Robin's Nest from American Humane - Sea Guardians: Dr. Debi Luke’s Fight for Manatees, Corals, Sea Turtles and more

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

In the Season 2 kickoff of Robin's Nest, Dr. Debi Luke discusses her impactful work at the Florida Aquarium, focusing on marine conservation. She highlights efforts to protect manatees, an iconic species at risk, and her advocacy for their well-being. Dr. Luke also talks about Florida's climate challenges, especially with coral conservation, aiming to restore reefs critical to marine biodiversity. Additionally, she covers the aquarium's role in rescuing and rehabilitating sea turtles, emphasizing the urgency of protecting these vulnerable marine creatures. Hope you enjoy!

Welcome to Robin's Nest. Many of us feel a deep bond with animals, from the pets we cherish at home to the endangered species in nature. Join us for lively informative conversations where together we will build a more humane world. Hello everyone and welcome back to Robin's Nest. I'm Dr. Robin Ganzert and I'm thrilled to kick off season two with you all. Last season was incredible. We had so many inspiring conversations and explored the powerful, life-changing bond between humans and animals in ways that touched our hearts and minds. As we step into this new season, our focus is sharper than ever. We'll be exploring innovative breakthroughs in animal

welfare and stories that highlight the remarkable ways our bonds with animals continue to evolve and strengthen. Whether it's cutting-edge research, global expansions, or heartwarming personal stories, we're committed to bringing you content that will inform, inspire, and ignite your passion. I'm so excited for what's in store, and I know you'll love the journey we're about to embark on. We are thrilled to be joined by Dr. Deborah Luke, a leading expert in wildlife conservation and animal welfare. With years of experience in both zoological management and marine science, Dr. Luke has spearheaded numerous initiatives aimed at protecting endangered species.

We'll dive into her career journey, the challenges facing global conservation efforts, and the innovative solutions she's championing. Welcome, Debbie, to Robyn's Nest. I'm so thrilled to have you here today, and we've got lots to catch up on. I'm so excited. Thanks for having me. Oh my gosh, you know you're a movie star now, don't you? I know. I love the film. It came out so beautifully. Oh, well, well, thank you for being such a part of it. And what we're talking about, friends, in Robin's Nest is Escape from Extinction,

Rewilding, narrated by the incredible Meryl Streep. And of course, Dr. Debbie Lucas in it. And Debbie, you have a very prominent role in this film. You set it up at the opening, you set it up at the end, and you talk about some points that a lot of people don't realize. Number one, there's not much nature left. And number two, as you close out the film, you're saying there's stories of hope. And you have a lot of stories of hope. But let's first start at the very beginning

and let's share the reality. And that is that there is not very much nature left. There isn't. That's part of what we have to live with, right? We're all creatures on this earth, including human beings. And there's very few places I think most people can think of where they could even say they have nature in their backyard nowadays, never mind the animals that

share the space with us. So we've moved from a place where humans lived in harmony with animals a long time ago to a place where humans lived in harmony with animals a long time ago to a place where humans are now caring for animals in one capacity or another. From very little management, and that's few and far between that that happens, to really intensive management in accredited and certified zoos and aquariums. And you happen to be at one of the best, the Florida Aquarium, it's outstanding.

And you've done incredible work in your role. Can you share with our listeners who are in the nest today about what you do? Because I think a lot of people would want to be you, Debbie, you know, with the incredible work you do. I know it's incredibly hard work. People don't always recognize all the sacrifices one has to make in your role, but share with our incredible listeners about what you do every day for the Florida Aquarium. Sure, and you're right.

The Florida Aquarium is one of the best aquariums out there, and I am very fortunate in every step of my career. I have been so fortunate to start off as a field biologist working in Florida, working with manatees, working with wild dolphins and doing population studies with both and health assessment studies at Mote Marine Lab with Dr. Randy Wells. He's a well-known dolphin biologist and Buddy Powell, well-known manatee biologist. And so I started my career that way. And it transitioned sometimes in ways that you don't anticipate, but it transitioned to working with animals in human care at Mote when I started taking care of manatees

that had been affected by red tide at Mote. And we built a facility there. And I started working on my PhD at the same time as taking care of the manatees and started a training program. And through that, we were able to conduct all kinds of sensory biology research with manatees that had never been done before. So looking at how they see, how they hear, how they sense their world.

And you can apply that knowledge now to conservation efforts in the wild, or what we call the wild out there. And so I was able to transition from field work to work with animals in human care to understand animals better and then implement those that knowledge into conservation efforts moving forward. I then took my career to the next step of I worked for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums for a decade and oversaw all the conservation work there.

And I was so fortunate to be able to travel the world globally, really, and see the amazing conservation work that zoos and aquariums are doing. These are things that you wouldn't be able to do with animals out there in the wild. You can do them with animals in human care. And so I was able to do that for more than 10 years. And Florida is my home. And I have my babies and my grandbabies there. And so working with the Florida Aquarium was my next logical step. And we are doing amazing cutting edge work at the Florida Aquarium that I'm really, really proud of. Well, I want to talk about that, but I want to go back into your career because your career trajectory is remarkable, right? And all the

different journeys that you've had along the way and the animals you've met. I want to talk about manatees. We can't forget the manatees. But importantly, your work and your career serves as an inspiration to, I'm sure, so many young people entering the space, looking for the way to get in the space and to make a meaningful difference. You've lived a life with such purpose and such impact, and that serves, I think, as an inspiration to so many. So thank you for that.

Thank you for that. For sharing. So let's back up a little bit in the career, because I have to say, you started as a field biologist. So let's back up a little bit in the career, because I have to say you started as a field biologist. So for anyone listening in Robins Nest and you're young in your career and you have your degree in biology, field biologist, pretty cool area for sure.

It is. And so needed today because so many of the issues that we look at in conservation. We talked earlier with the incredible Arnaud who is the 2024 Kiesling Prize recipient and he said communication is crucial for conservation but I would also say biology is crucial for conservation. So tell us a little bit about the space and the role of biologists in conservation. They're extremely important. They're the boots on the ground, if you will. They're the ones that are typically out in the field,

what I was doing, and seeing the real impacts of what's happening, what the animals are facing, what humans are facing with. Let's face it, we have to work on this together, all of us. So there's a role in every capacity for people to work in conservation. And field biologists are those front lines. They're the ones that are working in the field, in the environment, seeing what's affecting the animals, seeing what's affecting the habitats,

measuring those, keeping track of the data, and putting that back into the lab. There's biologists that work in the lab too, and that's just as important, right? They're looking at different samples there. But oftentimes those are the ones that are in the thick of it, and they're critically important. I love that. That's very, very good advice too

for people looking at the space. I have to pivot now to manatees. So in Escape from Extinction Rewilding, you present the manatee case study particularly in Florida also my home state now too I love it and I love the turnaround story in the Crystal River. It's really a remarkable story but I know there's still so much more in terms of threats for the manatees that they face every day. Please talk to us about your love for manatees and what threats they face. Manatee is my favorite animal. Not many people say that but they are adorable and very smart. They are cute. They are cute. They are

cute and they have amazing personalities but they are facing other threats there. What we're seeing now particularly on the east coast of Florida, is there's very little seagrass left. And that is what manatees eat. They're herbivores, so they eat seagrass. And what we're finding on the east coast is the manatees are starving. They have no more food left. Literally no more food left. And last year and the year before, there were quite a few animals that died to the point where Fish and Wildlife, who regulates them, is taken to feeding, supplementing food for those animals there until a solution can be found. It's easy to talk about, well, there's no seagrass, but there's a reason why there's no seagrass. So this is where all those different layers come in, what we talked

about with the biologists, doing measurements out there, seeing where the grass is, where it isn't, and why. We have a pretty good understanding of why, and now comes the solutions, right? And that's the challenge. So let's talk about that. The whys are the fertilizers, you know, and going into the water, right? Things like that that are really impacting the water that we can all change. We can change our habits. But then there's also large agriculture interests who also have the chemicals going into the ground and into the water systems as well. That's also changing in Florida, I understand. So those things are changing to

hopefully stop some of that. But then we've already lost so much that we have to, and what we talk about in the film, is replant it. That's right. And we have a case study for that. The west coast of Florida actually did a lot of seagrass restoration years and years ago, Tampa Bay area in particular. And that seagrass came back well. And we are seeing animals thriving there. So we'll talk about turtles in a little bit, but what we're starting to see on the east coast is turtles having the same thing.

We're starting to see them undernourished, underweight, and being impacted by the lack of seagrass. And the same areas that the manatees are having that. So yes, we know that runoff will do that. We know that chemicals will do that. And so from our perspective, what we treat our lawns with is important. Because everything that you treat the lawn with goes into the waterways. Agriculture, to your point, is the same thing, but we all rely on food, right? And we need that.

So there's a happy medium, and that's where collaborations are important. Collaborative conservation, I think, is so critical, and that means working with corporations and everybody else. And those corporations that are raising the bar to do better are the ones we want to be partnering with because they're setting the bar for others to follow. But the other thing is turbidity in the water blocks the sunlight. So if plants don't get sunlight, they don't grow well. They don't thrive. And we're seeing more and more turbidity on that coast. And a lot of that is coming from leaking septic systems. The infrastructure is so old on that side of Florida. You're talking the East Coast? Yes, yes. So the infrastructure, the pipes and everything that's under the roadways, all of that is old. It leaks, it goes

in there. And I know Florida is working to really advance their infrastructure. There's a lot of funding that's been promoted for that, but it all comes from that. And that's human-induced. That's right. But it can be human-solved too. Yes, yes. But it's going into the systems and that's causing them a loss of more. Right. Yes, we've created a lot of problems, but you also show the replanting efforts and that story of hope with the manatees made me quite happy, but I do know we still face significant challenges. Are they technically endangered on the IUCN records? They are not right now. They were at one point. They came off the list but now they're in process of

relisting those animals potentially. That's so sad. So sad to have such a victory and then to go backwards again. That's right. Yeah. And you love them. And you say they have personalities. They do. They have great personalities. Tell me about a personality of a manatee. I'm so fascinated by this because I've not met one in person like close up.

So now I feel like I've really missed out. Well, I had the opportunity to train them, right, and work with them to understand how they sense their world. So it required a lot of training of these animals and they picked up on it so fast. Within a year's time of training to come to a target and just a whistle and all positive reinforcement, all treats, apples, beets, carrots, their favorite treats. I love apple, beets, and carrots too. There you go. Yeah, there might be a snack there once in a while. Yes, I love that. They learned all of their husbandry behaviors.

And husbandry behaviors are those that are the same as when we would go to a doctor for a checkup, right? Yes. So they would station at their target and they would turn over and give us their flipper to get a blood draw. They would pee in a cup for us. Very well trained. They would do their weights. They would do everything they needed to do for an exam within a year and then we were able to train all the behaviors they needed to see how well

they could see and see how well their vibrancy could sense their world. Interestingly enough, their whiskers on their face, they can move each one independently. And each one is more sensitive than the tip of our index finger. Wow. Yeah. Now their vision is not good. Not good at all. But that's remarkable. I don't think I've ever even thought about the whiskers, for example, having that capability.

Yeah. If you watch them eat, you'll see their little whiskers come in. Now I'm making goofy faces. So cute. Okay. Now we all want a manatee in our backyard we have to have enough wonderful kelp right definitely a lot of grasses thank you for what you've done for the manatees and thank you for still being their voice and championing them because they still need it and you know in Florida we still see the signs and we know the

boaters there I've met boaters who complain about having to slow down for the manatees. And I'm thinking, what are you? You're not my kind of person if you're not going to slow down for the manatees, for goodness sakes. Not my kind of people. But they're there and it's really a shame. We have a lot more education to do for sure. We do. And that's why it's sliding backwards the wrong direction. You also in your work do a lot with coral and sea turtles. Absolutely.

And first of all, I love them too. But talk to me about your coral work in particular because people don't understand about the bleaching of corals and what's happening there too. Yeah, there's a lot going on with corals right now. It's probably our biggest crisis in Florida, environmental crisis right now. Florida's coral reef is the third largest barrier reef in the world. A lot of people don't recognize that. Florida's coral reef is the third largest barrier reef in the world? Exactly. And how come I didn't know that? Exactly. Not many people do. Wow. Not many people do. Wow. So we're seeing in the last decade or so, we saw a disease that went through the reef,

stony coral tissue loss disease. And it was such an unprecedented step that the government agencies made a decision to go out and rescue healthy corals before the disease margin hit them as it moved down the coast. And so Florida Aquarium was one of many aquariums that was ready and able to take those corals in when they were rescued. And so there's quite a few aquariums now, and even some zoos that are holding some of these rescued corals. But what we've done at the Florida Aquarium is we've taken one of the tools out of the toolbox.

It's a little bit different, so there's a lot of restoration tools, as I'm sure you can imagine. And one of them you may have heard of is fragmenting corals, where you take a piece of a coral. And again, coral is a living animal. It's not a stone. It's not a rock. It's a living animal. It's a colony of animals.

And people don't know that either. True that, yes. And you can cut a piece of that off because it does have a stone under structure. Yes. And it will grow. It will continue to grow. And so a lot of people will take fragments of coral and replant them out there for them to grow. And that works. The problem is it's the same genetics. Yes. So it's the same individuals of coral there. So every time you break it apart and put it next to each other, it's the same genetics. Yes. So it's the same individuals of coral there. So every time you break it apart and put it next to each other, it's the same genetics. And

just like with humans, we need good genetic diversity to be healthy. And the more diversity you have, the healthy you are as populations, as humans, as all animals. So what we have done is we built a system and we based it off a system that Jamie Craig's did in London with soft corals. But we're doing it with hard stony corals, which is difficult and we didn't know if it could be done. And we mimicked all the conditions in the Keys from salinity to water temperature to length of day to moon phase for the whole year. Wow. temperature to length of day to moon phase for the whole year with the corals. And we were able to have them spawn at the exact same time they spawned in the wild. Oh, what a victory.

Amazing victory. What a major, major success. Amazing. We have such amazing footage of it, too. Oh, I love that. We did that for the first year with one species. And then each year we've increased it to now we're up to 14 species that we can reliably spawn in our labs. We have received much funding from the agencies, government agencies, and just built a brand new 3,800 square foot building.

That's all lab space for us to continue this work. And again, partnering is so important. and again partnering is so important collaborating with universities like the university of miami nova southeastern and so forth where we are spawning and raising millions and millions of larvae and sharing them with our partners to now start looking at resiliency work we can because we know the genetics of each coral we can start looking at coral A and coral B and putting them together to make little coral A and B babies and see if they're more resilient to temperature changes, warming water, or to disease, which is what we have. And so last year you probably saw the rescues of the remaining corals. There's very few of them left out there at all on the whole reef. And we brought

them in because the water was too hot. And so we were able to spawn those this year too. Wonderful. So our work is more important than ever now. And that's where innovation comes in. Nobody had done that before. We're trying to teach others to do it. We're sharing our knowledge and we're moving forward. But the future is innovative. And again, human-induced, human-solved. Human-induced, human-solved. Spectacular. I'm so surprised about the coral situation.

I had no idea it was the third largest in the world, and now it's mostly gone. It is. It's very sad. My staff, we have an amazing coral team led by Carrie O'Neill, and the whole team is just amazing. And these, you know, I love manatees, but they're big animals. Yes, they are. It's hard to train a coral. But you talk to this team, and those babies are their babies. You know, when they are able to grow those corals out after a couple of years, we've now had corals that were spawned by us.

So we're having generations of corals now. That's terrific. And we start out planting them. It's their children. You know, they're looking at them like that because their love and their passion is part of every day of their lives. And the ability to do this with technology and science is always, to me, so incredible to witness. We talked about corals, learned a lot more than I did coming into this. How about your work with sea turtles?

Because I think everyone has fallen in love with a sea turtle at one point in their lives. And those people that complain about the manatees and the boats they always still love the sea turtles you know but i have to tell you they're so charismatic and so precious so tell us about your work with sea turtles yeah we're very fortunate with that again i have an amazing team ashley reese leads that team and they're just as dedicated so we do rescue rehab release as one component of our sea turtle program. And so we'll bring in turtles that are hit by boats or stranded for some reason. We bring in a lot of turtles from New England, actually.

So we have cold stun turtles every year that strand in Cape Cod, New England area. And they are then flown around the country to different places that can do rehabilitation services. And so we receive those. And they often take months to recover. Those turtles come in so emaciated and covered in barnacles and algae and just barely, barely alive. And then it takes several months. And then we release them back out again. One of the things that we're looking at, which has really been

kind of interesting, is these turtles that come in are juveniles. They're young. Yes. So they haven't had years and years out there to know where they're going. Right. They've had some time, but they haven't had a long time. So we've started satellite tracking some of the turtles that we release. Oh. And there's a lot of satellite tracking work done on turtles, but mostly they're adults when they come into nest and lay their eggs because they're busy laying their eggs. You can put, you know, glue a satellite tag on their back that will fall off naturally over time and see where they go. But these are adult turtles that have lots of experience. The turtles we're bringing in from New England and that go all over the country are young and we're re-releasing them off of

Florida. So there's a gap in knowledge there. We don't know. We don't know where they go and how they respond after they're released after that. So we started satellite tagging some of the turtles we're releasing with that, which has been great to see that data come in. Where do you see they go? They seem to be following the Gulf Stream the way they should be. They seem to be getting out there. They'll meander back and forth on the coast. We often release them on the east coast. Again, all regulated by the agencies. But yeah, we're starting to gather that data now and look at that, which is amazing. So that's one component. Another component we work on is responsible fishing peers. Wonderful. So there's, you know, lots of people in Florida fish.

Yes. And it's a passion of theirs. But oftentimes they hook a turtle and they're afraid they're going to get in trouble. So they will leave the turtle or they'll leave the hook in and they won't. If they report it, they can very easily will come out and get it, will rescue it, will take care of that turtle. And there's no problem with that if they do that. And discarding of their fishing line because there's a lot of entanglements and issues with that. So we put out the fishing line holders there. And then the third pillar of what

we do is in water health assessments. So we're looking at turtles in the wild. We're working with Sea Turtle Conservancy as a partner and we're testing these health parameter tools that we look at turtles in the wild with. We'll go out, we'll catch turtles out in the wild with us, neighbors, you know, not necessarily wild again, but out there, and we'll bring them on board the boat, and we'll do a complete health assessment, see how they're doing, and then we'll put them right back in the water again.

And what we found, again, is on the west coast of Florida they're doing well just like the manatees they're pretty fat and happy and doing well east coast again not so much underweight undernourished the same as the manatees on the east coast and we're doing both coasts so we can see the differences there but part of the assessment is being able to have those animals on board as little time as possible. And so there's some health parameter tools you can use to just do quick eye stat tests of blood values and so forth. But nobody's checked them to see if their values are correct. What we can do, because we're dealing with animals in our hospital, is test them on the animals in our care and ground truth them and then apply it again to the wild.

And so it's because of those animals in our care that we're learning from them and being able to apply that to the wild. When you started out as a field biologist, did you ever dream? No. I mean, seriously. No, no. It's been a journey. Yes. I have the opportunity quite often, actually, to have people talk to me and I like to share my journey with them because sometimes the world seems overwhelming and they're young and just out of college and saying, I don't know, how do I get to be here? How do I do that? And I said, I never thought I'd be here. You know, I just kind of took the turns and then I made the most out of every turn along the way. And and again I've been so fortunate

so well it's also because you're so good you do I wanted to read this quote this is what how you close out the movie uh and in your segments in the in the movie escape from extinction and this is what I love you said quote there is hope And I think that's something we forget or we don't see often because there are so many stories of doom and gloom. There's a lot of hope and a lot of sick-death stories out there. And you've just shared some. You've just shared some. The doom and gloom is the breakdown of the entire coral reef in Florida.

But yet the hope is that you have been able to grow 14 species of coral, saving them really from extinction. It's stunning. It is amazing. It's probably the number one question I get asked in interviews is, how do you have hope? Do you get overwhelmed? Is it exhausting? No, it's not. It's not because I do believe that there is a solution for everything. I don't know what that solution is all the time. There are younger people than me coming up and younger people than you coming up at this point. And there's all kinds of technology and artificial intelligence. And, you know, some of that can seem scary at times, but the world that we live in seems scary right now, too. And I think that when we are faced with the biggest challenges, that's when we come up with the biggest solutions.

And I've seen it happen time and time and time again throughout my career. And I feel like this next generation that comes up is more invested than ever, and they really give me hope. I love that. This next generation gives her hope. It does. That's the most beautiful way to close this out. But I just have to ask you, you said your favorite animal is the manatee.

I'm going to pull it back. How about a dog or a cat in your house? Do you have a dog or a cat? I have, oh my goodness, we had so many animals growing up, absolutely. I have a cat right now. She's my 18-and-a-half-year-old cat, yes. We have a cat, too. Julius Caesar is our cat.

We love Julius Caesar. He's always in Robin's Nest, literally. What a great name. Mine is Pukatu. Pukatu. Oh, I love that. I love it. I love it. He's always in Robin's nest, literally. What a great name. Mine is Pookatoo. Pookatoo. Oh, I love that. I love it.

I love it. These animals, they just, the celebration of the human-animal bond every day. And, you know, we get to experience that with our domestic animals. And then the kind of work that we get to do every day allows us to impact all the wild creatures in the world. We're very lucky, aren't we? We are. We're amazingly fortunate. And I think one of the most important things for everybody out there listening

is to recognize that you're lucky too because you live in a world where all of these creatures are sharing your habitat with you. And you're sharing your life in their habitat too. And so we're very fortunate to have that. Absolutely. Well well thank you debbie one of my heroes in conservation is debbie luke thank you so much for being with us today

in robin's nest thank you so much for having me this is fabulous absolutely thank you thank you for tuning in to robin's nest we want to hear what you think. Please make sure to review the podcast on your podcast platform. Watch for upcoming episodes that will include new and exciting discussions. If you love animals, you'll love this season of Robin's Nest.