Ologies with Alie Ward - Cnidariology (CORAL) with Shayle Matsuda

Episode Date: July 25, 2019

Will changing your sunscreen save coral reefs? What even IS a coral? Where do they grow and what do they eat and why are they so pretty? Is it reefs or reeves? The wonderful and charming coral biologist and cnidariologist Shayle Matsuda of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology/UH Mānoa takes time out of his busy schedule during a coral spawning event to chat about how magical and beautiful coral can be and why reef health is important. Also: whether or not "Finding Nemo" got coral right, making transitions during grad school, and how to pursue your ambitions while being bravely authentic. He'll quickly become you favorite cnidariologist.Follow Shayle Matsuda on Twitter @wrong_whaleDonations went to paepaeoheeia.org and pointfoundation.org Shayle's blog post about coral spawningSponsor links: linkedin.com/ologies, kiwi.com/ologies, calm.com/ologiesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologiesOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologiesFollow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWardSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's your karate teacher who smells like your college sweetheart. And so you're weird around them. Allie Ward, back with another episode of oligies. So this episode was recorded in beautiful Hawaii, ever heard of it? A few weeks ago, you're about to just get an earful of coral. But before I recorded it, honestly, I knew neither Jack nor shit about coral. Now all I want to do is stare at videos of coral. Honestly, I used to just consider them to be like the really plucky kind of quirky setting

of a snorkeling, John, kind of like a like a splashy backdrop in a community theater play. Like, oh, that's nice. But you know, what's happening in front of them? What kind of fish do we have? Oh, contrary, after this episode, you'll be like, move out of the way, fish. I'm staring at a polyp. And yeah, it's totally fine. If you don't know what a polyp is, we will get to that.

But first, thank you to all the folks that support the show at patreon.com slash oligies for as little as a dollar a month. You can submit questions. Also, thanks to everyone who buys and wears shirts and hats and such from oligiesmerch.com. We have some new denim dad hats. If you need a new lid that says, I like weird facts, good intentions and bad puns. It doesn't literally say that. I'm just saying that it's like people will go, oh, that must be what you're into.

Although that's not a bad idea for a hat. Stay tuned. Also, thank you to everyone who tells friends and coworkers about the show and who rates and subscribes and leaves reviews, which you know I read because I deliver a fresh one each week. This week was a fun one for your old pal, Allie Ward. I brought attention to the fact that a department store was carrying some pretty out of touch and scientifically unsound body shaming dinnerware. And it made, for some reason, international news.

And it was picked up by some news sites that somehow made this a political issue. So I pointed people toward the collology episode with Dr. Renee Engelm to educate people on why body shame doesn't actually promote healthy eating. So this led to a rare one-star review from a new curious listener who must have heard about me on Breitbart. Golf guy 69, 69, 69, 69, 69, 9, 6, 9, 6 says yuck. This podcast claims to be science comedy. I didn't hear either.

Just a bunch of self-congratulation about not trying to look good. Sad, real. Is this what we want to promote in our society? A bunch of slobs. Thank you so much, Golf Guy 69, 69, 69, 69, 9, 6, 9, 6. I appreciate your feedback. This podcast has taught me so much about different perspectives and experiences. And I appreciate every single one of you, most of you.

So thank you for sharing your perspectives. I learned so much, and it's very much a pleasure to pass that information on. And hopefully make the world a little bit more compassionate. Anyway, okay. Nidariology. Totally a word. It's a well-documented, legit term. It's a study of animals.

There are over 10,000 species who have nitocytes, which are these specialized cells for catching prey. And where does this lovely, silent, consonant weird word come from? It looks like when your mom tries to weasel a fake term into a words with friends play. And you're like, no way, Nancy. That's not enough vowels. But it comes from the old Latin, Nide, which means a nettle. And it might also have ties to old Latvian and Lithuanian words, meaning to itch and to tickle. So corals are Nidarians.

They're underwater animals that poses these kind of beautiful plant looking things from Mars. And they want to just tickle you to death. I'm already sold. I already love them. But let's hear more. So I was introduced to this eulogist by your favorite toothologist, squid expert, Sarah Macanulty. Sarah Mac Attack on Twitter.

Follow her. Love her. And she invited me to tag along on a squidding trip to Hawaii, a research trip she was doing. A company called Atlas Obscura was facilitating it. They were awesome. They do wonderful science and history trips. It was a joy. Rachel, she led it.

I love her. Anyway, one day the group got to take a little boat to Coconut Island. And the very island featured in the opening credits of Gilligan's Island. And this was once a weird getaway for Hollywood types. But now it's a research station where grad students tend to marine life. We spent the day looking at these gurgling outdoor tanks and watching a bay of hammerhead sharks, strolling some beachy trails to stations with urchins and sea cucumbers and carry snails.

They're all being monitored by these wonderful marine biologists there. This eulogist got his bachelor's at UC Santa Cruz, double majoring in environmental studies and feminist studies. Got his master's in biology and ecology, evolution and conservation biology in San Francisco. And is working toward his PhD right now at this famed Gates Lab at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and the Hawaiian Institute of Marine Biology. The Gates Lab is a coral lab. This dude has his hands full.

The coral were in the middle of a spawning event. That very week. But he is amazing and took an hour out of his day to come to my hotel and chat about corals. I was waiting so excitedly in the lobby. And I thought like he was maybe five or 10 minutes late, which is fine. But it turns out we were in the same lobby exactly on time, but just perfectly obscured by a pillar. So once we figured that out, it was all smooth sailing.

We talked about what coral even is, why they're important, how he feels about diving, what a dead reef looks like, the state of some reefs around the world, if it's reef or reefs, perhaps the importance of balancing work with being your true self. Some advice for aspiring marine biologists. How screwed are coral? What movies get it right? What's up with sunscreens?

What is bleaching? And what else can we do to help our hard squishy pals beneath the sea? So anchor down, get ready for a wave of coral info with the amazing naderiologist Shail Matsuda. Shail Matsuda 9.59, Shail's due here at 10. I'm sitting by the pool. He has so little time.

I'm just essentially gonna throw this microphone in his face and like start rolling before we even hit the elevators. Wait, were you behind the column? How long have you been here? Like five or ten minutes. Oh my god, you two. Oh my god, what's going on? I came in the other side.

I was literally like 10 feet away reading about microplastics of coral and wanting to cry, but... Yeah, it's awful. Here's my thesis. And you are a naderiologist? Did I say it right? Sure, I was thinking about that or a coralologist maybe. I mean, are corals naderia? They're the naderians.

Okay, naderians. They're the phylum they're a part of. And what unites all of those animals is their stinging cells. They're nitocytes. Oh, that's the common thread. We must be related. Yeah, so like anemones or jellyfish and corals. I'll produce these little stinging cells that they use in defense or prey capture.

I've already learned so much about corals. I didn't know that. They got little stinkies. And so, what exactly is a coral? That's a great question that we think about all the time, actually. So, corals are animals, first and foremost, but the corals, when you think of a coral reef corals, they're much more than like the sum of their parts. So, the coral animal looks white.

They have clear tissues and they secrete a white calcium carbonate skeleton. But the reason that when you're snorkeling around a coral reef, they don't appear white to us is because they have a symbiotic algae, which live inside their tissues that provide up to like 95% of their daily nutritional needs. And the algae's color themselves are what we're looking at when we see corals. Oh, my God. And just like you and me, corals also have a microbiome. They have bacteria that live inside of their tissues that also play a lot of really important roles.

Okay, so to recap, corals are animals and they often have a calcium carbonate white skeletal structure and a squishy skin bag that can be filled with colorful algae and bacteria pals that live under their skin and provide their nutrition. So, if you pitched that creature in a sci-fi series, people would be like, no, that's too weird. What about just like a short, skinnier human with bigger eyes? And everyone would be like, yeah, yeah, that's more plausible. Now, what is with them being a skin bag?

This is like the hardest question. I know. It's like, oh man, we have a term for this. It's called the coral holobiont. And that is like the coral animal itself. It's symbiotic algae. It's bacteria. They're fungi.

They're archaea. They're a lot of different obligate symbionts that these corals have that are critical for their life and function. So, it's kind of like a skeleton, a soupy mix of goodness, and then like a little transparent skin over it. And the transparent skin is the animal itself. So, if just like trees that grow in the forest, if you count their rings, you get an idea of how old they are.

Corals actually work the same way where they are constantly secreting this calcium carbonate skeleton and growing. And researchers will actually take a core of that skeleton and you can actually count the different layers and get an idea of the age of the corals and also what was going on on the planet at the time. Oh my gosh. Is it similar to trees in that there's a ring for every year of growth because of seasons? Or is that different?

It's kind of like seasons in the ocean. Different corals will grow at different rates. So, kind of like different plants as well. In a nutshell, like as the coral begins to grow and keeps putting down these layers of calcium carbonate, we can use things like carbon dating to get an idea of like what was happening in the atmosphere and in the oceans at those times. And so, it kind of gives us a geologic history of what was happening in these environments. Wow.

So, when you see, let's say, a coral out of the ocean and it's like a piece on a... I know. I'm like, well, yeah, you know, number one, it's not a happy coral. But when you see like a decorative coral, are you seeing essentially just its skeleton? Yes. When we say coral reef corals, they're a particular type of group of corals that live in the shallow waters, that, you know, have these algal symbionts that rely on photosynthesis to get their food.

But corals are a really large group of organisms. And we have deep sea corals that don't have these symbioses that just feed heterotrophically by eating, you know, plankton or things in the water. And a lot of corals like can have pigments and their skeletons do have pigments of their own. And so, like black corals, you know, red corals, those things that you see in the stores, like that's still the skeleton, but those are the organisms themselves. Which we shouldn't pull out of the ocean. Which we should leave in the ocean.

Leave in the ocean. Now, are those getting harvested just for decorative purposes? Yeah, very often. There's a lot of protections in different places about corals, but it's, you know, not everywhere. Okay, so side notes. Some figures have estimated upwards of $200 million annually. Worth of coral is poached from the oceans for things like jewelry and decor. And in some places, just taking a coral skeleton bit from the beach is illegal.

So, if you're going to get arrested on a beach, do something else. Have a better story, you know? So, maybe don't have coral decorations. Yeah, okay. You know, but what you can have is that we're, you know, with technology increases where we're doing a lot of work with like 3D imaging and you can like go home or, you know, go to a museum or, you know, a tech place and get a coral printed and put that in your house. Yes, you can admire them in a way that's a replica.

Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. And this is beautiful. Right, you can, I'm sure you can even cast, cast them in the little plaster of Paris in there. Exactly. We fixed it. PSDS, I did look it up and there are hollow coral shaped molds. You can pour plaster of Paris in them and it just, it seems more convenient than getting

yourself to an ocean and then out of jail. And now how long have you been studying corals? I've been studying corals formally for four years during this degree. But I've been interested in corals for much longer and have studied corals as a volunteer researcher at the California Academy of Sciences on expeditions and volunteer expeditions, actually kind of like Alice Obscura as a younger person. And were you always maybe drawn to the sea or were you always like an aquatic person? That's a good question too.

So I grew up just outside of Chicago where even though I felt like I was growing up on a body of water like Michigan, it's not a marine environment, it's a freshwater environment. So it looks like I wasn't growing up swimming on coral reefs. But for me, looking back, my first taste of the ocean was growing up and going to the Shed Aquarium and seeing all the exhibits there and I think that's a really common thread that you hear for a lot of us who pursue degrees in marine biology that most of us in the United States aren't lucky enough to grow up on a coral reef. And so a lot of our first exposures to this, especially those of us before like the YouTube

era and whatnot, was going to our local aquariums and really seeing these organisms that you don't even read about the ocean. If you're wondering, where are corals? I asked corals.org and it said essentially around the equator plus where currents flow out of the tropics like in Florida and Southern Japan. It's a little bit warmer. They make up 0.2% of the ocean floor, but they're home to, this blew my mind, 25% of marine life. What?

So if sea animals were like the cool kids, the coral reefs would be like the mall if this were a movie from the 80s. And so was there a moment like at the aquarium where you thought I would love to do that in life? It's interesting. I'm going to give you my journey story and you can like hack this up. I love a journey story. It's a journey story. Okay.

Let's get to know Shale's science background. Settle in. So I had one of those moments where like I was always drawn to nature, to being outside and playing outside. I was a very like, I was not a video game kid. I was a wanted to get muddy kid. But when I got to college, I kind of went a different science route. I studied, you know, water policy and sustainable organic farming and that

was something that I was like really into and really excited about. And I never, I just like marine biology wasn't like something that I thought I could really do. And I ended up actually pursuing a different path. My dual degree in environmental science and women's studies. And I kind of went the second route and just kind of worked with the youth in nature and underserved communities. And I got to this point, you know, my little bit later twenties, I decided to, you know, quit my job and move out of my house and sell all my stuff.

And travel and figure that out. And something that happened for me on that trip was I finally decided to learn scuba dive. I'm a really claustrophobic person. So I kind of put that off for a while. And I really explicitly remember, you know, that first time I descended into the water. And this was in Thailand. And I remember like being so overwhelmed with how beautiful all the corals were and how this environment, like different than just snorkeling,

just like opened up in a really three dimensional dynamic way. And then I also remember seeing a lot of garbage on the reef too. And so I was having a lot of, I was having these like, you know, push-pull moments of being like so overwhelmed with the beauty around me. And so curious about, you know, what these animals were, what, you know, what is this environment that I'm in? And I want to look at everything, but also being really struck by how polluted it was as well. From there, basically went, I wanted to make sure that was the right choice.

And so I applied to sitting in these little internet cafes, like applying to these like coral reef monitoring like volunteerships, just to like learn a little bit more, make sure this is the like big life switch I was ready to make. And I joined one that was in the Yucatan in Mexico. I went out and lived for three months and learned to identify all the species of coral out there. And we participated in monitoring transects that were then used by local NGOs to compare the protected sites that they had gotten protection for versus the sites that weren't. And so in that experience, really kind of solidified that.

You know, I moved back to San Francisco. I went to City College to make up some coursework that I hadn't done the first time. I was volunteering as a diver at Aquarium to get more hands-on experience. Started volunteering in a research lab at the California Academy of Sciences. And then I was bartending to, you know, pay the bills. And then from there, I realized that, you know, being at a museum was such an exciting place because you've got researchers studying everything. Right. You've got that.

You've got tourists and like community folks from the neighborhood who are like right upstairs that you can just go upstairs and talk to you about like all the really cool things that we're working on. And then moving on, you know, from there to my to my PhD where I am now was, you know, at that point I was like pretty much sold. So I have never been yet snorkeling in an alive reef. Oh, you've got to do that. What is that like? I mean, you do that for your job and also as a passion.

Like what is it like to be underwater like that? It's so beautiful. Yeah. It's so beautiful. Coral's come in like all shapes and sizes and just like, you know, you have your favorite city or your favorite, you know, nature trail you like to walk on. Every reef is going to be a little bit different. They have huge structures and these corals will have these, you know, these big branching corals.

You just look a little closer and you see their homes to all these different kinds of animals. Like the more, you know, the more structure you have in your in the ecosystem, the more different types of organisms you're going to see when you're down there. And it's just, it's, it's so exciting. Like there's so much to see. And you'll see your turtle and your shark every once in a while, which is really exciting. But for me, it's like kind of just like swimming up to one kind of coral and just like staring at it for a while.

And then things will start to come out. You'll see like crabs that live inside the coral. You'll see, you know, snapping shrimp. Sometimes you'll see eels or octopus and just like, you just, it is like, it's like a, you can think of it almost like a, you know, a metropolis in the ocean and full of a diverse cast of players. When you're doing research, is it ever difficult for you to say, okay, all right, Jill, we're done. We're get out of the water. Are you like one more thing?

Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, and sometimes you forget, like there have been times when I, you know, since I work on corals and I'm working on an experiment right now where I'm focusing on individual coral colonies, I can be like upside down in the reef for like an hour at a time, just staring at this one coral. And then we'll come to the surface and people will be like, how did you see that shark that went by before? And I'll be like, what are you talking about?

You know, so it's always still really nice to go out when you're not working. And just really appreciate, you know, how lucky we are to be able to see these environments. You know, I've worked with researchers who, you know, I'll go to a coral reef and I'll say, this is beautiful. Look at all the diversity here. And they'll be like, you should have seen it 20 years ago. Because we're seeing these changes at such a rapid pace that we're witnessing them in our lifetimes. And that's new.

Yeah. So what is Shale working on in terms of protecting these bony, soupy, squishy, mysterious, gorgeous little critters? What we're working on, like our lab group is working on is, you know, really a whole wide range of questions, but we're really curious about, you know, what's going to happen to corals under these future climate conditions? And what can we do to intervene to give them a better chance of surviving? I'm trying to decide if I want to go like broad or like my stuff.

Actually, let's go broad a little bit just because people don't know shit about corals. That's true. But they're the coolest animals. I know. Yeah. So corals are all, coral species are all really, really different. That's something that makes them super exciting and interesting, but it makes it also a lot harder to come up with like strategies to help them survive because they reproduce differently.

You know, some will brood, like releasing coral larvae into the water. Some will spawn, releasing coral gametes, eggs and sperm into the water. Some are large and they grow in these really big shapes. Some are very small, even single polyped corals. And so they, and they have very different life strategies. They're so different. They associate with different types of these symbionts. And so what we're really interested in is seeing if, you know, are there types of interventions

that we can kind of scale up that managers and conservationists all around the world who work with these different corals and these different coral reef environments that are all widely different can use or like can use as signals for what might happen in the future or to use to kind of help those corals that are, that are out there survive. Some of the stuff that we're working on in the lab is looking at like, can we expose corals to non-lethal stressors to condition them, to them to be put out in the reef? And if they experience these higher temperatures downstream, will that initial exposure help them survive?

What is coral bleaching, you're asking? I get it. We're going to explain that in a second. Don't worry. I got you. And with coral bleaching, what's really hard about that is it's, it's this whole balance of how hot and for how long. So if there's like a really short, high temperature spike, how does that affect these organisms versus if this is more of a prolonged, only a degree or two above that thermal maximum that they have, how does that affect if they're going to bleach the severity of that bleaching

and then also their ability to recover afterwards? So we haven't really talked about like what coral bleaching is. Yeah, I know. That's an expression. So I was like, okay, like that probably doesn't make any sense yet. So corals have these, these symbiotic algae that are obligate. That means they're required for the corals to live. They provide up to 95% of their daily nutritional needs. And everything, when the temperatures are good, everything is happy, you know,

the corals get what they need, the symbiotes get what they need. But when the water temperature rises, like I said, just even slightly above that thermal maximum that the corals can handle, the corals are starting to stress out. I'm freaking out. And one of their stress responses is to expel these algae. So kind of how when we get sick, we'll get a fever and that's good. It's our body's way of helping protect us. But if that fever gets too high or goes on for too long,

that can actually be detrimental to us. And the same thing is true with coral bleaching. So as the corals are purging out these algal symbiotes, it's not just all the time. Like you'll see, you can watch a coral start to pale, losing its color, right? Because as the symbiotes leave, that white skeleton is showing through. And then as that's happening, the longer it goes on, the corals aren't getting the energy and they can begin to starve. Okay. So under temperature stressors, corals toss their internal friends and they bleach

because they lose that color. So they're not dead, but they're certainly weaker and they're in danger. It is not cute. And what you'll see is if you go out into the coral reef, when this is happening, if you see these corals that are white, you're seeing that skeleton through the tissue, but the tissue is still there. The corals are still alive. And if that stressor leaves, the corals have a chance to recover.

Those symbiotic communities can proliferate again in the corals. They'll repigment and be okay. But if that stressor goes on too long, the corals can die. And we've seen this happen on massive scales on a reef. And once the corals die, you'll start to see macro algae growing on top of them. And that's when the structure of the reef environment will then start to really break down. And also, some corals aren't bleaching. Some individuals, like in Kanioa Bay during the 2014 and 2015 bleaching events that we had,

there'd be two corals, the exact same species, right next to each other, touching on the reef. And one of them would be bleached and one of them would be visibly totally normal. And so we're really trying to understand what is it about that corals, like genetic makeup or symbiotic communities that is allowing these corals to perform a lot better. And so when you're looking at, say, two different examples of coral next to each other, are those different individuals genetically or are those different groups of a bunch of individuals? When you're looking at a fan of coral, how many people are you looking at that are coral? Yeah, that's a good question. So a coral colony is a coral.

You can think of a coral itself as a coral polyp. What is a polyp? Well, it's a squishy little bugger with a feathery head and it secretes calcium carbonate and it's based to anchor it on a surface, kind of like a cup holder filled with one of those gas station windsock dancers only made out of jello salad. Also, as long as this train has to toot made a stop into polypville, it comes from the words poly, many and P mean foot. So polyp. And in old Latin, it meant cuttlefish. I personally tend to associate polyps with bad news about colons. And that's because a polyp is a little intestinal dingle dangle

that can grow. And if not checked, it can turn into a tumor. So get checked. Okay, let's get out of our butts and back into the ocean though. What is a polyp? In the ocean. So you look a little mouth, kind of like if you took an anemone, that kind of structure in the middle, tentacles on the outside. And as the coral grows, it buds off and creates a genetically identical polyp. And as those polyps continue to multiply and spread and grow, you've got a coral colony that is made up of polyps that are all one genetic individual. Do you think that that's all the same person or do you think it's a person and a bunch of clones? Yeah, it's a hard question. I understand that a coral is not a person too, but

yeah, definitely. And that's a hard question. Actually, people in the lab are looking at that too, like at what life stage are corals able to fuse together and share resources or not. Do some species do this more than others? So that's definitely a really good question. Okay, good. But we don't totally know the answer to that. You can't just look at one and be like, that's three or four genetic, genetically distinct individuals. We're literally the same person. Sometimes when they do grow up next to each other, you can see kind of like a scar between colonies where one individual ends and the next one begins. But we're also like, we're also seeing evidence of fusion. And how much do you think research has changed in the last five or 10 years

with DNA sequencing and how much cheaper and faster that's gotten? So much. Yeah, that's cool. I mean, it's a really exciting time to be a biologist right now and asking questions that we couldn't afford to ask before to know the technology to ask before on these really large scales. And now what about their stinkiness? They're little stingers, stingers. How is that helping them survive or thwart predators? Or are there predators to coral other than just human mishaps? Yeah, humans. Our vantals. Yeah. So corals don't have a lot of predators. There's a lot of fish that will like, you've probably heard of parrotfish that will try to like eat the macro algae around coral. Sometimes they will nibble the coral too. But you know, for the most

part, there's not a lot of animals coming towards them to eat them in that sense. They use their stinging cells a lot to in prey capture. So if you see if you like stare at a coral long enough under the scope and you know, if you piece of plankton, you know, swims up, you'll see it almost like kind of like a venous slide trap. You'll see the plankton get stuck to the coral tentacles, and then the coral tentacles will pull it into its mouth and suck it in and digest it. It's really neat to watch. So but those, you know, the stinging cells, like if you touch a coral, which you shouldn't do, it will try to sting you too. But our skin is too thick. But you know, other animals like, you know, Portuguese man more, for example, like there are stinging

cells that can affect us too. But corals are pretty safe. Don't touch them. But Shale says that one thing that changed in his academic lifetime is that gene sequencing technology has improved vastly. So they're able to get hundreds, thousands, millions of reads, getting a much better idea of what bacterial communities associate with corals. Just imagine your haircut six or seven years ago, like yikes, right? Just imagine what gene sequencing thinks of its TBTs. So embarrassing. And what this will do is I can go out there and take a really small tissue sample, extract the DNA, sequence the DNA, get back like, you know, 10, 20,000 reads of all these different organisms that we were able to amplify. And from that, I can see, you know, who

is there? Who's there? Who is it? Get an idea of like, what the, what the functions of these organisms and like how important might that be to the health and survival of the coral, a lot of the bacteria, like, you know, bacteria of different, different roles, like in us, like your skin bacteria is going to be different than your gut bacteria. You don't want those to mix. And like corals have bacteria that, you know, help in like defense and nutrient cycling and things like that. So we're interested in like what, what those are doing there and we can get a way better idea of what's going on now than we could, you know, 10, 15 years ago. Warning. Bummer question. Bummer question ahead.

And what do you think is the biggest coral bummer for the coral? Would it be a rise in temperature or ocean acidification, pollution? Like is there, what's their big, what's their big sad trombone? So corals are dealing with a lot of threats right now. The biggest one being the impacts of climate change. And we're seeing this on reefs today in the form of sea surface temperature warming and ocean acidification, as you mentioned. And what, why this is so bad is that we're seeing an increase, like even in our lifetimes of these massive coral bleaching events worldwide. And a coral bleaching event can wipe out entire reef ecosystems in like one season. We're seeing them not only, you know, it's not just like a one off anymore. And here in Hawaii,

we've had, we had the events in 2014, again in 2015. The Great Barrier Reef has also experienced these successive events. And so while, you know, we're seeing corals that are able to survive one round of this warming and recover, it's like you keep on hitting them. What is that affecting? Like we've got research groups at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology who are looking at like, how does, how does the reproduction affected by, by these events? Like, are we going to see a lot more downstream things that are happening? And you add things like the local stressors, like, you know, overfishing or sedimentation and pollution runoff from a lot of the local environments that are there, that those are like kind of the, the added pressures that,

that corals are facing. And it's, if it is so good, like it is so good and so important to, to mitigate some of these local stressors, right? Like, you know, diverting pollution and sedimentation really important, like a coral can't live if it's covered in sediment. Okay. Quick aside, what is up with sediments? Well, apparently it's been long known that sediments and coral, they are not happy roommates. Sailors would know that they could enter a freshwater river because that's when the reefs would stop because the sediment in their outflows would kill the coral. So why can't coral deal with a little river dust or erosion or storms caused by weather events or say tsunamis? So in a paper titled,

Mechanisms of Damage to Corals Exposed to Sedimentation, researchers say that sediment blocks sunlight, which means that their photosynthetic inner algae buddies get blocked. So there goes their nutrient and energy source. Now, if there's also organic material in the sediment, it tends to hog all the nearby oxygen in the water and then those byproducts lower the pH and then other organic compounds in the sediment get digested, they release toxic hydrogen sulfide. So the sediment covered coral can die in 24 hours. It can happen really quickly. Okay. So even though coral is an animal, just like imagine a favorite house plant and then imagine coating it in a heavy spray paint and dipping it in an acid bath and then pumping poison in the room. Your plant

would be like, wow, can you not? The most important thing that we need to address if we want corals in the future is climate change. And why are coral reefs important? Also, is it reefs or is it reefs? Is it reefs? I always want to say like reefs, like roofs or like hooves. I like that, I haven't heard that actually. I always want to say reefs and I know that's not. Reefs. Reefs. Okay, like, you know, like multiple. Okay. I think, you know, foots or feet. I don't know. But it reefs. Okay. I've asked an expert and it's not reefs. Listen, if elves had hooves, the second halves of their lives, would they be tall enough to reach the shelves when they kept their knives to cut up loaves of bread or with their wives have to put down the scarves they're knitting to get

them themselves? I can't believe it's not reefs. So why are reefs important? Why do we why do we want to save the reefs other than they're fucking gorgeous and awesome and fish live there? But clearly they are important. Yeah, they're, yes. Yeah, they're, they're really important and they're really important for a lot of different reasons are really personal to too many people, but also that on a community and, you know, national international scale as well. So, you know, having a coral reef environment is they're one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world. They're a bank for biodiversity. And within that, you know, the coral reefs themselves are the breeding grounds and homes for tons of marine life. We've got animals that will come in from

like the deeper oceans to breed. Fish is a really important, you know, food resource for a lot of coastal communities. It's their main source of protein main source protein for many people in the world. And the reef environment is where a lot of those larger game fish reproduce and come back to coral reefs and a lot of our coastal ecosystems are really important for mitigating mitigating coastal damage. So you've got they absorb a lot of that, you know, wave action, that wave power that's coming in. We've all seen really awful things that have been happening in a lot of our coastal communities around the world because of, you know, flooding and you know, coastline erosion and things like that.

Shale stresses that he doesn't like to focus too much on the potential pharmaceutical benefits of nature because there are other intrinsic reasons for conservation. But, you know, a big something that we're learning more and more about the ocean in general is that there's a lot of these chemicals out there that can be used to help humans. And so for me, like one of the most exciting moments that I had actually during my master's degree, I studied sea slugs and new ranks during that time was I was like in my advisor's office looking through some old papers. And I found this paper where one of the slugs that I study, really cool animals, they will eat things like sponges or different organisms that produce these toxic chemical compounds

and they will slightly alter them when they eat them and they'll put them in their own tissues and use them to fend off their own predators. Really cool. I did a little digging and for more information on this, you might want to dip into just a light beach read entitled, quote, selective toxicity of a Persian Gulf sea cucumber, Hilarithia parva on human chronic lymphocytic leukemia by B lymphocytes by direct mitochondrial targeting. Okay. Spoiler alert, I'm going to let Shale tell you the plot of the paper. But these toxins that are like antimicrobial, antiviral also can be used in medical biomedical research that that benefits humans. So I'm like looking through this box of papers and found this paper and I'm like, oh my gosh,

should I like call my mom, right? And I'm like on the phone with my mom and I'm like, mom, like guess what? Like there's this nudibranch that they're studying that they're using to see if they can treat the adult form of cancer that I had as a kid, which was like mind blowing to me. Wait, what? Like this organism that I like didn't think I was going to study. And I don't study pharmaceutical things or anything like that. But just that like this kind of a group of animals that I didn't know much about before could actually have such like a personal impact on me. And there's like tons of things out there that we haven't discovered yet. Oh my God, what kind of cancer was it?

A childhood leukemia. Oh my God. Which is wild, right? So it's like, I was like, it's all came full circle. But it's those kind of moments where there, you know, the reasons to protect coral reefs, we might not even know all the reasons yet, right? And are we going to lose these opportunities? Because of like, you know, it's not because we don't know better, but it's because it's like, we're not ready. Politicians aren't ready. It's not for a lack of science, I should say, that we're not making these big changes. But I'm hopeful that we're getting there, we're getting in the right direction.

Do you think having had that experience with cancer as a kid changed the way you approached what you wanted to do in life and at all? Yeah, not in the way you would expect. Like everyone thought I was going to grow up and want to be a doctor, right? That's like a really typical narrative that people ascribe to childhood cancer survivors. For me, what was hard, or I think the way that it affected me the most like in my personality is that I, from a very early age, didn't have this idea of like all the time in the world. It was like, if I want to do something, I have to do it now. And so I was, from a very early age, I was very, for better or for worse, everything that I want to happen,

it has to happen now. So it resulted in me being a very driven human being, but then at the same time, it also causes a lot of anxiety and pressure. And I think that it got me really curious about science, about answering questions, and about the fact that, oh man, this story too. So leukemia is a really interesting thing because for like, you know, centuries and whatnot of studying this thing, we didn't know what caused it. And there's been a lot of hypotheses out there that have talked about, you know, it's going to be like an environmental thing, whatnot. And it was only, it was very recently that a paper came out with like this new hypothesis that it was, it's kind of like a combination of things. It's like a genetic thing, like a genetic

predisposition. And then also, the hypothesis is that babies who are not exposed to like the right bacteria in their like first year of life, we're more prone to this. And, you know, so that, that was like super interesting, because like a lot of, you know, bacteria is like another really big thing in my research today, like there's a lot of work going on with like coral probiotics, like can we, you know, I'm studying like what bacteria is there, other groups are working on, like can we take the bacteria that we know is helping coral survive and like inoculate them with that at early age, and then will that help them down the line. So like this whole idea that, you know, maybe we could prevent childhood leukemia by creating a probiotic cocktail for

babies. And then all of a sudden, like, can we solve, you know, or help mitigate, you know, coral diseases by also creating like a probiotic, like there's the amount of knowledge we're gaining about bacteria just in general right now, it's just been like a huge, a huge driver for knowledge. Right. And the notion that it's not just one necessarily species you're studying, but it's interaction with several species that almost makes it able to survive and adapt. Shale says that some corals even need both bacteria and certain viruses present to survive these thermal events. So the symbiotic connections go deep, they get complicated, kind of like a group of adults who've been friends since college, just like a girls weekend without stuff,

things that a coral party just aren't the same without both bacteria and viruses. The ocean is full of different things and, you know, we're looking at like a lot of these like interactions, like how many partners need to be in play to get this result or to prevent something from happening. It's just a really exciting time to be studying like all of this stuff. So home to 25% of the world's marine species, potentially home to a cure for cancer, weird, interesting alien-like live sculptures full of other beings. And also, our new friend, Coral, is just plain really pretty and nice to look at. So there's that factor, Shale explains. And they're also, you know, really important for tourism and the economy. And that's also a really

great way to kind of switch our way that we think about like our economy is, you know, instead of, you know, extracting from the reef and damaging the reef, we can actually like do, you know, eco-friendly tourism, bring people, educate people to see the reef. And, you know, it's hard to find an appreciation for something that you have never seen before. Like, you know, we can all kind of relate to that. And we all have those moments where like, you know, you saw something for the first time, even, you know, any place in nature, like we can have those kind of moments. But I think that's really important also. And especially like here in Hawaii, the coral reef ecosystems are incredibly important culturally. And there's a lot of history,

there's a lot of stories, a lot of history wrapped up in these ecosystems. And it's, you know, there's a lot of reasons to protect them. And with 85% of the US coral reefs surrounding Hawaii, there's also a really big cultural necessity of protecting and preserving those ecosystems. And there's a piece called Pukamai Heikoa, the significance of corals in Hawaiian culture. And it's featured in the book, Ethnobiology of Corals and Coral Reefs with an F, Reefs, fine. And the lead author of it, Tony McConaughey writes, quote, Hawaiian people consider coral to be Anakua, something that provides birth and death to both the people and the islands, and possesses much mana, which is the

essence of spirituality. Corals are considered the beginning of life, and are thus the most ancient ancestors of all living things in Hawaii. And that's something that Shale seems to approach with a lot of reverence. He seems to have a lot of empathy, which may be from feeling conscious of ping-ponging between a few science subjects before he landed on reefs. But also, he plays through grad school with challenges that most of us don't face. Not only did I not have a, you know, a direct like go to undergrad, go to your master's or go straight to your PhD kind of experience, but I'd experienced also a lot of the obstacles and challenges that, you know, folks who don't typically see themselves in science face as well. And that's not something that you would necessarily

get from looking at me today. And for me, I experienced a lot of sexism when I was younger. So I didn't transition until I was just, until I was in my master's program. And so I had the experience of being a woman in science for like my entire coming into science. And, you know, in high school, I was put on like the, not the honor science track and took me a while to realize that this is something that happened. Those experiences in particular, like really came to head for me when I showed up at my PhD program, like well into my medical transition, and all of a sudden had access to like conversations in space where people really kind of let you know what they really think in ways that I didn't before. And those, you know, it's, it has been

a very interesting experience to see on the other side, you know, really a lot of the things that I thought were happening, although, you know, the old ways of thinking and kind of the gatekeepers for a lot of opportunities in STEM from, from this point of view. And so I think that like the taking a longer time in your journey is something that's very typical for folks, you know, from many underrepresented backgrounds in the sciences, especially after decades, centuries of, you know, being excluded not only from science careers, but also like, you know, science research, the medical industry is a great example of that. PS, side note, I had heard that women weren't included in some medical research trials, but I

didn't know how big a deal or how recent this was. Like cell phones existed by the time a law called the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993 passed stating that the director of NIH shall ensure that a women are included as subjects in each project of such research and that be members of minority groups are included in such research. A 2016 article in pharmacy practice said that when studying diseases prevalent in both sexes, males frequently of the Caucasian race were considered to be the norm study population. And that was a direct quote from a journal article there. But PS heads up, I didn't know this until this past year, but the word Caucasian has super racist origins. It's no longer widely used. So scrap that white works.

And nearly 20 years ago, the Institute of Medicine clarified and made a really important distinction between sex and gender, gender being the self representation, social and cultural views of sex. So if anyone ever tells you that they know your gender based on your body, tell them that science says that is hogwash. Thank you very much. Also, Shale says that having a mentor you trust and respect is so important. He had situations that called for allies like like preparing for field work in countries where certain identities could put you at risk or navigating passport issues, just things that some of us might really take for granted. Because it's really hard to be alone and struggling. You know, I'd say like for me, like the hardest things have been, you know,

personal in this journey as opposed to like, you know, science is hard, but I have lots of people to talk to you about my experiments. And so like, I think that like, you know, besides all the like systemic things that we need to do to help make STEM actually more inclusive, we need to find our communities and like lift each other up in that sense. Do you find that maybe underrepresented folks tend to have a little bit more imposter syndrome? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, imposter syndrome. Yeah. Yes, definitely. And then sometimes you, you, you see it like it's very obvious. You're like, Oh, I know, like you walk into a room and like, I feel like every person of color, probably every woman, probably, you know, every LGBTQ person, when you walk into a room,

whether it's like a new class or a conference, like you kind of look around the room and you look for your allies. Like he's got my back here. And I think that, you know, so like there's these imposter syndrome is never like it's a standalone feeling, you know, it's, it's built up over, you know, over so much that's going on in the world. Like, do you, are there people like you that you have as role models? Do you see people are your, are the interests of your communities being addressed in like societal science? Did you end up at a lab that you felt you had a little bit more community? And also you work on coconut island, which is a beautiful place in Hawaii. I mean, it's also this little isolated pocket of marine science.

How did you, how did you end up there? And what was your feeling when you, when you found out you'd be researching there? That's a good question. So I only actually applied to one program. You did? For my PhD. That's great. And 100% I applied because I wanted to work with Dr. Ruth Gates, who's a excellent coral biologist and also someone who really valued science communication and connecting to communities and the public and inspiring like people to care so deeply about reefs. And those are two things that were very, very important to me.

I also really want to, it was very important to me to work in a large collaborative lab where there's a lot of collaborative work and a lot of sharing of ideas and support, and also in a place where I would feel safe. And safe means access to safe healthcare, finding community on the islands, a university or a place that actually has anti-discrimination policies in place. There's a lot of places that don't have a lot of friends who are part of universities that are in places that you can be thrown in jail for using the wrong restroom, wrong, right? Quotes. And then we've seen a lot of actually some really great response around that from like the scientific community, canceling conferences and areas that are putting up these

really discriminatory policies and things like that. And that's wonderful. The UC system has done a lot of actually great work in that sense by saying you're off funding travel to these places. One professional mentor who meant so much to Shale was Dr. Ruth Gates of the Gates Coral Lab. He's at now. And she was a veteran coral biologist. She apparently had such a zeal for her work. She passed away just this past October at age 56 of cancer. And when we went and toured the labs in Hawaii, Ruth's name was brought up a lot. And you can tell that she's dearly, dearly missed. But it seems like he ended up in the right place. Oh, and, and also before Patreon questions, it's a big day for you because they started spawning last night. What?

Oh, that's funny. I was like, because it's pride. Oh, yeah, happy pride. Yeah, they did. But spawn, it's spawn of Palooza right now. It is. It is. So something really amazing about corals, there's not enough amazing stuff is, is coral spawning events. And so corals, right, you're a sedentary animal, you're not moving around to find your mates. How you're in the ocean, how are you going to reproduce, you know, besides fragmenting off. And so the way it works is it's this combination of cues. It's the moon cycle. From the planet moon. It's the temperature. It's like the pressure in the environment that will all come together and cue the corals to release their gametes into the water column. And for the coral species that we study, the rice coral,

manta precapitata out here in the lab, they spawn two to three months during the summer on the night of the new moon and a few nights after. And if you're lucky enough to be out in the bay, you kind of peer over at around 845 p.m. And you'll start to see these little cream colored bundles slowly floating to the surface of the water with the size of a pin head. It was so little. And on a really big night, like the entire surface will be just like covered in these little white dots. After about like half an hour, the wave action will cause them to burst. Their little tiny eggs inside will float in the sperm will start to sink. And you know, in the next day or so, there will be swimming coral larvae, these little itty bitty jelly beans. And

then those larvae will then, you know, swim around and look for some suitable substrate to metamorphose into the first polyp, which will hopefully grow into to many of to form the next colony. We didn't get a lot of spawning in June. Usually we see it like June, July, August. And since we didn't see a lot in June, we thought, you know, maybe this will be our big month. And so coming going out of last night, we decided to just like take a quick look on the bay, see what we saw. And there was a pretty big event. So that kind of, you know, being a coral biologist, you have to be kind of ready to respond to whatever's going to happen. So we've kind of changed our plans and we'll, we'll go out and, you know, see what we can do. And this is a great time for

us because a lot of the questions we have about early life stages, we can only ask during the summer months. And so right now, this is a really exciting way for us to get a lot of genetic diversity and to run some of these preconditioning tests to see, you know, if you, you know, cool them down, if you heat them up, what it's going to do to their settlement or survivorship. So you can kind of scoop up and run them in, in tubs into the lab and see how they respond best? Yeah. Yeah. The technology that we use, you know, for like DNA sequencing is like one end of the spectrum. And then on the ground in the lab, okay, is, is very like DIY, you know, grab some buckets. We make these big scoops out of like these plastic shoeboxes where we cut like windows and hot glue

on mesh, kind of use those to scoop out the bundles, carefully put them into like little containers where they do the fertilization. And then oftentimes we'll even just leave them to sit overnight and buckets and see, you know, and then carefully clean them out the next morning. But a lot of our tools are stuff that we have to kind of just come up with on the fly to, to use. They don't sell coral spawning supply kits. There's a lot of Home Depot five gallon buckets. Yeah. Lots of buckets everywhere in any lab. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh my God. Shale wrote a blog post last June about coral spawning. And in it, he described setting out on the night of the new moon with life jackets and a first aid kit and headlamps. They use red

lights so they don't interfere with any lunar cues for the coral. And they have as many two and a half gallon buckets as will fit on the floor of a small whaler boat. And he says in it, our tools are not glamorous, but they get the job done. And there are photos of these milky trails of coral bundles popping to release eggs into the water and a glimpse of what field research looks like. So for more of that, I'm going to link the post in the show notes and on my website. Now we're about to ask your Patreon questions. But before we do, a few words from sponsors of the show. These sponsors make it possible for allergies to donate to a charity of etiologists choosing. And this week, Shale picked two. The first one is Pepe Ohei. It's a private

nonprofit organization caring for an ancient Hawaiian fish pond located on Oahu. And its vision is to perpetuate a foundation of cultural sustainability and to provide intellectual and physical and spiritual sustenance for their community. This fish pond serves as a place of learning to weave ancestral knowledge together with western ways of knowing to achieve their goals. And a second donation went to Point Foundation and PointFoundation.org is the nation's largest scholarship granting organization for LGBTQ plus students of merit and Point promotes change through scholarship funding, mentorship, leadership development, and community service training and links to both those charities and to our sponsors who make

that possible will be in the show notes. Okay, some things I'm liking this week. Okay, your questions. Now, first question we got from Laura Kruppens and a bunch of other folks including Jessica Efritz, Jennifer Alvarez, Caitlin Fitzgerald, Jenna Martin, Ira Gray, Jessica Zarninsky, Dakota Harriman, Crystal Mendoza, Tofer Hennis, Casey Kaiser, Lauren Kruppens, and Jesse E. Scott asked, how harmful is sunscreen to coral? This is a big question. How harmful or what does it do? It's oxybenzonates certain non chemical, some non mineral sunscreens. It's a tough question. It's a tough question. It's a tough question. Like people definitely, seen movements in different coastal communities to ban unsafe sunscreen and this is a field of

research that is beginning to grow. It's a new thing that we're seeing and it's really important to consider these stressors or these daily things that we're doing that may or not be harmful to reefs. Considering what sunscreen you use, just like considering any type of chemicals that you're introducing to a natural environment is a really important thing. However, what we are concerned about is that in the grand scheme of the impacts facing corals, it is a very small drop in the bucket compared to climate change. That's always a really hard thing. The research is ongoing with how bad these chemicals are and the effects that they have, but the danger is when that's where we stop. Considering your sunscreen choice is a really

great point of departure. Same thing with plastic straw bands and things like that for people who might not consider how their daily actions affect coral reefs to begin to learn more and to understand how are my actions affecting the reefs? What else can I do and to figure out what it is that each of us are doing every day that affects the planet? If that's the stopping point, that's a really dangerous thing because just changing your sunscreen is not going to slow down our loss of reefs. Afterwards, Shale sent me a link to a piece written just a few weeks ago by two coral scientists in Florida who said that people are being led to believe that there's extensive scientific evidence about the impact of oxybenzone on corals, and it's simply not true. It went on

to cite three main factors that are actually killing coral. Climate change, there are biological changes like diseases and invasive species, there's overfishing, and the overfishing depletes the fish that eat the algae that overgrow on corals. There's also water quality issues like wastewater and land runoff that dump those pollutants and sediments into the reefs. Sorry, everyone. So don't just change your mineral sunscreen and be like, nailed it. Yeah, let me. So actually, okay, I got permission to tell this part of that story. Oh, okay. And an example of that is a colleague of mine recently went into a local classroom to talk about corals and the research we do, and she asked the students what was the biggest

threat facing corals, and everybody said sunscreen. Oh, no. And that is the kind of, oh, no, moment. And she actually spoke with some of the teachers, and they were like, we had no idea. This is what people have been telling us. This is what we've been telling our students, and that's where that's not good. It's a great way to get people to understand that small actions that we take every day can have really big impacts. However, in no way is like, we have to focus on climate change. This next question was asked by a listener if you started making these beautiful paintings inspired by episodes. So to see them, you can check out the oligies Instagram and then follow

her too, because she is wonderful. Maria Hancox wants to know how excited are you that Pantone's color of the year is coral? Super excited. Anytime that corals can go, you know, make it into social media, get across people's radar, like why is that, you know, do I want to learn more? It's really great because there's a lot of animals in the world that are endangered, right? Like, corals are, you know, part of why corals are such a great, you know, organism to talk about these kind of things is that they're gorgeous, you know, and so like, like having, having, you know, companies celebrate coral, bring attention to coral is always greatly appreciated and really exciting. I didn't know that there was Pantone's color of the year. I'm excited.

Yeah, we're always excited, you know. Also, side note, huge ups to Pantone for naming the color, not just coral, but living coral. A live, non-dead, non-bleached, thriving, magical coral was too long, but living coral works. Sarah Terry asked what makes them so colorful. Is it that symbiosis? Yeah, so very often, like most, there's, I feel like with everything I'm saying and every coral thing, you're like, except then this other thing, does this something totally different that we didn't expect? So, yes, in general, like the, a lot of the color we're seeing are these symbiotes. However, corals also do produce their own colorful pigments. You can take a black light

and shine a black light on corals and they'll, oftentimes you'll see like fluorescence. If you've seen Chasing Coral, the movie, the, you'll see actually during some of the bleaching events, as the corals are bleaching, they actually will start to like glow in like these blues and purple colors. And there's been a lot of hypotheses on why they're doing that. It could potentially attract new symbionts. It could be sort of like their own kind of like sunscreen method to protect their own tissues. So we're still learning more about that, but the corals, you know, are able, some species are able to also produce their own, their own pigments themselves. So that was a doc called Chasing Coral. And if you want to see what coral bleaching looks like

and just get hyped to mobilize other folks to care, this is a great doc to watch. Are there any movies, any fictitious movies that honor or, or really fuck with coral that you're like, come on, any movies that you're like? I was actually really impressed with the coral and Finding Nemo. Really? Yeah, they're, they did a really good job. Like there's some other like inaccuracies in their biology, but they're, but I remember like when I first saw it, it came out like right when I was graduating college, I was really like, this is like, they did a really nice job with some of,

with the forums. So I was like, that's, that's pretty awesome. Corals don't tend to get a lot of spotlight in a lot of mainstream, you know, films. I'm going to go on IMDB and find out who the coral consultant was and chances are you probably know them. Quick aside, so I tracked this down and I think, I think it was a very passionate ectheologist who's done research on the Great Barrier Reef now at the University of Washington and he's credited as Adam Summers' fabulous fish guy in the special thanks of the 2003 film Finding Nemo. And yes, I found him. I called his office to ask him. He was out of the

office, so I sent him an email. I didn't hear back from him yet, but yes, I do want to be his friend. Brooke Reddinger wants to know, does coral have a smell? You can, so right now that you go on to County Obey, you can smell their gametes. Yeah, after a big spawning event, you can definitely smell them. Nice. Coral mucous, I mean, I feel like the longer you work with anything, the more you gain a nose for it. Underwater, you know, we're not really smelling anything, but like once you're covered in it, you definitely get a little earthy stink.

That's actually a great question because, you know, while we might not smell the corals, like a lot of marine organisms use chemical senses to, you know, interact with their surrounding environments and things like that. So there's a lot of smells in that sense going on in the water. In the oceans. So this next question was also asked by listener Grace. And Allegra Violetta Benesman wants to know, what role does concrete truly play in the health of our coral? And I know nothing about this. Concrete's composition, and we'll look this up, is it has a lot of same attributes as like calcium carbonate coral skeletons. It's a really great substrate because it's also kind of porous. So a lot of times you'll see, like I think it is in Mexico where they have

that underwater sculpture installation made of concrete that, you know, different corals and sponges and whatnot are all recruiting to. So it can actually act as a pretty good substrate. It's a really great substrate for artificial reefs. So he's talking about an underwater museum in Cancun, Mexico. It consists of nearly 500 sunken sculptures, and they serve as a base for new coral. Why did they make this, you ask? Because too many tourists were snorkeling in the natural local reefs and destroying them. So they were like, hey, hey, look over here. Look over here. Look at these sculptures. And it worked. So people go there now. And coral can grow on it. Ding, perfect. Also,

some of the sculptures serve as scathing environmental critiques, like the ones of men in tuxedos burying their heads in the sand. Ooh, a burn so sick, it's scorched underwater. Zane Lebrum wants to know, hello. Oh, hi. Is the news about the Great Barrier Reef being declared dead true? And if so, is there anything that we can do about it? That's a great question. So there was that article that came out, I think a couple years ago now, that declared the Great Barrier Reef dead. It's not dead. That's the answer. However, it's not doing so great. And that's why articles like that can be challenging to the overall conversation, because we don't want everyone to say, oh, good, it's not dead and move on. But the Great Barrier

Reef, it just experienced two horrific leaching events back to back. And a new paper by Terry Hughes's group out in Australia showed that the recruitment of baby corals to the reef post those events had significantly declined. And so that's one of those, not only are we dealing with the impacts of dying coral on the reef, who's going to replace them, right? And so these are kind of the smaller impacts that we're looking at. So the Great Barrier Reef did experience this massive leaching event lost, in some regions lost 50% or more of the coral on the ground. And they're trying to come back. Different sections of the reef are still healthy. You can still go out and see corals in the Great Barrier Reef. But if it keeps getting hit

by these events, there's not going to be enough time for things to recover, just to go back to what they were. Educating yourself on the politicians and on the laws and bills that are coming up that would directly impact the reefs here and where we are, like that's where we have the most sway is a really important thing, like going to town halls also, not just voting, but like actually showing up and becoming parts of the conversations that are directly influencing the legislators in your own area can be a really good way to start. And then also, if you're going to a place like the Great Barrier Reef, you know, essentially voting with your dollar, doing your due diligence to look up operators that are eco-friendly, that with some of the funding

from that might actually go to research or refrestoration, but like looking for, you know, making sure that your footprint in those spaces are supporting organizations that are doing it right. And our tour operator for Atlas was saying that they don't provide fins because so many times tourists will just absolutely slap a coral reef with the fin. And so I thought that was great. I didn't know that. Yeah, definitely. And that's the thing, like some corals, their structures are big, as good as any surfer, like they hurt when you actually get hit by one. Okay, side note, I just watched a bunch of videos of surfers bailing on coral. Not only are the corals hurt, but oh man, oh the blood, oh the scars. So there was one video of a Tahitian pro surfer who got a pretty

bad scrape up and they show her on the boat afterward and they have to brush the coral bits out of your skin. And then for some reason, they have to rub citrus in it. And she's like biting a towel. I cannot imagine the pain. Now other remedies for this reef rash, according to some surfer message boards that I just totally larked on, are hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, people use iodine, others say just baby shampoo and scrubbing it with a toothbrush and antibacterial ointments but you have to treat it right away because you can be left with a staph infection, which would be hell in Narnar, not in a good way. Please note, I am neither a surfer nor a doctor, so consult one of the two or both. Also as for the coral, I don't think they have a strategy for

first aid. But they're also super fragile. Some of them that have those really nice like branching shapes, you know, just a tiny kick that you can kick over a colony that's been growing for over 100 years in like one kick. And so that's, you know, that's great. That's great. It's a great way to educate people on that. A lot of people think they're rocks. So they're like, oh, I'm going to go stand on that. And the polyps, they're just thin layers of tissue. And you get to crush them like a face bone. Other patrons like Erica, Sarah Peck, and IzzyM had questions about Shale's favorites. Hufflepuff, Hillary wants to know, which reef has been your favorite to dive in? Do you have a favorite? Can you pick a favorite?

All the other reefs are going to be like, really? I know. I know. What's a favorite? This is really hard. So I was lucky enough to dive the blue hole in Belize, which is like a big atoll that you can just like sink down to like, there's all these sharks everywhere. And that dive and the surrounding reef there, I saw way more, if you, for someone like me, like in this environment, if you see like a shark, that's really cool. Like one. And that's because we don't have as many anymore, right? And like sharks are actually a really good sign of like a healthy reef environment. You want to have all the levels of the food chain. And I had never been in a reef before that environment where there were so many apex predators

just living there. So like the coral was beautiful. There was diversity of fish and, but then also like they're, I got to see it all together. And so for me, that was just a really exciting moment. Oh my gosh. Have you ever been scared of a shark bite? Are you like, no, not really. Like sharks have a really, sharks are doing awful. Where the shark fitting is decimating world shark populations. And so much of, you know, like we're talking about how do we change these laws? How do we ban shark fitting? How do we like not allow shark fins to be sold in commercial senses in our country? It relates to our own like emotional reaction to sharks. Are we scared of sharks? The majority, the vast majority of all shark species want nothing to

do with us. They're, they've got very tiny mouths or can be bottom feeders, or they're just not, you know, they're just as scared of us as we are of them. Anytime you go into the ocean or nature in general, you have to respect the environment where you are and respect the organisms there. And so, you know, it's always important to know what the, like what the threats are, or they could be or what dangers there could be anytime you go. So whenever I go diving in a new place, I look up like what organisms could I possibly encounter? And if you work with a good operator, you go to areas that are safer, right? But I always feel incredibly lucky every time I have the opportunity to see sharks anywhere. They're beautiful. They never, you know, they're

doing their own thing. They're swimming over there, not, not disturbing me. There are some shark species that might have like a case of mistaken identity. Like if we're swimming around like a seal at the surface in, you know, white shark territory, they can't come up and like, you know, poke you to see if you're food or not. And the way like their strategy for getting food is they don't have arms, right? And so they, they use their mouths to grab onto things. So they'll come up and, you know, if you think you're a seal, like try to take a bite, but people aren't dying of being eaten, you're not being eaten by a shark, right? You know, unfortunately, it has to do with like, you know, succumbing to a wound from that shark bite, but not scared of sharks. And you

shouldn't be either. For more on this, see the Sela macomorphology, Sela, Selaic morphology episode on sharks. Also, I snuck in this teeny tiny question about itty-bitty garbage. Sorry, this one's a bummer, but it's good to know. How about plastics and corals? I was reading a little article when I was, when we were waiting for each other on opposite sides of a pillar about microplastics being found in corals. Yeah, unfortunately, microplastics. So plastic, in general, is awful for the marine environment, right? You hear these stories about, you know, straws getting stuck on turtles' noses or, you know, animals getting caught in plastic bags or eating plastic bags, thinking that they're jellyfish or other kinds of food. And so those are a big

problem. However, what we've learned, you know, recently is that the plastics as they start to actually break down so they're not like necessarily visible to the naked eye. These microplastics are having like a huge impact on these lower trophic levels on like a lot of these, you know, the plankton are eating them plastics, the larger animals are eating those plastics. And there have been, yeah, some studies that are looking at our corals eating these plastics as well. And what does that mean, right? Like, you can't, there's no nutritional value. If you can't expel those, then all of a sudden there's something inside of your gut that's taking up space where nutrition could be. And so these are huge, huge problems that are also unfortunately global.

Anything that you've seen research-wise in the last few years or any turnarounds that have given you hope, you're like, no, everything sucks. I didn't think that's where you're going. Yeah, absolutely. Like I was telling you earlier, when we, you know, when you see a coral bleaching event and you're like, so many of these corals died, there's all those corals that didn't die. There are, the corals themselves are, there are some winners, there are some survivors. And that's really exciting because without any intervention from us, there are organisms, there are individuals that are already able to withstand these. You look at an environment like, you know, the Red Sea, which is on average way warmer than anywhere else. And the corals that are living up to

temperatures that can't hear. And like the, the difference is that, that this happened over geologic time, whereas we are speeding things up. And like, can these animals keep up for that? But like just the fact that like these things exist is very exciting. Also in the last, like, 10 years ago, if I had said like coral bleaching to somebody on the street, they might be like, I have no idea what you're talking about. But there's been a huge push and education and excitement around coral reefs in the last, you know, handful of years where people have heard about this, like people know people are starting to really care about it and understand why it's important, why it's important to them, like why they want this for their future generations. And so,

corals have really come into the national, international conversation in a way that they haven't before. And because of that, there's a lot more hope for these big overarching changes that we need on the systemic scale to potentially start to happen. And I always ask these last two questions, but what's the shittiest thing about your job? What sucks in a way that's either like annoying? Is it moldy wetsuits? Is it early mornings or more infrastructure? So like, what sucks? The thing that sucks most about being a coral biologist is watching something you love die and not being able to do anything about it. Yeah. And like, and that's something that's, you know, shared by probably everyone in our field. Like, you know, I love corals, like biologically

speaking, like I'm so fascinated by them. They're such interesting animals. But so much of my research is around keeping them around, right? And it's anytime you dive on a reef that's bleaching or a reef that's been devastated by any kind of impact, especially one that, you know, you'd seen flourishing before. It's, you know, you have an emotional reaction. It's a very devastating feeling. And that pressure of it's not just if I don't finish my dissertation, that I don't get to graduate, but like so much of this work that we all are working on is going to have an impact right now or not. And are we doing it right? Are we asking the right questions? You know, and that's definitely the hardest part, for sure. What's your favorite part about your job?

Or about corals? Oh, man, we do a whole podcast like that. My favorite part of my job is I'm going, I'm answering it in two part, which I'm not supposed to do. No, answering however many parts you want. It's, it's like, it's the daily life in the people I work with, for sure, like in the community. When you're working on an issue that's this important, people are really passionate and really excited. And because we're trying to solve something on a really quickly, it's a very creative place to be. Like people are coming up with really creative out of the box solutions and being able to be part of new technologies that are coming in, new ways of like addressing these questions, trying just like crazy ideas that just might work.

Maybe it's something that we might not have had the luxury to do on a system that, you know, is doing fine somewhere. But, you know, that, that kind of creative thinking and passionate environment is a really exciting place to be. So I, that's, that's something great. And then also I take a boat to work every day. I can just like walk into the water and see the reef. And while that's amazing for research and asking questions, it's also just, it's a luxury. I feel so lucky to be able to be in a place where my study environment is right here. And I can appreciate the, just the beauty of the reef on an everyday basis. Maybe that's why marine biologists are a little bit more chill. I don't know. I feel like we're like, you know, we're like, we're really chill and they're also

like super stressed out, you know. That's a good point. That's a good point. You're doing such great work. I'm so excited that I got to talk to you. Thank you for taking a sliver of your time. I know that it's a busy day for Coral. Are you going back out tonight? I am. Yeah, definitely. Excited? Very excited. So ask smart, amazing people, sometimes stupid questions. And also if you can, please vote. Let's just, let's try to turn this vote around. Also, for more about Shale, you can follow him at rong underscore whale on Twitter. That will be linked in the show notes. We're at oligies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Ali Ward with one L on both. And thank you to Atlas Obscura for the really wonderful time in Hawaii learning about all this

stuff. And thanks to the world's most charming toothologist, Sarah McEnulty, aka Sarah McAttack, on social media for hooking me up with this really wonderful nadereologist Shale. I look forward to calling him Dr. Matsuda soon. Thank you also to Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis. They have a comedy podcast called You Are That. If you like funny, amazing people, they also manage my merch at oligiesmerch.com. Thank you to Hannah Lipo and Erin Talbert for adminning the oligies podcast Facebook group. I was also recently told there's an oligies podcast subreddit now, just in case you're on Reddit or you want to go discuss episodes and share weird, illogical facts there. So hi Reddit, hi. Thank you to Jared

Sleeper of My Good Bad Brain podcast for assistant editing and being wonderfully supportive on not the easiest week. And thanks to the host of podcasts See Jurassic Right about dinos and the Perkast, which is all about kitties, Stephen Ray Morris, who's a pillar serving as a sturdy substrate and putting this all together. Apologies for being a day late on this one, folks. I hate that it's late. I was in New York. I felt really under the weather and slept 12 hours a day, two days in a row. So I just needed a wee extension. The theme music was written by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands, which is a great band. Now if you listen until the end of the show, you know I tell you a secret. This week's secret is that when it comes to apples and baked potatoes,

my favorite part is the skin. Like I want to eat other people's discarded potato skins at the table. I'll eat the whole shebang, but I'm just, I'm like a goat. I just love like the chewy roughage. I don't know why, but also in college, my favorite thing to eat in the dining hall. Of all the things they had in the cafeteria, I loved baked potatoes with soy sauce and then sour cream on top of it. I think of it often and I'm like, yeah, I still stand by that combo. It was pretty tight. Bye-bye. Don't let me die.