Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Climate Change Actions Using Sargassum and Black Fly Larvae

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Climate Change Actions Using Sargassum and Black Fly Larvae · How To Protect The Ocean

0:00
Look, I get it. We're probably tired of hearing about
0:03
all the doom and gloom surrounding climate change, all the consequences of
0:06
climate change and all the money that's involved in
0:10
climate change. Like I know Canadians, we as Canadians are sick of
0:13
hearing about carbon taxes and all the money that we have to pay as
0:17
out of pocket to help climate change. However, today
0:20
we're going to switch it up a little bit. We're going to talk about climate solutions, no money
0:24
from us, no carbon tax, no taxes at all. We're
0:27
just going to focus on climate solutions. And today on
0:31
the program, we have Dr. Annalisa Bracco, who is a professor and
0:34
associate chair for research at Georgia Tech School of
0:37
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, specializing in
0:41
ocean and climate dynamics, not only is she
0:44
specializing in ocean climate dynamics. She also has experience
0:48
working out in space and she talks about how familiar things
0:52
are in space as they are into the ocean. We're going to hear all
0:55
about that and her projects as she's been collaborating with a number of different engineers
1:00
and scientists and business people on climate
1:03
solutions on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's
1:07
start the show. Hey
1:12
everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I
1:15
am your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with
1:18
the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for
1:21
a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, we're
1:25
going to be talking about climate solutions. And before we get
1:28
to that, if you want to know more about what you can do to
1:31
help protect the ocean, you find out more information from
1:35
us, you can go to our website at speakupforblue.com. All
1:38
you have to do is go to speakupforblue.com and then if you want information to
1:42
your inbox to find out more about the episodes that we release, to
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find out more about the news that's being released on the ocean, and
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you can find out more about jobs that you can search for to follow a career in
1:52
marine science and ocean conservation, just sign up for our newsletter. Go
1:56
to speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter. That's
1:59
speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter. Let's
2:03
get into the episode with Dr. Annalisa Bracco, who is a professor and
2:06
associate chair for research at Georgia Tech School of
2:10
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, specializing in ocean
2:13
and climate dynamics. And as I mentioned before, she
2:16
was like a physicist that looked at space and looked at the
2:20
how galaxies were formed and how planets were formed and modeling
2:23
all the stuff around there and how similar space is and modeling space is
2:27
compared to the ocean. Very, very interesting. We talk a lot
2:30
about climate solutions. We talk a lot about how she was told by
2:34
her own father that you wouldn't do
2:37
well in physics because you're a woman. And we'll see what happens with
2:40
that. She became quite interested in looking after
2:43
things about physics and pursuing all things surrounding physics,
2:48
and she is here right now to talk about her career,
2:51
to talk about climate solutions, and why she switched from just modeling
2:55
climate change to climate solutions. We're going to talk about that today.
2:59
Enjoy the interview with Dr. Annalisa Bracco, and
3:02
I'll talk to you after. Hi, Annalisa. Welcome to
3:05
the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about ocean
3:09
climate solutions? Absolutely. Love
3:12
it. I love it. I'm really excited about this episode because a
3:16
lot of the times when we talk about climate change in the ocean, we really focus on
3:19
the doom and gloom. We don't talk a lot about solutions. And today,
3:23
we're going to be talking about some of those solutions. A lot of it is experimental. A
3:26
lot of it is in the research phases. But it's really great to be
3:30
able to look at hope down the way. And
3:33
I think that's what we need a little bit in today's world. We need a lot of hope. So
3:37
I'm looking forward to being able to discuss that with you, Annalisa. But before we do,
3:44
Absolutely. So my name is Annalisa Bracco. I'm a professor
3:48
at Georgia Tech in climate and oceanography. My
3:53
background is in physics. So my degree, my
3:57
bachelor degree, was in theoretical physics. And I
4:00
got that in Italy at the University of Turin. And
4:05
then I did a master
4:09
thesis or research work looking at the formation of
4:12
galaxies. And from that, I
4:16
entered in a PhD to study the role of
4:20
vortices in the formation of planets. And
4:25
I do all of that using numerical models. And
4:29
then after a couple of papers on the planets,
4:33
and how they form after the star has
4:37
exploded, has formed. So we have the sun, we have a proton nebula, we
4:40
need to figure out how we aggregate stuff to
4:43
get to the planet. After doing that, I
4:48
was essentially asked by my advisor to get
4:52
closer to our planet and work
4:56
possibly in the ocean or in the atmosphere, because
4:59
he was kind of switching research. The
5:03
equations that describe the motion of the
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gas around the star or of the
5:10
oceans are the same. You may make very different
5:14
approximations, but at the end of the game, the
5:17
players, the big players are exactly the same. Because when you
5:20
have a star and you have a nebula around, what happens is that
5:23
the nebula is rotating around the star. So
5:27
you have rotation. And then you also have stratification. Because
5:32
all the gas and the heavy, the gas it's all around, and
5:36
instead the heavy stuff, so all the dust that forms after the
5:39
star explosion, coalesce in the center. And
5:43
so you have a thin layer of a dense object
5:47
that is rotating. And that's really what the ocean is,
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is a relatively thin layer on a big object,
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which is rotating. And so really, the equations and
6:00
the forces at play are very similar. So it was a relatively simple
6:04
switch. I love to sail. I love the
6:07
ocean. And so for my side, it was very easy
6:11
to pick the ocean against the atmosphere. I ended up
6:14
also working on the atmosphere. I have nothing against the atmosphere. But
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at the time I said ocean and that stick with me
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and I definitely do more research related to the ocean that
6:28
Phenomenal. I love that because a lot of the times when you
6:31
hear people talk about space, like say government talks
6:35
about space or you hear like SpaceX or whatever and we're like we want
6:38
to go to space, we want all these billionaires are wanting to go to space and stuff and explore
6:42
space. A lot of times, like, well, let's
6:45
forget about space. Let's focus on the ocean. It seems very divisive. It
6:49
seems very like people are pitting one against the other. But why can't we
6:52
do both? And I love the fact that you have the similarities in
6:57
terms of the equation and modeling the ocean and
7:00
out in space and formation of galaxies. And they're actually
7:04
all similar. So we're here arguing, like, let's spend less money
7:07
on space. Let's spend more money on the ocean, which I get. But
7:11
in reality, maybe some of the models that were used for
7:15
space can be used for the ocean and vice versa. It's just a matter of
7:18
finding those similarities. So I love the fact that you've crossed over that. But I
7:22
have to ask to go back a little bit and
7:25
talk about your interest in in physics as
7:29
a young woman, right? What got you into learning
7:33
about physics? That's not something you hear every day. And to
7:37
be honest, and this is a feat to you, is as
7:40
a woman, you don't see a lot of physicists come out,
7:43
right? You don't see a lot of women being known as being
7:47
physicists. So how
7:53
I was not very much encouraged for a while. That's
7:58
a very different story. So my dad is
8:07
Yes. My dad only managed to get through middle
8:11
school. Wow. He
8:14
was born just before World War II, so
8:17
there was kind of no money. He had to go to work, and he actually managed
8:21
to get through middle school just because some teacher really
8:25
pushed him. push his father to let him do it,
8:28
because the problem was really the family needed him. But
8:32
then he got into the army, because
8:36
that was a safe job and the job that pays you every month, when
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he was very young. And from there, he... Is this
8:49
And essentially he got in the, what here will
8:53
be the Corps of Engineering. Okay,
8:57
yeah. And so they were building bridges, they
9:01
were rebuilding the whole infrastructure for Italy and especially train
9:05
bridges for the rail system. And
9:09
he started studying on his own. And then in
9:14
1969, there was the opportunity for people that didn't have a high school degree
9:18
to take an exam and
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get through and if they pass and enroll at
9:28
Wow. How old was he in
9:36
Yeah. OK. So fairly late to think about university, but
9:41
He was already married. My mom really pushed him to do that.
9:45
He had this passion for physics. He had read and learned
9:49
a lot on his own, just reading books and things. And
9:52
so he entered. So he passed. But
9:57
then decided to stay where he was and
10:00
not go to university because that would have delay having a
10:03
family and things like that. So I was born a
10:07
couple of years later, in fact. But at the same
10:10
time, that allowed him to advance in
10:14
the career in the army as if he had a
10:17
high school degree. And so he was
10:20
able to get into the Military Academy for the Corps of
10:23
Engineering and teach applied physics. So I
10:27
grew up with a father that would teach us physics every
10:30
single opportunity he had. So I do remember, not
10:34
too fondly, those trips where he,
10:38
you know, any kind of something
10:42
that was moving in the car, and we would have to go through
10:46
the centrifugal acceleration and always
10:52
get to calculate, you know, what is the minimum
10:57
What is the ideal distance for a satellite to be
11:00
in a geostationary position? And
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I was six or seven, and my brother was younger. And
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so, you know, he always came to me to do all those
11:11
calculations. And of course, I was doing them wrongly. I mean, I was six
11:15
or seven. So he decided I was really not
11:19
talented for physics. But
11:22
it got me to think a lot about that. And it got me then
11:26
later on, we start talking about general relativity. He was, he
11:30
had read everything about that too. I mean, the original textbooks
11:34
by Einstein. And so
11:37
I got to be interested in that. And
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then one day he told me, but you are a woman and
11:44
women are not logic. And so you cannot understand physics.
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I got so mad that I ended up
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saying, well, I'll show you. And that's pretty
11:58
So it was more of like to prove your dad wrong to
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say hey, you know what you've been teaching me all these years I picked up
12:05
a few things and I've got an interest in it. I'm gonna do it. I like that.
12:08
I like that. That's really interesting And then so then from
12:12
there the so that means, you know high school, you know You
12:18
I know I took very little physics in high school I actually went for
12:21
classic literature. I was very very talented in literature and
12:24
writing so I did Greek and Latin for
12:28
five years and just a tiny bit of physics, but I
12:31
enjoyed that tiny bit. And then I really
12:36
went, I mean, I really did physics as an undergraduate
12:40
because I wanted to show him that I could do it. And
12:44
in fact, I finished and before getting into
12:48
a PhD, I took a year off and I went to do classic literature
12:51
as a bachelor degree. and decided that
12:55
I was getting bored because I was missing research. My
13:00
last year as an undergraduate in Italy,
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it's essentially equivalent of a master, you have to work on a thesis and I
13:07
really enjoyed the research part. So I
13:10
went back and I tried to enter in
13:13
a PhD, which is hard in Italy, just percent to advise because
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it's an exam that you have to pass nationally. So
13:22
there are very few positions open. Things have changed, but
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when I did it, it was like that. And
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I remember calling my dad and saying that I
13:32
was dropping a job offer that I had received because
13:35
I wanted to first try to get into a PhD. And he told me,
13:39
you are good, but not that good. I was like, well,
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Do you think he knew what he was doing? Because the first time
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he said no, and then you're like, no, I'm going to show him. And now
13:51
he's telling you, no, you're good. You proved his point, but
13:55
No, when I got in and I actually placed first
14:00
of the five people that were admitted that year, I
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called him. He's the first person I called and I said, I'm
14:07
in. And he told me, well, how many got in, like
14:11
five, and how did you place first, and how many other
14:14
women? None. It was completely by chance. At that
14:18
point, like the following year, there were three women out of five, so
14:23
Yeah, yeah, or the mix at that point. I mean, you know, the
14:26
numbers are so small. You start with 70 people, you have to get down
14:30
to five. Some years will be female, some years will be male.
14:34
But he was very impressed by that. He was really impressed by
14:37
the, you know, you put four guys
14:43
Yeah. You're like, you're ahead of four guys. You're like, Hey, what? Remember
14:52
That's fantastic. So you get into a PhD program and
14:55
you're still doing, this is not the galaxy
15:00
Yeah. I started looking on, I started working on, uh, of
15:04
formation of planets. And then I switched to
15:11
And again- You switched to oceanography while you're doing
15:15
Okay, because you're a supervisor. Again, vortices
15:19
in the ocean are fundamental for oceanography, so
15:27
But I'm sure, and you say very easy, I
15:30
say no way, because just what you're probably working with
15:34
on the regular, I wouldn't be able to understand because you sound
15:37
much more intelligent than I am in physics. But
15:42
going from space to ocean, just from
15:46
a mind perspective, one, you're exploring the
15:49
vastness of space where you could probably make a
15:53
number of different discoveries. You could probably do a lot of wonderful things.
15:57
Now, obviously, you can still do discoveries because there's still a vastness to the ocean. But
16:01
it seems like there's a little bit more limitation. And I say limitation by
16:05
a squeeze, right? But in comparison, was
16:08
there a shift being like, why am I going from space to ocean? Did
16:13
No. I love the space part because
16:17
I love just
16:20
the idea. you
16:24
are learning how everything formed and all of that. But
16:27
I must say that because I
16:30
was already working with models, the possibility of
16:34
applying it to something where I could have observations or
16:38
I could at least solve actual problem, it became a
16:41
little bit less abstract. And we
16:44
were also at the time where climate change was starting to become
16:48
a problem. So no, I
16:51
was very pleased to do
16:54
that switch. The fact that I had something to
16:59
anchor what I was doing and to see the
17:02
application of what I was doing directly, it was
17:12
So I finished my PhD in 2000. So I started in 1997. I finished in 2000. So I made
17:22
Right. So I was, the reason why I asked was more because
17:25
of the, you mentioned climate was, we were really starting to, we
17:28
were starting to focus more on climate at that point. And that's true.
17:32
I remember starting to learn, I went to university, I did my undergrad in
17:36
97 to 2001. And that's when I started to really find out more
17:39
and more about climate. And even though it wasn't necessarily being
17:43
talked about in the public eye as much up maybe
17:46
until the earlier 2000s, but It was in
17:50
the academic sort of circles. It was being discussed quite
17:53
a bit. We knew that there was going to be problems 10 to 20 years. And
17:57
surprise, surprise, we have problems 10 to 20 years later and so
18:01
forth, even 30 years later. At
18:04
that point, though, did you see, focusing
18:08
a little bit on climate, knowing where this is going, did you
18:12
really understand how, one,
18:16
good for your career this would be because you're working in climate, but also understand
18:20
the depths of the destruction that climate change
18:26
No, not at the time. Also because I was
18:30
a student and I'm always being kind of optimistic, like
18:33
I just, it's really curiosity what at the end drives me.
18:39
And the other thing that I would say the ocean was bringing was the
18:43
possibility to really work at the intersection of physics, but
18:46
also chemistry and biology, which is something that I had in me
18:49
already from the university, the undergraduate time.
18:53
So I wanted to be able to do something that
18:57
was more interdisciplinary. So I
19:02
didn't see it coming as much.
19:06
And also, I would say, we
19:10
started having satellites and having really good information about
19:14
climate only in the 80s. So we were just 15 years
19:18
or less than 20 years in. The trends were not there yet.
19:22
The record was just too short. But we were coming out of
19:25
the biggest El Nino in the century, the 1996 event,
19:30
and also what that meant for population all
19:33
over, from India to Africa. So there
19:37
was a lot of, you know, we can understand more,
19:42
we need to understand more, and we can also be useful
19:45
to society. That was interesting,
19:49
and it was also what drove me into the field.
19:53
Interesting. Okay, cool. Now, after which you finish
19:58
up your PhD, what happened next? Where did
20:05
I did a postdoc. I came to the US for the first time for
20:08
a long period. I did a postdoc at the Woods
20:12
Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. And
20:15
then I went back to Italy and I worked at
20:19
UNESCO for three and a half years. UNESCO
20:23
has one research center, which is located in
20:26
Italy, it's called the International Center for Theoretical Physics, and they were growing
20:38
And then I came back to the United States, and in December
20:52
Yeah, I had another year at WUTSOL in
20:58
So I know a lot of it was research-based, but working for an
21:01
organization like UNESCO, especially in Italy, where I feel like Italy
21:05
is a bit of a headquarters for a lot of
21:08
international organizations, UN, FAO
21:12
is there as well, UNESCO obviously has an
21:15
office there, it's a pretty big hub for international
21:19
type of work and research. What
21:23
made you decide to pursue one kind
21:26
of a little bit, get away a little bit of that and not work directly for
21:30
them, but also move into an academic position?
21:35
Well, there were a number of
21:39
work-related, personnel-related, a lot of things that got together. But
21:45
I was happy to get to a faculty position because
21:48
I wanted to work more directly with students. And
21:54
I truly enjoy advising. So
21:58
I wanted to have that opportunity and build
22:01
a group and kind of give
22:06
also back to the new generations, you know, the
22:09
passion, the kind of curiosity that I have. And so
22:13
that for me was important. I love it.
22:17
And in Trieste, you can do a little bit of that. And you do a lot of that with
22:22
students from developing countries, but are usually shorter interactions,
22:26
like they come for a few months, and they go. So it's a little bit
22:29
It's not like a three to five year, depending on what they're doing, whether a
22:32
master's or PhD, or even a postdoc, where you can, you really get
22:36
into a mentorship role with that
22:39
student. And I think that really, yeah, I agree. I think that's a
22:43
really great feature for academia. And now you've
22:46
been doing that since, at Georgia Tech, since then. That's
22:52
Yeah, no, another thing that really brought me to Georgia
22:56
Tech that I enjoyed very much was the fact that there was a lot of go
22:59
and a lot of attention for interdisciplinary
23:03
projects. So there was a lot of support for that. And
23:06
so I enjoyed that from the beginning because I
23:09
started working in collaboration with people in biology, School of
23:13
Physics, and College of Computing, and now
23:21
brought me here and kept me
23:24
here. Georgia Tech is a great school. It's a big school. It's
23:28
got a lot to go by. It's very popular. Now, how
23:31
did you feel about coming from Italy, where you have European football,
23:35
and you come to Georgia Tech, where you have American football, which is pretty big
23:42
I don't watch American football. I don't understand it.
23:48
I used to. Okay, I still watch the
23:53
Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, I
23:57
had to push that in there because I feel like that was a big change
24:02
Now, is there a lot of difference between doing
24:06
a PhD in Italy and
24:09
then mentoring PhD students and graduate students
24:16
Yes and no, in the sense that the Italian PhD
24:21
comes after an undergraduate, and
24:24
now it's different, but anyways, it's three plus two
24:27
years even now. So it's five years and essentially you
24:31
already do the equivalent of a master. So
24:34
when you start your PhD, it's shorter, it's three years, and
24:39
it's really focused on research. There are almost no classes. While
24:43
here, it's longer and is essentially what
24:46
in Europe or what in Italy would be the master plus a PhD. With
24:50
five years and the first couple of years, there is a substantial
24:54
amount of coursework that you have to take. So
24:58
in that sense, it's just putting together the two things. So it's different,
25:02
but at the end, it's- Same amount of time, just different way
25:07
Yeah. It's interesting because I live in Canada and the research thesis
25:11
for a PhD is very much research-based. You do some courses
25:15
if you need it, but there are students who don't.
25:18
They may do one or two courses if they need it, but it's very different there.
25:22
So it's interesting to hear the European versus North
25:25
American and the differences and similarities from there.
25:29
Now, since you've been at Georgia Tech, it's been almost 20 years,
25:33
I guess, since you've been there, your
25:36
work has stayed on oceans and climate. How
25:40
has that evolved over the last 20 years for you and just sort of
25:44
how we've been involving as a society as well?
25:47
I think we definitely shift from just
25:51
understanding the climate system and
25:55
trying to attribute the changes in the climate system to
26:00
greenhouse gas concentrations increasing to
26:04
aerosol increasing initially and now decreasing and so on
26:07
to really trying to find solutions to the problems and
26:12
to working much more towards adaptation and
26:15
mitigation strategies versus just we want to understand. Yeah.
26:23
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And now you are focusing a
26:26
lot now on, I guess, less
26:30
theoretical sort of applications and
26:33
more, I guess, practical applications,
26:37
especially when it comes to climate. Why
26:43
Well, again, I think that if you just
26:46
identify the problem and you don't work on the solutions, it's a lot.
26:51
Obviously, it's important to identify the problem and understand the problem. You
26:54
cannot solve it otherwise. But there
26:58
is a lot to be said for also trying to figure it out what is the best
27:01
way to address it. And I
27:05
think Georgia Tech in that regard, it's a fantastic place to be because
27:09
you have so many opportunities of collaborating with people
27:12
that can bring also the solution side, the engineers, for
27:16
example. And so it's kind
27:19
of an automatic thing to do, at least for me because,
27:23
again, I do like to work collaboratively and
27:28
I really appreciate to be able to have that
27:32
engagement and do new things all the time. Of
27:35
course. You learn if you are working with someone that
27:41
Absolutely. Can you talk about maybe one of the first projects that you worked
27:44
on where it was more solution-focused and where that collaborative
27:48
effort happen and how that collaborative, like how that networking
27:55
Sure, I have several at this point. There is
27:59
one that I find extremely interesting which
28:03
is about sargassum in the tropical Atlantic. We
28:07
have had since 2011 blooms of
28:11
sargassum in a region of the tropical Atlantic
28:15
around 10 north where we never used
28:18
to. Right. And those blooms are growing, are
28:22
growing over time. They're becoming bigger and bigger, essentially. And
28:26
they are really impacting the Caribbeans and
28:30
the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Florida because all
28:33
this amount of the sargassum at some point gets to the beaches and
28:37
it needs to be cleaned up or it rottens. It's
28:41
absorbing a very large amount of carbon
28:45
dioxide from the atmosphere to grow, but then it's releasing
28:48
it once it gets to the beaches. And so we have to figure out why it's
28:54
Yeah. And just to interrupt a little bit, I just wanted to give the
28:58
audience a perspective on how much actually
29:01
comes to the coast. I went to Mexico one
29:05
year, and along the beach, it would
29:09
go up to my knees. in in sargasm like i was really
29:13
up to my knees in it and it was all along the beach to the point
29:16
where there are now this was a resort there were garbage
29:20
truck, or not garbage truck, sorry, dump trucks that
29:25
were just there constantly, just being filled up with
29:28
diggers and being filled up with sargassum, and
29:31
then they would go and dump it somewhere, and then they would come back, and they would do that
29:35
all day. So that tranquility that you expected on
29:38
a beach wasn't very tranquil with trucks
29:42
working 24 hours a day just trying to get all
29:45
that sarcasm off. So I just wanted to kind of put that in perspective to people, like how
29:48
much is coming along the beach? And that wasn't just Mexico. That was
29:52
a lot of beaches in the Caribbean, as you mentioned, in
29:56
Yeah. Florida and Caribbean, I think together, they're spending
30:00
the order of $300 million per year now, just for cleanup purposes,
30:04
because you cannot leave it on the beach. Otherwise, you kill the tourists. Yeah.
30:08
Yeah. huge nuisance
30:11
on top of being, you know, bad for the environment if
30:16
Yeah, exactly. Even just the smell of a degrading sargassum is
30:22
Yeah, so, you know, I'm working with colleagues in the
30:26
School of Biology, I'm working with colleagues in chemical and
30:30
biogeochemical engineering, and in mechanical engineering, to
30:34
try to figure it out why we have
30:38
this excess of sargassum now. what is promoting those
30:41
blooms and are they going to continue in the future. It
30:45
doesn't look that we ever had them before. Also
30:49
from historical records, so written records, we
30:52
don't have records of blooms this large in that
30:56
area. But they appear in
31:00
2011. We kind of know why they appeared, why they
31:03
are growing. Not yet, not that clear. So
31:07
I'm working on that. But we're also
31:10
working on trying to figure out what to do with all this sargassum. There
31:15
are several groups both in the US and in Europe that are
31:18
considering essentially pulling
31:21
it together when it's possible out at sea and sinking
31:25
it. And we need to figure it
31:28
out how much that costs also from an energetic perspective, and
31:33
what could be the damage, if any, that
31:36
we do to the ecosystem in the deep ocean if
31:40
we dump those large amount of sargassum. And
31:44
of course, anything that you do in the ocean, if it's
31:47
within the 200 miles from the coastlines, also
31:51
need a policy and the legislation and
31:55
permits, and so it gets complicated. Yeah. The
32:01
other solution we are thinking is to
32:04
collect it and then transform it into
32:08
biofuels. And that's
32:11
the colleague in chemistry
32:16
and chemical and biogeochemical engineering and
32:19
the colleague in mechanical engineering that are looking into that. And
32:24
the problem of converting sargassum into biofuel is
32:27
that the amount of lipid
32:32
in the sargassum is quite limited. And so you
32:36
would need to spend a lot of energy to increase that
32:39
concentration. So we are looking for ways of doing
32:43
that in a natural, with
32:47
some kind of natural system
32:51
that can help us in that. And so
32:55
a colleague of mine, Jeff Davis, is
32:58
looking into using black fly larvae, which
33:02
is a fly that lives in the tropics. And it's
33:06
very good at eating up a lot of sargassum
33:10
or other material. And it's
33:15
very good at accumulating lipids. And
33:19
therefore, then you could extract the biofuel from
33:26
Which is crazy to think about. If you think about this larvae, there's probably about maybe
33:29
this big to extract all those lipids and how much you have to extract
33:36
Exactly. I think a lot of people would cringe at just the fact of
33:42
But it's a very efficient way of
33:46
doing it, and it's not very expensive at all,
33:50
also from an energetic perspective. And those flies
33:55
have no side effects to
34:03
I don't think they bite, the black... Because the black flies up here in
34:10
Exactly. Keep them constrained. Keep them all in one spot.
34:13
Keep them all together. There
34:18
is another that I read recently, an
34:21
article of someone that in the Caribbean is using the
34:25
leftovers from a brewery that make rum,
34:29
essentially, increase, to
34:33
make a mix of that plus sargassum that can be converted
34:37
So the byproduct of making rum used to mix with
34:41
the sargassum to create the biofuel, or
34:46
Yeah, and another one of
34:50
just using sargassum that has been shown to be possibly
34:54
a good idea, this has come from Mexico and is essentially a
34:58
one-person business. or one family or a
35:01
family business, and they are making bricks
35:05
out of sargassum. So they are drying the sargassum and compressing them
35:09
and making bricks. And one
35:13
good thing about that is that those bricks seem to be
35:19
better. So if you make a house out of
35:22
those bricks, it will resist
35:26
or it will be resilient. towards
35:34
So far you've identified two to three things that Sargassum, like
35:37
the byproduct of using Sargassum, would actually
35:41
help sort
35:45
of people adapt to climate change. So, you know, we have the
35:48
bricks, which are stronger than regular concrete cinder
35:51
blocks that are used, I guess, in Caribbean houses
35:55
and homes that will make them even more resistant to the
35:58
higher winds that you would see in hurricanes, like
36:02
in more intense storms. We also have using a biofuel, which
36:06
would probably be better than using regular fossil fuels to
36:10
provide energy for us, which is great. Did
36:19
And you can sink it, yeah, because it is absorbing carbon, right? So
36:22
the idea is to allow it to absorb carbon, but
36:26
not allow it to release the carbon back into the atmosphere, which
36:29
would be... Not only does it absorb carbon, but you can even make
36:33
it better by creating a biofuel and a more
36:37
resistant brick that could help in building houses in the Caribbean
36:40
and this thing. So there's a lot of benefits here, not just
36:43
one benefit, but there's a lot of solutions for this climate solution. And
36:48
so where are they at in terms, like obviously the person in Mexico,
36:52
small business, family owned business, is slowly starting this
36:55
up. Is that scalable? Do
36:59
Yeah, I don't know. Honestly, I've not looked into the
37:03
scalability of the problem, so I cannot answer
37:07
That's for economists and business people to worry about. You worry about more
37:14
We are looking into the scalability of sinking it
37:17
and the scalability of making biofuel using the
37:22
Gotcha. Now, let's talk about the sinking of it, because I've heard a lot
37:26
of different things when we hear about sinking
37:31
these carbon sources. If you sink carbon sources, they
37:34
go to the bottom. I guess the idea, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that it
37:39
becomes basically like hydrocarbons again, eventually going
37:43
into the seafloor and then kind of burying them in the seafloor. And
37:46
they don't get released. They just stay there, just kind of like how we see oil and
37:49
gas pockets that we get now. They're just in the
37:53
seafloor. The problem with that,
37:56
though, is like you mentioned before, we just don't know the
38:00
potential, if there are, consequences of sinking that
38:03
much into the deep sea. We just don't know the ramifications of
38:08
Correct. The deep sea is full of bacteria and
38:12
viruses and other little animals, and
38:16
so the impact of having those big chunks of
38:20
sargassum, it's not obvious.
38:25
I would say probably is not huge if
38:29
you can do it far enough from any kind of
38:32
coastline. Because you can imagine that when a whale dies and
38:36
sinks, it's not releasing less. It's
38:40
not being a smaller perturbation than a whole patch
38:44
of sargassum. The problem with the sargassum is that it's going to happen
38:47
more or less in the same place every year, right? And
38:51
it's very, very hard to put forward these kind
38:55
of solutions without having the data to prove that you're not
38:58
damaging the system. And unfortunately, those
39:02
data are very expensive to collect, because
39:06
you essentially have to send, you have to sync and you have to
39:09
send down cameras and you have to go back, you
39:13
know, after six months or after a year and try to figure it
39:16
out what is happening. And so it's
39:23
And expensive. Yes, absolutely. To do even those
39:27
pilot studies where it becomes expensive. It's similar in
39:30
a way to what people are worried about
39:34
with deep sea mining. That's more of an extractive exercise
39:38
and an extractive opportunity, whereas this one is more of an addition,
39:42
where we're actually adding more stuff. But like you said, it could
39:46
happen in the same place And unfortunately, we
39:49
just don't, if it's done to scale all at once, we don't
39:52
know the ramifications of that. If it's done in spots
39:56
and it's done properly where it's allocated in different regions and we can
39:59
see the breakdown happen, if the breakdown does happen down
40:04
in the deep, then maybe it'd be a little bit better. I
40:07
think the problem is just people just don't know, right?
40:11
When we talk about carbon capture like that, is we just don't know
40:15
and we see that there could be a lot of bad things that could happen, which is
40:18
probably giving that resistance enough to try
40:25
Yeah. It's also that, I mean, right now, in order to put those solutions
40:28
forward, we have to be able to verify what the
40:32
outcome will be, how much they will take, how much carbon they
40:36
will take down, how much they will cost, because there is
40:39
also a cost associated with going and collecting it. And
40:43
you have to make sure that the CO2 you use by running
40:47
your vessel that needs to go out and collect is
40:51
not offsetting all the advantage
40:59
I mean, you can hope to use solar panels and all
41:02
of that, but you have to do a calculation and you have to make sure that you can do
41:05
it that way. And so there are still a
41:08
lot of questions that, unfortunately, we don't have answer
41:12
to. But I can see the
41:16
sinking, the conversion into biofuel to be absolutely potential
41:21
good solutions to the problem. And,
41:31
Yeah, exactly. The toolbox will have to
41:38
How close, for both of those sort
41:42
of solutions, how close are we to getting
41:45
some of those answers? For the
41:48
syncing, have there been any experiments of syncing Sargassum?
41:53
Yes. Okay. And if I'm
41:56
not mistaken, group
42:00
from Great Britain has done most of that
42:03
work, because they managed to link with
42:08
a company that would like to do it and get credit for
42:12
it. And so they, they
42:15
were sinking Sargassum, I think, this
42:19
past summer. and they will go back and
42:23
they put cameras and they instrument the
42:27
regions where they put it down. And I have not heard from them. I
42:33
It's the summer, so it's still early in terms of it. Even with one years of
42:36
data, you're still going to need multiple years of data to really find out
42:40
the true difference, if there are any, in
42:48
Yes, but I think that if we can show that clearly
42:52
there is no major change of any kind, and
42:55
it's just, you know, being chewed up
42:59
by bacteria slowly, that would be... Yeah,
43:03
as long as you show that there's a decomposition. Yeah, yeah. And
43:08
for the blackfly larvae, my colleague here
43:11
is working in the lab and doing some experiments. And
43:16
my other colleague is advising PhD student
43:20
that is looking at how that would scale in terms of
43:25
cost and in terms of how many larvae
43:28
we need and how big needs to be the implementation
43:34
Let me ask you this. How many larvae does he have in his experiments? I'm
43:38
Oh, right now he is in the lab. It's
43:44
I feel like that's a lab I would not want to go and visit because there's
43:50
No, he's looking at optimizing the
43:54
mixture of sargassum. If you just give them sargassum,
43:58
they don't grow all that much. So you have to add a little bit of
44:01
something else that they really like, especially at the beginning. And
44:05
then once they pick up and they start growing, then they will eat all the sargassum
44:08
you give them. So they are trying to optimize that.
44:12
and really looking at having curves and
44:16
all the data required to then eventually move
44:20
forward and put actual data into how
44:24
Gotcha. So again, still fairly early stages, but the
44:27
experiment's going on to give us those results and to continue those
44:31
results going. That's phenomenal. That's
44:34
really cool. Are there other projects that you've been working on,
44:38
doesn't have to be recent or could be a little further or even recent, that you
44:44
Yeah, we are working on several projects related to
44:48
coral reefs. Okay. We have developed
44:52
in my group, again, I'm a modeler. So we use
44:55
models all the time. And we have developed a machine learning system.
44:59
So using a little bit of artificial intelligence to
45:02
figure it out what is the connectivity among
45:07
reefs. So essentially, if you have a reef or an
45:10
area in the oceans where you have a very healthy ecosystem, or
45:14
anyway, a very important ecosystem that
45:18
you want to observe and preserve, possibly.
45:23
You know that because of the oceans, there are currents, it's
45:27
probably connected to someone else or to something else,
45:31
because it's probably exchanging genetic material to
45:35
larvae and fries, which are the baby fish, with
45:39
another region outside this localized area
45:42
that you're looking at. And because
45:46
currents are pretty powerful, those regions can be pretty large.
45:49
So essentially I can be in Fiji
45:54
and I may be getting larvae from a place that
45:57
is 300 kilometers far away. And
46:00
so I want to figure it out if that's really the
46:03
case and how far I can go depending
46:08
on the kind of fish or the coral species that I'm considering.
46:13
Depending on that, I will know more or less how long a larva can survive
46:16
in the water. Right. You
46:20
know, be able to then attach and spawn. Yeah. And
46:24
so we are doing that using artificial intelligence and machine learning and
46:28
essentially using satellite data of sea surface temperature anomalies
46:31
because they are linked to currents and building
46:35
networks where we can see that. And we have done it in the Pacific. We
46:39
have done it in the Atlantic. and we've done it in the Mediterranean
46:43
Sea. So that has been really interesting
46:46
because in the Mediterranean Sea we don't have much in terms of corals
46:50
but we have been able to follow the invasions of the
46:53
species that comes from the Red Sea to the Suez Canal and
46:58
in the last 10 years or so have been really damaging
47:02
the Mediterranean ecosystem because they We
47:06
have essentially imported tons of lionfish,
47:10
and lionfish, nobody can eat it, and they
47:14
destroy everything. So
47:18
we have been following essentially how the lionfish
47:22
are spread, most likely through eggs, brought to
47:26
the Suez Canal. In
47:30
the Pacific, we have been able to look at why
47:34
certain area in the Coral Triangle is doing
47:39
pretty well overall. So it's sometimes it glitches
47:42
because temperatures are going up and we had very strong El
47:46
Niños and La Niñas and usually when those events
47:50
happen, temperature there really change
47:53
drastically. But nonetheless, they are recovering. and
47:57
they continue to be quite biodiverse and relatively healthy. So
48:00
we have checked, we figured that and usually,
48:05
so what we found is that the system is incredibly dynamic. And
48:08
so in the Pacific, there isn't a single place that,
48:13
or at least there are areas where no
48:16
matter what happens, some other area will bring new
48:19
larvae in within a year time. And
48:23
the usually they don't bleach at the same time.
48:26
Right. You know, one is maybe very sensitive to La
48:30
Niñas, the other is very sensitive to El Niños. But
48:33
what happened is that when I have an El Niño, the one that bleaches get
48:37
larvae from a different place, and whenever I have La Niña,
48:41
the one that was giving the larvae may receive it from another one.
48:50
So year to year, the variability of the connectivity among
48:54
reefs is very different. It's very, very dynamic. And
48:58
that has helped the system in certain areas,
49:01
not everywhere, to really stand out
49:05
as it's still doing well despite everything. The
49:09
same is not true in the Atlantic. And in fact, in the Atlantic, we are not seeing
49:13
corals recovering as much as certain areas
49:16
of the Pacific. Now, is that because the sources are not
49:19
changing or is it because... That dynamics is
49:23
not there, the variability is not there. Essentially, the current system
49:27
goes from Brazil, Belize, north.
49:32
And so if you cut and if you kind of bleach and really damage
49:36
any point or any big chunk in that
49:40
trajectory, because the trajectory is pretty much always the same, you
49:44
are going to essentially cut the supply of fresh larvae. healthy
49:47
larvae to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbeans. And
49:52
so Florida, Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbeans have been seeing strong
49:59
It's kind of interesting because we see the output from the Amazon River
50:04
in Brazil. I don't think we understand how
50:08
damaging that could be and how powerful that mouth is
50:11
in terms of that current and then going up into the
50:15
Caribbean, into the Gulf of Mexico. Is that correct? Like a lot of
50:20
No, it's really more that temperatures have
50:26
And we are really bleaching systems just
50:30
because of temperature. Just because of temperature. And other
50:33
stressors, the Florida and the Gulf of Mexico have, you
50:37
know, one thing to be very clear, it's not
50:41
just that is getting warmer. It's also
50:45
that we are dumping much more stuff in the ocean than
50:48
we used to. And so the Pacific has
50:51
the advantage of still being more pristine, just
50:56
fewer people live on those islands. Some of the islands are
50:59
completely inhabited, have no people living there. The
51:06
stressor in the Atlantic are heat, for sure, but
51:10
also pollution, big time. And
51:13
overfishing and having just
51:18
weaker ecosystems on
51:23
That's why it's so important to have marine protected areas
51:26
and quotas and stressors, or
51:30
not stressors, sorry, regulations to decrease water
51:33
pollution. all to help these animals
51:37
adapt to the higher temperatures. So if we take away all the human stressors, or
51:40
most of those human stressors, then perhaps the corals and
51:44
other animals have the ability to adapt to the higher sea
51:50
Yes, absolutely. So I have a colleague actually, just my
51:54
office on the side, who has worked on sea
51:58
cucumbers. And he has found that,
52:02
for example, in Moorea, where there is a big
52:05
effort that has been going on for more than 20 years, funded
52:09
by the National Science Foundation to do a long-term monitoring of
52:13
the coral reefs there. Some reefs have
52:16
been doing much better because sea
52:20
cucumbers have not been eradicated. Sea
52:24
cucumbers have become a delicacy in certain Asian countries, and
52:27
so there have been fish, and really overfish, and
52:32
sea cucumbers, they discovered, they
52:35
just published last year, are really the
52:39
cleaners of the bottom of the ocean. They
52:44
really remove any kind of virus, bacteria, stuff that you have. And
52:48
so they help corals to thrive immensely. And
52:53
so I postdoc here at Georgia Tech, working with my colleague Markay, was
52:58
trying to plant corals. You can break
53:01
coral and make little corals and plant them, essentially,
53:05
in order to establish a population that has
53:08
been damaged. And there were a bunch of sea cucumbers where
53:12
he tried to do it and he removed the sea cucumbers. And for the first time,
53:16
all his corals, little corals died. And
53:19
so he made the connection that, you know, usually his
53:24
efforts have been successful in the past. And so why this time
53:27
that happened? And he remembered he has removed, he removed the
53:31
sea cucumbers. And so they went back and they started studying it
53:34
and found that they are essential. So that's another stressor
53:38
that we add just for They're not particularly
53:41
tasty. There is no reason, you know, it's more
53:46
Yeah. As many times it is. Yeah. Yeah. It's
53:50
very, very similar to like shark fin soup in a way. Except
53:54
sea cucumbers are probably not as iconic as a shark, you know, when
53:57
we think about it. Exactly. This is, you
54:01
know, fantastic. This has all been quite interesting. You're working
54:04
on a number of projects. Is there anything upcoming that you're
54:07
starting to work on or you just started to work on that you're looking forward to
54:15
Yeah, we are working on a large project across
54:19
different universities to figured out
54:22
how much alkalinity enhancement we could do in
54:26
the Gulf of Mexico and through the Mississippi River Basin to
54:31
what is called weathering. This consists in
54:34
adding essentially
54:38
pulverized rock to agricultural
54:43
fields or directly in the ocean. to
54:48
reduce the CO2 by forming carbonates.
54:55
So the CO2 that is in the air will react with the
54:58
dust and form carbonates and
55:01
then those carbonates will eventually sink if
55:05
they are in the ocean or if it's done over agricultural land
55:08
will end up in the waterways. at
55:13
the end if it's the Mississippi River basin in the Mississippi and
55:16
therefore in the Gulf of Mexico. So we are doing high-resolution simulations
55:22
or simulations down to one kilometer essentially of
55:27
what it may happen in the Gulf of Mexico if this is
55:30
scaled up. And as part of this project there
55:34
are also farmers that
55:38
are trying to see the impact of
55:43
using fertilizers that contain a little
55:47
bit of the dust and so really trying to see also
55:50
at the land level what the impact could be, how fast
55:54
they will get in the water system, in the waterways and so on. So this
55:57
is incredibly interesting because it goes from really land
56:02
to ocean to the region, linking
56:08
Absolutely. Showing that watershed effect on
56:12
the ocean and how important it is to manage not only
56:16
water and oceans, but also land. I think we
56:19
see it a lot and you probably see it a lot, especially where you are in Georgia Tech in
56:23
terms of the Mississippi plume. We've known
56:26
for a long time that that plume has a huge effect on the Gulf of Mexico and
56:30
everything that comes down, all the fertilizers and all that that come down and
56:33
cause that big bloom in the spring and
56:37
then the bloom goes down into the
56:40
bottom as the phytoplankton die and then you get
56:43
that bacteria that uses up the oxygen to decompose that and you get basically
56:47
hypoxic zones along the Gulf of Mexico. However, if
56:51
you start to turn that around, and start to
56:54
look at what you can do in terms, like you mentioned, putting in the
56:57
rock dust onto the fields, getting into the Mississippi
57:01
or getting into the waterways, getting into the ocean. You can reverse
57:05
the shift from alkaline to acidic and really
57:08
help out not only corals, but a lot of mollusks like
57:12
oysters and mussels and clams and
57:16
scallops that can help build their shells and snails and crustaceans
57:20
like lobsters and shrimp and everything that use calcium, that
57:24
need calcium in their bodies, right? So I think
57:27
that's, this is all fantastic. I mean, this must
57:31
make your work such like a lot better than just
57:34
identifying the consequences that climate
57:38
change, you know, can cause. How
57:41
has this changed your outlook, like switching from modeling
57:45
the effects of climate change to looking at solutions?
57:49
Personally for you, how has that changed your
57:53
outlook on sort of what climate change can do
57:57
Well, it gives me hope that, you know, we are at the point of
58:01
really thinking about how to solve the problem or at least
58:04
how to find solutions that make sense and
58:08
that can help. Again, it's not
58:11
a done deal in any way and the portfolio
58:15
of solutions that we will need is really large because the problem is
58:18
big. But I also see, you
58:22
know, the Gulf of Mexico has also a lot of, we do a
58:25
lot of work with NOAA, so the National
58:28
Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, looking at both corals and
58:32
fisheries and how to best manage them. And
58:37
there is really a lot of attention in trying to
58:41
preserve what is left and help
58:47
with the resiliency of those systems. So it
58:56
And I think that also looking at communities
59:00
and fishing communities, fishermen's
59:03
communities, they do understand. So
59:08
it's much easier today to work with
59:11
those communities and they have
59:15
seen the changes. They have seen the decrease in fish, for
59:19
example, in the population, so in the ecosystems, the
59:22
damage, et cetera, and they want to help. And there is
59:27
a discourse that it's much better than
59:30
used to be. And what is
59:34
great is that the science ivory tower
59:43
Yeah. Yeah. That silo has come down and you're getting more
59:46
into the community. And I think it's a benefit for not only for you as
59:50
a researcher, but also for your students who get to interact with
59:54
the community and be able to work on projects very
59:57
similar to those, or maybe building on the
1:00:00
projects that you're already working or even expanding those projects where we're seeing more
1:00:03
and more solutions and increasing that hope. Because look, we know
1:00:07
one solution is not going to solve this. It's going to take a lot. It's going to take a lot of people.
1:00:11
and to be able to collaborate, which is a huge part of science, as
1:00:15
well as conservation, and to be able to find these solutions that,
1:00:19
you know, whether it's one or two or three or all of them that work out, then
1:00:25
And I think... Tomorrow I have
1:00:29
a phone call, a Zoom call with
1:00:32
program managers and a student of
1:00:36
mine and a colleague of mine in mechanical engineering, because we would
1:00:39
like to learn how coral listen,
1:00:44
how coral larvae respond to sound. Right.
1:00:48
Because we think that that will really help restoring some of those
1:00:51
coral reefs. And it's just unbelievable. Like, you
1:01:00
And, you know, we have a problem and there are a bunch of people trying to
1:01:03
solve it. And so we can also think of using sound
1:01:07
or chemical cues and trying to figure it out how they...
1:01:13
And what I love, it's combining that research of discovering these amazing
1:01:17
things and then putting it towards a solution that can help rebuild
1:01:21
these very important habitats and hopefully find ways just like we
1:01:24
did, just like you did in the Southeast Pacific, like
1:01:28
in near Indonesia, where the coral triangle, where there are some corals who
1:01:31
are doing really well. Why are they doing really well? Because then you do the research and
1:01:34
you figure that out and maybe that can be duplicated somewhere else, or we
1:01:38
can find similar patterns and trends, because that's what
1:01:41
science does. And I love what you're doing, Annalisa. I think it's fantastic.
1:01:45
And I want to thank you so much for coming on here and sharing your
1:01:48
research with us, as well as your collaborators. I think this
1:01:52
is something that we need to see and hear more of. So I
1:01:55
really do appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing that. And I would love
1:01:58
to extend another invitation on to discuss more of
1:02:01
the projects that you've done at a later date, to be able to get updates on the
1:02:04
projects that we discussed here. and learn more about some of the other projects that you
1:02:16
Thank you, Annalisa, for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean
1:02:19
podcast. It was great to be able to hear about your career, your determination, your
1:02:23
motivation to prove people wrong, including your own father, which
1:02:26
I think is really great, and to show how well you can do
1:02:30
with that motivation and where you're at in your career is
1:02:33
unbelievable. The stuff that you've accomplished and the stuff that you're helping
1:02:37
to accomplish by looking for solutions on climate change.
1:02:40
I just think it was really cool. talk about how we can use a
1:02:44
problem, like a pesky problem like sargassum just
1:02:47
accruing on the beaches and accumulating in the amount that it
1:02:50
is on the beaches. As I mentioned, like I went to Mexico and there was
1:02:54
knee deep in sargassum and people don't like it. Sargassum doesn't really feel good
1:02:57
on the feet or on your skin. It's a little rough and
1:03:01
people just don't like it. They think it's gross and nobody wants to swim on
1:03:04
a beach like that. So imagine taking that sargassum and doing something
1:03:08
good with it. to either sink it or make biofuels
1:03:12
out of it. I just think it's absolutely amazing to look
1:03:15
at the different things like to use actual black fly larvae
1:03:19
to be able to accomplish what you need to make biofuels out of sargassum.
1:03:24
these are the types of solutions that we need to find out. We need to do everything we
1:03:27
can to get to solutions, and not only just one
1:03:31
solution, we need to find many solutions. Because it's not just going to be one and done.
1:03:34
We're not going to find one solution that's going to fix everything. It's not going to be fixed right
1:03:38
away. It's going to take a long time to do so, but we need to do everything
1:03:41
we can to do that. So I think Annalisa is on
1:03:44
the right track. I think she's really showing by leading as usual, and
1:03:48
that motivation to say, hey, you know what? You can't do it. She can
1:03:51
do it. And then she will show you and more. So I just thought it was
1:03:54
wonderful. I'm going to link to all of Annalisa's links so you can
1:03:58
connect with her and you can follow her. And also if you want to
1:04:01
get a hold of me and DM me on what you
1:04:04
thought about this episode and what you think about Annalisa, I would love
1:04:07
to hear your thoughts. Just hit me up on Instagram DM me
1:04:11
at HowToProtectTheOcean. That's at HowToProtectTheOcean. And
1:04:14
of course, if you want to follow for more, you can do so by
1:04:19
subscribing, following on YouTube, on Spotify, on
1:04:22
Apple, and in your favorite podcast apps, and you'll be able to learn
1:04:26
more about how you can protect the ocean. So thank you so much for listening to
1:04:29
this episode of the HowToProtectTheOcean podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin.