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.
Seahorses are fish and in scientific parlance, most of them belong to the genus Hippocampus. The name is from the Greek words for horse and sea monster.
The horse part is easy to understand. The long snout, the upright posture, and the angle of the head all resemble a horse. But the sea monster part doesn’t quite seem to fit. Seahorses move slowly, they’re not aggressive -- unless you happen to be a tasty shrimp -- and they’re small -- the largest are only about a foot long, while the smallest are no bigger than the tip of your little finger.
A small fish with a big sting is invading the coastal waters of the eastern United States. And that’s probably not good news for the species that already lived there.
The invader is the red lionfish. It’s a colorful character, with red, white, and maroon stripes. It has bushy fins, and a variety of appendages around its head and mouth. It also has rows of spines that can inject venom. The venom probably won’t kill you, but it produces a nasty sting.
A sponge is one of the simplest animals on Earth. In fact, its description hardly sounds like a fully formed animal at all. It has no muscles, no internal organs, and no nervous system. It simply anchors itself to the bottom of the ocean and waits for food to come along.
Perhaps because of this simplicity, sponges are a hearty lot. They’ve been around for at least 500 million years, and today, there are more than 5,000 species, scattered across all the oceans of the world. And they come in a lot of shapes and sizes -- from small, spiny lumps to long, narrow tubes.
The great white may be the bad boy of the shark world, but when it comes to size, weight, and sheer toothiness, another species puts it to shame. The whale shark is by far the largest fish on Earth. It can grow to 40 feet or longer and weigh more than 20 tons. An adult whale shark’s mouth is wide enough to swallow a person, and it has thousands of teeth.
But the whale shark is the gentle giant of its kind. It glides serenely through warm waters, feeding on small organisms and occasionally playing with divers.
The Lost City of Atlantis sits in the middle of the North Atlantic, about half a mile below the surface. And it’s been there for a good 30,000 years or longer.
No, it’s not that Atlantis, but it is something just as amazing: a forest of rock pillars, spires, and beehive-shaped structures that are spouting hot water into the ocean. It sits atop an underwater mountain known as the Atlantis Massif, so when scientists discovered it in late 2000, they named it Lost City.
You might think that the best swimmers in the ocean would be the fish that live out in the deep. But that turns out not to be the case. Some of the strongest swimmers are the young of fish that live on coral reefs. They’re strong enough to swim against the currents, and they have plenty of stamina.
The adult fish that live on coral reefs release their eggs around the reefs, then abandon them to the currents. The eggs are carried out to sea, where they can hatch and develop in relative safety -- away from the predators that swarm around reefs.
A coral reef is not only busy and colorful, it’s noisy. Fish make popping and grunting sounds, and the clicks of hundreds of shrimp can sound like frying bacon. To newborn fish living far away from the reef, these are the sounds of home -- a beacon that just might draw them in from miles away.
Adult fish release their eggs on the reefs. Tides and currents wash the eggs out to sea, which is a safer environment for the young fish to hatch and develop.
Great white sharks are some of the most impressive animals on Earth. They’re big, strong, and fast, and have lots of big, sharp teeth. And scientists are discovering something else impressive about them: They can really get around.
Most great whites are found off California and Baja California, around Australia and New Zealand, or off South Africa.
The white cliffs of Dover are among the most famous landmarks in the world. They rise hundreds of feet above the English Channel. They look toward France, which is only about 20 miles away -- less than the length of a marathon.
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, you could have run between Britain and France. They were connected by a narrow strip of land from Dover to Calais. But a recent study suggests that the bridge was washed away by one of the most massive floods yet discovered.
Many fish use sound to communicate. Most of them vibrate a small internal "balloon," known as the swim bladder. This produces a variety of grunts, clicks, and buzzes. But some species may talk in a way that even Doctor Dolittle might not appreciate. To put it delicately, they pass gas.
Scientists discovered the sounds a few years ago when they were studying herring in the laboratory. They heard what might be described as rude noises.