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.
The White Mountains of New Hampshire have some relatives on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean: extinct volcanoes that were built by a “hotspot” below Earth’s crust.
The underwater volcanoes form the New England Seamount. It’s a chain of about 30 peaks. It begins a couple of hundred miles from Cape Cod and extends hundreds of miles eastward. Its tallest peaks rise a mile and a half from the sea floor.
Life in the royal classes has its perks. In some ancient cultures, that even included their own color: purple. The upper crust of the Mediterranean often wore garments dyed purple or a closely related shade of blue with pigments that were worth more than gold. Anyone not of the right class who was caught wearing the colors could be severely punished—even executed.
Earth’s warming climate is likely to have big impacts on tropical cyclones—the generic term for hurricanes and other big tropical storm systems. Studies have shown that the proportion of powerful storms may be increasing, and that storms appear to be dumping a lot more rain on land. On the other hand, a recent study suggests that the number of storms is going down.
A healthy coral reef is a noisy coral reef. Shrimp, fish, and other organisms create a cacophony of sound that attracts other critters. And for damaged reefs that’ve been restored, the noise can reappear in just a year or two.
Researchers from England studied reefs around several islands in Indonesia. Many of the reefs have been damaged or destroyed by “blast fishing,” climate change, and other causes.
In 2016, scientists discovered large fields of sponges atop some volcanic mountains that rise from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. And that was a big surprise—no one had seen anything like it before.
Corals are in trouble. Higher ocean temperatures and acidity are damaging or killing many reefs. And the problem gets worse by the year. But not all the news is in the “doom-and-gloom” category. Several recent studies have provided a slightly more hopeful outlook.
Studies say our planet’s changing climate is likely to make hurricanes more intense, trigger more outbreaks of the polar vortex, and bring more big thunderstorms and flooding rains to the American heartland. But no one is sure just what will happen to the biggest weather maker of all, El Niño. In fact, a recent study says that natural changes in El Niño make it hard to forecast how it might be altered by human-caused climate change.
If you like oysters, some researchers in Virginia have some good news for you: Restored oyster reefs can return to good health in just a few years.
Thousands of scuba tanks have washed ashore on the beaches of Cornwall, England, in the last quarter-century. So have life jackets, flippers, octopuses, and other nautical items. And they may continue to show up for decades longer. As you might expect, though, there’s a catch: They’re all Lego blocks that were washed off the deck of a ship.
The saga began in February 1997, when the cargo ship Tokio Express was hit by a rogue wave about 20 miles off Cornwall, at the southwestern tip of England.
As a hurricane roars toward the American coastline, residents pay close attention to a single number: the hurricane’s category. Category 1 is dangerous but usually survivable, while category 5 is monstrous—an Armageddon with effects that can last for months.
