World Ocean Radio

Each year on June 8th we celebrate World Ocean Day to recognize our relationship with the ocean, the vast watery world that covers 71% of our planet. Despite gains in ocean education and increased awareness and importance of the Ocean Literacy movement, public awareness of ocean issues in the United States does not advance much over time. What does it take for the will of the people to coalesce ar...

We live in a world of invisible circulation. It swirls in us and around us at all times, transporting and exchanging all things good and bad, some natural, some man-made. This week we're discussing the ocean-fresh water system--the full global circulation, from mountaintop to abyssal plain, upon which all life depends.  About World Ocean Radio World Ocean Radio is a weekly series of five-minu...

Will the children set us free? Has it come to that? Have we abandoned the future for our children to solve, leaving them accountable for what we have failed to do? This week on World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill shares where he finds hope for the future, including in a web-based educational initiative that introduces children worldwide to the complexity, significance, and beauty of the ocean--the...

This week marks the 750th episode of World Ocean Radio: 15 years of weekly short audio that reaches millions around the globe, sharing concepts, demands, and solutions related to ocean technology and science, policy, examples of best practice, personal reflections, and solutions for how the ocean connects, sustains, inspires, and engages us in common history, traditions, sustenance, communication,...

This week on World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill reflects on the importance of water in our lives, our culture, our memories, our very being. Water, he argues, is the essence of home, and the grace and gift of knowing it’s there for our return.  About World Ocean Radio World Ocean Radio is a weekly series of five-minute audio essays available for syndicated use at no cost by college and community...

Pope Francis, outspoken voice for climate and the environment, passed away on Monday, April 21st. Throughout his reign as leader of the Catholic Church, he was very clear in his views on climate change as a real factor in today's world, and expressed that we must understand and respond to these problems for our future survival. In 2015, Pope Francis issued a papal encyclical entitled "La...

Earth Day is April 22nd. In honor of our watery planet we revisit a land-centric episode this week on World Ocean Radio.  What About the Land? 40% of the planet is used for farming and livestock, often degraded by unsustainable or destructive practices. Coupled with coastal, wetland and reclaimed land development in the name of urban expansion, we are fast-approaching a tipping point. What are we...

Discovery of a curriculum developed for coastal Africa some years ago sent World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill on a journey of discovery and revelation about salt as a construct to be observed, understood, and taught. A western scientific perspective might teach students about salt from a chemistry-led lesson, whereas the African curriculum taught salt as serving a role in the enhancement of and as...

ter·ra·que·ous /terˈākwēəs/ Adjective: consisting of land and water Mud season: a special time of year in the northeastern corner of the United States, when winter and spring collide in a soggy muck: the rains come, ice and snow melts, saturating the land, creating a terraqueous mess for cars and boots. This week on World Ocean Radio, we're applying the metaphor of "mud season" to f...

March 22nd is World Water Day, a celebration of what Jacques Cousteau called The Great Hydrosphere , expanded beyond Ocean to include the entirety of the water cycle: the one natural system that controls our planet's utility. From mountaintop to abyssal plain, water is the great circulatory system that connects all things. This week on World Ocean Radio we pay homage to water, without which w...

This week on World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill shares a smart, succinct new title from the Forerunners: Ideas First series entitled "Coralatations" by Melody Jue. The book is a philosophical exploration of coral reefs, technology, and media and how, through co-relation, we might expand our understanding of natural resources beyond endangerment to how we communicate about climate change....

Ocean Literacy is a bottom-up movement driven by classroom teachers who understand the full implication of education, adaptation, and innovation for our future. In Venice, Italy, in 2024, a conference gathered to address today's issues, and to produce the Venice Declaration for Ocean Literacy to provide goals and agenda items for the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France in June of 2025. New go...

"Power is like water. It flows all around us at all times. Sometimes it takes the liquid form of politics-in-action...Sometimes it takes the solid form of settled law: policy is power frozen. Sometimes it is like vapor in the air, invisibly shaping the climate and our behavior in just the way beliefs or ideology or emotions do..."  So states Eric Liu, founder of Citizen University and Di...

Eco-psychology studies the relationships between people and nature, and seeks to develop ways to expand the emotional connections between individuals and the natural world. There is progression in the term: understanding of Eco-psychology presents plans, promise, and action toward transformational outcomes, strategies, and prognoses for the future.  About World Ocean Radio World Ocean Radio is a w...

Eudaemonism: What does it mean? What does it have to do with happiness? And what is its context for the ocean? Tune in to find out.  About World Ocean Radio World Ocean Radio is a weekly series of five-minute audio essays available for syndicated use at no cost by college and community radio stations worldwide. Weekly insights into ocean science, advocacy, education, global ocean issues, challenge...

What are the five key reasons for ocean conservation? What are the five areas where progress matters most? With the world in an off-axis state of turmoil, W2O founder Peter Neill is taking stock this week, asking the questions and distilling the essential reasons why the ocean is central to human survival. About World Ocean Radio World Ocean Radio is a weekly series of five-minute audio essays ava...

This week on World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill shares views and observations of the town of Isafjordur, Iceland, and the values it possesses that give the area its unique identity.   About World Ocean Radio World Ocean Radio is a weekly series of five-minute audio essays available for syndicated use at no cost by college and community radio stations worldwide. Peter Neill, Director of the World...

KNOT: a word with many definitions: from a tight constriction to something hard to solve; a cluster of persons or things; an ornamental ribbon; a closed curve in three dimensional space. And of course, the word comes back to the ocean: is not the ocean a dynamic of knots: entangled and integral, inter-placed with ornamental flexible bodies, comprised of the ties that bind.  About World Ocean Radio...

At the Fishhouses , is among our favorite poems here at World Ocean Observatory. In its richly-detailed mastery, it distills poet Elizabeth Bishop’s seaside meditations, evokes the clarity of meaning contained in personal encounters at the shore and with the ocean, and holds the reader and the listener in the space that lies between land and sea, a site of transience, mystery, and the sublime.  Wo...

Each holiday season on World Ocean Radio we return with 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, first-hand knowledge of extreme weather, storms and nor'westers. Christmas at Sea An evocative seasonal poem by Robert Louis Stevenson published in 1888, five years aft...

This week we're providing our listeners with a list of intentions that describe the World Ocean Observatory's statement of beliefs that drives all action. And we provide suggestions for those who may ask, "What can I do?" while encouraging determination to pursue the causes that you believe in. This week's episode is a statement of belief and intent that dates back to the...

The debate over the reality of climate change is over. There is no place on land or sea that is immune from the effects of extreme weather, fire, flood, inundation, erosion, and social impacts. This week we're discussing carbon as the key culprit to our current condition, and the multitudinous methods and suggestions and investments to remove carbon from the atmosphere and the ocean. Is it po...

The face of war is changing quickly: cheap, unmanned, versatile drones and remotely operated aircraft, coupled with rapidly-advancing technology, ambiguous algorithms, accountability, and responsibility are shifting the shapes of war around the globe, especially as it pertains to the unseen and largely unmonitored high seas. With a world struggling to keep up, the instruments of war are becoming i...

This week on World Ocean Radio we are examining Renewell, a company that has developed a method to repurpose abandoned oil wells across the United States into displacement reserves, effectively capping the more than 2 million abandoned, methane-leaking oil wells and converting them into renewable storage and renewed financial return.  World Ocean Radio: 5-minute weekly insights in ocean science, a...

This week on World Ocean Radio, two new books for readers to consider this fall: "The High Seas: Greed, Power, and The Battle for the Unclaimed Ocean" by Olive Heffernan, and "What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World Ocean" by Helen Scales. Both books evoke hopeful possibility while exploring the extent of the ocean and the implications of ongoing exploitation and exce...