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Philippe Cousteau on Why Coral Reefs Are Disappearing and How to Rebuild Them · Back From the Brink, from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom

• 0:00
  (gentle music)
• 0:02
  - Functionally, coral reefs will disappear in our lifetime
• 0:04
  if we don't take drastic measures.
• 0:06
  That is a fact, a tragic fact.
• 0:09
  - Finding Philippe Cousteau Jr. is no easy task.
• 0:13
  Although typically he's deep underwater,
• 0:16
  I was finally able to find him above ground,
• 0:19
  being a bit of a land mammal this time.
• 0:22
  He is in the Sierra Mountain Range
• 0:24
  and he's on a camping trip, which was windy, remote,
• 0:28
  and very true to form for an explorer like him.
• 0:31
  But thanks to technology, we're able to talk.
• 0:35
  Philippe is the grandson of Jacques Cousteau,
• 0:37
  the man who invented scuba diving
• 0:39
  and brought the ocean into living rooms around the world.
• 0:42
  Philippe grew up at sea
• 0:44
  and he's made the ocean his life's work also.
• 0:47
  He founded Earth Echo International, which is dedicated
• 0:50
  to building the next generation of ocean advocates.
• 0:54
  And over the last several years,
• 0:55
  he's turned his attention to what he calls
• 0:58
  the most under-reported environmental crisis on the planet,
• 1:02
  which is the collapse of coral reefs.
• 1:07
  (dramatic music)
• 1:13
  Welcome to "Back from the Brink"
• 1:15
  from Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom."
• 1:18
  I'm Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant.
• 1:20
  - [Peter] Each episode,
• 1:21
  we're going deep on a variety of species
• 1:23
  and those that went to the very edge of disappearing
• 1:26
  and the people that fought to bring them back.
• 1:29
  Coral reefs cover less than 1% of the ocean's floor,
• 1:33
  yet they support a quarter of all marine life.
• 1:37
  Since the 1950s, we've lost half of them.
• 1:40
  Before we get to what's being done, we need to understand
• 1:43
  what we're losing and why almost no one is talking about it.
• 1:48
  - For the folks who are watching this
• 1:50
  but may not have spent time underwater,
• 1:52
  can you just describe, first of all, what is a coral reef,
• 1:56
  what are corals,
• 1:57
  and then what roles do reefs play in the oceans?
• 2:02
  - Coral reefs are critical ecosystems,
• 2:04
  and oftentimes, people forget just how important they are.
• 2:08
  They are arguably the most biodiverse ecosystem on Earth,
• 2:11
  land or sea,
• 2:12
  and they're much more than pretty fish and snorkeling.
• 2:16
  Coral reefs are, of course,
• 2:18
  critical to biodiversity and fish.
• 2:20
  Tourism, they provide about two and a half trillion dollars
• 2:23
  of goods and services a year.
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  They contribute tens of billions of dollars
• 2:27
  to the global tourism industry,
• 2:30
  tens of billions to fisheries.
• 2:32
  Hard to estimate, but three quarters of a billion
• 2:33
  to one billion people rely on coral reefs
• 2:36
  for their livelihoods every year around the world.
• 2:38
  And so when I think of coral reefs,
• 2:40
  I think of them as infrastructure.
• 2:43
  Now, the really sad part,
• 2:46
  oftentimes when I'm giving talks or lectures,
• 2:48
  I'll ask people how much of the world's rainforests
• 2:51
  have disappeared in our lifetime?
• 2:53
  And the answer is usually 60, 70%.
• 2:56
  And I understand there's a lot of press and media
• 2:57
  around the rainforests and the decline of the Amazon,
• 2:59
  and it is terrible, but the answer is about 17 to 20%.
• 3:04
  Yet in our lifetimes, we've lost 50% of the world's reefs.
• 3:08
  And it's very possible
• 3:09
  that reefs become functionally extinct in our lifetime
• 3:12
  because of climate change and local pollution
• 3:14
  and development and overfishing.
• 3:16
  So coral reefs are in a much greater crisis
• 3:19
  than land terrestrial forests and rainforests by far,
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  and yet most people give it a collective shrug
• 3:26
  and the global community largely
• 3:27
  gives it a collective shrug.
• 3:28
  And that's a really big problem.
• 3:30
  - I just have to jump in here
• 3:31
  because these are statistics that folks really need to hear.
• 3:34
  A global shrug, I mean, do you think it's...
• 3:37
  I know that there's a lot of reasons why,
• 3:39
  one is that there are a lot of barriers to going underwater.
• 3:44
  So most people haven't seen a reef, touched a reef,
• 3:46
  swam in one, looked at it with their own eyes.
• 3:49
  But I think also the average person
• 3:52
  isn't really familiar with coral.
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  So can you even describe to us what are corals
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  and what do they do and why do we need them to stay alive?
• 4:01
  - A lot of people do look at coral reefs
• 4:03
  and think of them as painted rocks, colored rocks.
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  In fact, coral reefs are living organisms.
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  Coral polyps are part plant, part animal,
• 4:11
  a little bacteria thrown in for good measure.
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  They're fascinating creatures.
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  They build like the apartment buildings of reefs systems.
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  They construct little calcium carbonate homes around them.
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  And over millennia, they build new layer
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  upon layer upon layer upon layer.
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  So the outer layer of a reef is the only layer
• 4:31
  that has living tissue.
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  Everything underneath is essentially
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  calcium carbonate limestone.
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  And in fact, it is coral reefs that have built
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  the Parthenon and the Washington Monument.
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  Old limestone predominantly comes from the ocean.
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  They are the critical structure builders
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  of coastal ecosystems, tropical coastal ecosystems,
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  and they are, as I said, one of the most,
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  if not the most biodiverse ecosystem on the planet.
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  25% of the world's seafood spends part of its life in
• 5:00
  or around or dependent upon a coral reef.
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  So they are absolutely critical
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  to the global ocean ecosystem
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  and affect, as I said, hundreds of millions
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  up to a billion people's lives very directly,
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  from economic development and growth
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  and jobs to protecting coastlines from storm surge
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  that's getting increasingly worse.
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  So they look pretty,
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  but they provide a structural function,
• 5:25
  almost like infrastructure that is critical
• 5:27
  for coastal health of the ocean.
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  - I know that you and I believe coral reefs
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  are inherently valuable.
• 5:34
  They should just exist whether they're providing services
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  or not, but they also do protect coastlines
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  where humans live from storm surges and flooding.
• 5:44
  - Yeah, they do, and that's something,
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  we think about coral reefs as shields, coastal shields.
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  Now, coral reefs can absorb up to 97% of storm surge.
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  They can reduce wave height up to 84%,
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  and so in a world with increasingly catastrophic cyclones,
• 6:01
  hurricanes, typhoons, coral reefs play a very important role
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  along tropical coastlines to reduce the storm surge.
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  In coastal communities, it's the storm surge, not the wind,
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  that can be so damaging and so destructive and deadly,
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  and so both to land-based infrastructure,
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  homes, businesses, and also people's lives,
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  thousands of people can die from these massive storms,
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  and just the storm surge may cost the global economy
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  tens of billions, up to over a hundred billion a year
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  in mitigation costs and construction and repair costs
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  when these storms come through and coral reefs collapse.
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  And as I said, warming ocean temperatures
• 6:40
  are causing corals to die, but going back a hundred years
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  in a lot of these communities, overfishing,
• 6:46
  dynamite fishing, a lot of places in Asia
• 6:49
  throw literally dynamite in the water.
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  It explodes and stuns the fish.
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  They float to the surface, they scoop them up with the net,
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  but that dynamite just happens to destroy everything else,
• 6:58
  to cyanide fishing that they'll also do,
• 7:01
  to squirt cyanide on these reefs to get the fish stunned
• 7:04
  and they scoop them up and it kills everything,
• 7:06
  to development and human waste causing too much nutrients
• 7:09
  in the water that causes algal blooms.
• 7:10
  That's a big problem in places like Florida
• 7:12
  and the Caribbean,
• 7:13
  or to outright just destruction for ports, piers.
• 7:16
  So reefs have been under onslaught for over a century,
• 7:20
  and now with climate change, warming ocean temperatures,
• 7:24
  it's just really another nail in the coffin
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  that's terrifying.
• 7:29
  - [Peter] Philippe hasn't just studied decline
• 7:30
  from a distance.
• 7:31
  He's watched it happen underwater over decades,
• 7:34
  returning to the same reefs and seeing what remains.
• 7:38
  He has a term for why the disappearing reef
• 7:39
  has gone unnoticed by much of the world.
• 7:42
  He calls it shifting baselines.
• 7:46
  - To your point, it's been relatively invisible, right?
• 7:49
  We haven't had huge campaigns dating back decades
• 7:53
  and decades to protect the reefs.
• 7:55
  This is something that has been coming up
• 7:58
  after we as a society have realized
• 8:00
  we've kind of gone past these critical points.
• 8:03
  But before we get to solutions,
• 8:05
  I want to talk about your lifetime
• 8:06
  because I am anticipating that you got in the water
• 8:10
  when you were a kid,
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  and I imagine you still get in the water as an adult.
• 8:15
  So what kinds of declines in coral reef health
• 8:20
  and existence have you seen in your own lifetime
• 8:23
  and what has that actually looked like?
• 8:25
  - I actually did a piece for Discovery several years ago
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  down in the Florida Keys, and I knew one of the filmmakers
• 8:30
  that had filmed there for decades,
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  and so we got him to give us some footage
• 8:33
  that he had shot in the 1980s.
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  And then this was probably, I want to say 2008 maybe,
• 8:39
  so it's quite a bit ago,
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  so about 20 years later, 25 years later.
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  And we went back to the exact same spot that he filmed
• 8:47
  and we played the footage side by side.
• 8:49
  Having grown up diving and snorkeling
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  and seeing these places,
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  one of the challenges we faced is this idea
• 8:54
  of shifting baselines,
• 8:55
  that every successive generation's baseline
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  for the health of the ecosystem and the environment
• 8:59
  is what they were first exposed to.
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  As I said earlier, even my grandfather saw a massive decline
• 9:06
  from the '40s to the '60s that raised alarm bells for him.
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  Nowadays, we'd look at the '60s and go, "Paradise."
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  So our context changes.
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  My context certainly from the '80s to now is terrifying,
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  but seeing it side by side, the same exact places
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  with the same cameramen filming them,
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  seeing what in the '80s were these abundant,
• 9:27
  beautiful elkhorn reefs, huge schools of fish
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  and all of this life, clear, clean, beautiful blue water,
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  and then the late 2000s,
• 9:38
  all of that coral was dead rubble covered in algae
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  and a few fish poking around.
• 9:43
  And we've seen the Great Barrier Reef.
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  First time I visited the Great Barrier Reef was in the '90s,
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  going back just a few years ago for a syndicated show
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  that I hosted for several years,
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  it was bleached and covered in algae again,
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  the same places that I'd been that were abundant.
• 10:00
  So it really is, you think of it on land,
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  like seeing an abundant, beautiful rainforest
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  and going back a few years later and it's been clear cut
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  and there's some shrubs left.
• 10:11
  That's essentially what we're doing in the ocean,
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  but at a much larger scale.
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  Again, half the world's coral reefs have disappeared,
• 10:16
  about 17% of the Amazon is gone.
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  So we're doing it much more rapidly in the ocean.
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  I guarantee you if half the Amazon disappeared,
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  people would be losing their minds.
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  But because it's in the ocean, people are kind of like,
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  "Meh, it's still blue, what's the problem?"
• 10:35
  - Just as an opinion question,
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  if we were to continue with business as usual,
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  how close do you think we are to losing reefs entirely
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  if there weren't interventions?
• 10:45
  - Functionally, coral reefs will disappear in our lifetime
• 10:48
  if we don't take drastic measures.
• 10:50
  That is a fact, a tragic fact.
• 10:53
  And the reality is that while there will be pockets of reefs
• 10:55
  that no doubt survive, we've identified areas of reefs
• 10:59
  that are still being resilient,
• 11:01
  at scale as a functioning ecosystem around the world,
• 11:07
  it doesn't help the Caribbean very much
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  to have reefs in Indonesia, few smattering of reefs survive
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  when the reefs in the Caribbean have disappeared.
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  And actually in most places, up to 95% of the reefs
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  in the Caribbean have already disappeared.
• 11:21
  Massive alarm bells, huge problems.
• 11:23
  - I think that's so poignant
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  that we essentially are creating
• 11:27
  this negative feedback loop,
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  like destroying coral reefs is impacting human communities,
• 11:34
  which impacts ecosystems larger and larger,
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  and we could turn it into a positive feedback loop,
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  where healthy ecosystems enhance the ability
• 11:44
  for healthy human communities
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  and healthy human communities protect the reefs.
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  And that's where we're at.
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  We're trying to shift the feedback loop
• 11:52
  from negative to positive,
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  and people like you are doing that.
• 11:57
  - [Peter] The technology to grow
• 11:58
  and restore coral reefs already exist.
• 12:01
  The problem isn't science, it's the scale.
• 12:04
  Philippe has spent decades working on that problem,
• 12:07
  starting with a chance meeting with one scientist in Florida
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  that changed everything.
• 12:14
  - I want you to talk to us
• 12:15
  about the efforts to restore coral reefs,
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  kind of the conventional style versus some more innovative,
• 12:24
  more scalable approaches that you've been spearheading.
• 12:28
  - I was 19 years old and I met a scientist
• 12:30
  named Dr. David Vaughan,
• 12:32
  who was based out of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution
• 12:35
  in Fort Pierce, Florida.
• 12:37
  He had pioneered multiple different kinds of aquacultures
• 12:41
  over the decades of his career,
• 12:42
  things like clams and oysters, shrimp,
• 12:45
  and he turned his attention to coral.
• 12:49
  So he started growing corals in land-based nurseries,
• 12:52
  farms essentially, and found that they would grow faster
• 12:58
  in land-based farms.
• 12:59
  And he did that initially for selling those corals
• 13:03
  into the ornamental aquarium industry.
• 13:06
  Now, because most corals, even today,
• 13:09
  in that industry are caught and harvested from the wild
• 13:13
  and sold into wild reefs, into aquariums.
• 13:18
  - This kind of sounds like poaching kind of.
• 13:21
  - Yeah, in a way, I mean, a lot of it's illegal,
• 13:23
  some of it is legal, but we're essentially degrading
• 13:27
  these already degraded systems to sell into aquariums.
• 13:31
  - It doesn't make any sense, and so Dr. Vaughan said,
• 13:33
  "Could I farm these, like you would farm saplings
• 13:35
  in a greenhouse, and sell those?"
• 13:37
  So we're reducing pressure on the ornamental business
• 13:40
  off of wild reefs.
• 13:43
  So when I met him, I said, "Wow, Dave,
• 13:44
  this is pretty amazing technology.
• 13:46
  Do you think we could actually grow these corals
• 13:49
  in captivity for restoring wild reefs,
• 13:53
  not just to sell into the ornamental industry?"
• 13:56
  And Dave said, "I don't know, but I think so."
• 13:58
  He started a lab at Moates,
• 13:59
  Marine Laboratory down in the Keys,
• 14:01
  and pioneered all the technology that everybody uses today
• 14:06
  for aquaculturing corals in land-based nurseries,
• 14:09
  things like microfragmentation,
• 14:11
  where he proved you could grow corals 20 times faster
• 14:14
  on land than they can grow in the ocean.
• 14:16
  And we can harvest heat-tolerant corals
• 14:19
  that would eventually, more resilient corals will take over,
• 14:23
  but on a geological timeframe, we don't have that timeframe.
• 14:26
  We're operating in a human time, destructive timeframe.
• 14:29
  And so we can grow heat-tolerant corals much faster
• 14:32
  and outplant them back into the wild.
• 14:35
  So 22 years or so goes by,
• 14:38
  Dave made all this technology available to the world
• 14:40
  and many NGOs and nonprofits are utilizing it,
• 14:44
  but at a very, very small scale.
• 14:46
  So in 20 years, we've restored about one square kilometer
• 14:49
  of corals and lost thousands.
• 14:51
  And so we were both very frustrated that,
• 14:53
  my goodness, we have a big problem,
• 14:57
  this technology isn't scaling.
• 14:59
  So it's not scaling in scope and size the way it needs to
• 15:02
  to outpace ecological decline.
• 15:04
  We're losing thousands. We've built one.
• 15:07
  I did history at uni, I'm not really good at math,
• 15:10
  but I know those numbers don't work out so well.
• 15:13
  And so the question then is, what's holding us back?
• 15:17
  We have the technology,
• 15:18
  we know how to grow these corals quickly,
• 15:20
  and a lot of NGOs are doing really laudable work
• 15:22
  and it's lovely and really important and I support it,
• 15:26
  but replanting a few meters of reef is irrelevant
• 15:29
  to actually preventing these systems from collapsing.
• 15:31
  So we realize we need to stop thinking about coral reefs
• 15:34
  as these biodiverse ecosystems and restore corals by hand,
• 15:38
  planting them onto some rubble in the ground.
• 15:42
  We need to actually think of reefs as what they are,
• 15:44
  which is infrastructure, and the good news is, again,
• 15:47
  I think that so many instances from marine-protected areas
• 15:52
  to technology and tracking fisheries
• 15:54
  to regenerative farming on land
• 15:57
  and rebuilding the carbon sequestration potential of soil,
• 15:59
  we know there are extraordinary solutions that exist.
• 16:04
  Now, the question is not to keep researching them,
• 16:07
  not to keep testing them, but to deploy them at scale.
• 16:12
  That's the challenge, I believe,
• 16:14
  for the next iteration of the environmental movement.
• 16:17
  - This has been just a tremendous education for me,
• 16:20
  and what keeps coming up for me
• 16:23
  is how incredibly intersectional this approach is.
• 16:27
  So in the past, we've had conservation biologists,
• 16:31
  like myself, I am a trained biologist
• 16:34
  working on these issues and coming up with solutions.
• 16:36
  But it sounds like with the company that you've created
• 16:40
  focused on solutions for reefs,
• 16:42
  you have people with skills in biology and ecology,
• 16:48
  but also urban planning
• 16:50
  and business, certainly finance.
• 16:53
  I mean, tell me about all of the different skill sets
• 16:55
  that come to play to make this successful.
• 16:59
  - Well, it's what's so fascinating about this work.
• 17:00
  Fundamentally, the team that we've brought together
• 17:04
  is just what you're saying, it's multidisciplinary.
• 17:06
  We have 3D construction printers, engineers, biologists,
• 17:11
  farmers that are farming the coral
• 17:14
  the way you would farm anything,
• 17:16
  technologists using AI and machine learning.
• 17:18
  We have engineers that are just building tanks
• 17:22
  and maintaining these systems,
• 17:24
  divers and marine biologists that are going out
• 17:26
  and planting these corals and restoring these reefs
• 17:28
  and monitoring and tracking them.
• 17:29
  People building underwater drones that we're testing
• 17:31
  and training the AI models to monitor
• 17:33
  and maintain these reefs over time.
• 17:35
  Because when you think about them
• 17:36
  as critical infrastructure,
• 17:37
  you build a port, a road, a rail and it breaks down,
• 17:40
  you don't just say, "Oh, good luck."
• 17:42
  You maintain it over time.
• 17:44
  So it is bringing together a multidisciplinary approach
• 17:48
  to solving this kind of a problem
• 17:49
  that is the only way we're going to be able to do it.
• 17:53
  - Can I just back you up for a moment,
• 17:55
  because did you say 3D printing coral?
• 17:58
  - So we're not 3D printing coral.
• 18:00
  We're 3D printing the underlying structure.
• 18:02
  So think about it as the foundation.
• 18:04
  So coral reefs, as I said, over millennia,
• 18:07
  each generation of coral will build its little home,
• 18:10
  and then the next generation will build a little home
• 18:12
  on that and millions of them all together,
• 18:14
  they layer upon layer upon layer,
• 18:16
  and that's how a reef is built.
• 18:17
  We don't have that time.
• 18:19
  When coral dies, surprisingly,
• 18:21
  that structure degrades relatively quickly,
• 18:24
  and so hence, Caribbean islands
• 18:26
  that not only don't have coral, they don't have reefs,
• 18:29
  so there's no protection from this storm surgery,
• 18:31
  or Vietnam and the Philippines and Indonesia, et cetera.
• 18:34
  So what we do is use 3D construction printers
• 18:37
  to actually mimic what that coral structure would be,
• 18:43
  the nooks and crannies, the hydrological nature of that
• 18:46
  in order to diffuse and distribute the energy
• 18:49
  from storm surge, which is what regular coral reefs do.
• 18:52
  Currently, sea walls, which is usually the solution,
• 18:55
  they're designed literally as that,
• 18:56
  a wall to stop the energy of the ocean,
• 18:59
  and that energy then is diverted up or down the coast,
• 19:04
  digging out beaches, destroying currents,
• 19:08
  destroying the hydrology of those areas.
• 19:10
  So seawalls can eventually break down
• 19:12
  because you can't beat the ocean.
• 19:14
  Reefs evolved over millions of years with the ocean
• 19:17
  to diffuse and disperse that energy with all, again,
• 19:20
  the little pillars and nooks and crannies and cracks
• 19:22
  and caves, et cetera.
• 19:24
  So we can reprint that kind of structure
• 19:26
  with 3D construction printers to high fidelity, high detail,
• 19:31
  place that in the water,
• 19:32
  and then you plant the corals on top of that
• 19:35
  and then let them do their thing.
• 19:38
  - [Peter] The commercial model in the 3D printing
• 19:39
  solved the infrastructure problem,
• 19:41
  but the coral itself still has to survive in warming water.
• 19:45
  That's where nature has quietly been doing
• 19:48
  something remarkable,
• 19:49
  and Philippe has found a way to accelerate it.
• 19:53
  - So I also heard you talk about when the King of Jordan,
• 19:57
  when you got that person's attention
• 19:59
  and they were so jazzed by these solutions,
• 20:03
  you mentioned that that part of the world
• 20:05
  has some heat-tolerant corals,
• 20:08
  and considering we have a warming climate,
• 20:11
  is this something to get excited about?
• 20:13
  - It's actually the resilience of nature.
• 20:16
  So we see heat-tolerant corals around the world,
• 20:19
  which is the good news.
• 20:20
  Those corals over, again, a geological timeframe
• 20:22
  will no doubt take over that ecosystem,
• 20:26
  but we don't have that time.
• 20:28
  So we instead, right, so for example, a stony coral,
• 20:31
  like a porites, like a brain coral,
• 20:34
  maybe think of like a kind of half dome lump of coral,
• 20:37
  the size of a dinner plate can take up to 75 years
• 20:40
  from one polyp to grow that big.
• 20:42
  In the farm, we can engineer those in two years.
• 20:44
  - Wow.
• 20:45
  - So we can harvest a small amount of donor corals,
• 20:47
  grow them out exponentially faster in our farms
• 20:51
  and create heat-tolerant and sexually mature corals
• 20:56
  and replace those in the water that would take 75 years
• 20:58
  for one dinner plate size, then one larvae out of a million
• 21:02
  would survive and it would land
• 21:03
  and then another 75 years for that,
• 21:06
  and that's the timescale we're talking about.
• 21:08
  We don't have that time.
• 21:09
  So we can accelerate that dramatically.
• 21:11
  And the good news is there are heat-tolerant corals
• 21:13
  all over the world.
• 21:14
  We don't exactly know why.
• 21:17
  The underlying process is that when the water gets warmer,
• 21:21
  corals have a symbiotic relationship with the algae
• 21:24
  that we call zooxanthella.
• 21:25
  And as the water temperature increases,
• 21:28
  zooxanthella metabolism increases,
• 21:31
  and therefore, they create more free radicals that are toxic
• 21:33
  to the coral and the coral ejects that zooxanthella.
• 21:36
  Problem is that algae also photosynthesizes
• 21:38
  and creates some food for the coral.
• 21:40
  So when coral bleaches, it's not dead,
• 21:42
  it's just evicted the algae that gives it its color.
• 21:45
  It's when the coral, after three or four weeks,
• 21:47
  it actually slowly starves to death.
• 21:49
  And when it turns green and mucky full of algae,
• 21:51
  then it's dead.
• 21:53
  And so when corals bleach, if the temperature gets better,
• 21:57
  they'll re-invite that algae back and they'll recover.
• 21:59
  But there are corals out there that, for some reason,
• 22:02
  aren't as fussed by those free radicals
• 22:04
  that the zooxanthella create in higher water temperatures.
• 22:07
  Lots of research into the underlying reasons for that.
• 22:10
  We don't know necessarily,
• 22:12
  but there's a lot of research that's happening.
• 22:15
  But what we do know is that practically and functionally,
• 22:17
  we can pull stuff out of the water,
• 22:18
  grow it, and replant it, and we are running out of time.
• 22:22
  The challenge, the trap we can find ourselves in
• 22:25
  is researching forever.
• 22:28
  Research, research, research, research, research, research,
• 22:30
  research, research, research,
• 22:31
  and then we're going to do a little more research.
• 22:32
  Meanwhile, the corals are dying.
• 22:35
  And there's a point where we need to continue the research,
• 22:39
  but we also need to say enough is enough,
• 22:41
  good is good enough, and it's triage time.
• 22:46
  We need to start putting stuff back in the water
• 22:50
  and rebuilding these systems, and that's what we're doing.
• 22:53
  And the good news is it works anywhere in the world,
• 22:55
  and again, the good news is the technologies exist.
• 22:58
  It's just finding a way to make these
• 23:00
  investible, profitable investments
• 23:03
  that protect land-based infrastructure and people's lives
• 23:06
  and rebuild fisheries and tourist amenities
• 23:09
  to unlock the scale of capital needed to do the work.
• 23:12
  It's doable. It's doable.
• 23:14
  - For all intents and purposes, we have reason to believe
• 23:17
  that this could make a huge positive impact
• 23:21
  for coral reefs worldwide.
• 23:23
  There are obviously still, unfortunately,
• 23:25
  huge threats, right?
• 23:28
  There's a lot working against reefs,
• 23:30
  but there's some pushback.
• 23:31
  You're creating ways to push back
• 23:33
  and to keep the reefs thriving and building
• 23:36
  and coming back stronger.
• 23:38
  So let's say that in places we can fast-forward
• 23:42
  to a certain amount of time and see it working.
• 23:44
  What does a restored reef look like
• 23:47
  and what does it bring along with it?
• 23:49
  What other biodiversity gets kind of pulled back in
• 23:52
  to that restored ecosystem?
• 23:54
  - I dream every day of a world where we rebuild abundance
• 23:59
  in the ocean, and it's possible,
• 24:01
  where people can feed themselves,
• 24:03
  where shorelines and coastal ecosystems are healthy
• 24:07
  from mangroves and wetlands and seagrass and coral reefs,
• 24:11
  where my daughters can live in a world
• 24:13
  that was as rich as the one that I was born into,
• 24:15
  reefs teeming with life, microorganisms and crustaceans
• 24:19
  and mollusks and fish.
• 24:20
  And I dream of a world where coral reefs will continue
• 24:23
  to provide the foundation for a healthy, abundant ocean
• 24:26
  for generations to come.
• 24:27
  And that's what we are dedicated to doing,
• 24:30
  and we do not accept that there's no hope.
• 24:33
  - Yeah. Yeah. - There's always hope.
• 24:35
  - And then, Philippe, a challenging question I'm asking
• 24:37
  for you is what can the average everyday person do
• 24:39
  to help support coral reefs?
• 24:42
  - Conservation in nature shouldn't be a partisan issue.
• 24:44
  It should be a bipartisan one.
• 24:47
  Also, when we think about where we go on vacation,
• 24:49
  looking for resorts and developments
• 24:51
  that are protecting their coastlines
• 24:52
  and investing in restoration projects
• 24:56
  and supporting their communities.
• 24:58
  Shopping is politics as Bono said,
• 24:59
  and we have a lot of power with our wallets.
• 25:02
  And just recognizing the superpower that each of us have
• 25:04
  as storytellers, be it to an audience
• 25:07
  in a television program like "Wild Kingdom"
• 25:11
  or around the dinner table, that we are storytellers
• 25:14
  and we need to help people understand
• 25:16
  that humanity cannot thrive on this planet
• 25:18
  if the ocean cannot thrive.
• 25:20
  - [Peter] Half the world's coral reef gone
• 25:22
  in a single lifetime.
• 25:24
  95% of the Caribbean reefs are already lost,
• 25:28
  and yet, brain corals that would take 75 years
• 25:31
  to grow in the wild, farmed in only two.
• 25:35
  Reefs rebuilt kilometer by kilometer
• 25:37
  from the ocean floor up.
• 25:39
  The science works.
• 25:41
  The question now is whether we can move fast enough.
• 25:44
  This is "Back from the Brink"
• 25:46
  from Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom."
• 25:49
  (gentle music)
• 25:53
  - If this episode was super intriguing for you,
• 25:56
  follow or subscribe, leave a review,
• 25:58
  and send it to the ocean lover, the snorkeler,
• 26:01
  or the person in your life
• 26:02
  who had no idea coral reefs were even in crisis.
• 26:05
  I'm Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, and I'll see you next time.
• 26:09
  - [Narrator] The "Back from the Brink" podcast
• 26:11
  is sponsored by Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom,"
• 26:14
  hosted by Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant,
• 26:17
  narrated by Peter Gros.
• 26:19
  Executive producers are Jen Wulf
• 26:21
  and Jenny Van Soelen.
• 26:22
  Podcast production by Lower Street Media.
• 26:25
  (dramatic music)