Sea Change

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...

The media is full of stories about the coastal land loss crisis in Louisiana, dire predictions of climate change and sea level rise, and polarizing accounts of controversial projects. 

What's less known is that Louisiana is really good at something. A world leader, in fact. When it comes to coastal restoration, some say Louisiana is number one. Because project by project, Louisiana is piecing this ragged shoreline back together...

Louisiana is a world leader in coastal restoration. Many would even say number one. The media is full of stories about the coastal land loss crisis in Louisiana, the dire predictions of climate change and sea level rise, and polarizing accounts of controversial projects, but what is also true is that Louisiana is making tremendous strides piecing this ragged shoreline back together little by little. 

Over the next four episodes...

The amazing science behind understanding mysterious but critical ocean currents. And specifically, understanding the current in our backyard, the Gulf’s Loop Current.

We talk with scientists leading a huge multi-country research collaboration that is going to great lengths and depths to understand the especially unknown Loop Current. We talk about how currents connect us, how they are basically a thermostat for the globe, and ...

This is part 2 of a 2-part series exploring the future of farming seafood in the Gulf. We know this: demand for seafood is soaring. We won't be able to sustainably meet that demand from wild-caught fisheries. And there’s a growing global movement to farm more and more of our seafood. 

The Gulf is one of the LAST places in the world where there is still a major wild oyster harvest. Lately, though, that harvest…is in...

This is part 1 of a 2-part series exploring the future of farming seafood in the Gulf. Americans eat a lot of farmed seafood — but the vast majority of it comes from overseas. We just don’t farm fish on a big scale in U.S. waters. Now that might start to change. There are proposals to build massive fish farms in U.S. federal waters. And guess which coast is likely to be the first home for these new farms? You guessed it...

The story we are bringing you today is about sea turtles. In fact, it’s about the smallest and most endangered of sea turtles, called the Kemp’s Ridley. It’s a surprising and optimistic tale about a turtle’s return to Louisiana. 

We reported this episode back in 2023, but we wanted to revisit it because who doesn’t need more sea turtles in their life right now? And also because there has been some ...

What does it take to stay rooted on the Gulf Coast, even as the land and weather change around us? We meet individuals, from a poet to a minister to a computer programmer, each finding their own creative ways to adapt and fight for the future of their communities. From amphibious homes to inland retreats to processing our changing environment through poetry, we hear how people's ingenuity is helping chart a new path forward.

To hear...

There was a time back in the 1980s when overfishing had decimated popular fish like red snapper and grouper in the Gulf. But then, there was a dramatic turning point, when both fish and fishermen in the Gulf were kind of saved. Today, we hear the remarkable success story of how unlikely partners joined forces to save an industry and an ecosystem.

In this episode, Environmental Defense Fund's Executive Director, Amanda Leland, water ...