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Speaker 1: Seven oh two Weekend Breakfast the Nature Diary with Tim.

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Speaker 2: Neary at eighteen minutes before seven o'clock. Welcome back to

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Speaker 2: seven oh two week in Breakfast with Me, cooks and film.

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Speaker 2: It's a Sunday morning, it's after six thirty, so we

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Speaker 2: spend time in nature, and this morning we are exploring

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Speaker 2: the ocean. We're looking at some of the surprising DNA

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Speaker 2: stories from the sea. Also going to be talking about

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Speaker 2: zue plankton, which many of us probably haven't heard.

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Speaker 3: That word since high school. But don't worry.

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Speaker 2: We're going to be talking about sue plankton and what

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Speaker 2: it tells us somewhere. They're so important and such a

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Speaker 2: crucial part of the scene. Will be joined by doctor Ashrini.

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Speaker 2: Governor ash is an ecologist at Oceanographic Research Institute. And

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Speaker 2: then we're joined as always by our RESIDENCYSI and natter

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Speaker 2: conservationist Tim Neary. Tim, good morning.

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Speaker 1: Good morning, and how are we? I am? I just

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Speaker 1: feel like a hobbit.

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Speaker 4: Why I'm sitting down on the all miss on the

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Speaker 4: floor in this chair.

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Speaker 1: Like a shrunk.

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Speaker 4: It's actually yeah to see it's a bit of mizzled

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Speaker 4: outside this morning. So the miserable drizzle. Right, she will

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Speaker 4: get on in rain and rain. Commit to this, you know,

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Speaker 4: like fall the tanks with you. The rain's been really

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Speaker 4: good for my grass.

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Speaker 2: It was looking at bit desperate when it got really

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Speaker 2: really hot and we're having those like thirty six eight

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Speaker 2: thirty nine temperatures, and so i'd given up on it,

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Speaker 2: and now it's looking beautiful.

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Speaker 1: It's actually quite.

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Speaker 4: Interesting when you look at a lot of the growth.

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Speaker 4: I mean, we've got a false peach. I think it is, oh,

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Speaker 4: a false peach. I think it's a false peach. It's confused.

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Speaker 4: It's not supposed to produce fruit, and it does, of

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Speaker 4: which the dog consequently chews on then swallows the pip.

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Speaker 4: And then why it's usually to about eleven o'clock at night,

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Speaker 4: vomits up a few, right, that's the beetle does that.

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Speaker 3: That seems reasonable.

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Speaker 1: It is reasonable.

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Speaker 4: I'd far rather she vomited them up than try to

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Speaker 4: get them stuck in her chest, you know, otherwise that's

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Speaker 4: that's another mission in life. Right. But yeah, looking at

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Speaker 4: it at quite a lot of the stuff in the garden,

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Speaker 4: you're seeing the sudden new shoots after that heat sort

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Speaker 4: of rain, heat, rain and everything's going gone a little

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Speaker 4: bit growth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of cool.

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Speaker 2: I have some orange flowers that haven't been there all

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Speaker 2: summer that suddenly appeared this week.

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Speaker 4: It looks like I'm just trying to think that. I'm

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Speaker 4: pretty sure it's going to be the same as we Yes,

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Speaker 4: they're like.

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Speaker 2: Long and green, and then they almost look like not lilies,

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Speaker 2: but like the flowers are like tiny little lilies. At

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Speaker 2: the time, there's this vibrant orange just came out of nowhere.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: They they kind of a lot of gardeners think that

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Speaker 4: their weeds because you don't, because they disappear and then

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Speaker 4: they die back and then they reappear.

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Speaker 1: I love them.

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Speaker 4: I've just seen them for them. Yeah, I know, you

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Speaker 4: get all sorts of odd things that come out. No,

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Speaker 4: I don't like a managed, good, normals garden. I think

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Speaker 4: that's why I like play. Is like the ocean and

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Speaker 4: the bush and you know, I rather sit Yeah, and

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Speaker 4: I'd rather sit back.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 4: Why do I need to prune a tree if you

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Speaker 4: got kodoo, you know? Or do I need to clean

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Speaker 4: the gross sort of mow the grass? Or can I

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Speaker 4: bring the rhino and impola in? Yeah, that sort of idea.

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Speaker 4: It's much easier. You can sit back and enjoy a

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Speaker 4: glass of wine or whiskey or coffee, and while the

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Speaker 4: animals are doing the work slave labor, right, the same

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Speaker 4: as the ocean. I love the ocean. I think the

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Speaker 4: one thing I love about the ocean is that when

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Speaker 4: you look at it, you realize that you know very

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Speaker 4: little about it. Nothing looks. Every day is the same.

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Speaker 4: The tide comes in, the tide goes out, the sea

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Speaker 4: gets rough, the sea gets calm, blue bottles arrive. I

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Speaker 4: don't swim, you know that sort of thing. It's got that.

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Speaker 4: And yet the moment you poke your nose under the water,

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Speaker 4: there's another whole life there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, another whole life.

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Speaker 4: And one of the things we're going to discover this

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Speaker 4: morning is can you milk a zooplankton?

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Speaker 3: Oh? Don't we have enough milks? Well?

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Speaker 4: I just thought zooplankton milk might be a good idea. Really,

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Speaker 4: yeah's that we have enough? No, this almond milk tells

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Speaker 4: you before the day that I can sit on a

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Speaker 4: little stool and milk an almond into a bucket. That's fine.

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Speaker 4: I then start drinking almond milk until that point. No,

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Speaker 4: it's horrid stuff. Okay, oh no, okay, before we.

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Speaker 2: Get sidetracked with the milk and milking zoop flankton, maybe

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Speaker 2: we can milk zuop flankton, I think. So I joined

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Speaker 2: now on the line by ecologists. She's with the Oceanographic

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Speaker 2: Research Institute, which is part of the South African Association

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Speaker 2: for Marine Biological Research. Doctor Ashwini Governor joins us this morning.

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Speaker 2: Doctor Governor, A very good morning to you. Welcome to

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Speaker 2: Weeken Breakfast.

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Speaker 5: Good morning and thank you for having me this morning.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us. So tell us

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Speaker 2: why the ocean? Why did you choose that? As I

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Speaker 2: guess you're as your lab there's the area of research.

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Speaker 5: Why wouldn't you choose the ocean?

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Speaker 3: This is as the.

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Speaker 5: Question you should be asking yourself. I love the ocean

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Speaker 5: my whole childhood. I was always drawn to the ocean

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Speaker 5: and wanting to see what's below the water always fascinated me.

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Speaker 5: So that's where that's how I got to where I

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Speaker 5: am today.

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Speaker 1: Ash a molecular ecologist.

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Speaker 4: Ecologist, you seem to stick it on the back of

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Speaker 4: almost everything. I'm trying to think of some mad scientists

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Speaker 4: sitting in a laboratory surrounded by all sorts of molecules,

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Speaker 4: What on earth do you do?

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Speaker 5: Okay, so a molecular ecologists. So I study DNA. Right,

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Speaker 5: So I have now been able to study DNA, but

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Speaker 5: able to adapt it to ecology and ocean ecology, and

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Speaker 5: that's through something called DNA metabar coding. And I study

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Speaker 5: marine zooplankton. We can't look them yet, but we'll get

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Speaker 5: into that later on.

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Speaker 2: And so why is it so important to study zooplankton?

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Speaker 2: Someone might think, well, you know, there's so many interesting,

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Speaker 2: fascinating creatures in the ocean, and zoop plankton generally don't

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Speaker 2: get you know, the same kind of interest and excitement

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Speaker 2: to say, the whales or the dolphins. So why these

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Speaker 2: I guess very simple organisms.

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Speaker 5: So zoop plantin are really really important to all of.

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Speaker 3: Us, right.

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Speaker 5: They are the tiny babies of the ocean. They're your

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Speaker 5: tiny drifting organisms such as your baby crabs, your baby prons,

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Speaker 5: your baby fish. They are drifting in the ocean's water column,

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Speaker 5: and they play a very very important role to all

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Speaker 5: of us because they are actually the foundation of the

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Speaker 5: marine food web. They feed on something called phytoplankton, which

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Speaker 5: is your plant in the ocean, and they and your

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Speaker 5: larger organisms such as your fish, you're squid, your whales,

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Speaker 5: they all depend on the zoop plant in either directly

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Speaker 5: or indirectly, so they are eaten by everything in the ocean, right,

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Speaker 5: and they're not only are food sauce, but they also

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Speaker 5: help regulate the Earth's temperature. I'm not going to go

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Speaker 5: into too much of detail, but just remember they're actually

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Speaker 5: helping us regulate our temperature. And the most important to us,

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Speaker 5: which we feel is the most important, but it's not.

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Speaker 5: They support the global fisheries and everything that we eat.

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Speaker 5: Our heic, our prons, our crab, our lobster, they all

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Speaker 5: are dependent on the zoop lanktern.

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Speaker 4: Okay, how on earth did you study a zoop plankton? Though,

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Speaker 4: because I'm trying to think in my mind, you know,

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Speaker 4: you want to study a dolphin, great slapper, slap a

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Speaker 4: telemetry device on it. I want to study a whale

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Speaker 4: or a turtle telemetry. If we go and you can

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Speaker 4: identify them by a shape, by coloration, they've all got

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Speaker 4: something that they can identify. But you're dealing with something

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Speaker 4: it's failing microscopic.

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Speaker 5: Yes, a lot of our work start at sea so

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Speaker 5: we have to go out on these big research vessels

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Speaker 5: and at the back of the research vessels we attack

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Speaker 5: something called plankton nets to be able to collect the

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Speaker 5: zooplankton from the water. So when once we're out deep enough,

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Speaker 5: we can release these nets into the water and we

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Speaker 5: drag it basically along the water column, so we don't

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Speaker 5: go too deep because zooplankton are polagic organisms, meaning that

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Speaker 5: they love to be at the upper water column, So

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Speaker 5: we can put these nets between five meters to two

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Speaker 5: hundred meters deep and we can get all the zooplankton

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Speaker 5: that we need. So we drag these nets in the ocean.

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Speaker 5: We collect all our zoop plankton and in these little

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Speaker 5: honey jars, and we have to preserve it. So our

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Speaker 5: preservation method is with ethanol. And then we take these

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Speaker 5: samples of zooplankton back into the lab and that's where

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Speaker 5: now we are able to process it using DNA metabarcoding.

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Speaker 2: As is there a difference in zooplankton, for instance, of

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Speaker 2: the coast of South Africa and zooplankton off the coast

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Speaker 2: of I don't know Greece does zooplankton have I guess

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Speaker 2: not different species, but different.

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Speaker 1: Types, they speak a different language. Goods.

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Speaker 5: Oh, so there won't be different types, but there will

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Speaker 5: be different species. Basically, Definitely across our whole South African coastline,

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Speaker 5: even from the top of West Iduana based to maybe

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Speaker 5: Cape down to the west coast, there's zooplank different zoop

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Speaker 5: plankt species across our coastline, leave alone, all the way

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Speaker 5: in Greece.

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Speaker 4: Okay, so I'm assuming then as well that things like

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Speaker 4: water temperature that also starts to ply quite a role

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Speaker 4: on them. How big in fact is a zoo plant

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Speaker 4: in strike? How small?

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Speaker 5: So you can get them really tiny where they are microscopic,

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Speaker 5: you can't see them with your naked eye, and then

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Speaker 5: they can be as big as jellyfish. So jellyfish, your

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Speaker 5: blue bottles that you're running away from. In the ocean,

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Speaker 5: they're actually considered zooplankton because they spend their entire life

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Speaker 5: drifting in the ocean. They can't form on their own. Yeah,

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Speaker 5: they're drifting, so they are known as zooplank that's so cool.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so I've now been stung by a zoop planting.

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Speaker 4: I'm having a different, different feeling towards them.

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Speaker 5: Suddenly, by the way, plankton from SpongeBob is a zoop plantern.

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Speaker 4: Oh yes, okay, I'll pass on that comment. I don't

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Speaker 4: understand SpongeBob. So you have you know my kids did?

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Speaker 3: Oh I love SpongeBob.

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Speaker 1: No, I'm a I'm passed SpongeBob.

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Speaker 4: That's fine, I've lost my actually, okay, right, so now

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Speaker 4: you've got these things, you started to study them, what

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Speaker 4: in fact comes out? Why is it important to study them?

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Speaker 4: And I know that you say that the food stuff

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Speaker 4: or whatever, But do we have declining numbers? Are we

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Speaker 4: increasing numbers? How does climate change affect them?

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Speaker 5: Okay, so let's start with how I'm able to detect them? Right, So,

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Speaker 5: like I told you, we take them into the lab,

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Speaker 5: and I think there is also very important for your

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Speaker 5: listeners of how molecular collagere paused into this. So we

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Speaker 5: take our zooplankton into the lab and we extract its DNA.

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Speaker 5: But we have to make it into a little soup.

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Speaker 5: So we have all these whole zooplanktons, we blend them

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Speaker 5: in like a normal utrie bullet. We get a little

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Speaker 5: soup and then we send them off a sequencing And

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Speaker 5: once you get the sequences back it's basically like a

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Speaker 5: grocery list. We can tell you exactly what species of

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Speaker 5: zooplankton are in your sample. And this is where the

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Speaker 5: answer to your question comes from, because once we have

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Speaker 5: these species lists, we can actually use it now to

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Speaker 5: check zooplankton. Because just say, for example, we have a

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Speaker 5: monitoring line just outside of Durban, right and we're collecting

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Speaker 5: samples over every single year, we can actually see how

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Speaker 5: the species are changing as the years go by based

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Speaker 5: on the zooplankton species list that we are producing. So

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Speaker 5: zooplankton metabarcoding as a whole is a powerful tool because

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Speaker 5: it tells us and helps us detect species that are

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Speaker 5: too small, agile, or rare to see, and also give

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Speaker 5: us a clearer picture of biodiversity and how let's subtruck

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Speaker 5: how this marine ecosystem is responding to things like climate change,

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Speaker 5: your increasing temperature and things like that.

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Speaker 2: Tell us about the discovery of extinct cow DNA and

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Speaker 2: the ocean.

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Speaker 5: Oh so now we're getting into the story of mlking zooplanktons. Okay.

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Speaker 5: So one of the very interesting things about environmental DNA

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Speaker 5: is that sometimes it can reveal unexpected connections between land

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Speaker 5: and the sea.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 5: So in one case, we detected DNA from an extinct cow,

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Speaker 5: your boss primigenius. It's known as orox in one of

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Speaker 5: our ocean samples, and we were completely puzzled because these

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Speaker 5: animals went extinct in the sixteen hundreds, right, And we

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Speaker 5: eventually realized that the modern cattle still carry chases of

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Speaker 5: this orox from ancient in breeding thousands of years ago.

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Speaker 5: So the reason why we found this cow DNA in

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Speaker 5: our zooplants and samples is that around the time that

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Speaker 5: we actually collected the examples, there was really heavy rains

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Speaker 5: and flooding in Durban, and it's not uncommon to see

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Speaker 5: cow caucasses floating deeper into the ocean because obviously with

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Speaker 5: your water and the high flooding, it's pushing everything into

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Speaker 5: the rivers and the river banks into our ocean and

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Speaker 5: it goes deeper into the ocean. So basically, fragments of

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Speaker 5: this modern cow got collected in our zooplant examples, which

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Speaker 5: trains back to your extinct cow because of genetics and

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Speaker 5: the linkage between modern cows and your extinct cows.

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Speaker 4: Oh, I kind of like that it's not a serious

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Speaker 4: detective story because I can imagine that once you did,

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Speaker 4: once your reports came back in the lab, everybody must

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Speaker 4: suggested that had a flatline because this is theoretically impossible,

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Speaker 4: and how do you tack down that this was the

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Speaker 4: story that had happened.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's like a detective.

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Speaker 5: Novel because we knew that around the same time that

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Speaker 5: we collected these samples. It was like within a month

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Speaker 5: of the flooding that we collected these samples, and what

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Speaker 5: are the chances that we're getting cow DNA in our

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Speaker 5: zooplant examples all of a sudden when there were actual

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Speaker 5: sightings of these cars in caucasses in the deeper ocean.

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Speaker 5: So it's basically like detective work, like you're saying. So

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Speaker 5: like a DNA barcode is something that we produce, and

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Speaker 5: it's similar to going into a shop with the different

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Speaker 5: barcodes and you're having all your lists of different items

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Speaker 5: and you're scanning them, right, So it's the same in

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Speaker 5: the ocean. We have these different barcodes floating in the ocean,

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Speaker 5: and as you scan them, it gives us the story

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Speaker 5: and gives us more information of what in the ocean.

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Speaker 5: So that's how we managed to get the cow DNA

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Speaker 5: and how shocked. We were.

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Speaker 2: Is that I guess one of the coolest things you've

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Speaker 2: discovered or has there been something else that you found

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Speaker 2: through research, through investigation and you thought this is this

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Speaker 2: is really cool.

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Speaker 5: So that is the coolest story I have for you

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Speaker 5: right now. But we do find really cool trends when

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Speaker 5: we look at our zooplankton. So there was a study

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Speaker 5: that we did. It was actually part of my PhD.

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Speaker 5: We collected zooplankton along the whole coast of South Africa,

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Speaker 5: right and of the eastern eastern South Africa, not the

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Speaker 5: whole I have a student actually working on the whole

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Speaker 5: coast of South Africa, but on the eastern coast of

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Speaker 5: South Africa. We collected zooplankton and we could actually see

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Speaker 5: Linking to all the questions that you're asking me, this

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Speaker 5: is a really cool fact, is that we're actually seeing

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Speaker 5: zoo plankton that were like you know, the organisms, your

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Speaker 5: adult organisms that we don't know that occur in South

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Speaker 5: African waters. You know, the zooplankton drifting and with climate change,

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Speaker 5: we're actually seeing some of the species that we don't

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Speaker 5: generally see in South African waters. We're finding these zooplankton already,

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Speaker 5: So that is kind of a prediction of what we

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Speaker 5: made see later on HEAs our watch is warmer. Our

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Speaker 5: adults that are normally used to much much warmer water

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Speaker 5: closer to the equator, that we're going to start seeing

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Speaker 5: lower down because the water is warming like that, moving

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Speaker 5: to two areas where yeah, where the water is what

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Speaker 5: they like.

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Speaker 4: I love the way that science operates like this, and

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Speaker 4: then we can start then they start to model stuff

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Speaker 4: and then look at reality versus the model, you know,

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Speaker 4: and to me that that becomes really interesting. Wow, that's

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Speaker 4: a very different world the last and a very quick one.

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Speaker 4: Can you keep them alive and grow them in labs

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Speaker 4: or zoo or aquarium, et cetera, or they're only one ocean?

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Speaker 5: Definitely, So even though I'm based at the Oceanographic Research

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Speaker 5: Institute to be part of Sambra and Samba's other part

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Speaker 5: of it is your uShaka Marine World, SeaWorld aquarium, right

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Speaker 5: and they currently do that where you can take your

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Speaker 5: little zooplankton and you can grow them for like an

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Speaker 5: exhibiting an aquarium, so you can keep them alive. But

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Speaker 5: the way that we collect them and why we have

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Speaker 5: to kill them obviously it's because we don't want to

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Speaker 5: keep them alive. And also if they die in the seawater,

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Speaker 5: the DNA would degrade. But should you collect live samples,

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Speaker 5: you keep them in your seawater and then you can

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Speaker 5: transfer them to a tank and grow them out if

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Speaker 5: you have optimal conditions.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Googs is busy thinking about a.

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Speaker 3: Pitch, so but please don't do that, doctor Governdor.

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Speaker 2: I thank you so much for giving us your time

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Speaker 2: this morning. A great pleasure having you on the show.

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Speaker 5: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

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Speaker 3: Thank you very much.

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Speaker 2: That is doctor Ashwini Governor. She is a molecular ecologist

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Speaker 2: and scientist at the Oceanographic Research Institute. Tim has always

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Speaker 2: great to have you in studio as well.

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Speaker 4: Thank you kindly. I'm now going to go and find

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Speaker 4: my frog your from and see if it's related to

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Speaker 4: a zooplankton.

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Speaker 2: That's our residency is certain nature conservation. Tim neary coming

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Speaker 2: up and look at what's making headlines in your Sunday papers.

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Speaker 2: But first, it's seven o'clock time. Fair latest Eyewitness News