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