"The ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems." So states the fifth Ocean Literacy principle, a series of fundamental concepts to help us better understand the ocean's influence on us and our influence on the ocean. This week: the complex diversity contained in the world ocean and the ways that ocean systems, relationships and processes might be observed and understood for scientific gain. This episode is part six of a nine-part series on Ocean Literacy, an anthology of reflections, examples and illustrations that represent responses to the ocean and the environmental challenges we face.
"The ocean makes Earth habitable." So states the fourth Ocean Literacy principle, a series of fundamental concepts to help us better understand the ocean's influence on us and our influence on the ocean. World Ocean Radio's ocean literacy series continues this week with thoughts on the complex diversity contained in the world ocean, and the importance of a healthy ocean as the universal operating system that provides fresh air, water, food, and every nurturing condition upon which all life depends. This episode is part five of a nine-part series on Ocean Literacy, an anthology of reflections, examples and illustrations that represent responses to the ocean and the environmental challenges we face.
"The ocean is a major influence on weather and climate." So states the third Ocean Literacy principle, a series of fundamental concepts to help us better understand the ocean's influence on us and our influence on the ocean. World Ocean Radio's Ocean Literacy series continues this week with an overview of the various ways that the ocean influences all weather and climate on the earth. In this episode we examine the behaviors that are most adversely affecting ocean chemistry. This episode is part four of a nine-part series on Ocean Literacy, an anthology of reflections, examples and illustrations that represent responses to the ocean and the environmental challenges we face.
This week we bring you an abbreviated special edition of World Ocean Radio in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic. In this edition we'll reiterate the words of Jacques Cousteau, reminding us that we're all in this together and that, as a unified world community, we are now more than ever connected by the sea.
We interrupt our Ocean Literacy Series to bring you a special episode related to the Covid19 global outbreak. This week on World Ocean Radio we confront the crises caused by the coronavirus. In this episode, host Peter Neill asks, "Is this not an astonishing opportunity for change? Does not logic and practical need demand progress away from demonstrated failure toward new options and inventions for the future? What kind of world do we want on the other side of this crisis?"
Part 3 of 9 of the Ocean Literacy Series "The ocean and life in the ocean shape the features of Earth." So states the second principle of the ocean literacy curriculum, a series of fundamental concepts to help us better understand the ocean's influence on us and our influence on the ocean. World Ocean Radio's Ocean Literacy series continues this week with an overview of the various ways that the one oceanic system shapes the terrestrial landscape, the environment, the watersheds, plant life, and human existence. This episode is part three of a nine-part series on Ocean Literacy, an anthology of reflections, examples and illustrations that represent responses to the ocean and the environmental challenges we face.
"The Earth Has One Big Ocean With Many Features." So states the first principle of the ocean literacy curriculum, a series of fundamental concepts to help us better understand the ocean's influence on us and our influence on the ocean. World Ocean Radio's Ocean Literacy series continues this week with an overview of the various ways that the one oceanic system connects us all, with examples of the connections that occur worldwide: shipping, trade, circulation of water, watershed connections, weather, climate, food, coastal settlement, social connections, and much more. "One Big Ocean" is episode two of a nine-part series on Ocean Literacy, an anthology of reflections, examples and illustrations that represent responses to the ocean and the environmental challenges we face.
This week's episode of World Ocean Radio kicks off a multi-part series on the key principles of Ocean Literacy. The next eight episodes will provide an anthology of reflections, examples and illustrations that represent responses to the ocean and the environmental challenges we face. We will focus not only on ocean science and the ways that the Ocean Literacy curriculum aligns with the current educational system in the United States, but also on the ways that the ocean relates to climate, fresh water, food, energy, health, work, trade, transportation and much more.
Alternative energy is needed more today than ever before. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill asserts that the fossil fuel era is over, and it is time to look toward ocean energy, wind, hydropower, salinity gradient power, and further inventive blue energy technologies newly and not yet discovered to get on toward our clean energy future.
In this episode of World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill reflects on a landscape of special importance to him on the coast of Iceland, and the ways that the experience of visiting it for the first time shaped his future and his dedication to sharing the meaning of the ocean with others, and to its contributions for the health and welfare of us all.
Carbon offset programs offer ways for retailers and consumers to help address the challenge of climate impacts and environmental consequences, and can provide an effective means of contributing to conservation and sustainable practices . In this episode of World Ocean Radio we share a carbon offset initiative in partnership with South Pole and UCapture that supports progressive action toward a carbon-diminished future.
Since the mid 2000s, economists have spoken of Black Swans, disruptive financial events that embody three special characteristics: they are rare, wide-ranging and extreme, and they are explicable only after the fact. Now there are Green Swan events, a new scientific classification for climate catastrophes that can trigger systemic financial crisis unless authoritative action is taken. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill argues that due to the global disruption caused by the Coronavirus outbreak, we may now be in the midst of our first major global Green Swan event.
The climate is in crisis, and the next generation is committed to and has been successful in raising awareness, demanding political action, seeking legal recourse for offenders, and developing inventive responses to the problems we face. This week on World Ocean Radio we discuss the many ways that climate change is becoming part of the larger conversation around the world, entering into educational systems and curriculum, and calling young people to activism and demand for change around the globe.
This week on World Ocean Radio we highlight the innovative work of the Sasagawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo, Japan, an organization using philanthropy to stimulate practical and transformative change for ocean communities in the Pacific, innovating through community, partnership and social engagements to bring about real and lasting change for communities, fishers, harvesters and others affected by severe weather, economic uncertainty and climate change.
Moken is a Thai word meaning sea people, people of water, sea nomads or sea gypsies. The Moken are a group of Austronesian people of an archipelago claimed by both Myanmar and Thailand. Their way of life is under pressure by assimilation, subversion, suppression, climate change, and corporate greed. This week on World Ocean Radio we discuss their way of life, the challenges the Moken face, and the ways that some in Western civilizations are seeking a similar, simpler way of life, opting out of consumerism in pursuit of a deeper engagement with nature, land and sea as a means to achieve sustainability and community connection.
In the middle ages, alchemists for a time believed they could turn base metal into gold. This early endeavor may be the origin story for modern invention and transformative technologies that benefit mankind. This week on World Ocean Radio we introduce listeners to GivePower, an NGO working in coastal communities around the world challenged by the fresh water crisis, to turn brackish seawater into enough drinking water for more than 35,000 people each day. Could desalination be the new modern alchemy for a sustainable future: turning undrinkable water into liquid gold?
Each year during the holidays, longtime World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill reads "At The Fishhouses", a poem by Elizabeth Bishop. This is a perennial favorite of ours for its succinct distillation of Bishop's seaside meditations, the evocation of the clarity of meaning contained in personal encounters with the world ocean, and its profound relevance for the New Year. Our very best wishes to you from all of us here at the World Ocean Observatory.
This week on World Ocean Radio we have a special reading of "Christmas at Sea", an evocative poem by Robert Louis Stevenson written in 1883. Stevenson, the son of a lighthouse engineer, had intimate knowledge of nor'westers... Merry Christmas to all from the World Ocean Observatory.
This week on World Ocean Radio we explore the lessons of the ocean and the concept of adversity: adversity at sea due to weather, unpredictability, wind, tide, and waves, adversity among a ship's crew, and adversity caused by racism and inequity.
This week on World Ocean Radio we tell a tale of two cities--Newtok, Alaska (pop. 380) and Jakarta, Indonesia (pop. 30 mil)--6,000 miles apart yet facing similar realities of turmoil and social uncertainty due to fresh water stress and the myriad disruptive consequences of climate change.
How many ways do we hear the sound of water? In this episode of World Ocean Radio we explore water, the most essential element on earth, and the ways that we need it to thrive and survive, to nourish our bodies and our souls, and to sustain our families and our communities.
Fish markets are the noisy, colorful, exiting, authentic and lively centers of any coastal city, the place where mongers and customers, tourists and workers, auctioneers and bidders go to trade in the bounty of the sea. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we celebrate the allure of such places of commerce and connection, and their place in history and modern life.
In this episode of World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill reflects on the coming of winter and the collection of the last of the harvest to sustain us--and Nature's creatures--through the cold and into the spring. And he muses on the correspondent seasonal changes that occur in the maritime world: the shifts in the ocean that vary from the temperature of the water to the distribution of elements in the food chain to the migration of ocean species.
A scientific paper published in May 2019 states that eight urgent, simultaneous actions are needed to head off potential ecological disaster in the global ocean. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we discuss the questions and priority actions laid out in the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) report and the warning contained therein that failure to act within the next ten years to halt the damage caused by human activities could result in catastrophic change to how the world ocean functions and pose imminent threats to vital ocean ecosystems.
This week on World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill reflects on the magic of water and the ways it defines our urban spaces. This episode focuses on Tokyo and its network of often unseen and forgotten rivers, streams and canals, and a budding plan for their restoration and revival.
