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 possible link between global warming and stronger Atlantic hurricanes is complicated. It involves changes in water temperatures, wind speeds, and other factors. It may also involve weather conditions over Africa.
For a big creature with big jaws, the megamouth shark keeps an unusually quiet profile. In fact, it wasn’t discovered until 1976, and only about 60 have ever been recorded.
Waves as tall as skyscrapers ripple through the world’s oceans. They don’t come crashing ashore, though, because they travel across the ocean floor, not the surface. In fact, their effect on the surface is almost nil. But their effects on the deep ocean are critical.
Internal ocean waves are made possible by the fact that not all ocean water is the same. Water at the bottom is generally colder and denser than water near the surface.
If manta rays could pick a retirement home, it probably wouldn’t be Florida. Instead, they’d most likely select the islands of Indonesia, between Australia and Asia. In 2014, that country declared all of its waters — more than two million square miles — to be a manta-ray sanctuary. Capturing or killing the giant fish is banned, but swimming with them is encouraged.
Beaches can be fragile. Wind and waves grind away at them, while human development can choke them off. And big storms can wash them away in hours. That leaves a question for the folks in charge of a damaged beach: In strictly economic terms, is it worth the cost to replace it?
One of the creatures of the deep that you might not want to meet face to face is the lancetfish. It’s not all that big — a typical adult is about five or six feet long and weighs maybe 20 pounds. But it has a face that only another lancetfish could love, with big, scary eyes and a wide mouth full of fangs and sharp teeth. And when food is scarce, it turns into a cannibal, devouring its own kind to survive.
The oceans are probably in for some dramatic changes in the coming decades. They’ll get warmer and more acidic, and they may lose some of their oxygen as well – a trifecta that’s likely to be a losing bet for us as well as the oceans.
In May of 1916, three wretched men appeared at a whaling camp on South Georgia, a remote island in the South Atlantic. Exhausted, hungry, and frostbitten, the men had long since been given up for dead.
One of the things that the debate about global climate change doesn’t always make clear is that it doesn’t necessarily take a big jump in temperature to create a big change in your surroundings. If you live close to the coasts of Louisiana, Florida, or especially Texas, for example, you may already be seeing one effect: an increase in mangrove forests.
A half-century ago, the Aral Sea was a vast oasis in the desert of central Asia. It covered an area bigger than West Virginia, and its fishing industry employed thousands of workers and brought in more than 40,000 tons of fish every year. Today, though, only a tiny fraction of the Aral Sea remains healthy; the rest is doomed. Rusting ships sit on what was once its bottom, and dust storms blow away the polluted sediments, causing health problems for the remaining residents.
