HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
Alexandria, Egypt, has stood for almost 2400 years. Today, though, parts of it are crumbling—one building at a time. As Earth’s climate changes, the Mediterranean Sea is rising, the coast […]
Radio Program
Our regular Science and the Sea™ 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 to commercial and public radio stations across the country.
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
Most corals are homebodies. They settle in one spot, link with hundreds or thousands of their friends, and never move. They build the structures we recognize as corals: rock-like spires, […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
Earth’s warming climate has really heated up Atlantic hurricanes in recent years. Two recent studies, in fact, found that hurricane wind speeds were boosted by an average of 18 miles […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
A couple of years ago, marine biologists bought some giant “seabugs” from fishers in Vietnam. The creatures had been pulled from the mud at the bottom of the South China […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
There’s a big hole in the Indian Ocean. It’s nothing you can actually see. And the ocean itself isn’t especially deep. Instead, it’s a hole in Earth’s gravitational field—the weakest […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
For an oyster, gender is more than a matter of genetics—it’s also about the environment. Water temperature, salinity, pollution, and other factors determine whether an oyster will be male or […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
The great white shark probably is the most feared of all ocean animals. It gained that scary reputation 50 years ago thanks to a blockbuster movie: Jaws. The movie premiered […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
When tropical storm systems barrel across the Atlantic Ocean toward North America, they often take aim at the Lesser Antilles—an arc of small islands that marks the eastern boundary of […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
For some coral, home isn’t where the heart is—it’s where the sounds are. A recent study showed that one type of coral prefers to settle on reefs that sound healthy—even […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
The oceans are losing their memory. That could make it harder to forecast everything from monsoons to blizzards. Ocean “memory” is maintained in the top layer, called the mixed layer. […]