HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
You never know what you might find on the beach. The variety of plants, animals, and objects just keeps growing. In part, that’s because of our changing climate. As the […]
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
One of the most expensive commodities on Earth is the swim bladder of a large fish found in the Gulf of California. It’s a delicacy in China, where it’s thought […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
The last El Niño was a whopper. It produced a monster storm season in the North Pacific, extreme drought in the Caribbean and parts of Africa, and a jump in […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
If you’re spending an afternoon on your favorite bay, you probably don’t want to see any sharks gliding through the water. But the bay itself just might. Without sharks, the […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
Marine biology combines old and new, stinky and sterile — often in a single project. In 2016, for example, researchers gathered fish from a coral reef in the Pacific Ocean. […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
A walrus is a big pile of blubber. That’s not an insult — it’s a matter of survival. During the winter, blubber can make up up to a third of […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
If you’re a fan of Alfred Hitchcock movies, this plot might sound familiar: Thousands of angry seabirds attack a town on the California coast. They ram into cars, houses, telephone […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
Southern Florida has been seeing more of a fish that had just about vanished from its coastline. Most of the rest of the world, though, has been seeing less of […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
When researchers at Oregon State University were studying the rumbling of Earth’s crust about a hundred miles offshore, they noticed something interesting. Whenever fin whales were around, they got some […]
HOST Damond Benningfield
DISCUSSION
Fish display an amazing array of colors. Some are blacker than charcoal, others have rainbow-colored stripes, and still others have a mottled appearance to help them blend into the background. […]