Science and the Sea podcast
196 episodes - English - Latest episode: 7 days ago - ★★★★★ - 14 ratingsThe goal of Science and the Sea is to convey an understanding of the sea and its myriad life forms to everyone, so that they, too, can fully appreciate this amazing resource.
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Episodes
Deep Breathers
July 19, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.59 MBTo those who appreciate their beauty, great whales are priceless. For those who prefer cold hard facts, a recent study estimated their value: about two million dollars apiece. That comes from their benefits to the environment. Great whales are the giants of the whale family -- a total of 13 species, including blue, humpback, sperm, and bowhead. They’re found in all the world’s oceans. The whales accumulate carbon from the food they eat. Carbon dioxide is taken from the air by tiny organis...
Bionic Jellyfish
July 12, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.59 MBResearchers have given pacemakers to moon jellyfish. That makes the jellyfish swim faster. And in the future, similar devices may allow scientists to control the jellyfish -- turning them into deep-sea explorers. For the jellyfish experiment, scientists placed a tiny probe in the bells of moon jellyfish. These creatures are found in oceans all over the world, from the tropics to much colder regions. They’re big -- the size of a dinnerplate or bigger. And you can see right through them. Th...
Maritime Continent
July 05, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.59 MBThe phrase “Maritime Continent” sounds like an oxymoron. One word refers to the oceans, the other to land. Yet it’s a name that oceanographers and climate scientists have applied to a region around Southeast Asia. That’s because there’s a strong interaction between land and sea there -- an interaction that affects the climate of the entire planet. The Maritime Continent sits between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It includes Indonesia, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea -- thousands of ...
Marine Viruses
June 28, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.59 MBIf you swallow a mouthful of seawater, you’ll down a good supply of minerals, the wastes of lots of marine creatures, and tens of thousands of bacteria. And for good measure, you’ll get millions of viruses. Fortunately, they’re not likely to be harmful to people. But they can have a big impact on marine life. Viruses are by far the most abundant living organisms in the oceans. A study released in 2019 identified almost 200,000 types of marine viruses -- and few of them had ever been seen b...
Coral Triangle
June 21, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.66 MBBiologists have identified about 800 species of “hard” corals -- the kind that build reefs. And examples of three-quarters of them are found in a small wedge of the western Pacific Ocean known as the Coral Triangle. It’s home to almost a third of all the reefs on the entire planet. The Coral Triangle covers more than two million square miles, from the Philippines to Indonesia and east to the Solomon Islands, northeast of Australia. Although that’s a large area, it’s only about one and a ha...
Lost Continent
June 14, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.66 MBNew Zealand may be the equivalent of the Rocky Mountains: the highest part of a continent. Unlike North America, though, the rest of New Zealand’s continent is hidden -- at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The continent of Zealandia was first mentioned in 1995. It didn’t gain wide acceptance, though, until a couple of decades later, when a paper brought together the evidence of its existence. Part of the evidence consists of rocks from the ocean floor around New Zealand. The samples consi...
Saltmarshes
June 07, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.66 MBIf the Pink Panther is ever looking for a new home, he might pick a small village in southern France. Nearby ponds are filled with pink shrimp, pink flamingoes, and even pink water -- colored by microscopic organisms that thrive in a salty environment. The ponds are built in a saltmarsh -- spongy ground that acts as a transition zone between land and sea. Tides ebb and flow across these zones, bringing in saltwater. Despite the saltiness, the marshes are some of the most productive ecosys...
Deep Adventure
May 31, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.66 MBIn June of 1870, readers in France were treated to the conclusion of one of the most exciting adventure stories of the century. It was the end of an underwater odyssey – the travels of Captain Nemo and his guests aboard the submarine Nautilus. It’s an adventure that’s been inspiring marine scientists, engineers, and others ever since. “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” was written by Jules Verne, one of the first authors of modern science fiction. He wrote about journeys around Earth,...
Warming Winds
May 24, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.66 MBThe effects of our changing climate extend from main street to the ends of the Earth. Warmer air and oceans are melting the ice cap at the north pole, for example. And a recent study says the same thing is happening in the Antarctic. In recent decades, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been melting at an increasing pace. It contains about six million cubic miles of ice. But glaciers on its edge are getting smaller. Scientists have suspected that global climate change is playing a role. But ...
Silver Dragon
May 17, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.66 MBSurfers who want to spend a long time riding a single wave might not want to spend their time in Hawaii, Australia, or Portugal. Instead, they might want to surf up a river in China, where a single wave can last for more than an hour -- a wave known locally as the silver dragon. The wave is a tidal bore. Such waves form on rivers that flow into wide, shallow bays that have a large swing in the height of the tides. At the highest tides, the bay acts like a funnel, pushing water into the riv...
Seagrass Survivors
May 10, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.66 MBWhen a hurricane heads ashore, everything in its path is in danger. But not everything suffers the same fate. One house may be blown away, while the one next door suffers little damage. And the same thing happens off shore. Some seagrass beds may be wiped out, for example, while others are left pretty much unscathed. Researchers at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute studied what happened to seagrass beds when Hurricane Harvey roared ashore in Texas, in 2017. Seagrasses with ...
Sharing
April 26, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.66 MBLeopard seals are dangerous loners. They can be 10 feet long and weigh half a ton, and they sometimes attack people -- they’ve killed at least one. Yet they’ve also been known to offer penguins to divers. Some have seen the gesture as a friendly gift, or perhaps as an act of pity for a poor hunter. But British researchers recently came up with another possible explanation: The seal might be trying to get the diver to share a meal -- an act that would make it easier for the seal to consume ...
Earth Day
April 19, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.66 MBBy the late 1960s, many Americans were getting fed up with bad news about the environment. A book early in the decade warned about the dangers of pesticides. An oil spill on the coast of California killed thousands of birds and other creatures. A river in Ohio caught fire. And pictures snapped by Apollo astronauts showed Earth as a fragile blue ball. To inform Americans about the problems, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin organized an “environmental sit-in.” It was held on April 22nd of...
Halfbeaks
April 12, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.66 MBA fish known as the halfbeak looks like it’s about ready to do some knitting, have a sword fight, or give somebody an injection. That’s because its lower jaw resembles a needle -- it’s long, thin, and pointed. But the halfbeak doesn’t appear to use it to “jab” anything at all. There are about 70 species of halfbeaks. They’re found in the open ocean or in coastal waters around the world. Most are no more than a few inches long, with sleek silvery bodies. They live near the surface, so they’...
Axial Seamount
April 05, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.66 MBThe busiest volcano in the Pacific Northwest isn’t Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, or even Mount St. Helens. Instead, it’s a peak that’s 300 miles off the Oregon coast, almost a mile beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Axial Seamount belongs to a chain of submarine volcanoes that stretches from Oregon to near Alaska. They’ve built up along the boundaries between slabs of Earth’s crust. Axial, for example, is on the fault between the Juan de Fuca Plate and the Pacific Plate. Magma pushes u...
Nurdle Patrol
March 29, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 4.66 MBA “nurdle” sounds like a character from a children’s TV show. And if you look at one, it seems just about as harmless. But these tiny plastic beads can cause big problems for marine life. “Nurdle” is a nickname for plastic pellets that are no more than five millimeters across -- the thickness of a stack of three U.S. quarters. The pellets are the raw materials for making larger plastic items, from toothbrushes to cellphone cases to car parts. Nurdles are churned out by the billions. And t...
Green Volcano
March 22, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 1.85 MBWhen a volcano began erupting on the island of Hawaii in May of 2018, satellites kept a close eye on it. Just three days after the lava flow hit the ocean, for example, they saw that the water was turning green. And it stayed green until after the eruption ended a few months later. The Kilauea volcano belched millions of cubic feet of rock. The flow destroyed about 700 houses and covered more than 10 square miles on the island’s eastern tip. As the lava reached the Pacific Ocean, though, ...
First Submarine
March 15, 2020 05:00 - 2 minutes - 1.84 MBHundreds of submarines glide through the world’s oceans. Most of them are military, but some sail for science. They measure temperatures and currents, sample the water, map the sea floor, and perform other tasks -- revealing the secrets of the oceans. The first submarine dropped below the waves 400 years ago, in 1620. It was designed by Cornelis Drebbel, a Dutch inventor. Drebbel was born in 1572. By the early 17th century, he’d made a name for himself in European science and engineering. ...
Iceberg Alley
March 08, 2020 06:00 - 2 minutes - 1.85 MBThere’s an old saying that if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Some folks in northeastern Canada are following that advice -- with a twist. When life gives them icebergs, they’re making vodka -- and selling excursions to the bergs to eager tourists. The businesses are taking off along “iceberg alley.” That’s a stretch of ocean from Greenland to Labrador and Newfoundland. Big chunks of ice break off glaciers in Greenland and follow the current down to Canada. A thousand glaciers or mo...
A New friend
March 01, 2020 06:00 - 2 minutes - 1.85 MBBiologists have been sampling life in the Gulf of Mexico for decades. Yet they're a long way from getting acquainted with everything that lives there. Consider a tiny shark that was discovered there a decade ago. When researchers pulled it from the water, they didn't recognize it. It took them until 2019 to classify it. It turns out the shark is a member of a species never seen before. Scientists grabbed the shark during a research cruise in the central Gulf in 2010. They were studying th...
Empire Builder
February 23, 2020 06:00 - 2 minutes - 1.85 MBA massive tsunami in northwestern Sumatra wiped out coastal villages for miles. Only one survived. But by a century later, its influence began to wane -- the result of a new power settling on the sites of the destroyed villages. Archaeologists began studying the area in detail after another tsunami, in 2004, killed more than 150,000 in Sumatra alone. And in 2006, one researcher discovered bits of pottery and Muslim gravestones that were uncovered by the 2004 tsunami. He recruited a large t...
Night School
February 16, 2020 06:00 - 2 minutes - 1.85 MBFor the flashlight fish, school doesn't end at night. In fact, the schooling is just getting started. The fish is one of the few known to congregate in schools at night, even when there's no moonlight. That's because the flashlight fish brings its own lights, so all the members of the group can keep an eye on each other. The flashlight fish is found at depths of up to a few hundred feet in the tropical Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. It has a patch below each eye that emits blue ligh...
Damaged Seagrass
February 09, 2020 06:00 - 2 minutes - 1.85 MBWhen Hurricane Harvey hit Texas in 2017, it killed almost 70 people and inflicted more than a hundred billion dollars’ worth of damage. Not all of the damage was visible, though. Some of it was on the bottom of the lagoons along the coast. Harvey ripped up seagrass beds, which provide shelter and breeding grounds for many species of fish and shellfish, and hunting grounds for birds and other critters. That could change the complexion of those regions for years. Researchers from the Univer...
Long Waves
February 02, 2020 06:00 - 2 minutes - 1.85 MBWith a top speed of a few hundred feet per hour, the giant tortoise won’t win many races. Compared to some of the longest waves in the oceans, though, it’s like an Indy race car. The waves are almost entirely below the surface. And they can take a decade or longer to ripple from one side of an ocean to the other. Until recently, that made them almost impossible to see. Rossby waves are set in motion by strong winds or storms or other disturbances. They then undulate westward, concentrated ...
Double Trouble
January 26, 2020 06:00 - 2 minutes - 1.84 MBEarth's changing climate is expected to produce higher temperatures and stronger tropical storms. And when you put those two together, the results could be especially deadly. A team of scientists recently studied the risks of extreme heat -- defined as a heat index of 105 degrees Fahrenheit or higher -- after the landfall of a hurricane or typhoon. The team found that such a one-two punch could pose major health risks for millions of people. The problem is that big tropical storms knock o...
Kelp Oil
January 19, 2020 06:00 - 2 minutes - 1.84 MBFor more than three months, giant kelp off the coast of California bobbed up and down like a pumpjack in an oil field. The goal of that motion was to replace a few pumpjacks by developing a replacement for some of the country’s oil. Corn and other crops are already used to produce biofuel. But they require land, fertilizer, pesticide, and freshwater. So researchers are looking at ways to produce biofuels using organisms grown in the oceans, including kelp. Although the kelp would release c...
Deep Edge
January 12, 2020 06:00 - 2 minutes - 1.84 MBThe Pacific coast of South America is a bit like a medieval castle surrounded by a moat. The “castle” is the Andes Mountains, which hug the coast. And the “moat” is the Peru-Chile Trench -- a gash in the ocean floor that’s miles deep. Castle and moat were built by the motions of two of the plates that make up Earth’s crust. The Nazca Plate, which makes up part of the floor of the Pacific Ocean, is sliding under the South American Plate, which makes up most of the continent. The Peru-Chile...
Cave Markers
January 05, 2020 06:00 - 2 minutes - 1.84 MBThe Mediterranean Sea has been recording sea level for millions of years in a cave on a Spanish island. As the water rises and falls, it adds layers of minerals to rock formations inside the cave. And interpreting those layers may help scientists better understand what could happen to future sea level. Artá Cave is on the coast of the island of Mallorca. It’s filled with beautiful stalactites and stalagmites -- delicate rock formations on the ceiling and floor. Many of them are coated with...
Glass Houses
December 29, 2019 06:00 - 2 minutes - 1.85 MBThere are many symbols of love, from the heart to red roses. And for some couples in Japan, it’s a glass vase -- the skeleton of a sponge. Venus’s flower basket is a type of glass sponge. Various species of glass sponge are found around the world, usually in fairly deep waters. The largest concentrations of them form reefs off the coast of British Columbia. The living part of the sponge filters the seawater for silica -- the mineral that makes up glass. The silica is molded into thin stra...
Trade Winds
December 22, 2019 06:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBToday, the word “trade” means to swap something. That hasn’t always been the case, though. Centuries ago, it meant a path or a track. The new definition blew in on the wind -- the trade wind. Trade winds blow in belts that flank the equator. The Sun heats the air and oceans at the equator. Warm, humid air then rises and heads toward the poles. As it reaches about 30 degrees north and south of the equator, the air cools and descends. Earth’s rotation deflects this flow. So as it reaches th...
Resting Eggs
December 15, 2019 06:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBFrom November through April, a tiny marine creature is pretty common in the coastal waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico. It’s a species of copepod. It looks like a cross between a flea and a shrimp, but it’s only about a millimeter long. After April, though, the species disappears -- there are no adults to be found. But by then the females have produced a bounty of eggs. The eggs settle to the ocean floor, where they shut down for the summer. When the water turns cooler and more oxygen-r...
Wobbegong
December 08, 2019 06:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBWhen you walk on a tattered carpet or a stained-up rug, you don’t usually worry about it lunging up and biting you. Unless, that is, you happen to be walking through shallow coastal waters around Indonesia or parts of Australia. In those areas, the carpet just might give you a nasty shock. These “carpets” are sharks, known as wobbegongs. They have wide, flat bodies. Most of them are colored in shades of brown, speckled with white spots or circles. And they have “tassels” around their heads...
Hurricane Gliders
December 01, 2019 06:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBHanging out in the water while a hurricane is bearing down sounds a little scary. But that’s just what some underwater “gliders” are doing. They’re recording ocean conditions before, during, and after hurricanes pass overhead. That’s helping scientists improve their forecasts of hurricane intensity. The gliders look like torpedoes with wings -- long metal cylinders packed with instruments. They monitor ocean temperature, salinity, and other parameters. They can dive hundreds of feet down. ...
'Nervy' Squid
November 24, 2019 06:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBThe squid has quite a nerve. In fact, it has the biggest nerve fiber in the animal kingdom -- a thousand times wider than the typical human fiber. That’s made the squid a good subject for learning about how nerves work -- and how they can misfire. The massive squid nerve fiber is known as a giant axon. It forms a ring around the creature’s esophagus, and it’s protected by a hard cap. The axon is up to a millimeter wide. Its function is to help keep the squid alive. It’s part of the creatu...
Cayman Trench
November 17, 2019 06:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBThe Caribbean Sea is known for its tourist-attracting wonders: sandy beaches, coral reefs, and beautiful blue-green waters. But the deepest part of the sea is full of geological wonders. Parts of Earth’s crust there are moving apart. That’s created a long, deep trench, along with metallic “chimneys” that belch dark, super-heated water. This busy region is known as the Cayman Trench or Cayman Trough. It’s about a thousand miles long and 60 miles wide. It stretches from the southeastern end ...
Big Jaws
November 10, 2019 06:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBIf you really want to see “jaws,” forget about great white sharks. Instead, look for the sarcastic fringehead. It’s a little fish -- no more than a foot long. But the male fringehead can spread his jaws wider than the length of his body. And it’s not just for show. He’ll attack just about anything that enters his territory. The sarcastic fringehead gets its name from its behavior and its appearance -- it’s aggressive and fearless, and it has little filaments above its eyes that look like f...
Icebound
November 03, 2019 05:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBMost of the time, an icebreaker that doesn’t plow through the ice is about as useful as a car without wheels. But a German icebreaker is scheduled to make an important scientific expedition -- while frozen inside the ice. The Research Vessel Polarstern will study the Arctic for a year. The mission’s goal is to collect information that will help scientists develop better models of how the climate is changing. The icebreaker will leave Norway in September, and head for icy waters north of S...
Expensive Jewelry
October 27, 2019 05:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBBlack corals are different from most coral species. Most coral “skeletons,” for example, are made of calcium carbonate -- the mineral that makes up chalk. The skeleton of a black coral, though, is made of proteins and chitin -- the stuff that makes up insect skeletons. And black coral doesn’t rely on algae to provide most of its food. Instead, it feeds on tiny organisms that drift by on the currents. And there’s one other difference. In the United States, black corals from Hawaii are the o...
Bengal Fan
October 20, 2019 05:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBThe Himalayan mountains climb miles high, forming a towering fence line across Asia. But they also plunge miles deep -- buried at the bottom of the Bay of Bengal, off the eastern coast of India. The underwater portion of the Himalayas forms the Bengal Fan -- a roughly cone-shaped bed of sediments that extends far into the Indian Ocean. It’s about 2,000 miles long, 600 miles wide, and up to 10 miles thick. It’s the largest submarine fan in the world. The Himalayas began forming about 40 mi...
Little Stinger
October 13, 2019 05:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBThe lesser weever typically is no more than about five or six inches long. Even so, you don’t want to mess with it. It can give you a painful sting that can smart for hours. You’ll come across this little guy mainly if you visit the North Sea or the Mediterranean Sea. It lives in shallow coastal waters with sand- or gravel-covered bottoms. In fact, the lesser weever spends most of its time buried in the sand or gravel, with only its eyes and part of the black fin on its back sticking out....
Gulf of Maine
October 06, 2019 05:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBFor a lobster, hotter water is a bad thing. So not surprisingly, biologists expect the crustaceans to hop out of a rapidly warming pot of water off the east coast of the United States and Canada. The Gulf of Maine is heating up faster than 99 percent of the oceans. That’s already having some effects on life in the gulf, and more dramatic effects could be on the way. The gulf stretches from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to Nova Scotia. It covers about 36,000 square miles. It’s fairly shallow --...
Red-Lipped Batfish
September 29, 2019 05:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBIf a modern-day Hollywood creature designer worked with a 1940s make-up artist, they might come up with something that’s shaped a little like a bat, walks on the ocean floor, and has gaudy red lips. In other words, they’d make a red-lipped batfish -- an odd critter that lives on reefs around the Galapagos Islands, which are off the Pacific coast of South America. The red-lipped batfish isn’t very big -- up to about eight inches long. It has a flat body that’s wide at the front and tapered ...
Counting Sharks
September 22, 2019 05:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBWhen many people see a dark shadow passing through the water close to shore, they think of one thing: Jaws. Is it a shark, ready to attack unsuspecting swimmers and surfers? On the beaches of eastern Australia, it’s probably not. Researchers used drones to shoot video along four beaches. And they found that sharks were a rare sight. Drones are becoming popular tools for marine scientists. The birds-eye view can help them count animals, study water quality and red tides, and perform many o...
Standing Tall
September 15, 2019 05:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBMangrove forests are some of the most important on the planet. They protect the coastline from storms and provide habitat for fish and other creatures. They also sponge up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which helps slow down changes to the climate. In fact, a recent study says that mangrove forests may be storing five and a half trillion tons of carbon. Most of that is in their tangled networks of roots, and in the surrounding soil, where fallen leaves and branches decay and deposit t...
Seeing Blue
September 08, 2019 05:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBSome of the most amazing colors on Earth are seen in icebergs and their parent bodies, glaciers. The intense shades of blue and blue-green make them look like icy confections -- like sno-cones flavored with blueberry or mint syrup. These masses of ice are colored blue for the same reason as the water in the oceans. Water molecules are just the right size to absorb the longer, redder wavelengths of light. But they allow the shorter, bluer wavelengths to pass through, or to scatter like blue...
Guitarfish
September 01, 2019 05:00 - 2 minutes - 2.3 MBThe guitarfish looks a bit like the result of an experiment by a junior mad scientist. The front half is wide and flat, like a sting ray. But the back half is long and tapered, like a shark. Put the two halves together, and look at them from above or below, and the outline resembles a stringed instrument. So the creature is called a guitarfish, although it’s also known as a fiddler ray or a banjo shark. Biologists have identified about 50 species of guitarfish. They’re found in warm, shall...