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at vox.com green innovation

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it's recode daily

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i'm adam clark estes

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would you picture the ocean what

0:54

he sees

1:04

for me i

1:45

oranges and greens and kings and

1:47

it's just it's really beautiful in it's

1:49

also in the middle of this crystal

1:57

that you jones environmental reporter

2:00

there are you right now

2:02

the right now i'm scuba diving near

2:04

key largo florida in florida

2:07

keys and i'm swimming

2:09

in an underwater coral

2:12

nursery and it's actually the

2:14

oceans largest nursery of

2:16

of it's kind i'm

2:18

guessing this was in a typical field

2:20

reporting assignment for you right but

2:22

were you doing in an underwater fiberglass

2:25

forest on the ocean floor yeah

2:28

so i was down in florida

2:30

for a story about what scientists

2:33

are working on to save coral reefs

2:35

around the world and florida

2:37

is kind of hotspot for coral reef

2:39

restoration though first

2:41

of all like coral reefs are incredibly

2:43

important they cover less than

2:45

one percent of the world's oceans

2:47

but are actually provide homes

2:49

for more than a quarter of of all marine

2:52

life charismatic, clown

2:54

fish or seahorses are sharks or or

2:56

whatever and so do

3:01

things like prevent storm surge from

3:03

from harmony coastal communities during

3:05

a hurricane so have all these kinds of benefits

3:07

right now things are pretty bleak climate

3:10

change is taking pretty big toll on

3:12

reefs because it is warming the seas

3:15

and also making them more acidic which

3:17

is bad for quarrel there's also

3:19

a lot of diseases out there right now that

3:21

are that are a problem for coral as well

3:23

and so all together these threats of

3:25

wiped out more than half of the world's

3:27

coral and in

3:29

florida it's wiped out more than ninety

3:31

percent of the coral so this like

3:34

is very bleak picture for the world's coral

3:36

reefs yikes well want

3:38

get back to this nursery because this don't

3:41

totally understand how works how are

3:43

scientists using projects

3:45

like this to restore the coral population

3:48

this particular nursery is

3:50

run by nonprofit called the core restoration

3:52

foundation and they took

3:54

me out one afternoon we

3:56

drove out on a boat and went

3:59

down with our the tanks and

4:01

the organizations science program

4:03

manager amelia mora

4:05

was kind of scuba me around to see this

4:08

forest and it was pretty cool

4:11

you can kind of think

4:13

of coral nursery is like a nursery

4:15

that you might use to restore forest

4:18

like nursery of trees basically

4:20

a place where find has

4:22

can quickly grow lots of corals

4:25

they eventually plan to plans on

4:27

a reef that's been degraded over time

4:31

the surface you can't really see

4:33

much a while but then you just drop

4:36

and and all of sudden as far as your

4:38

eyes can see you sees rows and rows

4:40

of these trees with pieces

4:42

of coral hanging on them like

4:44

stag forums and l correns and i

4:47

watched amelia more i caught

4:49

pieces of coral and they kind

4:51

of float to the ocean bottom and then

4:53

her colleague kicked them off and

4:56

put them in a band from are collecting pieces

4:58

of coral from the nursery and

5:00

then we we drove about fifteen

5:02

so minutes to a reef has been degraded

5:05

went back down the bottom actually started planting

5:07

those pieces of coral wide into the play

5:09

and i watch them to them planning that literally the decision

5:11

like the special kind marina park see to

5:14

glue these fragments a quarrel to

5:17

the reef itself and so itself was just

5:19

really cool to see like the actual planting

5:21

process take place not that

5:23

different than my planting than sapling and

5:25

sapling degraded forest the

5:27

great quarrels grow really really slowly and

5:29

that's why a problem that reefs are are getting degraded

5:32

by it scientists figured out how to speed

5:34

up growth and key part of that process

5:36

is something called micro fragmentation

5:38

or fracking that's like a really

5:40

important part of repress or said

5:45

bragging okay interesting name what

5:47

is that is that the process you're describing

5:49

where they break this is often replant

5:51

and elsewhere that kinda sounds like laughing

5:53

for trees that maybe i'm not right about what bragging

5:55

as essentially yes what

5:58

we're talking about his

6:00

green piece of coral into tiny

6:02

tiny pieces like dime sized fragments

6:05

and when you do that the coral

6:07

seems to grow much much faster

6:09

than would as an adult and you can

6:11

think of it as similar to like if

6:13

you scrape your knee the skin cancer

6:15

grow much faster than would if you

6:17

didn't have an injury and so

6:19

scientists think that that's that similar process to

6:21

what's happening with quarrel their kind of preparing

6:24

themselves and and when they're in that repair

6:26

process they grow really quickly why

6:29

wonder how did scientists

6:31

figure this out the sounds like a pretty cool

6:33

breakthrough that you can get a tiny piece

6:35

of coral and that it will grow really quickly into

6:37

a big squirrel i love it because it like

6:39

is a breakthrough but it's also dislike break things

6:41

off of but but yeah so

6:43

the marine like aquarium

6:46

industry has

6:47

probably been doing this for a very long time

6:50

cause people who work in the aquarium industry

6:52

know that if you cut of coral up into tiny

6:54

pieces it will grow quickly and

6:56

there is like money to be made because people

6:58

by corals further aquariums and so forth

7:00

and you be like aquariums the you'd put your

7:02

home yeah have vastly or tropical

7:04

this the as the crimes you put your home

7:07

for aquariums that you would go to to

7:09

visit and scott heard dc

7:11

or whatever by it this

7:13

approach really made it's way into the feel

7:15

restoration thanks to this guy named

7:17

david vaughan who really

7:19

pioneered frying for restoration

7:21

and he actually stumbled upon it accidentally

7:23

because he broke coral

7:25

when he was working at the marine loud and saw

7:28

that it grew basically as much

7:30

as that word in two weeks in two

7:32

days so he saw just like the tremendous growth

7:34

and then i'll really built this approach

7:36

out for the industry so

7:39

fracking as fracking central everyone

7:41

uses it restoration there is

7:43

downside though and that is that when

7:45

you fragment a quarrel each piece

7:48

is genetically identical so it's like

7:50

genetically identical twins and

7:52

the problem with that is that because

7:54

everything is same if one

7:56

of them susceptible to say disease

7:58

than all of them my be and so

8:01

it can become a problem just because of

8:03

this uniformity of those kind of like general

8:05

principle in ecology or conservation that

8:07

genetic diversity tends to breed

8:09

resilience and because you have more

8:12

variation that might be able to better response

8:14

hurt to various threats like disease so

8:17

reading so actually creating

8:19

new genetically distinct

8:22

varieties of coral allows

8:24

scientists to introduce genetic diversity into

8:26

a population of coral and

8:29

then also you can use

8:31

breeding of coral to speed up

8:33

evolution because we know that

8:35

certain traits that as

8:37

tolerance to rising temperatures are disease

8:40

i read it in genetics and so theoretically

8:43

you could breed individuals that possess

8:45

those traits and their babies

8:47

would be also like more tolerant

8:49

to heat or to disease others on gives

8:51

a lot of options as opposed

8:53

to fragmentation which is just that cloning

8:55

process that i described tell me more

8:58

how exactly do coral breed i'm

9:00

not sure i've spent a ton of time thinking about it

9:02

okay so this like the most interesting thing

9:04

about coral my opinion so corals

9:06

spine that which basically means they

9:08

like in

9:09

fact lots of sperm and

9:12

eggs into the water and

9:14

was so spectacular about this

9:16

is that these organisms with no eyes

9:19

or brains yet across

9:21

large swath of the ocean they're able to synchronize

9:24

are spawning event and so the same

9:26

species or can have a rough

9:29

with their reproductive parts of the same time

9:32

almost like like cyclicals the key as or something

9:34

like that they just know how to erupt in unison

9:37

and in an ideal world

9:39

the sperm and eggs will find each other

9:41

from different individuals

9:43

like a big already

9:45

or something like that and

9:48

the eggs will be fertilized and then they'll settle

9:50

on the grounds become larva

9:52

and screen new corals

9:55

the problem is that because we've lost

9:57

so much coral some those individuals

9:59

or so far apart from each other so even

10:01

if they what their sperm and eggs into

10:03

the water they might not find

10:05

each other and the and that's problem because

10:07

we're seen that coral can't breed

10:09

on it's own so it sounds like corals

10:12

atlanta

10:13

hope for the best during the spotting process

10:15

yeah mean that that's essentially right they are relying

10:17

on their eggs and sperm fight each other and the water

10:20

why

10:21

there are ways that you

10:23

can kind of interfere with this process

10:25

and help them make it more likely

10:27

that they're going to breed successfully okay

10:29

tell me more about that how to scientists actually

10:31

how this process doesn't

10:33

sound super scientifically advanced they

10:35

eventually will bowed out to sea

10:38

really this is in middle of the night off

10:40

and it is following cycle of full moon

10:43

and they will go out and literally like to raise

10:45

what looks like large mosquito

10:47

net over a colony of quarrels

10:50

no be like little test tube at top

10:53

of the national

10:55

then when they spawn the eggs

10:57

and sperm our boy instance low rise to the

10:59

surface and they can you that massenet to capture

11:01

the eggs and sperm and then the literally

11:03

just do that with another colony and then they can

11:05

mix them together either in like

11:08

these floating tanks at sea or they can

11:10

bring it to lab scientists have figured

11:12

out how to get corals in a tank

11:14

in an aquarium the spawn on their

11:16

own the controlled environment so

11:18

it's much easier although it is pretty expensive

11:20

these tanks can run like thirty thousand dollars

11:22

each and it's literally just retrained

11:24

exactly what you might see out at the ocean

11:27

with especially cool about this is that

11:29

you don't need to tell them to spawn at

11:31

night you can actually kind override

11:34

system so that they spawn during work hours

11:36

because you can just control all

11:38

of that manually and so allows

11:40

scientists to like work and nine to five job while

11:43

also seen them spawn in capturing all

11:45

the eggs and sperm of the right time

11:48

while at the beginning of this conversation you presented

11:50

a really grim picture for coral

11:53

but after you explain some of the science

11:55

to be and what researchers are doing

11:57

are doing it sounds kind promising

12:00

the researchers you been talking to hopeful

12:02

about what they can do save world

12:04

mean ultimately

12:06

the same coral reefs

12:09

we just need to put cap on carbon

12:11

emissions because

12:14

climate change such severe threat and it's getting

12:16

worse but that doesn't mean that there are not

12:18

and solutions sort of that that we can work

12:20

on the same time and time

12:23

will say like as someone who spend lot of time reporting

12:25

on conservation solutions

12:28

and often find solutions that

12:30

like don't actually seem to hold water and

12:32

and don't really work and can even kind of harm

12:34

the environment i feel pretty confident in saying

12:37

that restoring coral reefs through

12:39

these processes that i've laid out really does

12:41

help and we can actually see

12:44

some of the the progress already i i

12:46

came across this incredible example

12:48

of of scientists from the marine

12:51

laboratory the summer of twenty

12:53

twenty they went scuba diving

12:55

at night sir see corals

12:58

that they had restored five

13:00

years earlier and they

13:02

had seen that the corals had grown to

13:05

a size large enough to reproduce

13:07

and they actually got to watch these corals

13:09

spawn it as any marine biologist

13:11

my tell you like getting to watch correspond

13:14

it's just such a cool experience cause

13:16

he cds these like seemingly

13:18

lifeless stone like objects

13:20

that are wrapped with eggs and sperm all

13:22

of the same time it looks super cool

13:25

but even cooler is getting to see

13:27

corals that you planted or that

13:29

your organization planted because it's literally

13:31

just the just the progress and that

13:33

the sign of restoration of getting

13:44

reggie

13:48

think you ah thank you my pleasure

13:53

today's episode was produced and mixed

13:55

by so feeble on i'm adam carcass

13:58

thanks for listening

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