Shedding light on Bioluminescence | Shorewords!

December 15, 2023

Uncover mysteries of the glowing deep.

Enjoy the Shorewords! podcast with Dr. Edith (Eddie) WIdder, author of Below the Edge of Darkness, marine biologist, and co-founder of Ocean Research & Conservation Association (ORCA,⁠www.teamorca.org⁠). Eddie has spent years studying bioluminescence, which is light produced by living organism, and since most bioluminescent organisms are in the ocean, she has spent hundreds of hours in submersibles hoping to see flashes of light. Her podcast covers stories of her time under water and provides clear explanations of the current science on the hows and whys so many mid- and deep-ocean creatures blink and glow.

Show Transcription
This transcription was generated by a computer. Please excuse any errors.
Lesley Ewing

Hello. I’m Lesley Ewing, host of Shorewords!. This podcast combines two of my favorite things – the ocean and books. I learned to swim before I could walk and looked forward each summer to my family’s vacation at Ocean City, Maryland. As a student I was interested in science and engineering and became an environmental engineer before learning that there was something called coastal engineering. Both my 1 st and 2 nd mid-life crises resulted in me going back to school – first for a Masters of Engineering at UC Berkeley and later for a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. The first crisis also moved me from DC to the SF Bay. The second crisis reminded me how much I liked to read. Getting a Ph.D. while working a 40+-hour/week job meant that my only reading was work reports, text books and technical articles. They were all important and interesting books, but as soon as school ended, I replaced my academic text books with broader literature and realized that the coast was often a character in the fiction and non-fiction that I read. I am still fascinated by every visit to the ocean and remain in awe of what others write about the coast.