Stuff You Should Know - Mangroves: Nature's Best Tree?

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

Mangroves are incredible survivors and adapters. They're also amazing at lessening the impact of tropical storms and climate change. And heck, they're cool looking. So jump into the brackish waters and have a listen.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey y'all, it's Caroline Hobby, host of Get Real with Caroline Hobby, interviewing the most fascinating people in

Nashville and beyond. I talk to artists, I talk to the wives of artists, I talk to women entrepreneurs who have created businesses, who are moms, who juggle a million hats and do it all. Each episode will leave you inspired feeling like you can accomplish your own dream and calling. Listen to new episodes of Get Real with Caroline Hobby every Monday on the Nashville podcast network available on iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcast. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there. So let's get to it while we're talking about mangroves, everybody. Mangroves gather around while we talk

about mangroves. My new favorite tree. It's a great tree. It's a good favorite tree to have. It is and this is one of those, I think this is the second and probably final that was inspired by my recent trip to Mexico because we were surrounded by mangroves, literally surrounded by mangroves and we couldn't get enough of them and like riding the bikes around and looking in these mangrove forests and considering what it must be like to try and navigate through them. Nearly impossible, I would say, because I mean, you've seen them in person. I'm sure like just how dense these things are and you know, we're going to be talking about different kinds, but really sort of the money mangroves are the ones that we're going to focus

on and they are just, I was knocked out just by how they looked and I could tell that they were a remarkable wonder of nature and evolution and then after this stuff, Dave Ruz helped us put this together after learning everything that they're capable of. It's just like what kind of tree is this? It's amazing. It's an amazing tree. Like I said, it's maybe one of the best trees to have as your favorite tree because there are very few trees that are this amazing, Chuck. Man. And we're talking mangroves and we should say mangroves aren't necessarily like a species or even a family of tree. One of the other things that makes them such a cool tree to have as a favorite is that there's something like 80 or 90 species of them and they're not genetically related

in every case. Instead, biologists classify them by their ability to survive and even thrive in salty water in soil that has little to no oxygen, which are two things that most trees can't do and that's just the tip of the iceberg and what makes mangroves so amazing. Yeah, but like I said, we're talking mainly about those amazing trees that sit up above the water with this network of, you know, look like fingers just sort of propping up the tree, which are the roots. They are a woodland tree. Also could be called a shrub and they grow in a pretty narrow area between, well, they're subtropical along the coastlines first of all, but they grow between literally between the terrestrial and the marine environment

in salty brackish water. Yeah, and there's, I want to say a lot of them. It's really not, though. I think they make up like 1% of the forests of the world mangrove forests are, but it's still 85,000 square miles, which is a pretty decent amount of area for, you know, one kind of tree. It's about the size of the state of Arkansas and the largest mangrove forest in the world is at the mouth of the Ganges near the Bay of Bengal. It's called the Sundarbans and that's where the Bengal tiger lives, which is pretty cool. Agreed. They exist in 118 countries and here in the United States in Texas, Louisiana and Florida, and I thought, oh, surely the Georgia coast is so close to Florida. Surely they've got some mangroves.

Don't even try. Not quite. I did see some people that were like, oh, so mangroves, but it's not true. It looks like the closest mangroves are about 40 miles from the Georgia border near the Georgia coastline. So I was really sad that we don't have our mangroves. That is sad. But they do have them in Florida and Louisiana and Texas and in Mexico. That's right. And again, you said that they grow subtropically and Chuck, I want to share that it was just today that I finally stopped and was like, this subtropical thing is driving me crazy. Like it's above the tropics on either side. It's either above or below depending on where your perspective, but it's not below the equator. And then I realized if you're

on the equator from the perspective of the equator, it's below the equator on either side. So it's subtropical. You've never stood on the equator. I never have. And I think I should. I've never been to Ecuador. Well, we should go sometime. We should do a podcast live from the equator. Yeah. And see if we melt. I know I will. I would too. I'm melting this week. As far as the money mangroves that I was talking about, we're talking about red, black and white. And for my money, I love those red mangroves. Those are the ones that grow along the water's edge. They have those prop roots that, and if you've never seen a mangrove, please just look up red

mangrove. And they're called prop roots because they prop that tree up off the ground. They are fully, well, not fully exposed because they also go into the water into the soil, but they're largely exposed and they are just tangled gnarly, beautiful roots that, again, I can't imagine trying to navigate through a mangrove forest. You probably had to go around. Yeah. It can be really, really thick, both above water and below water because of those roots. So those roots, if you see them, that means that it's low tide. At high tide, they're usually covered up with water. But it's like you said, they prop the tree up. And so for that reason, because at low tide, you can see the bottom of the tree and it's above ground, they're sometimes called walking

trees. They're pretty neat. And the red mangrove is, I think, anyone who knows about mangroves or seen a mangrove probably is what they're thinking of as a red mangrove because those roots are just so characteristic and unusual. Yeah. The black mangroves are still really cool looking because they have these protrusions coming up out of the water called pneumatophores and just put a pin in this. But they allow the plant to basically breathe and we'll talk about that later. But if you look at a picture of these, it looks almost like little just spiky roots sticking up out of the ground all around the tree. Yeah. Almost like stalagmites. Yeah. And I got that right too, by the way. That's right. White mangroves are, it's weird. I don't understand fully why

they're considered mangroves aside from the fact that they must still thrive in brackish or salty water and poor oxygen soil. That's it. But I guess so, but they grow inland and they have normal shallow root systems like any other terrestrial tree, but they're still considered mangroves. Yeah. And I don't think I mentioned the black mangroves to grow a little bit further inland than the reds. Yeah. So if you are looking at a cross section of the ocean hitting the land and going inland, you would see at the ocean or at the bay or wherever, red mangroves on the shoreline actually growing into the ocean depending on where the tide is. Behind them, you would have the black mangroves on slightly higher ground. And then behind those on the highest ground,

you would have the white mangroves. And that's what it would look like. You put it all together. What you have is a mangrove forest, also known as a mangal. A mangal, which is one of the more amazing. I'm going to be talking about a lot of amazing things about mangroves and mangals, but it's the only species of tree that can grow in saltwater. And big time, they grow... It's not like they love the salt. We'll see in a minute. They have some great ways of getting rid of it, but they figured all that stuff out, but they can grow in salinity levels of 75 parts per thousand, which is about twice as salty as ocean water. Yeah. That's pretty impressive, because I mean, where are they growing that's twice as salty as ocean water? I think that's just

kind of showing off at that point. Well, I didn't know if that inland water just accumulates salt or something. Yeah, you might be right. Yeah. I think you've hit upon it. Okay. So they're not show offs. They're just doing what they've got to do. They're making lemonade out of the lemons that they were handed by natural selection for where they grow. So what about the salt? How do they get rid of it? So you would think like they can drink saltwater and use it like terrestrial trees use water. Not true. There's actually two techniques where they can either keep salt from entering their roots or they can take the salt in and then get rid of it in certain ways. And so that means that there's two types, secretors and non-secretors. And black mangroves are secretors,

I believe, right? That's right. Those are the ones with the little nubby, they look like sticks almost sticking out of the water. They filter it out and they secrete it on the leaves. So that means if you see a black mangrove and you see some kind of chalky white stuff on the leaf, that is salt. Like go, I don't know if I should say go look it because I don't know if that's dangerous. It's salty, just trust me. It tastes like salt and DDT. Red mangroves, they're non-secretors. So they actually just don't allow salt to be taken up by their roots. Now that's easier said than done because their roots are planted in the water, right? They're taking up water from the ocean, from salt water. And what they do is they have cell walls that actually act through reverse

osmosis. It lets water through, but it doesn't let solids through, which is quite a trick. I mean, that's something that humans have only recently figured out how to do. Mangroves have been doing it for who knows how many hundreds of thousands or millions of years, but they do it in part because they have this hydrophobic lipophilic material called subarin that really serves them well. That's right. It allows them to get rid of more than 90% of the salts in the water, which also means, which I didn't really think about until just now, that they can literally tolerate, I guess, about 10% salt content. Yeah. I saw 90 to 95%, but yeah, that's still a lot of salt for a plant. Totally. Yeah. So they have at least adapted in some ways

to tolerate salt more than other plants, but for the most part, they're just really good at keeping salt from being taken up by their roots. I just find that fascinating. And I love how Dave puts these. This sections are labeled either mangrove magic tricks or what was the other one? Mangrove superpowers, which is pretty fun. They're both apt. They are. So this is magic trick number two is, I mentioned earlier that they actually breathe through these roots. I think typically you might like to think about plants as just eating up that CO2, which they definitely do, but plants need oxygen and they need to get oxygen from the roots. And with a regular tree and a regular forest, they're getting that through

the soil and these little gaps between the soil in mangrove or mangals, I guess you would say, they can't do that because the tidal sediments come in and it's all waterlogged and compacted. So they don't have those air gaps that you have in a normal forest. So they kind of came up with a brilliant little trick to get around that, right? Yeah. So the pneumatophores that black mangroves have, those stalagmites that are coming up in spikes around them, those act as snorkels. So they stick up out of the water and they're covered in these little cells called lenisols and that's where oxygen exchange happens. So they actually absorb oxygen through these snorkels. They get taken into the snorkel, underground, into the other roots of the tree and used for

aerobic respiration, which is converting food into energy. It's just pretty nuts. And pneumatophore actually is Greek for air carrier. So makes sense. Pretty on the nose. Yeah, some of those pneumatophores can reach up to 10 feet tall. Did you see that? Yeah, I didn't. I looked at a lot of pictures. I didn't see any that tall with my eyeballs, but I looked because I wanted to see that. Yeah, I didn't see it either. Could be made up. So then you've got this, I don't think so. Then you've got these red mangroves that we talked about for my money, like the money mangrove. And those prop roots serve the same purpose as the pneumatophores. Like I said, they sit up on those long sort of curvy stilts and they

stay above water, like a lot of it stays above water even at high tide at times. And they are also covered with those lentils and they do the same thing. They allow for that oxygen exchange to take place. Yeah, so that explains also why there's so many roots and so many pneumatophores that spread around these trees. It's like if you dug up a tree of roughly the same size, it would probably have a similar sized root structure, maybe a little less, but you don't see it. It's all underground. This is above ground. So it looks like a lot of roots and it is a lot of roots, but it's not necessarily more than a terrestrial tree would have. We just don't see them. Yeah, it's like a tree that has dropped trowel. It's porky pig in it. Should we take a

break at mangrove magic trick number two? Yeah, we'll come back with number three right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush

boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuck, which mangrove is your favorite kind? Well, I think I've been clear. I know you're teasing me because me and my red mangrove tirades. To me, this is the best part of the episode and the most amazing thing that may besides, and we'll get to

carbon sequestration because that's amazing too. But to me, this just knocked my socks off. That mangroves kind of give birth to baby mangroves. I think the only reason you want to qualify it with kind of is because our mind rails against accepting that that's what's going on. But that is what's going on for all intents and purposes, that some mangroves are vivaparis, meaning that it means live bearing to where they have seeds on their plants that they develop. They're about acorn size. But then rather than the seed falling off and dispersing and then eventually growing into a seedling, something much more mind blowing happens with mangroves. That's right. The seedling is actually produced on the tree itself. And they sort of keep

qualifying it. They self-plant themselves. Eventually, this thing is going to fall off. You've got to look up the video on the internet. There are many out there where it shows these acorn-like things. They grow down to these sort of long arrow, green arrows that are pointing down. And eventually they just go boop and they snap off and they go straight down and they either stick into the ground at low tide or I saw them in two feet of ocean water just going straight through and sticking into the sand and they plant themselves. They do. They plant themselves in that sandy bottom and then they sprout roots really fast. I saw that they can start growing roots within hours, which means that also if they don't fall

straight down, if they fall and they land on their side, they can actually stand themselves up by growing roots on the ground-facing side and then grow roots on the other side as well, which is pretty amazing. What's even more amazing is that if they fall, they happen to fall at high tide and it's pretty deep and they never touch the bottom in any way, they'll float along. They'll go out to sea. And as they're out to sea, they're a little tree growing, like growing leaves, getting water from the ocean and doing photosynthesis in the sunlight and they can float around for up to a year before they make land and stand themselves up and grow roots wherever they land. It's just unbelievable because this was an evolutionary adaptation because my first thought

was, well, why doesn't the acorn-like seed just fall into the water and float around? But it must have just not been able to survive and got waterlogged and died and adapted to grow on the tree itself and get that little seedling started. Yeah, because think about this, Chuck. A seedling is a small viable tree. It has everything it needs to grow. So it's an individual organism. And when the mangrove is growing the seedling on its tree on itself, that's gestation. Because when it drops off, it's like a giraffe dropping a baby out like three or four feet above the ground. It's the same thing. It's gestation. It's the live birth of a plant. It's nuts, man. I love it. And the baby giraffe sticks its nose into the ground and grows from there for months and months.

Plants some roots out of its head and there you go. Let's talk about the mangalls a little bit. We've talked about the fact that these forests are very dense, but it is a dense ecosystem that is dense in more ways than one. It's not just all these gnarly roots that you see everywhere. There are all kinds of fish habitats and wildlife habitats that exist in these mangalls. Yeah, one of the reasons why these root systems and why the above water parts of the trees are all just so thick, like you were saying, is so hard to get through, is because of the way that they drop seedlings right off of their tree right around them. So these mangalls develop into these really thick deposits of trees and shrubs above water and

below water because they grow so closely together. And as they grow, they migrate one way or another, or they just spread out one way or another sometimes toward the ocean, sometimes behind them, sometimes to either side of the shore. But that's how they grow and that's why they're so dense too. And that provides a lot of protection for these habitats. There are all manner of fish. If you're in Florida, you're going to see Gray Snapper in there, or you probably won't see him, Snook, Tarpen. This is pretty remarkable. The Goliath grouper, which is actually endangered, spends their first six years in that mangall before it goes to open water. Yeah, and it's not just like a few kinds of fish, like things like octopi,

sharks, shrimp, mollusks, just tons of different kinds of fish. This is their nursery ground because these roots, these tangle of roots provide a place for juveniles to hide out of reach of predators and get bigger and bigger because it's also a very nourishing place for them to eat too. So they're really, really important as nurseries for all kinds of sea life. Yeah, and if you're talking about eating seafood, the commercial fishing industry, and this just sort of shows you how important these mangalls are, a one square mile loss of mangrove forest would lose about 275,000 pounds of fish every year. And then that's not even to speak of all the indigenous communities that are, you know, rely on these fish to provide their

sustenance. Right, and so that's just the below water part of the mangall. The above water part of the mangall basically does the same thing, but for terrestrial and arboreal animals like monkeys, insects, reptiles, birds, they make their home and their nurseries in those the mangalls too, the branches, the leaves, the trunks. Those are really just as important for above ground animals as they are for below water animals. Yeah, and you mentioned that bingal tiger. This was also in the Sum Darbans, right? Yes. And this is the largest single population of bingal tigers on planet earth, and it's only about a hundred of them, but they live in these mangalls. Yes, and also attention, Kristen Bell, if you are ambivalent about mangrove forests,

prepare to care because in Panama, the pygmy three-toed sloth, critically endangered by the way, only makes its home in mangrove forests down there. That's right. So you got to care now. I still watch that video of her in that sloth about once every two years. Yeah, it's a good one. It's just one of the great human reactions to something. Yeah, and I remember how heartened we were when we realized that she didn't touch it, even though she clearly wanted to more than she's ever wanted to do anything or like, but she didn't do it. It's good for her. It's pretty great. I think we can move on to some superpowers, right? Yeah, mangrove superpower number one, which is coastline protection,

which is pretty important if you live along the coast. Yeah, this is a big one. One great benefit of all those above ground gnarly mess of roots that are everywhere is, and it just makes perfect common sense when you look at them, is they make great wave breaks. Any kind of wave, even like a tsunami, is that a word? It is now. I think it's a great word. Right. Tsunami's wave is going to be cut down big time when it hits this stuff. It's just going to, you know, just cut through and disperse it in a really profound way. Yeah, because there's so many different like roots and individual things to bump into on the way to the shore that it's going to reduce its energy, which means that it reduces one of the

pernicious effects that waves have on shore, which is erosion. And not only does it reduce erosion because the waves don't have enough energy to take stuff back out to sea, it actually has them deposit the sediments that they're bringing to the shore in the mangrove swamps. And if you compare, if you combine that, I should say, with the really low oxygen environments that make up the mucky bottom in a mangrove mangal, I guess you can kind of flash back to our coal, the mystery of coal episode where we talked a lot about how swamps work like that. So mangrove swamps are very much like that as well. But then in addition to that, they have ocean sediments being brought, all this organic stuff being brought from the oceans, layering with the mucky sediment that

from the mangroves falling into the muck, which means that they're like holding on to a lot of stuff and building up soil as a matter of fact, so much so that they outpaces sea level rises in some areas. Yeah, I mean, this kind of falls under one of their other superpowers is the fact that they are literally sequestering carbon. But I think that they add about, and we'll get to that in more detail in a minute, but in Australia, some mangrove or some mangals in Australian Belize add about 10 millimeters or more of coastal soil each year. A hundredth of a meter. Yeah, I mean, that doesn't sound like that much, but sea level rise is coming in at about 3.2 meters a year. So in parts of Australian Belize, it is actually outpacing climate change. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

And that's really, really important because as sea levels rise, if the soil level is rising, we don't have to worry quite as much about sea level rise there, but that's only in some spots as we'll see. Yeah, and as far as the waves go, and we're talking about tsunamis, well, with just regular waves for every hundred meters of a mangrove forest that a wave will hit, its height can decrease by as much as 66%. Wow. And if you're looking at storm surges, which is one of the big dangers, it's not just the wave, it's that water surge. If you've listened to our tsunami episode, there was a study that found that surge depths were reduced about a little over a foot and a half for every little more than a half a mile, 50 centimeters over every kilometer. And that

doesn't sound like a ton, but if you've got a mangrove forest that's several miles deep, then we're talking six or seven feet of less storm surge happening, and that can make a really big difference in flooding. Oh yeah, because the storm surge is what gets you. I mean, it can flood miles and miles inland. It carries all sorts of debris with it. It has so much energy. It can just rip buildings down. It's a real problem from hurricanes. It's that flooding from the storm surge, but because those mangroves are there to absorb a bunch of that energy, it just doesn't have the opportunity to come nearly as far inland. So mangrove forests, especially thick ones, save human lives, and you would guess animal lives too.

Yeah, and we've seen this bear out in very sad ways when mangrove forests have disappeared. I think it was in the Indo-Pacific region in the 1950s. They used to have about five miles deep of mangrove forests. By the 1990s, they were depleted because of shrimp farming. We'll talk about that later as well. But basically, human caused depletion. And in 91, there was a cyclone that hit the coast of Bangladesh where there were no longer any mangrove forests to cut down on that impact. And there was no buffer. And there was a big 20-foot storm surge, and almost 140,000 people died. Right. I saw that a lot of those people died because they didn't use storm shelters in addition to the mangrove buffer being gone. And that they had

built the storm shelters, Chuck, after a 1970 cyclone that killed 500,000 people in Bangladesh. Wow. Can you believe that? Can you imagine a storm killing half a million people in your country or your little area? That's insane. It is. That's devastating. Like it's biblical, you know? Yeah. They did some studies too with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004. And they found that the mangroves there were about 100 meters deep, and they at least helped reduce those waves between five and 30%. So that's a big deal. Six feet of storm surge, up to 30% of wave height, and the initial rush in from the ocean is you're saving a lot of lives in that case. Yeah. And I mean,

you saw how bad the Indian Ocean tsunami was too. It just makes you wonder like how much worse it could have been without mangroves. So I say we take our second break and we come back and talk about carbon sequestration. That's right, aka superpower number two. me in this situation. If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking

this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. We had promise of superpower number two and we tease a little bit earlier. I did about carbon sequestration. So we need to talk a little bit about what people are calling a blue carbon ecosystem, blue sort of referencing the ocean. Yeah. It's basically the same thing like, you know, trees inland capturing carbon and storing them in their bits and parts. This is, this is just coastal vegetation doing the same thing. And the thing is, is like trees, they're

really efficient at capturing carbon and storing it. But because of our friends fungi and rot, when the tree dies, that carbon gets released back into the ecosystem and even possibly back into the atmosphere, if say like a wildfire happens. Atmosphere. Hot wheels. That is right. But you know how we mentioned before that with that soil that the water is basically that ocean water is just sitting on top of. It is not, it's just building up to that salty peat and that carbon is not being released like it does in a terrestrial forest. Yeah. And it's not breaking down. So it is a champion at storing carbon, not only good at it, but really good at it. Yeah. It's like the Judah Friedlander of forests as far as carbon sequestration goes.

I love Judah Friedlander. We actually met him once, but I don't get the joke. Oh, he always wore a hat that said, world chief. Oh, okay. And he was always boasting about stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. I love that guy. When we met him at an event with Jesse Thorne and Hodgman many years ago. And this was kind of during his run on 30 Rock. 30 Rock. And this is when I was also wearing my last chance garage hat all the time, which I haven't put on in a couple of years. I hate to say so. Probably a few years. But he, I remember when I met him, he went into that face of his, he kind of peered up at my hat in that patch and he went, all right, okay, cool. That was a great Judah Friedlander. I was like,

hey, I got the stamp of approval from the hat guy. Yeah, definitely the hat guy for sure. That was cool. So, but yeah, so mangroves are the champion of carbon sequestration, so much so that they are four times more efficient than terrestrial vegetation at storing carbon, which makes them like a bonafide carbon sink. Mangro forests are. And again, it's because there's just no decay. There's no fungus. There's no rot. All the stuff that, all the vegetation that dies and falls down into the muck just gets stuck there and covered over and doesn't get a chance to break down. So, as long as you don't dig up or destroy a mangro forest and cut up the peat to use it as, as cheap fuel, you've got a really good carbon sink on your hands.

Yeah, to the tune of worldwide mangos account for about 6.4 billion tons of carbon that's being held in check. That means when you do do something, like you hinted at, it can have devastating effects for the world. Surprise, surprise. If you cut down a mangro forest, that carbon is going to be released. That sequester carbon is slowly going to creep back into the atmosphere from 2000 to 2015, roughly 122 million tons of carbon. Extra carbon were released into the atmosphere because of the destruction of mangro forests. And between 80 and 2000, 30% of the mangos of the world have been stripped away. And it is outpacing like the tropical rainforest destruction.

That's mind boggling because if you just hear the figures on how, how frequently and how much rainforest is cut down, the idea that mangro forest is outpacing it is pretty nuts. But apparently, Myanmar is the, the current hot spot for mangrove deforestation. Between 1996 and 2016, Myanmar cut down 60% of its mangos. Just gone. Part of the problem is, is like you can restore mangrove forest, fortunately. We'll talk about some people who do that, but it can take a while. And sometimes when you restore some mangroves, you put the seedlings in and a typhoon or a cyclone or a hurricane comes along and just washes them all away. So if your timing's wrong, it might take

a very long time for you to restore a mangrove forest. So it's not something you want to cut down willy nilly, basically. No, shrimp farming is something we mentioned earlier in passing, but they are the, the biggest culprit responsible for 35% of mangrove forest loss. And, you know, people love shrimp all around the world and in Thailand in the 80s and 90s and other places as well, but especially Thailand, they cut down a lot of mangrove forests to make these shrimp farms along the coastline. And then you've also got the sea level rise that's causing destruction. We mentioned parts of Australian Belize that those soil deposits are outpacing it, but that's only in a couple of those places. It is,

it is not doing that in other areas. No. So that means that sea level rises outpacing soil deposition there. I want to say one more thing about shrimp farming too. I looked a little bit into it and I cannot decide, maybe it deserves its own episode. Who knows? Oh, okay. One of the other problems with shrimp farming, in addition to a shrimp farm sharing the same kind of land or a mangrove forest that landed occupies being desirable for a shrimp farm, so you cut down mangrove forest to build a shrimp farm, is that when you harvest shrimp, you basically have to refresh the water. So shrimp farmers typically just basically open a dam and let all the water out. And that water is filled with tons of nutrients that overwhelm

the carrying capacity of the ecosystems, the mangrove forests around the shrimp farm. And you get what's called an algae bloom, which sucks up all the oxygen, kills off all the fish, and has just this devastating effect on the ecosystem surrounding it. So shrimp farming is really hard on the areas where it takes place, not just from the shrimp farms themselves, but from what comes out of the shrimp farms as well. And there's just so many basic good, best practices that could be followed, that just aren't followed, that there's almost like a general, like, duh, coming out of the shrimp farming industry, as far as I can tell, that really needs to be fixed. It's almost as if they just want to continue to make as much

money as they can before they're regulated in some way. But I mean, what are you going to do if you try to regulate them at all? You've got a nanny state on your hands and who wants that? Yeah. And shrimp farming is just one tiny fraction of the great amounts of harm that are happening to the ocean because of lots of things, but commercial fishing is certainly one of them. I will say though, it's really hard to turn down shrimp on pizza. Is that your head or something? No, no, that's from years back. I used to love shrimp on pizza. All right, talk to me more about this. What are we talking? You just throw some shrimp on a regular cheese or is it like a barbecue pineapple thing? No, no, no, no, no. A regular pizza,

but you don't want to use just any shrimp. You certainly don't want to use jumbo shrimp. You want to use the little tiny salad shrimp because they cook just enough with the pizza. A bigger shrimp might still be partially raw. It's going to be too big to eat. Oh, you put it on the raw? Yeah, you just throw some of this. Well, no, I think they usually come already cooked now that I think about it, but you just throw a couple of handfuls on your pizza, put it in the oven, and they thank me later basically. Oh man, I love shrimp. I don't know about shrimp and pizza. Well, now I feel bad about eating shrimp knowing how bad shrimp farming is. I know. It's another wake-up call, isn't it? Well, yes, and I've been awoken because I'm now farming my own

shrimp here at home in a very sustainable manner so that I can have it on my pizza. Ah, a bathtub shrimp. It's delicious. We don't take baths anyway. Yeah, Yumi's like, why do you have an out-of-order sign on our bathroom door? Right, I'm still trying to figure out how to break the news to Yumi. We don't really have a working bathtub anymore. So, there are also invasive species that can totally wreck the health of a man gall in the 70s in China. They were trying to do the right thing, I think. There were conservationists that transplanted some marsh grasses that were from the United States there to try and slow erosion, but it crowded out mangroves. And then in Texas, they weren't trying to do the right thing. The Fish and Game officials there,

they said, hey, people like hunting this exotic Asian antelope. It's called a nilgai, I guess, N-I-L-G-A-I. So, let's put them in Texas so people can hunt them. And it turns out they love to eat mangroves. Yeah, so they're being deforested by the game that was imported to Texas to hunt, which means I'm sure there's huge bounties on these things now, too. Yeah, isn't that funny how that all works out? So, there are people who are like, we really need to work on this. We need to get mangroves back. And there are places where, this is the good news, mangrove deforestation globally, speaking on average, has actually stopped progressing and is now starting to decline. Yeah. The deforestation is. So, people are kind of getting hip to the idea

that we really need these things. They provide countless services for us humans. So, even the most selfish human can get behind mangrove restoration, right? Yeah. I mean, I think there's about 42% of the worldwide mangals are protected now. But you need that number at like 92, well, at 100. But I would feel much better if it was like in the 80s or 90s. Yeah. And not only that, like areas that have been developed coastally need to replant the mangroves that they cut down to build because they need them really bad. You need mangrove buffers, as we've found, whatever you can get is helpful. That's right. But there's another kind of clever financial instrument, as they call it, called blue bonds. It is a subset of green bonds. Green bonds

came around a while ago. And these are basically, if you have money and you want to invest responsibly in a way that not only doesn't impact the environment, but can help the environment, you invest in a green bond, or if you're really into the ocean, the subset of blue bonds, which were first introduced in 2018. Right. And so, if like you want to offset your emissions, you buy a blue bond and all of a sudden you've just paid somebody to go plant some mango, or not mango, maybe mango too, but mangrove forests. Right. Yeah. A mango forest, that sounds delicious. It would be. I'd be like, plant it in my backyard. That's where I want you to plant it with my blue bond. Yeah. So, look into blue bonds and green bonds. I saw something depressing the

other day when they were, I don't know what they were talking about on the news, but they basically said like, if you have an IRA, you were supporting all kinds of companies that you would probably never support in real life. Oh yeah, definitely. Mutual funds. Yeah, mutual funds, just everything's all lumped in. So, they were trying to encourage people, if they're able to, to be a little more selective in what they choose to invest in. Well, there's a lot of sustainable mutual funds too. That's right. That where they're very carefully selected. Unfortunately, that means the management fee is going to be higher, but if you care, it doesn't really matter, you know. Oh, is it really a higher management fee? Yeah. Anytime it requires any additional thought or effort, the management

fee just automatically goes up. I had to click on three extra things. Right. I had to find out what these blue bonds were. That's my impression of a mutual fund manager. Yeah. Financial advisor. If that's your financial advisor, you're going to be the wrong person. Right. I meet him at Burger King every couple of weeks. In the back. Yeah. Where else would you meet? You got anything else? Yeah. Nothing else. Up with mangroves. Up with mangroves. And since we both set up with mangroves, everybody, that means it's time for a listener mail. This is a thank you from a Satanist. We had a great podcast that we must have put this on a select recently, I guess. Yeah, like two weeks ago. Okay. Hey, guys. Discovered your podcast in 2011, have been hooked ever since.

Your informative banter filled episodes remain to welcome constant in my life throughout college. Adult years and now parenthood was helping me stay sane during sleepless nights with my newborns. When I saw the episode on Satanism, I guess they hadn't listened to it previously. I was simultaneously excited and nervous. I would hope you'd give it the usual Josh and Chuck treatment, and I was not disappointed. Over the years, I've been given a lot of grief being a Satanist. People often assume that I'm a very devout Christian based on the way I look, and often go from praising me to threatening my family upon learning that I follow the tenants set forth by the Satanic temple by shedding some light on the true nature of Satanism.

I feel that you have given many people a look into the practice in a non-threatening way, and hopefully this will help people choose kindness over fear based hatred when interacting with Satanist in the future. And thank you for being bold enough to put this episode out in the world. I'm sure it wasn't that easy, but this long time listener appreciates it. Your friendly Satanist, Donna. Thanks a lot, Donna. Donna the Satanist. Yeah, that was a good one, because I went back and listened to it, to QA it before it was a select. I was like, this was a really good episode, but there was one thing at the beginning, Chuck, that now I wish we had back, because a couple of people wrote in, and it was that we CO8 at the beginning saying, if you're a Christian,

you probably don't want to listen to this, and people wrote in and said, no, you should not have said that, because there's plenty of people out there who should hear this and, you know, change their views on people who hold these views. So if you go back and listen to that, just plug your ears for that first part, and then listen to it through again. Yeah, that was 40-year-old Chuck talking. Not 51-year-old Chuck. That's a weird number to say. It is, Chuck. 51 is a weird number, and it's going to be a weird time in your life, I'm sure of it. That's it, huh? That's the one thing I'll always hate is you'll always be younger than me, no matter how much I want you to speed up the aging process, you'll always be younger.

You would have to travel to Mars in suspended animation, and I might just have to stay here on Earth for me to catch up. All right, I'm going to look into that. Thanks a lot, Donna. We appreciate that big time, and if you want to be like Donna and send us some kudos, we'll take them. You can send it in an email to stuffpodcastatheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Introducing The Biz Tape, your all-things music business and media podcast. Join me, Joe Wozleski and my co-host, Colin McKay every Wednesday, where we discuss the breaking news, changing the music industry. And what your favorite artists and creatives are up to. Listen to new episodes of The Biz Tape every Wednesday on the Nashville

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