History Heritage & Cultural Traditions
October 3, 2023

This week on World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill talks about the power of storytelling and the vast catalog of tales of adventure, sailors, song, battle, Captain's logs, letters home, and more that tell the stories of our ocean culture and civilization.

September 25, 2023

This week on World Ocean Radio we're discussing a topic close to our home waters in Maine: the complex dispute between the lobster fishery and environmentalists over gear modification and the entanglement of migrating right whales. And we highlight the Maine Coast Fisherman's Association who recently addressed the US House of Representatives to discuss amendment to the Farm Bill that would extend those bill's advantages and opportunities to fisheries and marine coastal development.

September 18, 2023

This week on World Ocean Radio we wrap up the 33-part RESCUE series with a checklist of steps and questions for a practical, personal plan and strategy to embrace the transformational change required to sustain the deteriorating world ocean.

September 12, 2023

This week on World Ocean Radio we are discussing the means to accelerate the urgent response required to visualize, plan, and implement for a new ocean future. ETHOS is defined as the spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its beliefs and aspirations."

August 28, 2023

This week on the RESCUE series we're continuing our discussion of the water cycle and the ways it defines our cultural identity from global to local. We are surrounded by evidence of our cultural ocean: we see it at all shores both fresh and salt, we see it the location of our settlements, in our bridges and dams, in fishing vessels and practices, in ports, and so much more. In this episode we'll explore these myriad connections in depth.

August 22, 2023

We are nearing the end of the RESCUE series. This week, in its 30th edition, we're talking about water: the well-spring of world ocean health and the essential natural system that sustains us all, thus its protection and sustainability are the key strategy for RESCUE.

August 14, 2023

We are nearing the end of the 33-part RESCUE series. This week we turn our attention to the young people around the world that are approaching outdated conventions with resilience and resolve. Thousands upon thousands of youth activists are having their voices heard and their calls to action heeded. We must reinforce their resolve, their commitment and their acceptance of RESCUE: R for renewal; E for environment; S for society; C for collaboration; U for understanding; and E for engagement.

August 7, 2023

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with a highlight of the World Ocean Explorer virtual aquarium project of the W2O, an innovative tool by which to present responsible science, innovative education, and a unique virtual experience freely accessible to all. For further information, to promote and support, please visit worldoceanexplorer.org. Dive deep, share with your children and grandchildren, and spread the word. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

August 1, 2023

This week on World Ocean Radio we continue the RESCUE series with recommendations to further protect the ocean--by building ocean literacy into every level of education and action around the world.

July 17, 2023

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with a shift from suggestions for change to analysis and observation of those things that are missing from the equation--namely ocean education and communication. And we assert that the need for ocean literacy has never been more important, and that we must consider ocean understanding as the key factor that enables communication and informs responsible decisions regarding the sustainable use of ocean systems and resources. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

July 13, 2023

This week on World Ocean Radio we are broadcasting an early episode in which we look to the night sky, to ponder the wonder contained therein, and to explore the danger of polluting it forever in the name of modern navigation and instant communications worldwide.

July 5, 2023

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with a proposed solution to advance successful connection and communication within and with those who fund and communicate ocean programs and projects.

RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

June 26, 2023

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series by listing some of the most critical changes and improvements required to create a new, sustainable ocean economy--in essence a checklist for step-by-step actions toward future governance, regulation and investment in the world ocean.

RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

June 19, 2023

This week on World Ocean Radio as part of the multi-part RESCUE series we revisit the concept of ecosystem services accounting and propose that, in order to create a culture of investment for our future, we must apply energy, imagination and innovation to enable transition and success. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

June 13, 2023

The multi-part RESCUE series continues this week with a discussion of the reality of carbon offsets, corporate accounting, and the concept of net zero. In this episode we lay out three paths forward toward a sustainable future: 1. remove subsidies 2. embrace renewable alternatives and 3. shift funds and banks to these options. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

May 30, 2023

This week the multi-part RESCUE series continues with a hypothetical tale of investment, manufacture and accounting, and the financial analyses of both sides of the balance sheet: the initial investments and benefits to investors and the long-term debits of extraction, public health, emissions, downstream effect, and what is left behind. What would project proposal budgets look like if all near and long-term costs were included? Would projects be viable and approvable? How would investments, incentives, and subsidies be recalculated? Would the public approve and would such projects be feasible at all?

RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

May 23, 2023

This week the multi-part RESCUE series continues with a breakdown of a 2020 Report by the World Resource Institute High Level Panel for Sustainable Ocean Economy that offered some revised definitions and pathways toward a more sustainable future, including three fundamental questions as a framework for change: 1. How will a decision change the wealth on an ocean balance sheet, including all produced assets? 2. How will a decision change net national income or welfare, and how will those changes be distributed between different groups of people? and 3. How will the decision change ocean-based economic production and create new means to achieve social and economic goals?

May 15, 2023

This week the multi-part RESCUE series continues with a call for a new valuation of ecosystem services and natural resources that reflects the true costs of goods, services and ecosystem functions inclusive to habitat, food, water, regulation and recycling that serve human populations now and in the future.

RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

May 8, 2023

This week the multi-part RESCUE series continues with a turn toward the topic of finance. This episode lays out a plan for future editions that focuses on examples that calculate the value of the ocean including ecosystems services, accounting and practices that calculate the value of goods and services, accounting of measured growth, and public acceptance of some the changes required to transform the world we live in.

RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

May 2, 2023

This week the multi-part RESCUE series continues with an examination of familiar products derived from the ocean that we use to support our ways of life, our well-being and our health: from vitamins and supplements to pain and cancer treatments. And we discuss the future of exploration and exploitation of resources as the bio-prospecting rush heats up. How are we regulating extraction from the ocean and seafloor? Who owns the proprietary rights to marine resources, and what criteria are applied to protect biodiversity, ocean ecosystems and future resource potential to revolutionize medicine and treat disease?

RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

April 25, 2023

This week the multi-part RESCUE series continues with an advancement of the sub-theme of technology. We're talking about the pitfalls of modern agriculture, examples of sustainable fisheries, and the innovative ways that we might farm the marine environment that positively impact human health and have a regenerative, sustainable response to our harvest and use. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

April 18, 2023

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with the topic of seafood consumption. While more than 3 billion people worldwide rely on wild-caught and farmed seafood as a significant source of animal protein, unsustainable and illegally caught seafood harvest threatens a major health crisis if we do not confront the issue through regulation and enforcement of best practice, change in social behavior and consumption, and new technological innovations toward a sustainable future.

April 10, 2023

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with an outline of the four technological focus areas of the recently announced Ocean Climate Action Plan, the organizing connection of which is technology. Guiding the actions of the plan are a commitment to be responsible stewards of a healthy and sustainable ocean, to advance environmental justice and engage with all communities, and to coordinate action across governments.

April 3, 2023

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with defined programs and relationships that apply technologies toward public good, such as a universal grid system, battery generation and storage, desalination, and better understanding of natural systems and our relationship to them. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

March 28, 2023

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with a discussion of alternative energy solutions, battery technology, geothermal energy production, and the adaptation of existing at-sea platforms and rigs to capture energy from the ocean as a less-polluting, renewed, refit utility, taking an old technology and transforming it into a new solution for our energy future. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.