around 14,500 years ago, the flow of melting ice increased from a trickle to a torrent. Sea level jumped another 50 feet or so in just a few hundred years, drowning islands and causing coastlines to retreat by many miles.
If you camp out on a tropical island, it’s a good idea to have some mosquito netting to keep the little bloodsuckers at bay while you sleep. And the same rule may apply to some parrotfish that sleep on tropical coral reefs. The fish make their own netting, which appears to keep away the underwater equivalent of mosquitoes.
Before they nod off, some species of parrotfish surround themselves in a thick cocoon of mucus. It’s produced by glands near the gills, and it takes a half-hour or so to make.
Mangrove forests along the world’s coastlines are becoming less common these days, in large part because they keep people away from the ocean. But the forests that are left may serve as a barrier against the fury of Mother Nature by keeping the ocean away from people.
Undisturbed mangrove forests form thick tangles of vegetation. And they serve as habitat for fish, birds, mammals, and other critters. But in many parts of the world, they’ve been stripped away to make room for human development.
The male fiddler crab is quite the show-off. To attract the attention of females, he stands outside his burrow and waves his large claw in the air. And as the girls get closer, the waving becomes more and more frantic.
But that big claw may also play a role in the male crab’s everyday life -- it may help keep his body at the right temperature.
A sailboat skimming along the surface of the water on a sunny, breezy day would seem to be about as “green” as you can get. After all, the boat is powered by a renewable energy source -- the wind -- so it’s not burning oil or belching greenhouse gases into the air.
Yet it turns out that, like just about any other endeavor, sailing can foul the environment in ways large and small, from dumping raw sewage into the water to using paints that contain toxic compounds.
Overfishing, coastal development, and many other human activities can decimate fish populations. That’s not only bad for the fish, it’s bad for people, too -- it leaves fewer fish for food and recreation.
One possible solution may be restocking -- adding to the population by introducing fish that were raised in captivity.
It’s been a century since she disappeared beneath the glassy surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet she remains the most famous passenger ship in history, her name a symbol of tragedy and of the fallibility of both people and their technology.
The Royal Mail Ship Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, on April 10th, 1912. It was her maiden voyage across the Atlantic, to New York. The luxurious liner -- the largest of her day -- carried more than 2200 passengers and crew.
