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.
If you don’t like creepy-crawlies, then you might want to avoid the undersea mountain chain known as Macquarie Ridge. One of its peaks is covered with tens of millions of brittlestars -- relatives of starfish and sea urchins that look like fat, five-legged spiders.
Macquarie Ridge stretches from New Zealand southward to the Antarctic Circle. Some of its peaks -- known as seamounts -- reach to within about 300 feet of the surface.
Much of the floor of the Gulf of Mexico is flat and drab. But about a hundred miles off the Texas coast, it explodes with life and color. Yellow-and-blue angelfish, burnt orange creolefish, and kaleidoscopic grouper live among coral reefs that can reach to within 50 feet of the surface. Purple and orange sponges are anchored to the bottom, along with red seaweed. And fuzzy orange worms and flaming ruby brittle stars scuttle along the seabed.
An octopus that lives in the waters around Antarctica is like the elderly aunt who never left home. It stayed put while its relatives went out to see the world. More than 30 million years ago, those relatives went deep. And about 15 million years ago, they cruised northward on a highway of dense, salty water.
Great white sharks really get around. In 2000, researchers tracked one that swam almost 2500 miles, from California to Hawaii. And three years later, another great white swam from South Africa to Australia and back again in just nine months -- a round trip of almost 13,000 miles.
Scientists tracked these movements with electronic tags. The tags broadcast data to a satellite when they came to the surface.
When Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands in 1835, he was greeted by an assortment of wildlife unlike anything he’d seen before. He saw giant tortoises, odd-looking iguanas, and several new varieties of finches. These critters helped him develop his idea that life adapts to survive in different environments.
One of the silliest creatures that Darwin saw was a marine bird that’s ungainly on land, but a precision diver at sea.
A modern-day navigator can guide a ship across great distances without ever looking at the ocean or sky. Satellites and other instruments pinpoint the ship’s position to within a few feet, and provide precise readings of speed and direction.
Porpoises and dolphins are a common sight for boaters along much of the world’s coastlines. They love to race along near the bow of a boat, putting on a show as they jump free of the waves.
One exception is the vaquita -- a name that means “little cow.” It’s a porpoise that’s found only in the Sea of Cortez, which is between Baja California and the Mexican mainland.
In 1940, novelist John Steinbeck sailed into the Gulf of California with his friend, marine scientist Edward Ricketts. They cruised the gulf for six weeks, gathering scientific samples, doing a little fishing, and enjoying the gulf’s tranquil beauty. Their work provided the first in-depth look at life in the gulf. And the two books they published popularized another name for it: the Sea of Cortez.
Off the coast of Norway, a mile-wide volcano spits out mud and methane -- a greenhouse gas that could increase global warming. Near the Azores islands, “chimneys” pump 500-degree water into the Atlantic, feeding colonies of algae, shrimp, and other organisms. And beneath the Sea of Marmara, an active fault line triggers deadly earthquakes across Turkey.
If there’s one thing the fish known as Macropinna microstoma doesn’t have to worry about, it’s being hit in the head by a falling brick. Its tube-shaped eyes typically look straight up -- through the transparent top of its own head. But it can also rotate its eyes so they look forward -- through organs that are the equivalent of nostrils.
Macropinna is found along the rim of the northern Pacific Ocean, from Japan to the Bering Sea to Baja California.
