News Round Up: aquatic vocal fry, fossilizing plankton and a high seas treaty

Reading the science headlines this week, we have A LOT of questions. Why are more animals than just humans saddled — er, blessed — with vocal fry? Why should we care if 8 million year old plankton fossils are in different locations than plankton living today? And is humanity finally united on protecting the Earth's seas with the creation of the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty?

Luckily, it's the job of the Short Wave team to decipher the science behind the headlines. This week, that deciphering comes from co-hosts Emily Kwong and Aaron Scott, with the help of NPR climate correspondent Lauren Sommer. Hang out with us as we dish on some of the coolest science stories in this ocean-themed installment of our regular newsy get-togethers!

Tiny ocean: Fossilized plankton hold climate change clues

This week, Lauren spoke to micro-paleontologist Adam Woodhouse, a post-doc at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics. He studies the plankton the size of a grain of sand, called Foraminifera. When they die, they sink to the ocean floor and form layers of microfossils. In a recent study published in Nature, Adam and his colleagues found that 8 million years ago, when the oceans were warmer, those plankton were in very different places from where they are today — about 2,000 miles away, closer to the poles. Plankton are at the base of the food web. Where plankton migrate as waters warm, so too will the entire food web, including the fish and marine life people depend on.

Mid-sized ocean: Toothed whales have vocal fry, too

For decades, researchers have been stumped trying to understand how toothed whales — like dolphins, sperm whales, and pilot whales — produce such a wide range of sounds. Hunting dozens of meters below the ocean's surface, their lungs are compressed. So, how are they able to echolocate their prey and navigate their murky surroundings? According to new research published in Sciencelast week, the secret to toothed whales' vocal repertoire is found in their phonic lips. Located inside their nose, the phonic lips produce sound waves with very little air. Moreover, these researchers found that toothed whales are using their vocal fry register — a lower register than usual — to echolocate and hunt prey.

Read more reporting on this topic from our colleague Ari Daniel.

Big picture ocean: An international treaty

About half of the planet is covered by international waters that are largely unregulated — especially when it comes to the environmental protections. For two decades, countries have been negotiating to create a treaty to protect these waters beyond individual countries' control. March 4, United Nations member states finally accomplished that goal and released the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty. It's a legal framework that allows countries to create marine protected areas in the ocean, wherein activities like fishing, mining or drilling can be restricted. The treaty also sets ground rules for how countries assess the environmental impact of various marine activities and sets up a way to share the benefits and profits from any sort of genetic resources that are discovered. It's a great first step toward protecting our oceans, but there's still work to be done. Countries have to adopt and then ratify the treaty. And there's still the question of how to concretely manage and enforce the protected areas.

Have suggestions for what we should cover in our next news roundup? Email us at [email protected].

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This episode was produced by Berly McCoy and edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Anil Oza checked the facts, and the audio engineer was Alex Drewenskus.