Woods Hole

In a moment, a man moves across the world to meet his birth family when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Today's episode is brought to you by Alma.

Therapy has been valuable for me, but getting started isn't exactly easy.

Podcast music production support from Davy Sumner.

We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Special thanks to our friends at Audacy, including executive producer Leah Reece-Dennis.

The discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania gave rise to a cheaper source of oil for lamps and led to an almost complete collapse of the industry by 1870.

After the Old Colony Railroad came to Woods Hole in 1872, summer residences began to develop on the island, such as the community of Hearthaven established by William H. Hart, the community of Ocean Heights developed near Senji-Kontaget Pond in Edgarton by the prominent island businessman Robert Marsden Laidlaw.

Although the island struggled financially through the Great Depression, its reputation as a resort for tourists and the wealthy continued to grow.

There is still a substantial Wampanoag population on the Vineyard, mainly located in the town of Aquinnah.

It is the birthplace of George Claghorn, master shipbuilder of the USS Constitution, aka Old Ironsides.

Aquinnah is home to the Wampanoag Indian tribe and clay cliffs.

In the era before modern highways and jet planes, travelers took New York, New Haven, and Hartford railroad trains from New York City or Boston to Woods Hole or Hyannis, at which point they would embark on ferries to the island.

The Martha's Vineyard Transit Authority provides year-round bus service throughout Martha's Vineyard.

So I think that goes all the way back to when I was young.

I used to spend, uh, summers on Cape Cod in Massachusetts growing up, and, um, it's part of that, I was always, you know, in the water and, um, observing tides and looking at tide pools and, uh, had the benefit in sophomore year of high school of attending a NSF-funded, um, kind of ex- you know, initiation into research kind of summer program, and that blew my mind, and I worked directly with faculty, um, at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and, um, you know, conducted my first independent research.

So I really caught the bug there, and, um, it's not an accident that I ended up getting a PhD in oceanography, uh, whatever, 15 years later.

Growing up, did you always imagine that you were going to be a climate scientist, for example, like when you went into college initially, or did that path unfold unexpectedly?

Additional editing by Sidney Lewis.

Audio mixing by Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Theme music by Tupac Crew.

Additional music by George Brendl Egloff.

There may be more fish biomass in the Twilight Zone than in all the rest of the ocean combined.

That's the current working estimate from Woods Hole, and it emerged from a straightforward methodological problem.

For decades, the way you estimated fish in a region was to tow a net through it and count what you caught.

Sensible and badly wrong at depth.

Senior audio engineer, David Goodman.

Additional editing from Vicki Merrick, Sidney Lewis, and Samantha Brown, and audio mixing from Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Theme music by Two Bob Crew.

Additional music by George Bernal Egloff.

That's when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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[upbeat music] Max Tracco, everyone.

In a moment, we head into a bumpy senior year, and then to the start of law school when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more.

And we, he would drive me up.

It would be five hours to the Woods Hole from New Jersey.

We would drive up to the ferry, and he would keep the windows down, and he would bundle me up in all these blankets, and then he would sit there while he was driving and be like, "It's so cold.

It's so cold," you know, like, fucking with me.