MSt alumna Kent DePinto’s programme, “The Fish that Ate Florida”, originally on BBC World Service’s Life Stories on 1st October 2017, is now available to listen to online.
From the BBC:
“As part of the BBC Life Stories season, exploring our relationship with the natural world, we travel under the sea in pursuit of a major ecological threat to Western Atlantic coasts – the Lionfish.
The species, which recently spread from its natural territory in the Pacific to Atlantic waters, is aggressive, exotic and very, very hungry. Kent DePinto explores how lionfish went from being an aquarium favourite to the scourge of an aquatic ecosystem as it eats everything in its path – with no natural predators in these seas to control it. She meets the people who have made it their life’s work to eradicate lionfish from Florida waters, in an underwater journey of spears, guns, and survival of the fittest.
Kent explores the tight-knit and sometimes unlikely partnerships of conservationists, scientists, and competitive spear-fishermen and women, as they band together to combat one of the biggest challenges American and Caribbean coral reefs have faced.”
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Beta readers. Some belittle, some won’t admit to using them, some praise them. I fall into the final category. While I’m willing to concede beta readers are not for everyone, I am going to champion them here. I have a two-tier system. My long-suffering husband is my initial beta reader/listener. After a draft gets past him, I bring it to my writers’ group.