This past week, BP earned a dubious new distinction. Although it’s not the first oil company to have a blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s now officially the worst. In June 1979, the Ixtoc 1 offshore oil well exploded and oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico for 10 months. Within weeks oil was coating the beaches of south Texas. Leo Trevino was a college student back then in Corpus Christi, when one of his professors asked him to grab his diving gear and travel down to Mexico to check on a research site not far from the Ixtoc. Along the way, Leo and another grad student surveyed the Mexican coastline, looking for oil and documenting recovery efforts. Leo talks with Dick Gordon about what he saw on his Ixtoc roadtrip, and how well the Gulf of Mexico has recovered in the three decades since. Also in this show, surprising dad.

Casey DeMoss Roberts was 17 when her father, a oil rig drilling engineer, was killed onboard the Seacrest Drill Ship off the coast of Thailand. A typhoon capsized the vessel. Most of the workers onboard were killed, and the accident is still ranked among the deadliest rig accidents of all time. Inspired in part by her father’s death, Casey began studying the intersection of the environment with public health issues. She now lives in New Orleans and works for the Gulf Restoration Network - which is currently focusing on the effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Also in this show, the music of Razia Said.

Randall Arauz is a marine biologist in Costa Rica who has been working for years to protect sea turtles there. One day he saw a video documenting "shark finning." Fishermen haul in sharks, cut off the fins, and dump the bodies of the sharks back into the ocean.