Coastal stories with civic weight.
Our Ocean is a warm, interview-led marine conservation series rooted in real coastal places. Its episodes connect Scotland’s inshore fisheries, youth advocacy, eDNA science, seal ecology, electric sailing, and elections to the larger question of how people protect the sea fairly.
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Our Ocean is a marine conservation show built around careful, human conversations. It rarely starts with abstraction. Instead, it begins with a beach, a boat, a seal colony, a young person, or a memory of how a coast used to be. From there, the show moves steadily into the bigger machinery of ocean protection. Scotland’s inshore waters appear often, especially the debate around bottom trawling, dredging, marine protected areas, and the removed three-mile limit. The episodes do not treat protection as a simple slogan. They keep asking what fairness looks like for fishing communities, coastal habitats, and future fish stocks at the same time. That is where the show’s civic streak comes through. Conversations about just transitions, candidate meetings, manifestos, and youth advocacy make ocean citizenship feel like something done in public, not just felt privately. The science episodes bring a different kind of energy. Environmental DNA becomes a way to notice invisible life, while grey seal research turns a pupping beach into a story about recovery, monitoring, and the complicated history of human impact. Adventure also has a place here. Wayne Peters’s electric boat work and sailing stories bring ocean connection into motion, without letting the travelogue take over the purpose. The tone stays warm and explanatory. Technical terms arrive, but they are usually translated into ordinary language before they harden into jargon. Guests are given room to tell stories, but the show keeps returning to what those stories mean for marine protection. Its episodes are especially interested in Scotland, public participation, and the link between personal connection and policy change. That mix makes the show useful for listeners who want more than beautiful ocean imagery. It offers beauty, but it also asks who gets to use the sea, who pays the cost of change, and how protection can become real rather than symbolic.
Made for: For listeners drawn to marine life, coastal communities, environmental policy, and practical conservation. It especially suits people who like thoughtful interviews that make science and civic action feel understandable without flattening the complexity.
What sets it apart: The show connects ocean wonder to real governance questions, from seabed protection and fishing methods to elections and youth policy work. Its strength is the bridge between intimate coastal scenes and the practical mechanics of change.
Bringing to life the Ocean's most pressing and beautiful stories to Deepen Ocean Insight and Empower Ocean Citizenship. Brought to you by Seaful, the UK charity dedicated to connecting people to our ocean.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Kal Major connects vivid coastal observation with practical questions about conservation, fisheries policy, and public action.
Our Ocean moves between close observation of coastal wildlife and conversations about how marine protection works in public life. Kal Major brings an openly curious presence to both modes, watching guillemot chicks leave cliffs at St Ab's Head, examining grey seal recovery, and…
A gull nicks your chips; Kal Major makes its missing fish harder to ignore.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Marine protection is framed as a fairness problem, with fishing habits, community change, and policy trade-offs in sharp view.
Our Ocean treats marine protection as a fairness issue, beginning with the gap between what many assume protected areas allow and what is actually permitted in Scotland's inshore waters.
A practical guide to being heard before election day.
Election 101 - How To Make Your Voice Heard treats elections as work that begins long before ballot day, with Kal Major and Rhea Criss centered on the practical job of helping candidates hear what matters.
Grey seals, coastal recovery, and the branded female seal mystery.
This Our Ocean outing returns to St Ab's Head with a clear sense of place, following grey seals through pupping season as pups can arrive overnight and the beach settles into its own low-key bustle.
A thoughtful case for seeing chip-snatching gulls as adaptable seabirds rather than seaside villains.
This episode turns a familiar seaside irritation into a sharper ecological story. Gulls are not framed as petty chip thieves so much as adaptable seabirds pushed closer to people as life at sea grows harder and food becomes less reliable.
A cliffside seabird colony where beauty and brutality share the frame.
Kal Major takes Our Ocean to St. Abbs Head National Nature Reserve, where Kieran Hatzell frames a cliffside seabird city above a wild grey ocean.
War, silence, and ocean politics meet in a careful, grounded discussion.
The episode treats Gaza as a way into injustice and environmental damage, then broadens that frame to explain why an ocean podcast would turn to war.
Regional sustainability, explained through real-world change.
Sacred land, defended in full context.
Climate progress, measured against reality.
Campus, community, and faith in eastern Idaho.
Accountability radio for serious citizens.
Seafall founder Cal and COO Lorna take 14 young carers and local teenagers aged 12 to 16 from Ilfracombe to Lundy Island, 20 miles off North Devon, to snorkel with grey seals.
The episode starts with a mismatch.
A Scottish fisherman argues for reinstating the ban on bottom trawling in inshore waters to protect seabed habitats and rebuild fish stocks.
Wayne Peters, founder of 4-1 Ocean, discusses his journey into sailing and his mission to create ocean-friendly sailing adventures for marine data collection and reconnecting people to the ocean.
An inspiring conversation with Young Sea Changers Scotland about empowering young people to advocate for Scotland's seas and influence policy change.
Kal Major opens on elections.
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Seafull's Ocean Citizens Award recipient Megan Hamill shares her ocean conservation journey on the west coast of Scotland.
It returns to St Ab's Head and the grey seals on its coast.
Ellie Owen says herring gulls are red-list birds, not pests, and that culling is "one of the most difficult to achieve" options.
Kal Major and Kieran Hatzell head toward St.
Phil Taylor discusses marine conservation in Scotland, using underwater drones to observe fish behavior and advocate for ocean protection.
The host opens on Gaza.
Noel Hawkins shares his life intertwined with the sea in Ullapool, Scotland, during a wildlife tour boat outing.
Ross Edgley discusses his upcoming challenge to swim around Iceland and his training in Scotland.