[Music]
do me a favor close your eyes for a
moment now imagine you can open your
eyes imagine you’re on the deck of the
Starship Enterprise approaching earth
for the first time and you see this
beautiful blue marble
Captain Kirk says mr. Spock is there any
life down there the first sign of life
you would see on this planet are these
beautiful rings in the ocean coral reefs
coral atolls they are the largest oldest
most productive structures that are
living on the planet and then as the
enterprise slipped around the dark side
you would see the signs of civilization
of all these people trying to ward off
the darkness with their lights and if
you drop down into the city you’d feel
that buzz that buzz you get when you go
to a major city like New York or Paris
or Hong Kong or London
you know it’s C these are incredible
collections of people and and there
really are cultural centers in our
innovative centers and that’s where
things happen with humans
and if you dropped underwater and went
to one of these apt halls and visited a
coral reef the exact same thing would be
happening everybody down there is busy
everybody has a little job to do
everybody’s running away from something
bigger that might eat it these are the
oldest as well as the the largest
structures built on earth are the oldest
ecosystems on the planet they date back
240 million years at least and their
ancestors date back to 500 million years
these old bio homes so they are the
oldest most productive most biodiverse
systems on the planet and you might say
well why should we care well they feed
about a billion people they protect our
coastlines from big storm waves they
provide the biodiversity for future
pharmaceuticals most of all they provide
what we think of as environmental
security on the in the planet these are
an integral part of humans and they’re
also the highest expression of life
in the c30 out of 34 phylum of animals
touch reefs during their lifespan but
all the different phyla of plants are
found on reefs as well in and out of
them are associated with them so these
are like the epicenter of life on our
planet now in the last 15 20 30 40 50
years we’ve seen an increase in the
human population it’s doubled since I
began studying coral reefs and this has
sort of sparked the rise of what we call
mega cities these are cities of over 10
million population at the same time
coral reefs starting in 1975 if we say
well what did this reef carries for it
reef look like now looks like this
dancing lady reef in Jamaica the one of
the most well developed reefs and all
the Caribbean it was the center of the
Discovery Bay Marine Lab which was
started coral reef science modern
science and dancing lady in 1972 looked
like this and in 2013 looked like this
forty years later the magical island of
Bali a reef that we call Symphony reef
because it’s so beautiful and you dive
there the whole reef is playing a
symphony the fish the corals all the
invertebrates it’s just a magical place
2014 fast forward three years yeah looks
like a war zone
it’s an underwater war zone most of us
don’t realize that because it’s
underwater we watch the sunset on the
water we have a margarita all’s well
with the world it’s a beautiful world we
don’t realize what’s been happening
underwater is the same thing as what’s
been happening in our cities it’s like
people have been going to these cities
these underwater cities and just
ravaging them and the question is why
how are people dealing with this so to
begin this story I want to tell you a
little bit about the biology of reefs
and the geology of reefs reefs are
collaboration between biological and
physical forcing functions to grow
underwater mountains made out of a rock
called calcium carbonate and in the
center of this photograph you can see a
coral skeleton that’s growing outwards
that coral grew for about eight hundred
years this is a reef in Key Largo when
about a hundred thousand years ago when
sea level was quite a bit higher than it
is today so this is a reef that formed
Institute reefs developed to their
highest expression in the middle of the
tropical ocean where the water
visibility is 200 feet in any direction
there are almost no nutrients in the
water there’s no sediment in the water
there’s lots and lots of sunlight and
there’s lots of wave energy but the
question is how do these incredible
ecosystems basically exist in the middle
of a desert
and that’s their key the the adaptations
that have evolved in this last 200
million years or so that have resulted
in these incredible ecosystems also make
them vulnerable to humans and we have to
realize that we have to begin to learn
that remember I’ve said these are the
largest structures on earth the key of
the corals that grow and these corals
are small animals an individual polyp in
this picture is somewhere between the
size of your thumb and the size of your
pinky these are little animals they’re
voracious carnivores they open up at
night and they feed on plankton and
that’s where they get their nutrients
the phosphates and the nitrates that
they need they’re sort of like the roots
of plants but they’re the roots they’re
animals acting as roots sticking into
the water in the daytime they collapse
they withdraw and we see this yellow
brown surface and the yellow brown color
are microscopic algae that live in their
tissues so these microscopic algae are
sitting there being plants inside the
animals and there’s actually as much or
more plant material on a reef as there
is animal material underneath so
quarrels are animals and plants in one
symbiosis they recycle all the materials
that come in and the photosynthesis
which you can see here as the
fluorescence that escapes a naturally
photosynthesizing coral is everywhere on
the surface this is what drives the
growth rate of the coral skeleton and
all of this occurs in ReCell layers
thick about the thickness of a dollar
bill so corals even though they get huge
and some of them get you know as big as
your SUVs are a surface phenomenon so if
you scratch their surface there’s just
rock beneath it it’s not like me if I
scratch myself my body
we’ll heal it but a coral doesn’t do
that it has to grow back in from the
sides so they’re very vulnerable the
things that happen on their surface
humans come along and we do three basic
things we take stuff we break stuff we
pollute stuff okay
we take stuff out of the sea and you
have to realize that this is sort of a
local thing fishermen go out and they
take animals out of the sea we collect
shells we sell them we glean the reef
there are people that go out and just
glean the reef it’s an individual taking
these shells selling them to tourists
it’s a form of income people go diving
and snorkeling on reefs and when they do
that they step on the reefs or sometimes
they go sailing on the reefs by mistake
and there’s no way that a coral that can
stand up to a ten foot wave or even a 15
foot wave can stand up to the forces
exerted by a 5,000 pound sailboat keel
or a diver that just stamps on the reef
they’re just not adapted to that they’re
adapted to the ocean we also like to
live around reefs so in places like the
Florida Keys we go into the mangrove
areas we dredge them out we make
beautiful areas where we can plant
houses and we can have a boat slip right
next to it and every single one of those
houses has a septic tank and every
single one of those septic tanks
collects waste that’s rich in nutrients
and those nutrients leak out into the
nearby sea and when they do that the
algae grow because the algae are better
at absorbing large amounts of nutrients
then the corals are so the reef recounts
overgrown with algae and also because we
have microbes in our guts those microbes
go out and actually see the coral if
something delicious to eat and so we
have what we call coral diseases this
one’s called the white plague and these
diseases could kill 500 year old corals
in a matter of months we also put a lot
of stuff in the atmosphere we burn coal
we burn other fossil fuels we plate
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and
we dump a lot of stuff into the oceans
for years with the solution to pollution
is dilution right so we just dump it in
the ocean and see what happens all of
that when you dump something in the
water it’s going to connect
somewhere else in the ocean these little
red dots every single one of these red
dots happens to be a river mouth
that’s polluted and that if you put
pollution in the ocean it’s going to
travel around the world in the ocean
currents so everywhere is everywhere the
amount of heat that the earth has
absorbed in the last 40 50 years has
been principally absorbed by the oceans
the oceans have absorbed somewhere
between 80 and 90% of that extra heat
load when the ocean gets too hot the
corals bleach what happens is the
zooxanthellae DS algae that are so good
for the corals start producing too much
oxygen they become toxic and the animal
says get out you’re toxic sort of like
you’re losing a kidney and when you dive
on a reef that’s bleached when these
mass bleaching czar it’s just a bad
feeling when you dive on these reefs if
it gets too hot the corals will die so
we have to ask ourselves can we imagine
a world without coral reefs can we
imagine that can we let that happen well
the answer might be we don’t want to let
it happen and there’s a way that we can
deal with it we’re all connected by the
water cycle when it rains here that
water probably comes from the ocean the
ocean begins at your front door you walk
out your door in a rainy day or anything
you drop on the ground actually floods
into the sea eventually so the ocean
begins at your front door be careful
it’s also that ecology is local think
about all this debris we see on a beach
in Bali every single one of these cups
was handled by at least three people
people all right somebody made it
somebody sold it somebody used it and
dropped it on the beach
so ecology is really local it begins
with every single one of us we believe
in conservation through participation we
believe that people should begin to get
busy and put their hands to work and do
things do things in your front yard do
things on your beach or do things in the
ocean like this large net we were taking
off here Edie Ricketts who was the dock
and cannery row is a good friend of John
Steinbeck’s
wrote an essay called on participation
and breaking through in which he said
when people work together to solve
problems they can bang their head
against a wall for a long time and then
they break through and they realize hey
I can do something and what we found
that breaking through gives you an
endorphin squirt it gives you a rush it
gives you a good feeling it’s like the
birth struggle followed by joy and when
we get people to do things like that
they become ardent conservationists and
they realize I can make a difference
myself Cousteau wrote an essay a long
time ago called the long-term has no
price in which he argued that
conservation is not something that we
can trade-off with economics the goods
and services of the planet were valued
in 1997 at 33 trillion dollars more than
all the economies of all the world’s
nations put together 33 trillion dollars
the oxygen we breathe the water we get
the fish we get and on and on and on but
if I took 33 trillion dollars and went
to the best universities on the planet
and said hey guys here’s a great grant
here’s 33 trillion dollars make me a
biosphere we wouldn’t even have the
faintest idea of how to go about doing
that so what we need to do is keep what
we have so when someone says I’m sorry
but we can’t have that marsh where those
birds breed because it’s not
economically feasible to save it the
answer is I’m sorry it’s too expensive
to lose okay
so what I tried to show you here is the
threats to reefs are the result of their
adaptations to a world without humans
humans come along and we provide all of
these various stressors that are
becoming aggregated the stress begins
locally with a person who catches a fish
or a person who steps on a coral or a
person who throws a cigarette out of a
car or a person who who uses too much
water or whatever you can think of and
you guys are smart you have a lot of
those things that you’ve done you’re
over consumption that scales up to
regional issues and it scales up to
global issues but it starts with
individuals individuals participating
that’s right a journey of a thousand
miles begins with the first step so
maybe we all need to reduce our
ecological footprints on this planet and
maybe just maybe if we all get together
and do that maybe all those little steps
can start a stampede and we can save the
planet thank you
[Music]
do me a favor close your eyes for a
moment now imagine you can open your
eyes imagine you’re on the deck of the
Starship Enterprise approaching earth
for the first time and you see this
beautiful blue marble
Captain Kirk says mr. Spock is there any
life down there the first sign of life
you would see on this planet are these
beautiful rings in the ocean coral reefs
coral atolls they are the largest oldest
most productive structures that are
living on the planet and then as the
enterprise slipped around the dark side
you would see the signs of civilization
of all these people trying to ward off
the darkness with their lights and if
you drop down into the city you’d feel
that buzz that buzz you get when you go
to a major city like New York or Paris
or Hong Kong or London
you know it’s C these are incredible
collections of people and and there
really are cultural centers in our
innovative centers and that’s where
things happen with humans
and if you dropped underwater and went
to one of these apt halls and visited a
coral reef the exact same thing would be
happening everybody down there is busy
everybody has a little job to do
everybody’s running away from something
bigger that might eat it these are the
oldest as well as the the largest
structures built on earth are the oldest
ecosystems on the planet they date back
240 million years at least and their
ancestors date back to 500 million years
these old bio homes so they are the
oldest most productive most biodiverse
systems on the planet and you might say
well why should we care well they feed
about a billion people they protect our
coastlines from big storm waves they
provide the biodiversity for future
pharmaceuticals most of all they provide
what we think of as environmental
security on the in the planet these are
an integral part of humans and they’re
also the highest expression of life
in the c30 out of 34 phylum of animals
touch reefs during their lifespan but
all the different phyla of plants are
found on reefs as well in and out of
them are associated with them so these
are like the epicenter of life on our
planet now in the last 15 20 30 40 50
years we’ve seen an increase in the
human population it’s doubled since I
began studying coral reefs and this has
sort of sparked the rise of what we call
mega cities these are cities of over 10
million population at the same time
coral reefs starting in 1975 if we say
well what did this reef carries for it
reef look like now looks like this
dancing lady reef in Jamaica the one of
the most well developed reefs and all
the Caribbean it was the center of the
Discovery Bay Marine Lab which was
started coral reef science modern
science and dancing lady in 1972 looked
like this and in 2013 looked like this
forty years later the magical island of
Bali a reef that we call Symphony reef
because it’s so beautiful and you dive
there the whole reef is playing a
symphony the fish the corals all the
invertebrates it’s just a magical place
2014 fast forward three years yeah looks
like a war zone
it’s an underwater war zone most of us
don’t realize that because it’s
underwater we watch the sunset on the
water we have a margarita all’s well
with the world it’s a beautiful world we
don’t realize what’s been happening
underwater is the same thing as what’s
been happening in our cities it’s like
people have been going to these cities
these underwater cities and just
ravaging them and the question is why
how are people dealing with this so to
begin this story I want to tell you a
little bit about the biology of reefs
and the geology of reefs reefs are
collaboration between biological and
physical forcing functions to grow
underwater mountains made out of a rock
called calcium carbonate and in the
center of this photograph you can see a
coral skeleton that’s growing outwards
that coral grew for about eight hundred
years this is a reef in Key Largo when
about a hundred thousand years ago when
sea level was quite a bit higher than it
is today so this is a reef that formed
Institute reefs developed to their
highest expression in the middle of the
tropical ocean where the water
visibility is 200 feet in any direction
there are almost no nutrients in the
water there’s no sediment in the water
there’s lots and lots of sunlight and
there’s lots of wave energy but the
question is how do these incredible
ecosystems basically exist in the middle
of a desert
and that’s their key the the adaptations
that have evolved in this last 200
million years or so that have resulted
in these incredible ecosystems also make
them vulnerable to humans and we have to
realize that we have to begin to learn
that remember I’ve said these are the
largest structures on earth the key of
the corals that grow and these corals
are small animals an individual polyp in
this picture is somewhere between the
size of your thumb and the size of your
pinky these are little animals they’re
voracious carnivores they open up at
night and they feed on plankton and
that’s where they get their nutrients
the phosphates and the nitrates that
they need they’re sort of like the roots
of plants but they’re the roots they’re
animals acting as roots sticking into
the water in the daytime they collapse
they withdraw and we see this yellow
brown surface and the yellow brown color
are microscopic algae that live in their
tissues so these microscopic algae are
sitting there being plants inside the
animals and there’s actually as much or
more plant material on a reef as there
is animal material underneath so
quarrels are animals and plants in one
symbiosis they recycle all the materials
that come in and the photosynthesis
which you can see here as the
fluorescence that escapes a naturally
photosynthesizing coral is everywhere on
the surface this is what drives the
growth rate of the coral skeleton and
all of this occurs in ReCell layers
thick about the thickness of a dollar
bill so corals even though they get huge
and some of them get you know as big as
your SUVs are a surface phenomenon so if
you scratch their surface there’s just
rock beneath it it’s not like me if I
scratch myself my body
we’ll heal it but a coral doesn’t do
that it has to grow back in from the
sides so they’re very vulnerable the
things that happen on their surface
humans come along and we do three basic
things we take stuff we break stuff we
pollute stuff okay
we take stuff out of the sea and you
have to realize that this is sort of a
local thing fishermen go out and they
take animals out of the sea we collect
shells we sell them we glean the reef
there are people that go out and just
glean the reef it’s an individual taking
these shells selling them to tourists
it’s a form of income people go diving
and snorkeling on reefs and when they do
that they step on the reefs or sometimes
they go sailing on the reefs by mistake
and there’s no way that a coral that can
stand up to a ten foot wave or even a 15
foot wave can stand up to the forces
exerted by a 5,000 pound sailboat keel
or a diver that just stamps on the reef
they’re just not adapted to that they’re
adapted to the ocean we also like to
live around reefs so in places like the
Florida Keys we go into the mangrove
areas we dredge them out we make
beautiful areas where we can plant
houses and we can have a boat slip right
next to it and every single one of those
houses has a septic tank and every
single one of those septic tanks
collects waste that’s rich in nutrients
and those nutrients leak out into the
nearby sea and when they do that the
algae grow because the algae are better
at absorbing large amounts of nutrients
then the corals are so the reef recounts
overgrown with algae and also because we
have microbes in our guts those microbes
go out and actually see the coral if
something delicious to eat and so we
have what we call coral diseases this
one’s called the white plague and these
diseases could kill 500 year old corals
in a matter of months we also put a lot
of stuff in the atmosphere we burn coal
we burn other fossil fuels we plate
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and
we dump a lot of stuff into the oceans
for years with the solution to pollution
is dilution right so we just dump it in
the ocean and see what happens all of
that when you dump something in the
water it’s going to connect
somewhere else in the ocean these little
red dots every single one of these red
dots happens to be a river mouth
that’s polluted and that if you put
pollution in the ocean it’s going to
travel around the world in the ocean
currents so everywhere is everywhere the
amount of heat that the earth has
absorbed in the last 40 50 years has
been principally absorbed by the oceans
the oceans have absorbed somewhere
between 80 and 90% of that extra heat
load when the ocean gets too hot the
corals bleach what happens is the
zooxanthellae DS algae that are so good
for the corals start producing too much
oxygen they become toxic and the animal
says get out you’re toxic sort of like
you’re losing a kidney and when you dive
on a reef that’s bleached when these
mass bleaching czar it’s just a bad
feeling when you dive on these reefs if
it gets too hot the corals will die so
we have to ask ourselves can we imagine
a world without coral reefs can we
imagine that can we let that happen well
the answer might be we don’t want to let
it happen and there’s a way that we can
deal with it we’re all connected by the
water cycle when it rains here that
water probably comes from the ocean the
ocean begins at your front door you walk
out your door in a rainy day or anything
you drop on the ground actually floods
into the sea eventually so the ocean
begins at your front door be careful
it’s also that ecology is local think
about all this debris we see on a beach
in Bali every single one of these cups
was handled by at least three people
people all right somebody made it
somebody sold it somebody used it and
dropped it on the beach
so ecology is really local it begins
with every single one of us we believe
in conservation through participation we
believe that people should begin to get
busy and put their hands to work and do
things do things in your front yard do
things on your beach or do things in the
ocean like this large net we were taking
off here Edie Ricketts who was the dock
and cannery row is a good friend of John
Steinbeck’s
wrote an essay called on participation
and breaking through in which he said
when people work together to solve
problems they can bang their head
against a wall for a long time and then
they break through and they realize hey
I can do something and what we found
that breaking through gives you an
endorphin squirt it gives you a rush it
gives you a good feeling it’s like the
birth struggle followed by joy and when
we get people to do things like that
they become ardent conservationists and
they realize I can make a difference
myself Cousteau wrote an essay a long
time ago called the long-term has no
price in which he argued that
conservation is not something that we
can trade-off with economics the goods
and services of the planet were valued
in 1997 at 33 trillion dollars more than
all the economies of all the world’s
nations put together 33 trillion dollars
the oxygen we breathe the water we get
the fish we get and on and on and on but
if I took 33 trillion dollars and went
to the best universities on the planet
and said hey guys here’s a great grant
here’s 33 trillion dollars make me a
biosphere we wouldn’t even have the
faintest idea of how to go about doing
that so what we need to do is keep what
we have so when someone says I’m sorry
but we can’t have that marsh where those
birds breed because it’s not
economically feasible to save it the
answer is I’m sorry it’s too expensive
to lose okay
so what I tried to show you here is the
threats to reefs are the result of their
adaptations to a world without humans
humans come along and we provide all of
these various stressors that are
becoming aggregated the stress begins
locally with a person who catches a fish
or a person who steps on a coral or a
person who throws a cigarette out of a
car or a person who who uses too much
water or whatever you can think of and
you guys are smart you have a lot of
those things that you’ve done you’re
over consumption that scales up to
regional issues and it scales up to
global issues but it starts with
individuals individuals participating
that’s right a journey of a thousand
miles begins with the first step so
maybe we all need to reduce our
ecological footprints on this planet and
maybe just maybe if we all get together
and do that maybe all those little steps
can start a stampede and we can save the
planet thank you
[Music]
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