Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Coral Reefs Work

Transcript

How Coral Reefs Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
0:03
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know?
0:08
Speaker 1: From house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
0:16
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
0:19
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this stuff you shouldn't.
0:24
Speaker 1: I just noticed your coldest cleared up. Yeah a little bit.
0:26
Speaker 1: I still have the um the an interior lining and
0:31
Speaker 1: very thick alright, um flam. Other than that, I'm yeah,
0:35
Speaker 1: you sound fine. You know what it was tons of
0:38
Speaker 1: emergency used to wash down tons of vitamin B stress,
0:43
Speaker 1: which is like tons of just different vitamin b's. I
0:47
Speaker 1: ate solar ray um and scotch right single malt Scott
0:53
Speaker 1: just my secret ingredient um and lots of licene, A
0:57
Speaker 1: couple of licenes every time, like thousands and thousands of
1:00
Speaker 1: percentages of daily value. Like just it just makes the
1:04
Speaker 1: FDA cringe that I did much. That's what I do.
1:07
Speaker 1: I just load up on like everything like triple it. Yep,
1:11
Speaker 1: there you go. Take that body, So I'm fine, good
1:14
Speaker 1: has it? Do same exact thing. And she doesn't like
1:18
Speaker 1: when I tell her to take vita minutes yeah, but
1:21
Speaker 1: that you know, you live together, you drink after one another,
1:25
Speaker 1: you suck face, just like I'll leave like an emergency. Here,
1:28
Speaker 1: they're like laying around. Oh did I leave that? That's
1:32
Speaker 1: already dissolved in the water even and it's going down.
1:35
Speaker 1: You go it, um chuck. Yes, did you know that
1:40
Speaker 1: I am a certified Scooby diver. I sure did. Oh,
1:43
Speaker 1: yeah you did. I thought for sure. You're gonna be like, no,
1:46
Speaker 1: I didn't know. We've talked about this. Yeah, we've even
1:49
Speaker 1: Scooba dive together him. That's right. That was the first
1:52
Speaker 1: time I heard about it. I'm not the sharpest tack
1:54
Speaker 1: in the package. Um, but I say that to tell
1:58
Speaker 1: you that I was certified at a place called Isla
2:01
Speaker 1: Mueris off the coast of Cosumel, which just so happens
2:05
Speaker 1: to also be the home of the second largest barrier
2:08
Speaker 1: reef known to man. What's it called to humans? I
2:13
Speaker 1: don't know. It's not called anything, because there's the great
2:17
Speaker 1: barrier reef and then there's all the other all the
2:19
Speaker 1: other ones. But this is the second largest, which is
2:22
Speaker 1: pretty big because there's a lot of barrier reefs, there's
2:24
Speaker 1: a lot of coral reefs, in the world. But after
2:28
Speaker 1: reading this article, I found that there is a lot
2:31
Speaker 1: about coral reefs that I didn't know. Fortunately, we had
2:36
Speaker 1: Jennifer Horton, who I'm sure you'll remember, worked at the
2:40
Speaker 1: site for a while. Yeah, she's a great writer. He's
2:42
Speaker 1: great writer. We had. We had her to explain it
2:44
Speaker 1: to us, and like, I get coral reefs now. In fact,
2:47
Speaker 1: Jennifer has written many of the animal related podcasts that
2:52
Speaker 1: we've done. Um, Bison, I think maybe that probably wrote
2:57
Speaker 1: a lot of the animals animal migration. Yeah, lots of
3:01
Speaker 1: good ones. To miss you, Jennifer. I hope you're well.
3:02
Speaker 1: If you listen, I wonder who are they? Right, remember
3:06
Speaker 1: those guys I hated those two all right, coral reefs.
3:10
Speaker 1: This was all new to me. The rainforests of the
3:12
Speaker 1: Sea of the Equatorial seeds home to about of all
3:18
Speaker 1: this species. Yeah, that's crazy. In fact, right, um, the
3:23
Speaker 1: Great Barrier reef has more more kinds of coral um
3:29
Speaker 1: on like one, just single little outcropping of it. Then
3:32
Speaker 1: you'll find in the entire tropical area of the Atlantic Ocean. Wow. Yeah,
3:36
Speaker 1: that's amazing. I don't know why I just said that.
3:39
Speaker 1: There the Aussies are gonna they're gonna be so stoked
3:41
Speaker 1: with this podcast. Probably anytime they can like claim to
3:44
Speaker 1: something like that, they're just like, yeah, yeah, drink exactly.
3:49
Speaker 1: They're gonna go poor beer on the Great Barrier reef. Um.
3:52
Speaker 1: It's the coral reefs are very beneficial to humans in
3:55
Speaker 1: a number of ways. Economically, sure, because there's a lot
4:00
Speaker 1: of sea life and bus people fishing for shrimp and
4:04
Speaker 1: lobster and things like that, right in all sorts of
4:06
Speaker 1: weird ways which will get too later. Um. They also
4:09
Speaker 1: protect the beach from erosion. They act as natural buffers
4:13
Speaker 1: from huge waves wave action. That's right. Yeah, well let's
4:19
Speaker 1: talk about that because you think of when you think
4:21
Speaker 1: of coral, you think of huge you know, great barrier reef.
4:25
Speaker 1: It's enormous. It's like, um, I think there's eighteen thousand
4:28
Speaker 1: miles of coral face face on a Great Barrier reef. Actually,
4:35
Speaker 1: an individual coral called a polyp um, is about three
4:39
Speaker 1: millimeters long. Yeah that's small, super tiny for those of
4:44
Speaker 1: you in America. Uh, they are, Well, science got it
4:48
Speaker 1: wrong early on. We should go ahead and say that
4:50
Speaker 1: they um at one point fairly understandably thought that it
4:56
Speaker 1: might be plant life because it sort of looks like it. Yeah,
4:59
Speaker 1: like you know, like the coral fan. Yeah, that's a
5:03
Speaker 1: bunch of those little three millimeter corals building up into
5:07
Speaker 1: a fan. It looks like it looks like a plant.
5:09
Speaker 1: So they got it wrong. And they're actually not only
5:11
Speaker 1: are they real living little sea creatures, but they're carnivores, yeah,
5:16
Speaker 1: which is you know, you would never think about that. No,
5:18
Speaker 1: but they're in the phylum Sinidaria nari. Why would they
5:26
Speaker 1: put the sea there? It's silent, man, you know, I
5:28
Speaker 1: appreciate a silent letter. I am smarter than my pronunciations
5:31
Speaker 1: would suggest. I started looking this up because I feel
5:35
Speaker 1: like an idiot. So they're in the philo of Nidaria,
5:37
Speaker 1: which means, um that they have stinging cells, barbed stinging cells,
5:43
Speaker 1: um called nematicist that's right. So um they use this
5:46
Speaker 1: to catchure their prey. But the prey kind of has
5:49
Speaker 1: to come to them because they're also sessile, which means
5:52
Speaker 1: they're fixed to a certain spot. Seriously. Yeah, uh So
5:59
Speaker 1: it is understand enable also that they got it wrong
6:01
Speaker 1: because coral has a unique property. It is almost half
6:06
Speaker 1: plant because there's this algae in the cells Okay, go ahead.
6:12
Speaker 1: It's called zus anthony, you're right, very nice. Starts with
6:17
Speaker 1: a Z and there's an X in there somewhere. And
6:22
Speaker 1: so what happens with there's a very mutually beneficial relationship
6:25
Speaker 1: between the algae and the polyp. They do a little exchange.
6:31
Speaker 1: The polyp itself will supply I'm sorry, the algae will
6:35
Speaker 1: undertake photosynthesis as algae tends to do. As algae will do,
6:39
Speaker 1: and it will say, hey, mr polyp, why don't you
6:42
Speaker 1: take all this stuff that i've I've made within your
6:47
Speaker 1: cell walls and and convert it to proteins and fats
6:51
Speaker 1: like amino acid and cars and in return, why don't
6:55
Speaker 1: you give me a nice shelter. And you can also
7:00
Speaker 1: use some carbon and nitrates and both fates that I
7:03
Speaker 1: need to produce the photosynthesis to give you the proteins
7:06
Speaker 1: and fats that you need. So it's what you might
7:09
Speaker 1: call a symbiotic relationship. One's helping the other. And um,
7:13
Speaker 1: you can make the case that the coral is getting
7:16
Speaker 1: the better end of the deal because coral gets about
7:20
Speaker 1: the energy produced through photosynthesis by the zoos anthely right. Um,
7:27
Speaker 1: But that also makes the coral more dependent on the
7:30
Speaker 1: zuos anthely, and the zoos anthely is a algae very
7:35
Speaker 1: little needs. It's not needy, it's not grabby. It's not
7:38
Speaker 1: gonna call you up every Friday night wondering what you're doing,
7:41
Speaker 1: Why you aren't here? Are you talking about me? No? No,
7:46
Speaker 1: jerry like that one. So um. The the symbiotic relationship
7:51
Speaker 1: between the zux anthely and the coral polyps also produce
7:55
Speaker 1: coral reefs. Um. The polyps use some of that energy,
7:59
Speaker 1: some of that amino acid to create something called calcium carbonate.
8:04
Speaker 1: And that's the hard stuff. Right, that's limestone, my friend. Yeah.
8:08
Speaker 1: They produce limestone out of their butt hawks to create
8:12
Speaker 1: a cup, a little shelter for the polp to stay in.
8:15
Speaker 1: And since the algae stays in the polyp, it creates
8:17
Speaker 1: a shelter for both. Right. Yeah, And this limestone secretion
8:21
Speaker 1: can keep building and building and building because again, coral
8:26
Speaker 1: stays in the same place there cecile. That's right. And um,
8:31
Speaker 1: as as long as they're still secreting limestone, the limestone
8:34
Speaker 1: structure they build will just keep getting bigger and bigger.
8:37
Speaker 1: Eventually that's just one three millimeter long coral yes, what
8:42
Speaker 1: you want to do is get thousands together strengthen numbers.
8:46
Speaker 1: Then you have a coral fan yeah, or a colony,
8:50
Speaker 1: and then those colonies will eventually meet up with other
8:52
Speaker 1: colonies uh, and say, hey, you guys interested in forming
8:56
Speaker 1: a wreath because we're pretty indestructible. Although that's not quite true.
9:01
Speaker 1: We're more indestructible if we all hook up my brothers,
9:05
Speaker 1: like you said, strengthened numbers. And when they hook up,
9:08
Speaker 1: their limestone secretions can start to join together forming a reef.
9:15
Speaker 1: But they're also um connected by a thin piece of tissue.
9:20
Speaker 1: You got this one called a sin a sark. That's
9:24
Speaker 1: what I was gonna go for. I was just tired
9:26
Speaker 1: of humiliating myself for this episode. I would have called
9:28
Speaker 1: it a kna sark, So I was a way off.
9:31
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that Celia can. It's a scene of
9:33
Speaker 1: sark um and that's how the the coral themselves are
9:40
Speaker 1: through limestone secretions and through this tissue called the senu sark.
9:43
Speaker 1: They're connected. But how would they grow? Well, there's two ways, man,
9:48
Speaker 1: they can reproduce. Yeah, a couple of ways. So right,
9:53
Speaker 1: it's sexually or a sexually I know which one I choose.
9:59
Speaker 1: A sexual yeah, because you're cloning. That's pretty remarkable. Anyone
10:04
Speaker 1: can just get together and you know mate. Right. Sexually,
10:07
Speaker 1: it's like here's some sperm in another one's like here's
10:11
Speaker 1: some eggs, and then they get together and then it's
10:15
Speaker 1: just no, there's not much to it right A. Sexually, though,
10:18
Speaker 1: they actually do divide and produce identical clones of themselves,
10:22
Speaker 1: and that's one way they can grow. And the other
10:25
Speaker 1: way is just to keep pooping out limestone and that
10:29
Speaker 1: will connect with each other and it just forms a
10:31
Speaker 1: big o yummy wreath. Yeah. Um. This is not a
10:34
Speaker 1: fast process though. Like if there's a couple of coral
10:37
Speaker 1: that are a few inches away, say three inches away,
10:41
Speaker 1: and they're like, I would like to hook my sineu
10:44
Speaker 1: sark up to your sin a sark and let's poop
10:46
Speaker 1: some limestone up together and get this reef going. That's beautiful.
10:49
Speaker 1: It's gonna take them about a year to get together.
10:52
Speaker 1: Can you imagine how frustrating that is to be three
10:54
Speaker 1: inches away and be like, I'd really like to consummate this.
10:57
Speaker 1: I'll see you next June. I'm not convinced that coral
11:00
Speaker 1: can experience frustration. You don't think so, I don't. I
11:03
Speaker 1: think that's all the experience frustration either they or they're
11:07
Speaker 1: like really really patient. But that three inches of growth
11:10
Speaker 1: a year um has to take place under very specific conditions.
11:15
Speaker 1: Remember we said that coral reefs are in equatorial waters. Um,
11:20
Speaker 1: not the coral themselves, but the zooxanthely are actually very
11:25
Speaker 1: fickle and picky little organisms, and they like specific conditions,
11:30
Speaker 1: and as long as the conditions are right for them,
11:32
Speaker 1: then the coral can grow because remember the coral are
11:35
Speaker 1: dependent on the zaxanthely to produce the calcium carbonate. That's right, Um,
11:40
Speaker 1: So what are the conditions chuckers? Well, you said equatorial
11:43
Speaker 1: specifically thirty degrees north or south. If you have ever
11:47
Speaker 1: dived in the Bahamas and said, no, that's thirty two
11:50
Speaker 1: degrees north and they have plenty there. It's because the
11:54
Speaker 1: warm Gulf waters spitting out towards the Bahamas, which is
11:58
Speaker 1: one reason the Bahamas is such a fielder spot. I
12:00
Speaker 1: would imagine, yes, I've never been there. You no, my
12:04
Speaker 1: folks drove my car back from the Bahamas. Though once
12:08
Speaker 1: you had a car in the Bahamas, you're supposed to
12:11
Speaker 1: say you're kidding, You're kidding. I must be the Bahamas
12:14
Speaker 1: or islands. It's a it's a dead milkman song. It's
12:17
Speaker 1: pitching camaro Oh that's from Batne Camara. Yeah, it's the beginning. Geez,
12:21
Speaker 1: I'm a dummy. That's alright, Chuck, I'm not hip. I'm
12:24
Speaker 1: not hip either, Chuck. Sunlight is another thing that they
12:28
Speaker 1: need because, and it makes sense if you're gonna undertake
12:31
Speaker 1: photo synthesis, you need sun. So if the water is
12:34
Speaker 1: rich in nutrients, believe it or not, that's not great
12:37
Speaker 1: for them. No, because if you've ever looked through if
12:39
Speaker 1: you've ever been underwater and seen like a lot of
12:42
Speaker 1: plankton everywhere, it filters the sunlight, it's dappled, that's right.
12:46
Speaker 1: And also, as we learned later, um, the more nutrients
12:50
Speaker 1: there are, the more it will attract uh competition for
12:53
Speaker 1: those nutrients, and that's not good for me either. No,
12:55
Speaker 1: they don't like competitions. Basically, there's this little prima donnas
13:00
Speaker 1: this example. They are the water, since you're near the equator,
13:05
Speaker 1: should be between seventy three point four and eighty four
13:09
Speaker 1: point two degrees fahrenheit, and I ultimately, if you put
13:13
Speaker 1: all these factors together ample like clear water, and between
13:16
Speaker 1: seventy three and eighty two or twenty three celsius and
13:19
Speaker 1: twenty nine celsius um, you can get up to about
13:21
Speaker 1: ten centimeters or three point nine inches of growth in
13:24
Speaker 1: a year, twice as much on sunny days. Yeah, this
13:27
Speaker 1: is remarkable, but they're still not going to exceed that
13:30
Speaker 1: three point nine inches most likely it's not all the time.
13:34
Speaker 1: But what's cool then is if you think, well, that's crazy.
13:37
Speaker 1: You know there's some coral that. Um. I've seen coral
13:40
Speaker 1: reefs and they're big. And if it takes three point
13:44
Speaker 1: it takes a year to grow about three point nine inches,
13:48
Speaker 1: say horizontally or vertically, maybe even die diagonally. If it
13:52
Speaker 1: was like a crazy year for them, Um, it must
13:56
Speaker 1: take thousands of years for coral reefs to build up.
13:58
Speaker 1: You would be right, my friend, Which is why scientists
14:02
Speaker 1: very affectionately consider coral reefs the old growth forests of
14:06
Speaker 1: the sea. Um. Because when you're looking at coral reef,
14:10
Speaker 1: you're looking at something thousands, if not tens of thousands
14:12
Speaker 1: of years old, which my question is how long does
14:15
Speaker 1: the coral live? So one thing I didn't get out
14:18
Speaker 1: of this this article. Did you, oh, how each individual coral,
14:23
Speaker 1: each polypic, Well, I don't know. And are they are
14:25
Speaker 1: there their cups, the protective cups that they secrete. Um,
14:30
Speaker 1: are they inhabited by like successive generations, their clones? Maybe?
14:35
Speaker 1: My guess, and I'm guessing here, is that there are
14:37
Speaker 1: so many, hundreds of thousands and millions of these so
14:42
Speaker 1: tightly together that if one of the little guys dies,
14:45
Speaker 1: it ain't no big thing because he's surrounded by his
14:48
Speaker 1: living brothers and sisters. But I don't know how long
14:51
Speaker 1: each one lives though this good question. Someone will know.
14:56
Speaker 1: Coral sand. If you look at the reef and you think, hey,
14:58
Speaker 1: coral is obviously the skeleton in here of this great reef. Uh,
15:02
Speaker 1: it's not just the coral. Coral sand, from what I understand,
15:06
Speaker 1: is little remnants, tiny pieces of coral that are either
15:10
Speaker 1: eaten and pooped out or just chipped away because of
15:14
Speaker 1: erosion and waves crashing and bad weather and stuff like that.
15:18
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? And um? But the cool thing
15:21
Speaker 1: is that it doesn't necessarily go anywhere. It can fill
15:23
Speaker 1: in gaps or holes and then, as luck would have it,
15:28
Speaker 1: there is a type of algae called coral line algae
15:34
Speaker 1: that goes and covers it up, and the structure of
15:37
Speaker 1: the algae acts is like an adhesive that glues the
15:40
Speaker 1: coral sand. So basically it's like this self sustaining repair
15:46
Speaker 1: process that's always going on the waves of road the
15:49
Speaker 1: coral into coral sand. Certain types of fish choose the
15:51
Speaker 1: coral into coral sand. The saying goes in just drifts
15:54
Speaker 1: into like little pockets where it gets caught in the
15:56
Speaker 1: algae lays over it bam strong. Coral and coral sand
16:00
Speaker 1: is mind which is one of the threats to reefs
16:03
Speaker 1: because they use it for bricks and cement and roadville.
16:08
Speaker 1: So if you're mining the coral sand, there's not gonna
16:10
Speaker 1: be that natural spackle to fill in the holes, and
16:13
Speaker 1: thus the reef is jeopardized, which is just one of
16:17
Speaker 1: many ways that research in jeopardy. Apparently one estimate is
16:20
Speaker 1: that um of the world's reefs could be gone in
16:25
Speaker 1: the next few decades. That's scary, very sad. I hope
16:29
Speaker 1: you're scared. I'm scared. Um. This is where I got
16:33
Speaker 1: a little confused. Was well, let's talk about the kinds
16:36
Speaker 1: of reefs, because I'm not confused about that There are
16:39
Speaker 1: basically three categories, depending where they form. The fringing reef
16:44
Speaker 1: it's most common it's directly from the shore and they
16:48
Speaker 1: form a border projecting out to the sea. Yeah. It's
16:51
Speaker 1: kind of like, um, if you go to like marble
16:54
Speaker 1: Head in Ohio, there's a lighthouse. Yeah, um, I think
16:57
Speaker 1: it's limestone. It's like it just comes it off the land, right.
17:01
Speaker 1: I don't understand how that would be because it's in
17:03
Speaker 1: Lake Erie, which is not fresh water, but who knows.
17:06
Speaker 1: It's very similar to that. It's like just a rocky
17:09
Speaker 1: projection jutting out from the land. But it's a coral reef, right,
17:12
Speaker 1: or if it were a coral reef, that's a fringing
17:15
Speaker 1: reef reef attached to land. Barrier reef, very similar to
17:20
Speaker 1: the fringing reef, but it has a gap of water
17:24
Speaker 1: between the land and in the reef. Correct. And then
17:28
Speaker 1: my favorite, of course, the atoll. It's a nice one,
17:31
Speaker 1: which is when at one point there was an island
17:34
Speaker 1: or volcano and it sunk, but you still have the
17:37
Speaker 1: circular wreath reef with I guess like a lagoon or something. Yeah,
17:42
Speaker 1: the reefs keeps building, but the mountain is now submerged.
17:46
Speaker 1: Pretty cool. Yeah, so you got your three types fringing
17:50
Speaker 1: barrier and at all. Right, the zones is where I
17:52
Speaker 1: get a little confused. So all of these reefs um
17:55
Speaker 1: are kind of broken down into zones. Like remember the biospheleology.
17:59
Speaker 1: How could I forget? Okay, So you've got like the
18:01
Speaker 1: different zones. It's very similar to that. You've got the
18:05
Speaker 1: um back of the reef, and the back is the
18:09
Speaker 1: side closest to shore. I think that's what's a little confusing.
18:14
Speaker 1: But it's from the it's from the viewpoint of the
18:17
Speaker 1: seed um. So you've got just imagine like a line
18:22
Speaker 1: and then a bump and then another line, and that's
18:25
Speaker 1: our reef right um on the shore side of the bump,
18:29
Speaker 1: that's the back of the reef. And this is actually
18:31
Speaker 1: where the most life is. Yeah. Um. Sometimes it's left
18:35
Speaker 1: high and dry by low tide, but most times it's
18:38
Speaker 1: just this little shallow area that's got tons of sunlight.
18:41
Speaker 1: So there's tons of plankton, which means there's tons of fish.
18:45
Speaker 1: There's a feeding frenzy, there's diurnal temperature changes. It's just
18:49
Speaker 1: very pretty. It's what most people think of when they
18:52
Speaker 1: think about diving. On a coral reef. Right. Then that
18:56
Speaker 1: bump that's the ridge or the crest o um. That
19:01
Speaker 1: part the the crest is always exposed at low tide,
19:07
Speaker 1: and it may be exposed even at high tide sometimes
19:10
Speaker 1: depending on how big. But it's the tallest point. It
19:13
Speaker 1: also um serves as the wave break for that function
19:17
Speaker 1: of um reefs that protect the land. This is what
19:20
Speaker 1: the waves smack into, so it's gonna be more easily
19:23
Speaker 1: eroded and probably have more of that natural speckle. Right. Yes,
19:28
Speaker 1: that was it coralline algae. Probably that was called cora
19:33
Speaker 1: line yeah or coraline whichever, however you want to say it.
19:37
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna stress you out, all right, um. And
19:40
Speaker 1: then there's the four reef that's the the ocean side,
19:44
Speaker 1: the seaside, right um. And in that part of the
19:48
Speaker 1: of the four we find the other side of the crest,
19:50
Speaker 1: the seaside of the crest. There's the buttress zone, which
19:53
Speaker 1: is awesome if you ask me. And that's where you're
19:55
Speaker 1: gonna find if you're shark hunting, that's where you're gonna
19:58
Speaker 1: find like sharks and barracuda and sing things like that. Right,
20:01
Speaker 1: but does it buttress is that why they call the
20:03
Speaker 1: buttress n So the buttress, consider a buttress is just
20:06
Speaker 1: like a jutting projection of coral limestone, right, just jutting out,
20:11
Speaker 1: and then in between these projections are little channels holes
20:14
Speaker 1: that can go all the way through. Right. I'm not
20:17
Speaker 1: quite sure what the physics are of it, but basically,
20:20
Speaker 1: once a wave goes through this coral reef and hits
20:23
Speaker 1: short and then gets drawn back out to see these channels,
20:27
Speaker 1: UM funnel these spent waves back out to sea, and
20:32
Speaker 1: by funneling them it gives them a more energy, so
20:36
Speaker 1: then they crash into oncoming waves, which reduces the oncoming
20:40
Speaker 1: waves velocity. So all this is is in an attempt
20:43
Speaker 1: naturally to combat the erosion of pounding waves. Yes, a yeah,
20:48
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool UM. And it's also a really excellent
20:52
Speaker 1: UM shelter for little fish ees and things like that
20:56
Speaker 1: they want to go into the channel. So, Josh, we've
20:59
Speaker 1: talked about the Great Barrier reef uh here and there,
21:03
Speaker 1: but we should give it its proper do. As the
21:06
Speaker 1: largest living structure on the planet seen from outer space.
21:10
Speaker 1: Everyone loves to throw that back around. Yeah, you can
21:13
Speaker 1: see it from outer space, and that made me look
21:15
Speaker 1: something up, chuck. Um, that's it's the largest living structure. Okay,
21:21
Speaker 1: So if if coral reef is an organism, do you
21:24
Speaker 1: know what the second largest living organism is? Um? My
21:30
Speaker 1: guests would be Louis Anderson. Is he still with us?
21:35
Speaker 1: I think so. I don't know why I picked a
21:37
Speaker 1: comedian that's been out of the loop for that long?
21:41
Speaker 1: Does a fat joke? Man? That was so many? No,
21:45
Speaker 1: it's a fungus in Oregon named amarially Ois stay years old.
21:52
Speaker 1: Takes up four square miles or ten square kilometers, single organism.
21:55
Speaker 1: Where is it Oregon? It's in our friend Van Austrian's house.
22:00
Speaker 1: So it's a big mushroom. Yeah. Interesting, didn't that cross?
22:04
Speaker 1: That is cross? So? Uh, the great Berry Reef? We're
22:08
Speaker 1: talking fourteen hundred twenty nine miles or clicks and um,
22:14
Speaker 1: it is not a single reef. It's about three thousand
22:17
Speaker 1: I got so I'm not sure if that number had
22:20
Speaker 1: declined since this was written or not. But um, Jennifer
22:23
Speaker 1: points out, and like you pointed out earlier, the the
22:27
Speaker 1: full edge of the reef is about um eighteen and
22:31
Speaker 1: a half thousand miles. So she says, if anyone's ever
22:34
Speaker 1: told you they've dived the entire Great Berry Reef. They're
22:37
Speaker 1: dirty liars, Yes, she said, they're lying because there's no
22:40
Speaker 1: way you couldn't do it in a lifetime. She said.
22:43
Speaker 1: I wonder if somebody told her that, and she inserted
22:46
Speaker 1: it in the article. I don't know. It's definitely an
22:48
Speaker 1: accusation due it is. It's a weird sense. It's one
22:51
Speaker 1: of the seven natural Wonders of the world. More than
22:54
Speaker 1: four hundred coral species, two thousand fish species, four thousand mollusks,
22:59
Speaker 1: and six of the seven sea turtle species. All right
23:03
Speaker 1: there for the for the googling, nice and the um
23:11
Speaker 1: the like you said, the Australians are gonna be proud
23:13
Speaker 1: of this and they should be. Back in ninety five,
23:17
Speaker 1: apparently it was in some jeopardy and the Australians moved
23:22
Speaker 1: to protect it as a National Marine Park UM and
23:28
Speaker 1: that basically ensured its survival. It's still, you know, kind
23:33
Speaker 1: of in rough shape here there is, as I understand.
23:38
Speaker 1: But UM six years after that, so let's see, that's
23:41
Speaker 1: one it became a World Heritage Site UM and one
23:46
Speaker 1: percent of the eighteen and a half thousand square miles
23:50
Speaker 1: or eighteen and a half thousand linear miles UM are
23:55
Speaker 1: open to the public except for that one percent to
23:58
Speaker 1: just one percent is that ated to research only? Just research,
24:01
Speaker 1: just pretty cool, not very much. They need bona fide
24:05
Speaker 1: scientists to dive that part. The rest of it, Jennifer
24:08
Speaker 1: points out, is divided into national park zones, which is
24:12
Speaker 1: where you can go, recreate and learn some things. And
24:15
Speaker 1: then the rest of it is general use, which means
24:19
Speaker 1: commercial fishing, which I guess there's no better time to
24:22
Speaker 1: get into the threats than right now. Yes, Um, there
24:27
Speaker 1: are some coral reefs and trouble UM the Great Barrier reef.
24:32
Speaker 1: Like I said, it's pretty well protected. But say if
24:34
Speaker 1: you look at some of the reefs in the Philippines
24:40
Speaker 1: have been destroyed and five percent, just five percent, are
24:43
Speaker 1: in good condition on these days, UM, ten percent of
24:47
Speaker 1: the world's reefs are now beyond recovery, not just because
24:51
Speaker 1: of human causes, because of the natural causes as well.
24:54
Speaker 1: Because everything exists on a life cycle here on Earth,
24:57
Speaker 1: we humans just tend to accelerate it. UM may die
25:01
Speaker 1: in the next ten is pointy years. So what are
25:05
Speaker 1: Some of the natural threats are obviously harsh weather like hurricanes,
25:09
Speaker 1: um el Nino a weird weather pattern. It's going to
25:13
Speaker 1: increase temperatures, mess with a salinity, a lot more rainfall.
25:18
Speaker 1: So an El Nino season could can do some serious damage.
25:24
Speaker 1: Bleaching coral bleaching. When they experience as little as like
25:28
Speaker 1: one degree rise in temperature, the algae will be ejected
25:32
Speaker 1: basically from the coral. The algae takes off, oh it leaves. Yeah,
25:37
Speaker 1: it's like see you in hell, coral. There's a fine
25:39
Speaker 1: line between injection and and self leaving. The chicken and
25:44
Speaker 1: egg thing, maybe you think so. The algae gets the
25:48
Speaker 1: heck out of dodge, turns the coral white. And if
25:52
Speaker 1: you google pictures, you can see a lovely coral with
25:55
Speaker 1: like white patches here and there. That's the parts where
25:57
Speaker 1: it's bleached out and go it. If if this keeps
26:02
Speaker 1: up long enough, the coral dies because again coral has
26:05
Speaker 1: a symbiotic relationship where it's dependent on this is Anthony's algae,
26:09
Speaker 1: and if this is Anthony's leaves, then the coral dies
26:14
Speaker 1: very sad um. And like you said, it was just
26:16
Speaker 1: a as much as a one degree temperature increase, right,
26:20
Speaker 1: not much. There's also predators, like there's things that eat um.
26:26
Speaker 1: The coral, the polyps themselves, crabs, worms, snails, barnacles, parrot fish.
26:33
Speaker 1: Those are really pretty I can't do anything about that,
26:35
Speaker 1: pal that's nature at work. But there are things we
26:39
Speaker 1: can do, such as not using dynamite when we fish
26:43
Speaker 1: on coral reefs. It's a pretty good start. There's forty
26:47
Speaker 1: countries in the world. Over forty countries in the world
26:50
Speaker 1: that allow blast fishing, people using explosives that they drop
26:54
Speaker 1: onto the reef to stun the fish so they can
26:57
Speaker 1: just swoop them up with the net and um basically
27:00
Speaker 1: go fall like a slack jawed yokel wearing nothing but
27:04
Speaker 1: overalls while they just bring their nets in. They just
27:08
Speaker 1: threw dynamite in the water to stunt fish. Well, the
27:10
Speaker 1: dynamite also has a deletrious impact on the reef structure
27:16
Speaker 1: as well. You're gonna go to the grave with that one,
27:18
Speaker 1: aren't you. I saw on Facebook you you put the
27:22
Speaker 1: apostrophe and you all after the ax it up. You
27:26
Speaker 1: know what's weird is the iPhone corrects it incorrectly. Oh really, yeah,
27:30
Speaker 1: Well they don't know, y'all. They're from California. I've always
27:33
Speaker 1: done why apostrophe A L L? You all y'all know.
27:38
Speaker 1: See someone pointed out to me on email that it was,
27:41
Speaker 1: in fact, why a apostrophe LLL? No, it's you all,
27:45
Speaker 1: so I've been doing it right the whole time. No,
27:47
Speaker 1: you're doing it why a apostrophe LLL? Because someone told
27:50
Speaker 1: me to change it. You can't just listen to any
27:53
Speaker 1: know who. Email fans have a deleterious effect on me.
27:57
Speaker 1: Deletrious Do you want to look it up right now?
28:01
Speaker 1: Let's talk about blast fishing again, our cyanide fishing, which
28:05
Speaker 1: is the ugly step sister of blast fishing, which is
28:09
Speaker 1: dumping cyanide onto reefs to kill fish. Again, you have
28:14
Speaker 1: to wear nothing but overalls, no shooting, no service. Over
28:20
Speaker 1: fishing period has got a negative effect obviously, Yeah, because
28:24
Speaker 1: you're basically affecting the food chain. You're like, oh, we
28:27
Speaker 1: like these guys because they're tasty and I'm sure they
28:30
Speaker 1: won't be missed. Whenever you take any key species out
28:33
Speaker 1: of a h an ecosystem, you're in trouble. No good. Um.
28:37
Speaker 1: There's also a runoff as a big one because um,
28:40
Speaker 1: remember they like clear light, the algae do and uh
28:44
Speaker 1: or clear water and when they're when the water is
28:47
Speaker 1: not clear, they shrivel up because they need sunlight for photosynthesis. Yeah,
28:52
Speaker 1: the pollutants went also. Um, I thought it was gonna
28:54
Speaker 1: be pollutants because just pollutants are bad, which they are,
28:58
Speaker 1: but really the reason is polluting sin sewage actually increase
29:02
Speaker 1: the nutrients so that attracts harmful algae and uh competition
29:08
Speaker 1: and that's no good. Right, And then we already talked
29:11
Speaker 1: about the mining. So what can we do, chuck, um,
29:16
Speaker 1: we We've got a few things we can do. You
29:19
Speaker 1: can adopt a reef. You can, tons of organizations will
29:23
Speaker 1: let you do that. In fact, if you want to
29:25
Speaker 1: go to adopt dot nature, dot org slash coral reef,
29:29
Speaker 1: you can adopt a reef in the Bahamas, Dominican Republic
29:34
Speaker 1: uh poooo and Popula New Guinea nice, just like that. Yeah,
29:39
Speaker 1: you can funnel money to an organization that will take
29:42
Speaker 1: care of that reef exactly. Um. And that's just one.
29:46
Speaker 1: I think you can do it through all kinds of places.
29:47
Speaker 1: And then you say that you can get your congress
29:50
Speaker 1: person to lobby for stricter oversight of phishing methods. Um.
29:56
Speaker 1: You can boycott products from countries that allow ast fishing
30:00
Speaker 1: or cyanide fishing really put the squeeze on the common
30:03
Speaker 1: in the other country you can kim go to. You
30:07
Speaker 1: cannot chip off bits of the coral when you scooba
30:09
Speaker 1: dive because it's just so pretty that you want to
30:11
Speaker 1: take it home. Yeah, that's a big one. Give it
30:12
Speaker 1: to your daughter. Yeah, not good. There's a lot of
30:16
Speaker 1: stuff you can do that you probably should do if
30:19
Speaker 1: you want to save the coral reefs. That's right, I
30:22
Speaker 1: have nothing else. Why would you save them? Do you say,
30:24
Speaker 1: if you don't care about snorkeling or anything like that, Well,
30:28
Speaker 1: my friend, if you care about the economy, you will
30:30
Speaker 1: want to save corel res because they are valuable. The
30:34
Speaker 1: the total value of the asset that is the reefs,
30:39
Speaker 1: the reef systems in Florida. In Florida alone, just Florida
30:43
Speaker 1: eight point five billion dollars when you take into account
30:46
Speaker 1: not just tourism, which is a big part of it,
30:48
Speaker 1: but also the estimated hundreds and seventies seven thousand jobs
30:51
Speaker 1: that is all the industries surrounding it UH create. That's
30:56
Speaker 1: just Florida worldwide, just from tourism and recreation, just tourism
31:02
Speaker 1: recreation that reefs bring in nine point six billion dollars annually.
31:06
Speaker 1: So if you like money, then you should support core reefs.
31:09
Speaker 1: Twelve of Bolivia's g d P is created by reefs. Yeah. So, um,
31:18
Speaker 1: if you don't have a heart, but money makes you liy,
31:23
Speaker 1: then that should get you going on saving coral reefs
31:25
Speaker 1: as well. That's right. So if you want to learn
31:28
Speaker 1: more about core reefs, including um seeing a diagram of
31:32
Speaker 1: where the four and the back of the reef is,
31:35
Speaker 1: you can type in coral reefs in the search part
31:38
Speaker 1: housetuffworks dot com. It'll bring up this great article by
31:40
Speaker 1: Jennifer Horton. Um. And since I said Jennifer Horton, it's
31:44
Speaker 1: time now for listener, ma'am. Every time the name Jennifer
31:50
Speaker 1: Horton is uttered on the planet, somebody will read a
31:53
Speaker 1: listener mail somewhere. Quick announcement first, Josh, okay, you know
31:58
Speaker 1: what you're gonna say. That's right. We want to went
32:00
Speaker 1: out to our south By Southwest action this year. We've
32:02
Speaker 1: been invited back somehow. I didn't think that's why it was.
32:05
Speaker 1: I thought it was about the party were coming up.
32:08
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, that's been UM. We are going
32:11
Speaker 1: to be podcasting live at south By South West. Jeez,
32:15
Speaker 1: it's a tough one. It's a mouth for south By
32:17
Speaker 1: Southwest in Austin, Texas on Sunday, March the eleven, from
32:23
Speaker 1: three thirty pm. We don't know the location yet, but
32:26
Speaker 1: we will get that out soon. It's funny. If you're
32:29
Speaker 1: a badge holder, we would love to have you come
32:32
Speaker 1: down and here's podcast live. If you're not a badge holder,
32:35
Speaker 1: take keed Monday March twelve, we're gonna be throwing a party.
32:40
Speaker 1: Did you write down the dates? I've noticed you've been
32:41
Speaker 1: getting him right? Nice? Get my little calendar out. Yeah,
32:44
Speaker 1: we are going to throw a party. We can't really
32:46
Speaker 1: reveal the details yet, but if you're in Austin, Texas
32:50
Speaker 1: on March eleventh and twelve, we'll be in town and
32:53
Speaker 1: there will be something for everybody, badge holder or nonlike. Yes, right, yep,
32:58
Speaker 1: so stay tuned for details. Got it on Facebook and
33:01
Speaker 1: Twitter and on the podcast. When we get everything firmed up,
33:05
Speaker 1: we'll let you know, all right, listener mail, Okay, all right,
33:09
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this uh good cause from a good person. Um.
33:14
Speaker 1: Hello s Y s K team. I want to take
33:16
Speaker 1: a minute and thank you for helping me in a
33:18
Speaker 1: really big way. I've been working alone as a volunteer
33:21
Speaker 1: in Malawi, south of Tanzania Mallowe mallowe uh since September
33:27
Speaker 1: of two thousand nine, and I happily passed the time
33:29
Speaker 1: listening to your show during my super long, super Awesome
33:32
Speaker 1: minibus rides. I am building a library and a small village,
33:36
Speaker 1: and a big part of my library is an audio
33:38
Speaker 1: video collection that I've been putting together for the past
33:41
Speaker 1: few years. Many of the people in the village are illiterate,
33:45
Speaker 1: so a library full of books just wouldn't do them
33:47
Speaker 1: any good. So I started to think of ways I
33:50
Speaker 1: could include everyone in a learning activity. My answer was, UH,
33:55
Speaker 1: to incorporate documentaries and podcast on a variety of subjects.
33:59
Speaker 1: So basically, we will choose the topic for the week
34:01
Speaker 1: and use the podcasts as a way of getting people interested,
34:05
Speaker 1: then direct them to read articles and books on the topic,
34:08
Speaker 1: or watch documentaries and have some group discussions. Pretty cool, um.
34:12
Speaker 1: I really believe in the beauty of being inquisitive and
34:15
Speaker 1: interested in life, and videos and podcasts really help immerse
34:18
Speaker 1: people in new subjects. This is the first library of
34:21
Speaker 1: its kind in the country. Wow, and I'm really hopeful
34:24
Speaker 1: that it helps to open the world up to people
34:27
Speaker 1: who are so often cut off. Fingers crossed. And that
34:31
Speaker 1: is from Diane Bowls, the founder of the Future found.
34:37
Speaker 1: And if you want to check out Diane's awesome work
34:39
Speaker 1: she's doing, you can go to the future found dot org. Excellent, Chuck,
34:45
Speaker 1: very cool. It's Diane Diane in Malawi. Yeah, building building
34:50
Speaker 1: the only library of its kind of Um, thank you
34:54
Speaker 1: very much Diane for doing that. Um. What do you
34:57
Speaker 1: want to hear? You want to hear of other people
34:58
Speaker 1: making a difference in the world. We always love that. Yeah,
35:01
Speaker 1: you're a set for that kind of thing, or some
35:03
Speaker 1: good harrowing scuba diving stories one or the other. Okay,
35:06
Speaker 1: so um, that's a great one. Chuck, either doing good
35:09
Speaker 1: in world or not to winking worksoever. Um. That could
35:13
Speaker 1: be directed to Chuck and I via Twitter at s
35:16
Speaker 1: hye sk podcast. That's our Twitter handle on Facebook dot com.
35:21
Speaker 1: If you go to stuff you should know his page.
35:23
Speaker 1: That's that um, and you can also email us directly.
35:27
Speaker 1: We both get emails sent to the address Stuff podcast
35:32
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this
35:39
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
35:41
Speaker 1: dot com to learn more about the podcast. Click on
35:44
Speaker 1: the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.
35:48
Speaker 1: The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it
35:50
Speaker 1: today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two
35:56
Speaker 1: thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you