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.
It’s tempting to think of the oceans as a big mixing bowl -- pour in a little water here and a little there, and it all blends together. That’s not quite the case, though. Water from different sources forms ribbons, sheets, and blobs that tend to stay together for a while.
If you ever feel sluggish after a meal, like you don’t have the energy to do anything but relax, you’re not alone. A recent study shows that fish may have the same problem. But in the fish-eat-fish world of the oceans, a little siesta after mealtime isn’t a good strategy.
The study was conducted at The University of Texas Marine Science Institute. Researchers examined what happens to young red drum after they eat.
Rivers pour hundreds of cubic miles of water into the Arctic Ocean every year. And over the last few decades, the flow’s been increasing by close to two cubic miles every year. That may not sound like much, but it adds up to a lot of extra fresh water.
That’s just one of the changes the Arctic Ocean has seen as a result of Earth’s warming climate. Over time, those changes could have an impact on the entire planet.
When spring arrives above the Arctic Circle, great rivers in Russia, Canada, and Alaska roar to life. They carry melted snow and ice that accumulated during the long winter northward to the Arctic Ocean, providing sudden jolts of fresh water.
In fact, the Arctic Ocean receives about a tenth of all the fresh water that empties into the world’s oceans, even though it accounts for just one percent of the total volume of ocean water.
Folks who have lived along the coast for a while know that no two tides are quite the same. That’s because the tides are the result of a gravitational tug-of-war between Earth and two other astronomical bodies.
If the fear of great white sharks has kept you out of the water, then get splashin’. It turns out there are probably no more than a few hundred of them in the northern Pacific Ocean.
Fridtjof Nansen was just 21 when he first sailed into the frigid waters of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The young zoologist, who was born in Norway in 1861, joined the crew of a seal-hunting ship. In addition to catching seals, he recorded details about the oceans, the weather, and marine life. And he developed a love for the sea, the ice, and Arctic adventures.
If you’ve ever spent an afternoon at the beach without your sunscreen, then you’re all too familiar with the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation -- it was responsible for that nasty sunburn.
Ultraviolet has a shorter wavelength than visible light, so we can’t see it. But it’s more penetrating -- it can zap right through individual cells. As a result, we feel ultraviolet’s effects. It’s responsible for that nice golden suntan -- and the skin cancers that can follow. It can also cause genetic mutations -- not just to life on land, but to life in the oceans as well.
Streamers of sunlight filtering through a clear blue sea are more than just a pretty sight -- they’re the power source for almost all the life in the oceans.
Three forms of solar energy hit the oceans: infrared, visible, and ultraviolet. Some of this energy is reflected back into space, but most of it penetrates the surface. In clear, calm waters under a cloud-free sky, some of the sunlight can travel up to a few hundred feet down.
If you dig into the muck at the ocean floor, you’ll find layers of ash deposited by volcanic eruptions and by the impacts of giant boulders from space. You’ll also find minerals, pollen grains, and spores that washed into the oceans from the land, and the skeletons of microscopic animals that died long ago.
These and much more are contained in layers of sediments. Scientists probe them by dropping a hollow tube into the sediments and pulling up layers from as far as two-thirds of a mile down.
