Podcast · Tech & Science

Science and the Sea Podcast

by The University of Texas Marine Science Institute · English · Tech & Science

The 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.

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 2 min
Latest: 11 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

11 Oct 2026 · 2 min

Golden Oldie

When you clean out the attic, you never know what treasures you might find. For scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, it was a “golden oldie”-the earliest known audio recording of a whale. Scientists can study the recording to learn how whale songs might have changed, and how the ocean soundscape has changed-especially the sounds produced by people. The sounds of a humpback whale were recorded near Bermuda in March of 1949. Researchers from Woods Hole and the Navy were testing sonar gear and studying ocean sounds. They used a type of dictation machine to record…

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Earlier episodes 9 most recent

4 Oct 2026 · 2 min
Marine Tumbleweeds
The ocean floor and the wind-swept prairies of the west have something in common: tumblin’ tumbleweeds. On the prairie, they’re nasty bushes teeming with sharp thorns. In the ocean, they’re growing clumps of red algae known as rhodoliths. They can tumble along with the currents until they get too heavy, when they settle down for good. Rhodoliths are found in all the world’s oceans, from the tropics to the arctic. They often congregate in large, dense beds. They need sunlight to produce energy, so they’re most common in shallow coastal waters. Many species of rhodolith begin with a small…
27 Sep 2026 · 2 min
Manta-Ray Groupies
Young manta rays off the coast of Florida have something in common with pop stars and athletes: They have groupies. A recent study found that several species of fish like to hang out with the rays. That can provide advantages for the groupies. Scientists have been watching a manta-ray nursery in South Florida for a decade. Most of the rays inhabit shallow waters less than a mile from shore. And most of them are juveniles. The study looked at 465 videos of the rays. Researchers identified 59 individual rays in the images, some of which were present for several years. In the videos, the manta…
20 Sep 2026 · 2 min
Going Green
Big swaths of the Southern Ocean have been going green. Summertime “blooms” of the tiny plant-like organisms known as phytoplankton are covering a much larger area. That makes the ocean look greener. And that could be kicking off big changes in the life around Antarctica. The trend started in 2016 and ’17. Before then, the sea ice around Antarctica had been pretty stable for years. But it decreased dramatically—disappearing across an area as big as Texas and New Mexico combined. And the ice has been dwindling ever since—a loss seen year ’round. To understand how that’s affected life in the…
13 Sep 2026 · 2 min
Sea Potatoes
If you dig into the sand below the tide line along many of the world’s beaches, there’s a chance you’ll dig up some potatoes. They’re small, fuzzy, and fragile. But they’re not the kind of spuds you serve with butter and sour cream. Instead, they’re sea potatoes—a type of sea urchin—smaller cousins of the ones with long, painful spines. A typical sea potato is maybe two or three inches long. It’s encased in a thin shell, known as a test. The shell is shaped a bit like a heart—hence the potato’s other name, heart urchin. A pattern on one side of the shell forms the outline of a sea…
6 Sep 2026 · 2 min
Changing Pace
Big tropical storms are slowing down in a hurry. If that sounds a little contradictory, think of it this way: More storms are slamming on the brakes as they get close to land. As a result, they spend more time along the coast before they move inland, making them even more dangerous. Researchers poked through records of tropical cyclones across the globe from 1982 to 2023. They were looking for “rapid slowdown” events—storms that slowed their forward motion by a significant amount in just a few hours. They found that the rate of such events over the open ocean hadn’t changed much over that…
30 Aug 2026 · 2 min
Seal Singers
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star” might not seem like an especially romantic song. Apparently, though, it works for male leopard seals. During the mating season, East Antarctic leopard seals sing underwater for hours on end. The songs resemble the structure of children’s nursery rhymes. Leopard seals are named for the leopard-like spots on their coats. An adult male weighs about 700 pounds. Much of a seal’s diet consists of organisms known as krill. But they also eat penguins, fish, squid, and even the pups of other seal species. The seals mate during the southern-hemisphere spring and summer.…
23 Aug 2026 · 2 min
Freshening Up
Part of the Indian Ocean has been freshening up a bit. Water at its surface is getting less salty—a result of climate change. That could impact everything from the health of fisheries to the severity of winters in Europe. Researchers combed through decades of records of the southeastern Indian Ocean, off the coast of Australia. They also looked at changes in global winds and ocean currents over the same period. They found that the ocean’s top 600 feet or so has become much less salty since 1960. The change was like adding more than half the water of Lake Tahoe to the region every year. The…
16 Aug 2026 · 2 min
Unicornfish
Unicorns graze among many of the world’s coral reefs. But instead of the graceful animals of mythology, they look more like cartoon characters. Their “horns” can be long, short, or even round and fat. And some have no horn at all. These creatures are unicornfish. Biologists have identified about 20 species of them. They’re a type of surgeonfish—named for some scalpel-sharp spikes where the body and tail join. The adults of most species range from about one to two feet in length. Unicornfish are found in tropical waters in much of the Indian and Pacific oceans—from the east coast of Africa to…
9 Aug 2026 · 2 min
Land Vs. Sea
The oceans provide the “fuel” for almost all the thunderstorms on Earth: water that evaporates from the ocean surface. But the oceans generally don’t provide the “trigger” for the big storms. As one indication of the difference, about 90 percent of all lightning happens over land. A thunderstorm forms when warm, humid air rises high into the atmosphere and condenses to make clouds. The humidity comes from the oceans. Storms in the Great Plains, for example, are fed by water vapor from the Gulf of Mexico. And the summer monsoon in the Southwest is fed by the Gulf of California. But the storms…

About Science and the Sea Podcast

The 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.

Science and the Sea Podcast is a English tech & science podcast from The University of Texas Marine Science Institute. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: The University of Texas Marine Science Institute
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 2 min
Latest episode: 11 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id973506101
Rights: 2026

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