Diving Deep Into The Ocean With ‘Sea Camp’

NPR’s flagship science podcast Short Wave is doing a special eight-part series on the ocean this summer called Sea Camp. 

News Director Eric Douglas, who is a diver and ocean advocate himself, spoke with the hosts Emily Kwong and Regina Barber to learn more about the series and why it is important to people in landlocked states.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. 

Douglas: First off, the quick 30-second version, tell me about what Short Wave is. Let’s set the stage there.

Kwong: Short Wave is NPR’s flagship science podcast. This show has been around since 2019 and in just 15 minutes, we bring listeners new discoveries, everyday mysteries and the science behind the headlines. The show comes out four days a week, so we cover everything from the cuts at the federal level, how they affect local communities, we talk about the latest in animal research, we talk about new comets visiting from other solar systems. And we have a new series out every Monday where we go deeper and deeper through the different levels of the ocean. 

That project is called Sea Camp, and listeners can hear the new episodes every Monday and also sign up for a really cool newsletter at npr.org/seacamp, where they can receive even more fun ocean facts in their inbox.

Douglas: We get Shark Week. We get all this stuff, which is kind of pseudoscience, sensationalized stuff.

Barber: Last year we did Space Camp. For the summer, we focused on a lot of stuff. My background is in astrophysics, and we really focused on having this idea where we were going from Earth, and talking about junk in space, satellites, and then we went all the way to, like, the end of the universe. We wanted to do something like that this year, in an area that we also know very, very little about and that’s the ocean. 

I think people don’t really get that. We know a lot about space but we’re still learning more every single day. But like with the ocean, there’s just so much we can learn and we can get every single day. So we wanted to have something like that. We wanted to do something very similar, where we start from the top of the ocean down to the bottom, and that’s how the series is going.

Kwong: And then the other thing is, just the ocean, we wouldn’t be alive without it. It produces half the oxygen on our planet, and it’s absorbing a good amount of the carbon. It’s a carbon sink. So it is what is leveling out our weather systems so that we can continue to exist. The ocean is more than just like dolphins and boogie boarding. It’s also basically what helps stabilize life on land. So understanding what it is and being able to articulate why we should protect it is really important for our show and to bring that love of the ocean that you’ve already experienced as a diver and others. 

Douglas: Regina, you said you have an astrophysics background, Emily, or do either of you have any ocean background?

Barber: I don’t.

Kwong: Only in that, I worked for about four years in rural Alaska as a community radio reporter. So I reported out of Sitka, Alaska, in a community whose whole livelihood was driven by the ocean, you know, fishing, and there’s something that happens to you when you live in a place like that. And I think I started really thinking differently about my relationship to the ocean, too.

Douglas: I live in West Virginia. We’re a landlocked state. A lot of people love to go from here and go vacation at the ocean, but that’s one week a year. Tell me why the people in landlocked Middle America should care about the ocean. What did you learn from your reporting that they should know?

Kwong: The ocean is like our lifeline in the air we breathe, and just because it’s out of sight doesn’t mean it should be out of our minds. That looks like purchasing sustainable seafood. That looks like buying sunscreen that is safe for coral reefs. That looks like educating your children about how to be gentle with ocean creatures if they’re lucky enough to go to an aquarium or go fishing. 

I think it’s just recognizing we are like one species out of untold, probably, billions on this planet. And we want humans to keep going right? The way to do that is to live in a kind of respect and harmony with all the other species we share the planet with whose livelihoods depend on this ecosystem.

Barber: I think another thing to think about, just everyday life, is shipping. We get all of our stuff from a lot of boats. One of our episodes, we talk about ocean currents and how they make shipping and sailing so much faster. Emily has been trying to get me to read this book called Longitude, and I’m reading it now, and it’s just fascinating. There’s so much history with our ocean. I don’t know if we all like pirates, but I like pirates and there’s just so much stuff that happened in the ocean. There’s so much history, there’s so much of our American culture and other people’s cultures that really did, what do I want to say, originate from stuff that happened through shipping. I mean, sad stuff and good stuff. I think the ocean is just so interesting and so mysterious, and that’s what we’re going to talk about. 

Kwong: I think that some of the most estrangement from the ocean can actually happen within spaces where they live right next to it.

If anyone from West Virginia has a story they want us to investigate regarding the environment or just science in general, if you have a space question, Regina is so good at going into those, you can email us at shortwave@npr.org, and we’d love to look into it for you.

Douglas: Any last word before we have to go?

Barber: To Emily’s point, like, people do take the ocean for granted. I grew up on the West Coast my whole life, and I remember some people being like, I’ve never seen the ocean before, and how amazed they were when they finally saw it. I think Emily is right. I think that even though West Virginia is landlocked, I think there are probably a lot of people that are like, the ocean is amazing, and either I really want to see it because I haven’t before, or, like, I can’t wait to get back because it’s beautiful. 

Douglas: What do we need to do in West Virginia to keep the water clean? Whatever that affects downstream?

Kwong: All the water from the ocean is a part of our water cycle and so protecting the health and cleanliness of rivers and tributaries that then drain into watersheds and basins that lead to the ocean is ultimately like, again, being a good steward on planet Earth. So it’s not just like out there. What happens to the ocean is always going to come back to haunt us eventually.