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.
Build it and they will come — fish, that is. Sink just about any big structure in the ocean and fish, crustaceans, and other marine life will flock to it. That rule seems to apply to wind-power turbines as well. Several studies in Europe show that reef systems develop on the bases of submerged turbines in a hurry.
The United States hasn’t built any offshore wind farms yet, although several are in the early stages of development. A government study said that offshore wind farms could provide as much electricity as all our current energy sources combined.
Penguins are some of the most adorable creatures on Earth. But some penguins that lived in New Zealand more than 25 million years ago also would have been a little bit scary — they were big enough to almost see eye-to-eye with a person.
People ranch just about anything these days, from llamas to emus. And the roundups aren’t limited to the land — some of them take place in the sea. One example is the sea urchin — a small, spiny creature found in much of the world. But natural stocks have been dwindling, so urchin are being raised in captivity — in tanks, cages, and undersea ranches.
The sea urchin is especially popular in Japan, where the roe — its reproductive organs — are a delicacy. In fact, Japan imports most of the world’s production of sea urchin.
Exploring the deep ocean is like exploring another world — it’s a realm unlike anything on dry land. In recent years, though, marine scientists have been taking the “other-world” concept to extremes — they’re working with astronomers and planetary scientists to study oceans on other planets and moons.
The best example is on Europa, one of the largest moons of Jupiter. Its icy crust appears to hide a global ocean — one that holds more liquid water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. That makes Europa a possible habitat for life.
Fishing is all about deception – convincing a gullible fish that the lure is really a tasty treat. That’s the case whether the angler is a human or another fish an anglerfish. The anglerfish is probably one of the ugliest creatures on the planet, but it’s also one of the most interesting. In some of its more than 200 species, for example, the male becomes a small parasite. It attaches itself to a female, then loses its vision and even its ability to move. It feeds off the female, and its only job is to fertilize her eggs.
A high-tech sentry is keeping an eye on the Texas coast, providing an early warning of dangerous invaders. And it may already have saved lives.
The sentry is known as the Imaging Flow Cytobot. Its quarry are microscopic organisms, known as phytoplankton, that cause red tides and other harmful outbreaks. They produce toxins that can kill the fish that eat them. The toxins can also build up in the bodies of oysters and other shellfish, making them harmful to anything that eats them -- including people.
Methylmercury is a nasty compound. It can damage the immune and nervous systems, and can cause severe birth defects. Fortunately, it’s rare -- we seldom come across it in our daily diets. In fact, almost all of the methylmercury in American food supplies is found in marine fish and shellfish.
On summer days here in Texas, the TV weather folks often tell us that the mercury once again topped a hundred degrees -- a reference to the days when many thermometers were glass tubes filled with liquid mercury.
The metal has been phased out of thermometers and many other products, though, because it’s toxic. But it’s still all around us -- in the soil, the air, the water, and even in many of the big marine fish we eat.
Scientists aren’t yet sure just how the mercury gets into the fish. But they suspect that bacteria in the water play a key role.
Their shells look like rocks, and are just as hard. Their innards look like...well, innards. Yet oysters are a popular seafood, their meat grilled, added to soups and stews, or slurped down raw. In fact, oysters are too popular for their own good. Overfishing has decimated oyster beds around the country -- a loss not just for the oysters, but for entire marine habitats.
Almost 2400 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle noted that whales sometimes did something odd: They ran aground without, he noted, any apparent reason.
Whales still run aground -- thousands of them “strand” themselves every year, sometimes in groups of dozens or even hundreds. And scientists are still trying to fully understand the reasons.
