Sea Change

For thousands of years, Indigenous communities along the Mississippi River and its tributaries built earthen mounds. Some complex constructions rose 8 stories high. These mounds were built for spiritual and religious reasons and also used as a refuge from floods.  

Thousands of miles away, on a string of tiny islands off Germany’s North Sea coast, people still live on raised earthen mounds, watching the sea wash o...

SpaceX wants to build one of the biggest spaceports in the world on the Louisiana coast—a sprawling $100 billion complex near tiny Pecan Island, where marshes, birds, and generations of coastal communities are already living with a rapidly changing landscape. Louisiana sees the project as an economic opportunity—and a potential new source of money to help save its disappearing coast. But for people who live there, the a...

We love our beaches. We build homes beside them, vacation on them, and spend billions of dollars trying to keep them from disappearing. But beaches are supposed to move—and as sea levels rise, keeping them in place is becoming more expensive, more difficult, and possibly impossible. 

So what happens when the sand, the money, and the time start running out? Coastal geologist Rob Young says we’re going to have to make...

What does it take to bring a seabird back from the brink—and can we keep it there? We travel from a rocky island of Maine to a tiny restored island in coastal Louisiana to learn the astonishing comeback stories of two beloved birds, puffins and pelicans. This is a hopeful story about how innovative ideas can save wildlife — and asks whether that's enough in a rapidly changing world.

Want to know more about birds on the G...

Throughout the Western history of conservation, protecting nature has often meant removing people. It's what happened during the creation of many of America's national parks. But what if protecting nature didn't have to mean displacing the people who call it home? That's the question that brings us to Culatra, a small fishing island off Portugal's southern coast, and one of the country's seven natural wonders. 

For decades, the...

Neil McQueen learned to surf as a Texas teenager, and it changed his life – eventually pulling him away from a career as a plastics engineer and into the fight to save the very waters that shaped him. Thanks to the way ocean currents loop through the Gulf, the Texas coast collects roughly 10 times more plastic debris than any other Gulf state, much of it spilling from the massive petrochemical complex that lines its shores.&n...

In the Netherlands, water has always been both a threat and a triumph. A quarter of the country lies below sea level, and for centuries the Dutch have engineered their way to safety. It’s a place not unlike New Orleans: a delta shaped by risk, resilience, and the belief that with enough ingenuity, water can be controlled. But as sea levels rise, that centuries-old confidence is beginning to crack.

In this episode of Sea Change...

This is part 3 of our three-part series about elements. And today is a biggie: carbon. When we hear about carbon, it's usually about its role in heating up the planet. And while that's an absolutely critical part of the story, the story of this most miraculous of substances is so much larger. 

We talk to Peter Brannen, author of The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything, about how carbon has always been central to just about ...

This is part 2 of our 3-part series about elements.  Last time we met nitrogen, today, it’s partner in crime and in life – phosphorus.  

WLRN Environment Editor Jenny Staletovich has gotten to know the main character of this story pretty well after reporting on the environment in South Florida for more than a dozen years. Bone Valley in Central Florida has quietly fed the world’s hunger for phosphorus, ev...

In this three-part series, we’re giving some of the most misunderstood characters on the periodic table a fuller story. We dive into the fascinating double lives of these elements that are both the makers and unmakers of our world. 

In part one, reporter Olga Loginova travels to Cape Cod to meet nitrogen. In this episode: we trudge through the marsh, avoid great white sharks, and find out how we harnessed the power of nit...

Want to feel better? Get unstuck? Be inspired? Remake the world? Then this episode is for you. We talk with Katherine Wilkinson,  author of the book Climate Wayfinding, and Colette Pichon Battle, lawyer and co-founder of Taproot Earth, about finding our way through the climate crisis.

To read more about Climate Wayfinding, or order a copy of the book, click here. 

This episode was hosted by Carlyle Calhoun and Eva Tesfaye.&...

Why are fishermen being arrested in Louisiana? An epic battle over "Sportsman's Paradise" is being waged on Louisiana's water. This is a story about public rights and private power colliding. As more and more of Louisiana’s coast disappears underwater, the state’s two most powerful and iconic forces – fishing and fossil fuels – are waging war over who owns the drowned land.

Check out a print version of this s...

Carlos Rafael immigrated to the US from Portugal as a teenager, and over the years, built one of the country’s largest commercial fishing operations from scratch. Carlos owned the biggest fleet of boats in the most valuable fishing port in America. He became known as the Codfather. But it all came crashing down in a federal sting. 

Who is Carlos Rafael? Depending on who you ask, he's either a villain who robbed the ocean ...

Two years ago, we investigated the Liquified Natural Gas export build out on the Gulf Coast. We followed those exports around the world from Louisiana to Germany to Japan to unravel the story of LNG. 

But that story isn’t over. Today, host Carlyle Calhoun returns to LNG with Gulf States Newsroom reporter Drew Hawkins. They talk about how people in Southwest Louisiana are still being impacted by this build out, how LNG exp...

We’re in the beginning of spring bird migration here on the Gulf Coast, which means warblers, vireos, orioles, and thrushes coming through as they make their way up North. Around 2 billion birds make landfall along our coast from March to May after crossing the Gulf of Mexico. But even after the high-stakes crossing of open water, their next leg of the journey is no less perilous.

In this episode, our friends from Up From Dust...

Sea Change travels to the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, for a lively live panel discussion about the future of seafood. 

For more than a century, the Gulf seafood industry has shaped towns, cultures, and identities along the coast. Yet, if you talk to almost anyone who works on the water, they’ll tell you the Gulf seafood story has changed more in the last 30 years than the hundred years bef...

Artificial reefs have been credited with supporting fisheries, protecting rare species, and attracting tourists that boost the economy. But, of course, like any story about the environment, it gets complicated both here in the Gulf and on Cambodia’s coast. 

If you'd like to know more about Alabama's booming artificial reef program, check out this article from Irina Zhorov.  

EPISODE CREDITS

This episode was hosted by E...

For the fourth and final episode of our collaboration with Wetlands Radio, a series about coastal restoration: ways we can all help repair our coast. So...what does a bottle of Two Buck Chuck and slinging back oysters have to do with building land? Find out how one man's trash transforms into coastal treasures.And then, to close out the series on coastal restoration, we learn about the crown jewel of Louisiana science: a research p...

Oil and gas canals. You’ve likely heard about the canals—tens of thousands of them, ever-widening, shredding the wetlands. The canals are what some scientists say is Louisiana’s major cause of land loss. In Part 3 of our collaboration with Wetlands Radio, we explore the impact of canals, why industry has gotten away with the damage, and what's being done about it now.

And then, what does it actually look like for B...