Latest / Simmer Down / Coral & Climate with James Porter

Transcript

Coral & Climate with James Porter · Simmer Down

0:03
Kathleen Biggins: Hello, everybody, and welcome.
0:05
Kathleen Biggins: It is my distinct pleasure to introduce you to Dr.
0:09
Kathleen Biggins: Jim Porter.
0:10
Kathleen Biggins: Jim is kind of the Jane Goodall of the coral reefs.
0:16
Kathleen Biggins: He is someone who has given his life and career to studying corals and now to combating the climate change that is imperiling them.
0:27
Kathleen Biggins: He has spent over 50 years studying corals, and he is one of the few scientists that actually have a coral patch named after him, the Porter Patch.
0:38
Kathleen Biggins: He is also the professor emeritus of ecology at the University of Georgia.
0:46
Kathleen Biggins: And he was the chief scientific advisor and principal cast member of Chasing Coral, a movie that launched in 2017 that depicted the bleaching of the coral reefs and was really groundbreaking because they devised the types of cameras that could enable us who are stuck up on the surface to see what exactly was happening down under the waves.
1:08
Kathleen Biggins: The movie was highly acclaimed.
1:11
Kathleen Biggins: It won many awards, including a Peabody, an Emmy, and was voted top film at Sundance, which is kind of akin to winning the Triple Crown in horse racing.
1:22
Kathleen Biggins: So congratulations, Jim.
1:24
James Porter: Thank you very much.
1:27
Kathleen Biggins: For me, the movie was incredibly emotional to see.
1:32
Kathleen Biggins: It was eye-opening, it was inspirational, and it was sobering.
1:39
Kathleen Biggins: And in some ways, it felt like a love letter, a love letter to the beauty and the life that the choral represents.
1:49
Kathleen Biggins: It was also a dirge, a lament for what is happening.
1:54
Kathleen Biggins: And it was also a call to action, saying that there is time if we come together, if we raise our voice, if we change our policies to make a difference on this trajectory.
2:03
Kathleen Biggins: And it also struck me that it was kind of a microcosm of the bigger picture of climate change.
2:09
Kathleen Biggins: It is one of the pillars that maintains the vast ecosystem that enables humans to live on this planet.
2:17
Kathleen Biggins: And it, like many of the others, is being threatened and weakened.
2:23
Kathleen Biggins: And so what happens to the coal reefs, I think, is indeed a canary in the coal mine for many of the other systems that are under pressure.
2:32
Kathleen Biggins: So what we're going to do is watch a short trailer for those of you who did not have a chance to watch the movie.
2:41
Kathleen Biggins: And then Jim is going to give us a short presentation, kind of drilling down on why this is happening and why it's so important.
2:49
Kathleen Biggins: And then Jim and I will have a brief conversation, maybe 20 minutes, kind of focusing on those areas I just outlined, and then we will open it up to audience questions.
2:59
Kathleen Biggins: So with that, Jim, we'll see the trailer and then you'll have the floor.
3:04
James Porter: Thank you.
3:09
Speaker 5: My name is Jeff Kurowski, and I'm the director of Chasing Coral.
3:12
Speaker 5: Chasing Coral is a film that we made over the last three and a half years, uh, following a team of adventurers and divers and scientists on this crazy epic trip around the planet.
3:22
Speaker 5: Um, we've we've been aware of the story that's happening to the oceans and to coral reefs, and what we wanted to do was to visualize it and to show people what's happening uh to corals.
3:32
Speaker 5: Well, let's take kids, like let's take politicians, let's take CEOs, let's take everybody on a virtual scuba dive.
3:39
Speaker 5: A couple years ago, I got an email out of the blue from a man named Richard Reavers.
3:44
Speaker 5: He attached two photographs, one of a healthy coral reef and one of a dead coral reef.
3:50
Speaker 5: And when I saw those photos, the light bulb immediately went on.
3:53
Speaker 5: It's like, if you can document that change, you can reveal this to the public in a powerful way.
3:58
Speaker 5: As a filmmaking team, we've been able to build some unprecedented technology.
4:04
Speaker 5: Richard's background is in communications and in advertising.
4:08
Speaker 5: He's been trying to rebrand this whole issue.
4:11
Speaker 5: We've been working on this film now for over three years.
4:14
Speaker 5: It's really hard to wrap your head around charts and numbers, but when people see visuals that tell that story, they get it in a completely different way.
4:23
Speaker 5: I feel like as filmmakers, we are translators for the scientific community.
4:29
Speaker 5: We know that the oceans are changing.
4:31
Speaker 5: And more than anything, I feel a responsibility to capture it because we know it's happening.
4:45
James Porter: So, what I'm going to do in this really brief presentation is to go over four points.
4:52
James Porter: First of all, I'll talk about the global significance of coral reefs.
4:58
James Porter: I'm also going to talk about the effect of rising temperatures on coral reefs.
5:03
James Porter: And I'll give a specific example from Florida 23-24, kinds of things that we're in the middle of now.
5:11
James Porter: And then I'll expand that to tell you a little bit about what's happening to coral reefs in Georgia in 2024 and beyond.
5:20
James Porter: Only 1% of the Earth's surface is covered by this extraordinarily biodiverse environment.
5:29
James Porter: Currently, 25% of all marine species of plants and animals are described from coral reefs.
5:37
James Porter: However, we know that's a gross underestimate.
5:41
James Porter: It's more likely half of all marine life are found on coral reefs.
5:47
James Porter: It's also the most productive environment of marine environment on Earth.
5:51
James Porter: And there's an irony there because corals are animals, they're related to sea anemones, and yet they have living inside them symbiotic algae.
6:01
James Porter: And these tiny microscopic algae give the corals their colors and their shape, and they make the environment as productive as it is.
6:12
James Porter: Currently, coral reefs generate $10 trillion per year in economic benefit to the billion people that live in the 94 sovereign nations that have coral reefs on their shoreline.
6:27
James Porter: And of those billion people, a half a billion rely exclusively on coral reefs for their sole source of protein and income.
6:37
James Porter: If coral reefs die, we are going to have at least a half billion climate refugees.
6:44
James Porter: The other thing that's extraordinary about coral reefs is that they are a modern pharmacopia of drugs from the sea.
6:52
James Porter: So recently, a new compound has been discovered that kills the HIV AIDS virus much more effectively than AZT.
7:01
James Porter: And quite recently, a new compound that reduces the second heart attack in elderly Americans.
7:09
James Porter: With the application of this drug from coral reefs, uh, elderly Americans that have a first heart attack are 50% less likely to have a second within five years.
7:22
James Porter: Extraordinary gifts from the sea.
7:25
James Porter: This is my favorite photograph.
7:27
James Porter: Um, it's from uh Mount Hawaii on Mauntaloa, and it's the only place on the earth that you can at the same time see both snow there in the lower right and coral reefs at the top of the picture.
7:42
James Porter: And it was on Mauntaloa that a graduate student by the name of Clyde Keeling measured CO2 from the uh 1950s.
7:50
James Porter: This has been called the Keeling curve of CO2 increase.
7:55
James Porter: Now, the only thing that would explain this upward trend would require the addition of 38 billion metric tons of CO2 per year.
8:05
James Porter: And no coincidence, this is the same amount that we add to the atmosphere every year by burning coal, oil, and natural gas.
8:15
James Porter: The burning of fossil fuels explains all of this graph.
8:22
James Porter: There's no mystery at all.
8:24
James Porter: And these greenhouse gases warm the planet, but especially the oceans, as you're going to see here now in a clip from Chasing Coral.
8:38
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people don't realize the climate change is happening because most of the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases has been transferred to the oceans.
8:47
Speaker 4: When you burn fossil fuel, that's burning oil, gas, or coal, carbon dioxide goes up into the atmosphere.
8:56
Speaker 4: Carbon dioxide has the property that it's able to trap heat.
9:00
Speaker 4: So the more you have in the atmosphere, the greater the amount of heat trapped by the Earth.
9:06
Speaker 4: It's a bit like putting extra wool into your sweater.
9:09
Speaker 4: What people don't know is that 93% of the heat that's trapped is going into the ocean.
9:16
Speaker 4: That's a lot of energy.
9:18
Speaker 4: If the oceans weren't doing this job of absorbing the heat, the average surface temperature of the planet would be 122 Fahrenheit.
9:34
James Porter: So we measure the amount of heat uh generated by greenhouse gases in a metric unit called a zeta-joule.
9:43
James Porter: And you certainly may be forgiven if you don't know what a zeta-joule is, but a zeta-joule is the equivalent of 10,000 one-megaton nuclear bombs.
9:56
James Porter: And what that means is that over the last uh 75 years, we have detonated these thermonuclear devices at a rate of one million of these bombs per year, giving the equivalent added heat.
10:16
James Porter: That means that since 1950, we have detonated 75 million thermonuclear bombs on the planet.
10:28
James Porter: Now, most of that heat has not gone into the atmosphere.
10:35
James Porter: Since 1950, only seven percent of global climate change heat has gone into the air, and the remaining amount, 93%, went into the oceans.
10:49
James Porter: And that's why we know that if the heat generated by greenhouse gas-driven global warming had not gone into the ocean, the average air temperature outside your window today would be 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
11:08
James Porter: This is physics, it's not politics.
11:12
James Porter: There is not one single credentialed scientist who disagrees with this assessment.
11:22
James Porter: The oceans are Earth's punching bags, absorbing the heat delivered by coal, oil, and natural gas.
11:31
James Porter: We are reliant upon the oceans to prevent that thermal buildup in the atmosphere.
11:38
James Porter: Now let's look at what that consequence is to a place like Hilargo, Florida.
11:43
James Porter: What you see here is a graph of temperatures going from 1985 to 2022, plotted on a monthly scale of the year.
11:51
James Porter: And as you can see, over time, the temperatures have been getting hotter and hotter and hotter.
11:57
James Porter: Now let me show you what 2023 looked like.
12:01
James Porter: Every month of that entire year was warmer than any other month in any other year ever recorded.
12:14
James Porter: On Key Largo, where we were working in 2023, we measured 101.1 degrees Fahrenheit, and that's 38.4 degrees centigrade.
12:28
James Porter: That's an important number for a variety of reasons.
12:32
James Porter: First, never in the history of oceanography anywhere ever recorded as that high temperature occurred.
12:44
James Porter: And so what this means is that 2023 was the hottest year with the hottest water ever, probably for the last five to hundred thousand years.
12:58
James Porter: And those temperatures are due to climate change and global warming.
13:04
James Porter: Now, what we've done for the last several decades is to monitor coral reefs.
13:10
James Porter: These are reefs in uh Keelargo in Florida, and what I'd like to show you is what happened between the beginning of uh 2023 and the end of 2023.
13:22
James Porter: Here is the coral reef in its full glory of color that you can see in 2023 at the beginning and by the end of the summer, it looks like this.
13:36
James Porter: What you're seeing is the coral still living, but all of the symbiotic algae that provide all of its nutrients and sustenance has disappeared.
13:46
James Porter: And you are looking through the clear flesh of the anemone to the white limestone skeleton underneath.
13:53
James Porter: And as this tragedy developed all across the reef, it set up a frantic race against time to save what we could of the corals that remained.
14:08
James Porter: And you will see this in the next video clip from NBC and other news sources from South Florida.
14:15
James Porter: The alarming water temperatures off Florida tonight.
14:18
Speaker 8: The heat wave in Florida got the world's attention for its speed and intensity.
14:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, when those temperatures get too hot for too long, the coral will slowly starve to death.
14:38
Speaker 9: Corals have been bleaching in response to rising temperatures for a long time.
14:42
Speaker 9: But this year the situation is extreme.
14:45
Speaker 9: The brilliant light of the corals might look pretty, but it is a sign of decay and death.
14:50
Speaker 6: Our team has poured our hearts and soul into building this nursery up over the last two years.
14:56
Speaker 6: Um this was this is our newest nursery, kind of our baby, our little our project.
15:00
Speaker 6: It's um, you know, really heartbreaking to see years and years of work be derailed in the matter of a few days.
15:08
Speaker 9: But Bailey and her team don't give up.
15:10
Speaker 9: In exceptional cases, they try to save what they can.
15:14
Speaker 6: So when we're pulling these corals out, uh, we did it from our nurseries, uh, through it through all of the nurseries throughout the keys, and so we just cut those corals off of the coral trees that we have, put them into crates.
15:25
Speaker 9: From there, they're placed in large containers that are brought ashore by boat to cold storage facilities.
15:32
Speaker: Today we're focusing on quantity to get as many large colonies as possible from our nursery and bringing them to these land-based nurseries to then um safeguard them.
15:42
Speaker 8: The rescued corals are transported back to land and then trucked to aquariums and labs across Florida.
15:48
Speaker 6: Hopefully, we can hold them there for the rest of the summer, but the goal is to bring them back to our nursery setting at the end of the summer once temperatures cool down.
15:55
Speaker 6: They are so stressed, and between the bleaching and the temperature and the transport to there, it's probably gonna be a survival thing for the next three months until we can get them back in the ocean.
16:07
Speaker 8: The operation is a success.
16:09
Speaker 8: The prized corals are safe, but now what?
16:12
Speaker 8: This mass migration was a desperate short-term move.
16:16
Speaker 8: Hanging over all this is a realization that this mass migration could be needed again next summer and again and again.
16:25
Speaker 8: But it also shows what happens when people who care about these corals refuse to give up.
16:30
Speaker 8: They find a way.
16:36
James Porter: So let's be clear about what we just saw.
16:40
James Porter: To get corals to survive, we had to remove the corals from the coral reef.
16:50
James Porter: And what we saw were young people fighting for their future in a desperate race against time.
17:04
James Porter: This is what climate change is doing, and this is why the work of sea change conversations is so incredibly important.
17:14
James Porter: We need to do this now.
17:16
James Porter: Now, we know that climate change is killing all reefs in Florida.
17:24
James Porter: We saw that because it was really bad this summer.
17:28
James Porter: However, if you go just a little bit farther north to Fort Lauderdale, it was not so bad.
17:36
James Porter: And if you go all the way to Gray's Reef, Georgia, it was not bad at all.
17:41
James Porter: We had no bleaching there, fewer corals, but because the water is cooler as you go north, reefs farther north are beginning to survive.
17:53
James Porter: So corals and coral reef environments are going to begin to move north.
18:00
James Porter: Let's be specific about what's going to happen by the end of this century or the beginning of the next century, water off of Savannah, Georgia will have, I didn't say might have, I said will have the same temperature as water currently off Miami, Florida.
18:22
James Porter: That's the effect of climate change.
18:26
James Porter: And as that water warms off of Savannah, the Gulf Stream is going to carry carry coral reefs north.
18:36
James Porter: Not the adult reports, but the planktonic larvae from the sea anemone like a structure will drift north and will be deposited on coral reefs off Savannah, where they will begin to grow.
18:51
James Porter: Let's take this just a little bit farther.
18:54
James Porter: And in fact, tropical water will come to Massachusetts as well.
19:00
James Porter: So, not by the end of this century, but by the end of the next century, Boston, Massachusetts will have the same water temperature as currently found in Miami, Florida.
19:14
James Porter: However, Boston will never have coral reefs.
19:20
James Porter: And the reason is that it's not that New England winters will be too cold because they won't be.
19:27
James Porter: New England winters will be too dark because not enough sunlight gets into the North Temperate Zone.
19:36
James Porter: So human beings have changed the temperature of the planet, but not the angle at which the sun hits it.
19:46
James Porter: So what we're seeing is that the hope for Paul Reefs is for them to move farther north and to begin to regrow in new places.
20:00
James Porter: We will live in a world with Paul Reefs, and one of those places will be Georgia.
20:08
James Porter: And I thank you very much for listening and going diving with me today.
20:18
Kathleen Biggins: Thank you, Jim.
20:20
Kathleen Biggins: And your your passion comes through and see how deeply you feel.
20:24
Kathleen Biggins: And thank you for that lovely call out for our work as well.
20:27
Kathleen Biggins: Appreciate that.
20:29
Kathleen Biggins: So the movie um really was a bit of a wake-up call for me, in that I really thought of coral reefs as a beautiful place to go on vacation to go snorkeling or scuba diving.
20:44
Kathleen Biggins: I had no sense of just how they act as communities, how there are traffic jams, how there are neighbors or neighborhoods, um, and even how the coral reef comes alive and starts making noise when the sun hits it, just like birds do on land.
21:02
Kathleen Biggins: Could you describe for our viewers a little bit of what it's like to see a healthy reef in action and what about it drew you in to love it so much you wanted to dedicate your life in protecting and studying it?
21:17
James Porter: Thank you.
21:17
James Porter: Well, coral reefs are a cacophony of brilliant life.
21:22
James Porter: I mean, uh Cousseau's first book was called The Silent World, but that really was not correct.
21:28
James Porter: It was because he was listening to his bubbles.
21:30
James Porter: But the reef is full of creatures that emit thousands of different kinds of sounds.
21:36
James Porter: For instance, each fish species has its own language.
21:40
James Porter: And so we talk about the potential loss of human languages with uh climate change and changes on the planet, but we're going to lose fish languages as well.
21:51
James Porter: But it's the vivid colors that you get.
21:54
James Porter: I mean, light penetrates in the shallow ocean and every form of light.
21:59
James Porter: Uses that magical lighting for these brilliant different colors.
22:05
James Porter: The other amazing things about coral reefs are these exotic shapes and forms from tunicates to lobsters and octopus, everything are these amazing shapes.
22:19
James Porter: So if you look at the diversity of a coral reef, it's much more diverse than even a tropical rainforest.
22:27
James Porter: So on a rainforest, there are only eight phyla.
22:30
James Porter: But on a coral reef, there are 32 different animal phyla, each with their own different shapes and sizes.
22:39
James Porter: I actually did my undergraduate degree on entomology on insects.
22:44
James Porter: And now I study the one environment on earth that has no insects.
22:50
James Porter: Go figure.
22:51
James Porter: But what happened was I had gotten certified as a scuba diver, um, as an undergraduate, trying to get out of PE calisthenics, and I took my first dive on a coral reef.
23:03
James Porter: I said, I don't recognize anything I'm looking at.
23:08
James Porter: I think I should study it for the rest of my life.
23:13
unknown: Wow.
23:15
Kathleen Biggins: So for those of us who are not as science-minded as you, could you please tell us what a phyla is?
23:21
James Porter: Yes, the phyla are the the main classifications of life.
23:26
James Porter: And um there are 34 phyla that break down, and there's a plant kingdom and an animal kingdom.
23:33
James Porter: And the thing about coral reefs is that each of these different animals that live there, they blur the lines between phyla, between species, all the things.
23:43
James Porter: 85% of the time that a new family or phyla or uh kingdom evolves on our planet, it does so first on coral reefs.
23:54
James Porter: So if we lose coral reefs, we're not just losing species, talk about you know, species diversity and species loss.
24:01
James Porter: We're going to lose life's ability to create new life.
24:08
Kathleen Biggins: Wow, I have never heard that.
24:10
Kathleen Biggins: That's startling.
24:12
Kathleen Biggins: So in the movie, we talked a lot about bleaching, and we talked about coral reese dying.
24:18
Kathleen Biggins: Um, and I know for those of the audience that have watched the movie, they were educated on this.
24:24
Kathleen Biggins: But those who have not, can you explain the difference between bleaching and dying and why the bleaching happens?
24:31
Kathleen Biggins: What is the mechanism?
24:33
James Porter: The mechanism failure.
24:34
James Porter: Yeah, sure.
24:35
James Porter: The mechanism of bleaching is elevated temperatures uh caused by climate change, um, damage the photosynthetic system of the symbiotic algae.
24:46
James Porter: And those algae are the food factories that live inside all reef.
24:52
James Porter: They have they have a salad bar living inside of them.
24:55
James Porter: And when the algae die, they leave the C anemone part of the host, and that's when you can see through the flesh of the anemone.
25:07
James Porter: So its temperature kills the algae.
25:10
James Porter: Now the coral has some energy reserves, so it can survive another year, possibly, without the algae, because the algae can recolonize, reinfect the coral if the water cools down.
25:26
James Porter: And that's an important aspect of why we're so interested in knowing what's going to happen in 2024 because the bleaching before and after I showed you was 2023.
25:40
Kathleen Biggins: And it appears as if 2024 is trending hotter at this point as well.
25:46
James Porter: Um, I'm in an unusual situation.
25:48
James Porter: I I am, as you mentioned, retired, but I just got a new National Science Foundation grant.
25:55
James Porter: So we are going back in 2024 summer to find out the extent of the damage.
26:01
James Porter: We're very, very worried about that.
26:06
Kathleen Biggins: So what happens to the fish that live on the reef and the other animals that live?
26:11
Kathleen Biggins: I I know the reef is indeed an animal, but the other animals that live within it, do they just starve?
26:18
Kathleen Biggins: Do they swim somewhere else?
26:19
James Porter: Or or you're you're correct, they starve to death, and um the fish go away, and all of the other life forms on the reef as well.
26:30
James Porter: What happens is that you know some algae that are that tolerate high temperatures can um attach, but most of those algae are like blue-green algae, they cause red tides and they are toxic.
26:47
James Porter: So there's a double whamming.
26:50
James Porter: Not only is the normal food of the reef destroyed when corals bleach, but new things grow there that are toxic to be eaten.
27:02
James Porter: So there's no substitute for the food that has disappeared.
27:09
Kathleen Biggins: So are there any technologies being developed?
27:13
Kathleen Biggins: We saw those trees in the clip you shared, but are there artificial reefs being prepared?
27:19
Kathleen Biggins: Are there sort of sunscreens or chemicals that we could spray on the coral reefs?
27:23
Kathleen Biggins: Are there any technologies coming that could help the reef survive the temperatures we know are coming?
27:30
James Porter: Yes, that is.
27:31
James Porter: There's a lot of new technology that's being tested.
27:34
James Porter: But one of the most promising actually is that a few individuals of corals have what's called a heat shock protein, which protects them against high temperatures.
27:47
James Porter: And what we're trying to do is to isolate that gene, clone it, and reintroduce it into corals in the wild.
27:57
James Porter: And this is this is a strange part of what we biologists and conservation uh people are doing right now.
28:06
James Porter: It's it's really called assisted evolution.
28:10
James Porter: And there are serious ethical concerns about that.
28:13
James Porter: Should be should we really be assisting evolution or shouldn't evolution take its own course?
28:20
James Porter: But trying to increase the percentage of the population that has heat shock proteins is one of the ways.
28:28
James Porter: Another way is new technology is cryo freezing.
28:32
James Porter: We're trying to freeze the eggs and sperm of a coral animal to see if we can grow them in the laboratory or return them to the ocean when things cool down.
28:45
James Porter: I mean, it's it's simply mind-boggling.
28:51
James Porter: Other people have suggested pulling screens over a coral reef during bleaching time to reduce the amount of ultraviolet light.
29:02
James Porter: I mean, we see this on glaciers in the Swiss Alps.
29:05
James Porter: They're pulling sheets over them to try to prevent the melting of the glaciers.
29:12
James Porter: Um human beings are in a race against time.
29:18
Kathleen Biggins: So the latest projections of our current emissions path brings us somewhere north of 2.7 around 3 degrees C hotter by the end of the century.
29:28
Kathleen Biggins: That totally blows by the two degrees C that is supposed to be lethal to corals.
29:35
Kathleen Biggins: So when I hear you saying this, I'm like, what are we gonna do with the little bits of coral?
29:42
Kathleen Biggins: Are you gonna put them in Georgia?
29:44
Kathleen Biggins: Are you gonna put them in higher latitudes to try to build those reefs?
29:49
James Porter: Yes.
29:50
Kathleen Biggins: Yes.
29:51
James Porter: Okay.
29:52
Kathleen Biggins: So you're gonna help those reefs move north.
29:54
James Porter: We are so right now off the coast of Georgia, um the local Atlanta um subway system called Marta, when they get rid of one of their cars, they take the train car, truck it down to Savannah, Georgia, they pull it 30 miles due east off the coast of Savannah, and they drop it on Gray's Reef because they are attempting to make an artificial reef, provide more settlement area, and try and jumpstart the growth of reefs there.
30:31
James Porter: But again, I mean, the problem is the scale.
30:35
James Porter: So most of this movement that we're talking about of this ecosystem moving north is going to be due to natural processes.
30:46
James Porter: So once a year or sometimes twice a year, all will reproduce, um, producing eggs and sperm released into the water.
30:54
James Porter: And those will drift north with the Gulf Stream.
30:58
James Porter: And after they uh form a viable egg, they then settle on the seafloor.
31:04
James Porter: Currently, after you get a little bit farther north in Fort Lauderdale, the water's too cold.
31:10
James Porter: That's true up in Georgia as well, but that's going to change.
31:14
James Porter: And as that changes, corals will settle and will grow.
31:20
James Porter: And we will have coral reefs off our coastline.
31:26
Kathleen Biggins: So I know that about 40% of Americans live in coastal communities, so they care about the oceans, but not all of them live close to a reef.
31:34
Kathleen Biggins: In fact, most of them do not.
31:36
Kathleen Biggins: Um, what would you say to someone who lives in Maine or Toledo or Nebraska about why they should care about coral reefs?
31:45
James Porter: Well, everyone should care about coral reefs, and everyone should care about the oceans.
31:49
James Porter: Every other breath that you take, the oxygen in that breath has been provided by the ocean.
31:59
James Porter: As go the oceans, so goes life on Earth.
32:04
James Porter: And you know, I cited a couple examples of these drugs from the sea.
32:08
James Porter: I mean, you think about, I mean, coral reefs have been around for 400 billion years.
32:15
James Porter: That's really an amazing length of time.
32:19
James Porter: They've been here.
32:20
James Porter: And in that time, the chemistry, the novel chemistry that has evolved is extraordinary.
32:27
James Porter: And some of that novel chemistry has been evolved in the corals to kill other things that are trying to eat them.
32:34
James Porter: And we can use those same chemicals to kill things that are trying to eat us.
32:40
James Porter: So, for instance, that one new compound uh kills the HIV AIDS virus.
32:49
James Porter: There's a new uh cancer fighting drug called prostaglandin.
32:53
James Porter: Um, and that comes from CFANs, and it is one of the most effective cancer fighting materials against breast cancer.
33:03
James Porter: I mean, coral reaves have so much to tell us that we need them around to allow them to tell us.
33:12
Kathleen Biggins: So, again, just so I understand the potential for the future, if they are bleaching out, and this year looks like they could bleach for a second time in two years, which I understand is extremely deadly.
33:24
Kathleen Biggins: Do we have time for them to create these outposts further north?
33:29
Kathleen Biggins: Because it's they the water further north has to get warm enough to support it, which means that the migration has to go over long enough, period, and yet we're hearing about the reefs dying rapidly now.
33:41
Kathleen Biggins: So, is there a disconnect time-wise?
33:44
James Porter: There is a disconnect.
33:45
James Porter: We're worried about that too, but we do know already that a lot of the reefs in Port Lauderdale um had things that survived in a regular Caribbean coral reef.
33:58
James Porter: And even if the ones from the Central Caribbean are not producing the larvae to get to Georgia, this hopscotching is the best mechanism we're aware of now to move entire ecosystems.
34:12
James Porter: Yes, it's a challenge.
34:14
James Porter: I would think uh I would really worry, you know, you you probably want to know, you know, what keeps me up at night.
34:21
James Porter: You're right on top of it now.
34:23
James Porter: Um, it's not just the second year in a row of these high temperatures, which would kill the local corals.
34:31
James Porter: It would be the third year in a row that would not only kill the local corals, but start to kill the corals that we're relying on for the spawn to get to Georgia.
34:45
Kathleen Biggins: So you stole one of my next questions, which was what keeps you up at night.
34:49
Kathleen Biggins: So let me turn that on its head and say, what is it that gives you hope?
34:56
James Porter: Well, there are there are a lot of things that give me hope.
34:59
James Porter: Um, I'm a teacher, and I don't think it's possible to be a good teacher without being something of an optimist.
35:07
James Porter: I look at what the young people around me and the young people that you saw in the film, the the level of commitment, the level of intelligence, the facility with new technologies is really phenomenal.
35:21
James Porter: So, just to name one, we're working with a group of students in microbiology who are trying to develop a probiotic solution that contains beneficial, a mixture of beneficial bacteria, the symbiotic algae that colonizes corals, and a nutrient packet that can be um spread over coral reefs to try to get corals to survive, increase the rate of reproduction, and increase the survivorship of reproduction.
35:59
James Porter: I mean, that is out-of-the-box thinking.
36:02
James Porter: That's what young people do every day.
36:04
James Porter: I watch that as a teacher, and that gives me hope.
36:10
Kathleen Biggins: I love hearing that.
36:11
Kathleen Biggins: Innovation.
36:13
Kathleen Biggins: So as you think about policy, because obviously policy lays kind of the rules of the road.
36:21
Kathleen Biggins: It enables others to know where we're trying to get and to hopefully march in the same direction.
36:27
Kathleen Biggins: Um are there policies coming?
36:30
Kathleen Biggins: We've heard a lot about the 30 by 30, 30% of the oceans protected, 30% of the land protected.
36:35
Kathleen Biggins: There's a lot of momentum behind that.
36:37
Kathleen Biggins: Does that work for corals?
36:39
Kathleen Biggins: Is uh or are there other policies that you would highlight as being really effective if we could get them passed or implemented?
36:48
James Porter: I think we're in a situation where we have to do everything immediately, as fast as we possibly can.
36:56
James Porter: And um, I mean, I have hope for nuclear power.
37:00
James Porter: I mean, it it doesn't produce, you know, greenhouse gases.
37:04
James Porter: And right here in the state of Georgia, we have opened up four new nuclear power plants.
37:09
James Porter: For instance, uh, Plant Vogel in Georgia takes 14 is equivalent to taking 14 million cars off the road every year.
37:20
James Porter: And it's the equivalent of preventing six uh BP oil spills every year.
37:28
James Porter: That's the extraordinary effect, beneficial effect of nuclear power.
37:34
James Porter: And there are a lot of ways to make nuclear power much less polluting and dangerous than it has been in the past.
37:41
James Porter: So, solar technology, once again, and battery technology to uh allow us to store that energy.
37:50
James Porter: I mean, solar is taking off.
37:52
James Porter: There are a lot of really hopeful things, and um, all of these things are going to combine to make a situation where we can supply the energy we need to create a culture that we want.
38:08
Kathleen Biggins: Right.
38:09
Kathleen Biggins: Now, I think you're hitting on something very important because there is so much momentum in the clean energy realm, and I'm putting nuclear within that realm.
38:18
Kathleen Biggins: Um, and it's exciting again to see the innovation that is coming from the young and some of the not so young that are providing new ways of powering our economy.
38:29
Kathleen Biggins: So I would totally agree with that.
38:31
Kathleen Biggins: Um, I see we have two questions in the chat box.
38:34
Kathleen Biggins: So I'm going to let Susan come on and bring those forward.
38:38
Kathleen Biggins: And then if we have a little more time, I always have some more.
38:41
Kathleen Biggins: Always love speaking with you two.
38:43
Kathleen Biggins: Sure.
38:45
Speaker 10: Yeah, thank you so much.
38:46
Speaker 10: So one question has come in, and it's a longer question, a lovely question.
38:54
Speaker 10: I'm going to try to make it a little bit shorter because this person is wondering about tangible action.
39:02
Speaker 10: What is the best way for a New Jersey resident to take tangible action?
39:09
Speaker 10: And she mentions the idea that she's seen on the Cheese and Coral website that there um there's a science teacher who shows your film.
39:20
Speaker 10: Um she's wondering if she could bring that sort of thing to other schools.
39:24
Speaker 10: But what are some other practical ways that she can take action?
39:29
James Porter: Well, I think both Kathleen and I should, you know, answer that question.
39:33
James Porter: Um absolutely anything that you are willing to do that reduces your carbon footprint is the right thing to do.
39:43
James Porter: So recycling helps.
39:46
James Porter: Trying to get um compact cars using public transportation, buying local food, supporting um people who are running for office from any party, it doesn't matter, this is this is not a partisan issue, who take climate change seriously.
40:05
James Porter: I I think everybody on who's online here realizes that the solutions we're talking about have to be long-term.
40:13
James Porter: And those long-term solutions are going to work, but we have to apply them as fast as possible.
40:22
James Porter: So education is really the thing that that I've been doing.
40:27
James Porter: And I've spoken to grade schools, high schools, junior high schools, you know, scout troops, everything.
40:34
James Porter: Getting the word out is important.
40:36
James Porter: And Netflix, when uh they saw the film, uh, they said, we will make this film available free of charge always and for any group that would like to have it.
40:48
James Porter: So getting the word out.
40:50
James Porter: One other thought with my students, I used to tell them to vote.
40:54
James Porter: I don't say that now.
40:56
James Porter: I say run for office.
41:01
Kathleen Biggins: Nice.
41:02
Kathleen Biggins: Um, um I can can I just add to that, Susan?
41:06
Kathleen Biggins: Uh if it's okay.
41:08
Kathleen Biggins: Um, because I just came back from uh presenting in Ohio, where we presented to a very large public high school amongst other groups.
41:16
Kathleen Biggins: It was it was a wonderful trip.
41:17
Kathleen Biggins: We we touched over 900 people.
41:19
Kathleen Biggins: Jim, I think I told you about it.
41:20
Kathleen Biggins: But one of the things that um really struck me was after the presentation, hearing from a student who came up and said, Thank you so much.
41:31
Kathleen Biggins: Your presentation meant so much to me because it gave me hope.
41:35
Kathleen Biggins: Another student reported to her mother that she had no idea that climate change was really real or important.
41:44
Kathleen Biggins: Two students at the same school with very different perceptions and very different concerns.
41:53
Kathleen Biggins: And so I think that's really um something for us to remember is that not everyone has gotten this memo, not everyone understands the significance.
42:03
Kathleen Biggins: Um, and sharing messages like chasing coral is a wonderful way to do that because it's it is a love letter at the same time, and it is so involving.
42:11
Kathleen Biggins: So um kudos to you and your team for doing that.
42:15
Kathleen Biggins: Sorry, Susan, I didn't mean to cut you off.
42:17
Speaker 10: Oh, it's totally fine.
42:18
Speaker 10: Okay, so another question is um specifically for coral restoration and saving, are there things that people in the north can do?
42:30
James Porter: There certainly would be.
42:32
James Porter: Um there are a number of organizations uh that are building these artificial structures.
42:38
James Porter: One of them is called reef ball, just reef ball.
42:42
James Porter: And what it does is it raises money by allowing you to mix interred ashes into a reef ball cement structure, which is then placed on a coral reef in memorial.
42:55
James Porter: And um, that's one way to get directly involved.
42:59
James Porter: And I also think there are a lot of conservation organizations out there, any of the large ones from Nature Conservancy to Audubon Society, all of them have uh very important coral reef programs.
43:13
James Porter: Pew Charitable Trust is doing work in this, and you might just direct any of the funds that you have to those kinds of organizations and say you'd like to target them for their coral reef programs.
43:27
Kathleen Biggins: Susan, I have one more add-on to um what Jim said prior to this, if I may.
43:32
Kathleen Biggins: Um one of the things that the research shows over and over again is that people do not talk about climate change enough.
43:40
Kathleen Biggins: It's not, it's still a bit taboo, it still makes people uncomfortable.
43:45
Kathleen Biggins: Uh and and so even though the vast majority of Americans really care, most Americans don't know that.
43:53
Kathleen Biggins: The perception is that it isn't really supported, and action really isn't supported, and in fact, it is.
43:59
Kathleen Biggins: Is generally even across party lines on most aspects of it.
44:04
Kathleen Biggins: So talking about climate change and also talking about the changes you're doing in your own life, like Jim said, whether it's the recycling or putting up the solar panels or getting that electric vehicle, using yourself as a model and then kind of being the stone that starts the ripple is an important part of it.
44:24
Kathleen Biggins: So if you recycle, talk about it.
44:25
Kathleen Biggins: And if you go and you know, vegetarian for part of your meal, talk about it because that's how we we need to influence others as we raise awareness.
44:34
James Porter: Yeah, we used to have trouble, you know, trying to explain uh climate change and the reality of it.
44:41
James Porter: But the situation is now we have the same certainty that climate change, anthropogenic climate change exists as we do of the existence of gravity.
44:54
James Porter: So we have changed from a situation where there was some legitimate scientific debate to the situation now where it's a basic principle on which all life depends.
45:09
James Porter: And I love, Kathleen, that you're getting out there to different schools and teaching the young people.
45:16
James Porter: So when we showed Chasing Coral on Capitol Hill, I testified before Congress and climate change a little bit ago, and we showed Chasing Coral, and uh Representative Edie Johnson from Texas said, let's show it after the hearing at 11 o'clock.
45:32
James Porter: I said, No, let's have it at 4:30 in the afternoon.
45:35
James Porter: And she said, Why should we do that?
45:37
James Porter: And I said, Because that way the congressmen and women could bring their children to see it as well.
45:44
James Porter: And that movie is multi-generational in its impact.
45:48
James Porter: So the next day, after we had had the Washington premiere with members of the Senate and the House from both parties, what we were told by the staffers was that on the way home from the movie, the kids read the Riot Act to their parents.
46:10
Kathleen Biggins: Wonderful.
46:11
Kathleen Biggins: Wonderful.
46:14
Speaker 10: Thank you.
46:14
Speaker 10: Um, okay, so I have another question.
46:17
Speaker 10: Speaking of young people, this is perfect.
46:20
Speaker 10: Um, here's the question.
46:21
Speaker 10: With your experience for young people who are super interested in and passionate about this field, what are the best jobs and best companies to work for that you've seen to get hands-on with this movement?
46:35
James Porter: It's an interesting question.
46:37
James Porter: Um if you go to a place like Miami, uh, you know, there's a huge impact of uh coral reef biology and the surrounding environment on the local businesses.
46:49
James Porter: I would say it it doesn't really matter.
46:53
James Porter: Uh, everybody's who's going to be passionate about the environment is going to be throughout business and industry.
47:01
James Porter: I mean, in the Florida Keys alone, you've got 40,000 full-time jobs that relate specifically to the coal reef.
47:09
James Porter: So um the but there are a lot of things you can do, summer projects and internships.
47:15
James Porter: For instance, in the Florida Keys, the Coral Restoration Foundation, I'll repeat that, Coral Restoration Foundation.
47:23
James Porter: They have an internship program which takes young adults and all the way up to you know uh real adults, and um they introduce them into coral conservation practices so you actually can get in the water and help these restoration efforts.
47:43
James Porter: So I I would say surf the internet.
47:46
James Porter: There are a lot of opportunities out there.
47:50
Speaker 10: Great, thank you.
47:51
Speaker 10: Here's another one.
47:53
Speaker 10: Have we reached a point with excessive temperatures in the ocean that they will ever cool?
47:59
Speaker 10: If they will cool, how long will it take to get back to normal temperatures?
48:04
James Porter: They will cool, but now we're talking, unfortunately, about a thousand years or more.
48:11
James Porter: So, but if you think of a thousand years, uh you know, that's a blink of an eye in geological time.
48:18
James Porter: I mean, as I'm just mentioning, you figure this is an environment that's been around for 400 million years, and we're going through a period of time where this kind of stress is going to be applied for a thousand years.
48:34
James Porter: So if corals, reefs, and corals can move north, survive that intermediate period where human beings come to their senses and start putting on the brakes.
48:47
James Porter: If you take the long view, there is a reason to take action now.
48:54
James Porter: It will slow it down and it will make the recovery period shorter.
49:03
Kathleen Biggins: So, can I add to that, Susan?
49:04
Kathleen Biggins: Um, there's some wonderful charts put out by Climate Central that take different places on land.
49:11
Kathleen Biggins: I haven't seen it for the oceans yet, but um show side by side what temperatures would be for each generation, ending up with the youngest, which is I guess alpha from 2014 on, the real youngsters.
49:23
Kathleen Biggins: And contrasting the temperatures on land with action and without action.
49:31
Kathleen Biggins: And it is so stark, and especially for those young people, that if we take action soon, the temperatures they will face will be half or even less than half than if we continue on our current path.
49:42
Kathleen Biggins: So I can only assume that's analogous to what is happening in the oceans as well.
49:48
Kathleen Biggins: Um but it's a reminder that actions matter and we still have time to make it better.
49:54
James Porter: Let me jump in with the Paris Climate Accords.
49:56
James Porter: If we were to fully implement Paris Climate Accords today, that would buy coral reefs 100 years before those multi-year two degrees centigrade or more back-to-back bleaching events would be common.
50:14
James Porter: So within that 100 years, that's an important length of time because that's the length of time that natural selection could operate to select for the heat shock protein, to select for new growth strategies.
50:30
James Porter: Now, the other thing is in deep water, it's a little cooler.
50:34
James Porter: So that may be another origin for future coral reefs.
50:41
Kathleen Biggins: I just have this picture of little coral reefs with like a knapsack on their back trying to make it further north, saying, I think I can.
50:50
James Porter: Well, they can because they pack a lunch too.
50:52
James Porter: They they have a lot of fats and oils that are put by the maternal coral into the egg, and that allows them to skiddle farther north.
51:04
James Porter: That's wonderful.
51:05
Kathleen Biggins: So let me just um jump in one question because we we talked a bit about the oceans, and then you talked about how the oxygen comes from the ocean.
51:12
Kathleen Biggins: And we all know that the coral reefs are kind of the rainforest, or even more than the rainforest to the oceans.
51:18
Kathleen Biggins: Can you talk for a minute about what's happening um to the oceans more globally?
51:24
Kathleen Biggins: Like what's happening to the other sea life?
51:26
Kathleen Biggins: What's happening to the ocean currents?
51:27
Kathleen Biggins: How is that being impacted by climate change?
51:30
James Porter: Just about every marine environment in every location in the world is being impacted as we speak.
51:38
James Porter: I mean, we're seeing drastic reductions in fisheries stock, and we're seeing things like starving blazes and things like that.
51:48
James Porter: I mean, and starving penguins.
51:51
James Porter: It's it's all of these changes are happening so rapidly.
51:55
James Porter: And one of the most frightening things that happen is happening now is that the glaciers that feed into the ocean are melting at unprecedented rates.
52:06
James Porter: And as a result of that, we're expecting sea level rise to accelerate toward the end of the century.
52:14
James Porter: The initial estimates were by the end of the century two to three feet.
52:19
James Porter: But now, given the kind of temperatures we experienced in 2023 and that we're experiencing in 2024, those estimates have been raised to the thought that by the end of this century, sea level may rise between five and a half and six feet, and that's the average projected rise that's occurring in the ocean.
52:45
Kathleen Biggins: Wow, that's sobering.
52:47
James Porter: Yeah, most of South Florida is threatened by that, and we should have policies that try to minimize that.
52:56
Kathleen Biggins: Yeah, I regret to say it is 8:30 and it is our time to close up this discussion.
53:04
Kathleen Biggins: But as always, such a delight to learn from you and hear from you.
53:09
Kathleen Biggins: And to our audience members, thank you so much for sharing this evening with us.
53:13
Kathleen Biggins: We we will send out a little survey um tomorrow.
53:16
Kathleen Biggins: Please let us know what you thought.
53:18
Kathleen Biggins: Uh, we will keep you apprised of future interviews as well.
53:22
Kathleen Biggins: So thank you.
53:23
James Porter: Thank you for coming.