Gulf Coast Life

In 2018 and 2019 we experienced massive simultaneous harmful algae blooms. Around that same time, FGCU’s Water School was becoming a reality, and FGCU Marine Science Professor, Dr. Mike Parsons, began dreaming up an artificial reef easily accessible from the school’s Vester Marine Field Station where ongoing, offshore science could occur. It's now a reality, and this Thursday night WGCU will premi...

Hurricane Ian arrived in Southwest Florida four years ago today. Whether you experienced true devastation or were just seriously inconvenienced, Ian left a deep mark on everyone who experienced it. In the months after Ian the folks at the Gulf Coast Writers Association embarked on a project to collect some of them for a book that could capture the moment from different perspectives and that culmin...

The dental program at Healthcare Network in Immokalee recently earned a Certified Autism Center designation, with their staff completing special training to help neurodivergent patients.

The midway point of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season was Sept. 10, and that’s pretty much considered the traditional peak of the season. Yet, there hasn’t been a single named hurricane. Since meteorologists started using satellites to track the weather in the 1960s, we’ve never made it this far into a hurricane season without a named hurricane. The calm season is due in part to strong El Niño co...

Peter Max might not have been a household name at the end of his life, but his visual style — and utterly prolific artistic output over his roughly six-decade career — undoubtedly left a deep imprint on our country's collective artistic culture. His art evolved through numerous styles over the decades, but always keeping his distinctive approach so no matter which era of his career, his work was a...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is the federal government's primary science and natural-resource research agency. It operates thousands of stream gauges, well monitors, and sampling stations that track real-time river flow, groundwater levels, and water quality. Since the late 1990s the primary model or tool they use to estimate how pollutants (primarily nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus) m...

Starting in the late 2000s, environmental engineers and policymakers began talking about taking "nature-based" approaches to protect ourselves from storms. Concepts like 'living shorelines' were developed, where planners would work with nature. Think planting seagrasses and protecting or restoring dunes along the beach, or strategic mangrove placement as examples. But those approaches are still fa...

NASA launched the new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 30. It's field of view will be about 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope. Its initial primary five-year mission will focus on finding and understanding exoplanets (planets around other stars), doing astrophysics (studying other stars and how they behave), and mapping our galaxy to hopefully get a...

We throw around the word "psychopath" a lot. But how many of us really know what makes someone a psychopath? Leanne ten Brinke knows. Listen to our conversation.

In the Fall of 2001, on a Tuesday in September, news started spreading that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York City. At first, most people assumed it was an accident. But then, just 17 minutes later, a second commercial airliner flew directly into the other tower, and it became crystal clear that what was unfolding was not an accident but an orchestrated a...

Jonathan Tepper's memoir describes his childhood in Spain, when his parents opened a drug rehabilitation center to help heroin addicts in Madrid.

The Wasmer Art Gallery at Florida Gulf Coast University is currently exhibiting “The History of the United States, Vol. I & II, 1774 – 1844.” There is one print for each year, each created by different contemporary artists. Some chose well-known events while others more obscure conceptual ideas, all of which were tied into what was happening during those years. During the opening reception, WGCU's...

Venice Beach is often referred to as the shark teeth capital of the world, but there had never been formal, peer reviewed documentation until a Florida Gulf Coast University professor published a paper breaking down what he and his students found beneath the waters there. The Venice shark and ray assemblage contains 45 species identified from their fossil teeth, all collected by Dr. Harry Maisch,...

Cold water swimming and plunging have gotten a lot of attention lately. Chris Ballard is here to tell us all about them.

Cottage food laws are what create the rules under which people can make certain kinds of food products in their home kitchens and then sell them without a commercial kitchen license or a state inspection or traditional food permits. Primary examples are baked goods like bread, or jams or honey. A 2021 law expanded the rules, and the cottage food industry nationwide has grown in the past decade or...

The nonpartisan nonprofit, Floridians for Democracy, is holding a Rally for Hope on Saturday, Aug. 29. They chose the date to coincide with the anniversary of the historic March on Washington that brought about 250,000 people to Washington, D.C. in 1963 to advocate for the civil and economic rights of Black Americans. Organizers say it’s meant to be a nonpartisan gathering rather than a protest, w...

Voters choose Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly as their parties’ respective nominees in the race for Florida Governor. In a surprise upset, Democratic State Rep. Angie Nixon defeated Lt. Col. Alex Vindman in the Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate. She now faces incumbent Ashley Moody in the November General Election. Primary contests for U.S. House seats in the sunshine state were...

Mac Stone is an award-winning conservation photographer and a National Geographic Explorer. His work focuses on swamps and wetlands — he says he's trying to change public opinion towards these often misunderstood and maligned ecosystems. We discuss his new book is "Cypress: The Last Old-Growth Swamps" which is filled with photographs of the American South’s ancient wetlands and intricate webs of l...

About 75% of the world’s flowering plants and about 30% of crops rely on pollinators. Things like habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change, and invasive species are all threats to pollinator populations, which are truly essential for both ecological balance and food security. On August 22-23 Floridians can do their part as citizen scientists to help researchers keep tabs on the health of pollin...

Laurien Papa Bartuccio co-founded The Bridge for Women. It provides trauma-informed peer support for survivors of domestic abuse in Collier, Lee, Charlotte, and Hendry counties.

Dr. Grace Farris is a practicing physician in Austin, Texas. Her graphic memoir, See One, Do One, Teach One: The Art of Becoming a Doctor traces her path through medical school and residency with very candid and funny comics.

The New World Screwworm has been in the news lately because it turned up in southern Texas in early June. These parasites are endemic to central and south America these days, but they were once present in the southern United States but were eradicated in the mid 1960s. The parasite is actually a fly whose larvae burrow into and feed on the living flesh of warm-blooded animals, cattle primarily in...

During the Covid pandemic, retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Michael Troop got into audio production and that led to him pitching an idea to Bryce Alexander from the Naples Players to recreate, from the ground up with professional and amateur actors, and full sound design, old-time narrative radio shows from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s and the Naples Players Repertoire Radio Theatre podcast was born and i...

Most people are by now familiar with the term genome — it's essentially a blueprint each person is born with. The exposome is the dynamic, lifelong ledger of every non-genetic exposure a person encounters. It includes thinks like air pollution and pesticides, dietary choices, lifestyle, and chronic stress. We talk with ethnobotanist, Dr. Paul Cox, from the Brain Chemistry Labs in Jackson, Wyoming...

McCollum Hall is a two-story building on the corner of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd and Cranford Avenue on the eastern side of downtown Fort Myers, just past the railroad tracks on the western edge of the Dunbar Community. The City of Fort Myers designated McCollum Hall as a local historic landmark in 1998 and it was officially added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2022. Over th...