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Speaker 1: This Pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets. Welcome to aquarium Mania.

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Speaker 2: I'm your host, doctor Royanad speaking to you from the

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University of Florida iphis Probable Aquaculture Laboratory.

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Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us. Jacques Cousto introduced many of us

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to a place both alien and beautiful, the underwater world.

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Decades later, our oceans and marine ecosystems have gone through

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significant changes.

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Speaker 1: So what's happening down there?

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Speaker 3: My guest today, Doctor Robbie Lamb, Faculty at the University

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of Florida's School of Forest, Fisheries and Geomatic Sciences and

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the Nature Coast Biological Station, is determined to answer that question.

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Robbie's work in the Caribbean, South America and the US

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helps explain how marine communities respond to this changing world.

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Robbie's and his colleagues research has been highlighted by National

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Geographic and.

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Speaker 4: Most recently PBSS.

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Speaker 3: OH and he used to be a professional basketball player

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in Ecuador. Join us as Robbie shares his journey and insights.

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Speaker 4: We'll be right back after these messages.

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Speaker 5: Take a bite out of your competition. Advertise your business

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with an Ad in pet Life Radio podcasts and radio shows.

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large and reaches more pet parents and pet lovers than

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Speaker 6: Let's talk pets on Petlife Radio dot com.

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to aquarium Mania on pet Life Radio. My

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guest today is doctor Robbie Lamb, marine ecologists and research

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scientists based at the University of Florida's School of Forest,

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Fisheries and Geomatic Sciences and the Nature Coast Biological Station.

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Oh and he's also on nat gio and Pbstar, but

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we'll talk about that later.

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Speaker 4: Thanks for your time, Robbie. Thanks for having me, Roy

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it's a pleasure.

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Speaker 2: So with a lot of my guests, I like to

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kind of get a little personal early on, get a

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little feel for what kind of drove them into doing

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what they do and who were some of your childhood

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influences that got you interested in nature and marine life,

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And I have to ask, of course, did you.

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Speaker 4: Ever have an aquarium.

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Speaker 7: I absolutely had an aquarium. We had in a freshwater

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aquarium as I was growing up. I remember, I don't

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remember exactly what kinds of fish we had, but we

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had a couple different fish and some freshwater salamanders as well,

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as I recall, So that was definitely something that I

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spent long, long hours looking at when I was real small.

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But I guess my first inspiration for being a biologist

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came from my mother, who was an avid birdwatcher, and

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that was something that she picked up from her grandfather,

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her from her father, my grandfather, so this was really

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kind of a family tradition at that point. And so

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she would get me up at four thirty five in

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the morning and I would be rubbing sleep out of

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my eyes, but also pulling on these binoculars and getting

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really excited about seeing a red tailed hawk or a

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bald eagle. And so that kind of honed my observation

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of wild life and nature and got me interest in

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just seeing the diversity of life that is out there

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in the world, and that kind of combined with watching

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Jacques Cousteau documentaries as a child, and David Attenborough and

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Crocodile Hunter shows and things like that about the wild

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places that had still so much left to be explored

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and discovered. In that sense of being able to observe wildlife,

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observe nature, and be able to do scientific discovery was

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really kind of what drew me into this field.

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Speaker 2: So were there any high school experiences that were pretty

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impactful for you, both either life wise or career wise.

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Speaker 4: Absolutely.

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Speaker 7: I have to say that for all those parents out there,

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they're thinking about their kids and what they want their

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kids to be able to do and experience in life.

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I think that when you're in high school, you're in

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this very sensitive, fragile time when there's a lot of

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opportunity to grow and expand your horizons. And my mother,

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again keep coming back to her, but she was fundamental

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in exposing me to some new opportunities that I hadn't

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even crossed my mind as possibilities at the time, but

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she came across them and kind of fed them my

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way and opened my.

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Speaker 4: Eyes to a lot of possibilities.

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Speaker 7: So one of them was there was a scuba diving

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training and sort of marine science field course in the

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Caribbean in the US Virgin Islands that you had to

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pay quite a bit for At the time, I think

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it was like twenty five hundred dollars.

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Speaker 4: It was a lot of money.

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Speaker 7: It was more than I could, you know, make myself

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as a as a high school student working and so

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my mother was able to get a scholarship or help

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me get a scholarship for this course, and I went

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down for four weeks of learning how to scuba dive

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and learning how to be sort of a core reef

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not biologist yet, but certainly someone who appreciates it and

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is able to you know, identify species of Cora reef

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fish and start thinking about how these ecosystems are put together.

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And so that was really my first experience of working underwater,

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seeing things with my own eyes. You know, when you

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see the surface of the water, it's easy to think

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that there's not a lot of life out there because

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it's just this blank canvas. But once you put on

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a mask and you dip your head into the surface

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and you see what's truly out there, it's just this

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rich world of colors and shapes and swirling particles of

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water and fish and algae, and it's just the most

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beautiful tapestry of life. So the second that I did that,

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I was hooked forever. Like at that point, I knew

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I was going to become a marine biologist. The other

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thing that I'd like to thank my mother for is

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that she sent me, didn't send me, but she encouraged

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me to go on exchange as a high school student.

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So I went to the Ecuador for a year in

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my junior year of high school as a rotary exchange student.

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I lived with two different host families. Over the course

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of that year, became very integrated into those families. I

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learned Spanish, I did a lot of volunteer work in

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the town that I lived in, which was Porto of Vieho,

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a very not that small but kind of isolated town,

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doesn't have a lot of tourist visiting or anything like that.

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So it was a real immersive experience and just a

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very rewarding life changing experience that again my mother really

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encouraged me to do, and that really kind of opened

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my mind to some of the international context of the

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world that we live in, this global society that we

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live in. I think that the exchange programs like the

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Rotary one are really fundamental for generating world peace because

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they show you how somebody else lives and kind of

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open your mind to other possibilities. And once we open

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our mind to those different possibilities, we become that much

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less biased and closed minded to other cultures and other

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ways of seeing the world. So those two experiences really

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kind of shaped who I became afterwards, which is I

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guess an international marine biologist.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, those both sounded incredible. Would have definitely would I

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love to do that. So let's talk a little bit

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fast forward a bit and talk a little bit about

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college and experiences after What did you end up studying

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college and did you have any experiences during your undergrad

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that most influenced you.

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Speaker 4: So I was a biology major.

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Speaker 7: I went to Oregon State University, Go Beavers, one of

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the fiercest mascots in the country.

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Speaker 4: But it was a fantastic school.

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Speaker 7: It was a state school, you know, state university, and

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much like the University of Florida where I am now,

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it's a land grant university. It's actually one of the

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I think there's only one other university. It's both a

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land grant a sea grant and a space grant, so

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they do a lot of really high level research across

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the board. And I got involved very early on with

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the lab of doctor Mark Hickson, who's a pretty well

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known core ref ecologist. He's now at the University of Hawaii,

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but at the time he was at Oregon State and

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as a freshman, we had a seminar series where they

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would bring in biologists of different fields, you know, people

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that had gone through biology as an undergrad and then

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gone into different fields of science or industry, medicine. We had,

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you know, a doctor come, we had a nurse come

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and give a talk. And so each week somebody would

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come from different fields of biology and give a talk

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about what it's like to be in their career path

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and how they got there from being an undergraduate biology major.

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So one of those talks was by doctor Hickson, and

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he was a professor at Oregon State. Like I said,

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So he gave his talk and I went up to

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him at the end of the talk and I said, hello,

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my name is Robbie.

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Speaker 4: I want to do what you do.

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Speaker 7: Maybe you'd have some opportunities for me working in your

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lab or something like that. So that I can kind

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of learn how this path might unfold, and he was

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really gracious and opened, you know, space in his lab

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for me to come work. What I started doing was

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they had this really interesting experiment that they were working

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with these territorial damselfish. So damselfish lay eggs on the

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seafloor and they guard those eggs really viciously from potential

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egg predators, but they also guard the territories where those

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eggs are laid, and those territories are sort of an

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indicator to potential mates of the strength of territoriality of

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the fish. You know, if I'm able to protect this

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garden really well from potential herbivores or other things that

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would want to eat what's there, I'm also really going

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to be good at protecting your eggs. So they took

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advantage of the fact that these guys like to lay

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eggs on sheltered surfaces. They would put these PVC tubes

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out underwater and line them with an acetate sheet like

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an old projector slide kind of sheet. Then when the

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fish lay the eggs on the inside of the tube,

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they could pull that acetate sheet out and lay it

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out into a two dimensional egg patch, which are. You know,

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eggs are laid in sort of one layer, and so

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by calculating the air the area of that egg patch,

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we could then figure out what the fecundity or reproductive

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output of those fish was. So I first started off

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in this lab reading these digital images and calculating area

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and then dividing that by the area the circumference of

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a single egg, and you would get the total number

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of eggs a reproductive output. And that's really fundamental information

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for studying things like fisheries biology and population genetics. So

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he opened up a space in his lab doing this

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sort of not menial work but certainly it's not out

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scuba diving on a core reef, but still it was

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working in this field and opening up a chance to

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see what that research was really like. And that's actually

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a model that I've kind of taken on as a

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as a professor at University of Floor to myself, is

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that you give students the opportunity to kind of show

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their worth and their interest level with one of these

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sort of data processing type of jobs. Once I was

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kind of doing well in that and showing my motivation

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and dedication to that work, doctor Hickson allowed me to

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start looking into ways of funding my own way to

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go to the Bahamas, which is where he was doing

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his field work each summer, and so I obtained a

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couple of undergraduate research fellowships. And for those of you

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who are undergraduates currently or who have kids that are

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undergraduate students and universities, look out for these research fellowships

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because they often open a lot of doors in terms

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of field opportunities for research with professors that otherwise don't

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have the funds to bring you with them. And so

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that's how I kind of paid my way to the

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Bahamas and was able to do my own undergraduate research

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with doctor Hickson and so out in the Bahamas. You know,

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this is basically working for three months straight, every single

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day under the water for four to eight hours. It

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was a dream. It was like I finally felt like

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this is what life is all about. It was so

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great and obviously challenging work as well. You know, you're wet,

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you're tired, you're cold throughout most of the day, but

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really rewarding work because I got to be, you know,

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a part of these core reef ecosystems and see them

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from the bottom up. I was able to publish an

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undergraduate thesis project as a result of that work, and

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learned sort of the basics of what it takes to

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do underwater research, which is a whole field into itself.

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Speaker 2: Well, that definitely prepped you for what you're doing. Now

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we have to do a really minor break and talk

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about some Robbie Lamb trivia. So can you, very briefly

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kind of tell us how you became a basketball star

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in Ecuador.

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Speaker 7: So basketball is not the most popular sport in Ecuador,

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not by a long shot. But when I moved down

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down there in two thousand and four, after or two

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thousand and eight, I'm sorry, when I finished college, I

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had been playing basketball at Oregon State as part of

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the practice squad that would practice practice against the main team,

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you know, the varsity team, and give them sort of

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a sparring partner, so to speak. So I was a

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decent basketball player, but like I didn't even make my

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own high school varsity basketball team.

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Speaker 4: I wasn't good enough. But when I moved down.

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Speaker 7: To Ecuador, suddenly I was like the tallest guy on

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the court and I could handle the ball a little bit,

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so very quickly I got roped into this professional basketball

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league in Ecuador, and so we would travel by bus

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to different cities each weekend and play in these tournaments

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and sign autographs and all this stuff. I never made

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any money out of it, you know, it was pretty

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much enough to pay your bus fare, but it was

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still a lot of fun. And yeah, a little side

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note away from marine biology.

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Speaker 4: That's awesome. So let's talk graduate studies. Now.

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Speaker 2: What made you decide to go to graduate school.

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Speaker 4: And where did you go?

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Speaker 7: So I didn't have probably the most typical progression from

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undergraduate to graduate school, but I always had a graduate

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school on my horizon. I always knew that that was

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something that I wanted to pursue, because from the get go,

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I was attracted to a lifetime of study and learning

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about the ocean. It really was more than a job

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for me. It was a passion. It was something that

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I knew that I was always going to want to pursue.

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And so following a graduate program of research and marine

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science allows you to design a job around that pursuit.

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And I always knew that was going to be the

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thing for me.

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Speaker 4: But when I.

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Speaker 7: Graduated college, I actually started off with a Fulbright fellowship

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to go back to Ecuador, where I had worked and

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lived before, and I started working in fisheries, sustainability and

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the development of rural fisheries and coastal Ecuador. So a

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Fulbright grant, this is another fellowship opportunity for those of

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you out there interested, take a good look at this one.

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They're available not just for recent postgraduates from college, but

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for professionals of all ages. So these Fullbright grants are

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very similar to a year long exchange program in that

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you go to another country and you really immerse yourself

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in that country's culture, You learn the local language. You

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usually work with a local partner to develop some kind

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of research project. Right after college, I received one of

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these grants to go to Ecuador and work with a

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series of small fishing villages along the coast of the

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northern province of Esmeraldas in Ecuador to develop sustainable fishing

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practices and to try to get these fisheries certified under

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international sustainable fisheries paradigms, which would allow them to export

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their fish at a higher value per fish and also

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improve the sustainability of the fishery. And so I would

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go out with these guys sword fishing. We would go

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out for three or four days at a time in

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a fifteen foot open fiberglass boat up to one hundred

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miles offshore. It was really harsh, harsh conditions exposed to

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this tropical sunlight, the wind, the waves twenty four to

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seven in at night. We would sleep in the basin

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of the boat, the bottom of the boat with fish

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guts and squid kind of slotching around around us. So

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it was really quite something to see how these people

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live and how they make a living off of the seed.

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Really eye opening experience. For another reason, which was that

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after a year of heavily investing in these communities, we

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did make a lot of progress. But at the same time,

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there were outside influences that were undermining our ability to

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make progress. Merchants that saw our efforts which would divert

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the production of these fisheries into an international export, they

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started to undermine our relationship with the community by spreading

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lies about embeztment and things like this, and so our

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connections with those communities were really aligned.

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Speaker 4: By that type of.

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Speaker 7: Lies basically, And the problem with these types of issues

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is that when you try to generate a new economic model,

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if you leave people out of it, they are going

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to find ways to undermine that new economic model, and

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we hadn't taken into account the local merchants that were

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going to be losing their livelihoods essentially because of this

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new product export idea that we had, So that really

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kind of shifted my focus back towards biology. I got

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the sense that working with humans was too challenging for me.

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These are fickle, fickle beings that will say one thing

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today and say something completely different than next. And so

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really my pursuit and my attraction to biology is that

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there's a natural world out there that operates under relatively

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fixed rules, and it's up to us to kind of

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learn and understand what those rules are. But they are

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reliable over time, whereas with humans there's just this whole

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other dimension that comes into it. So I really enjoy

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sort of the hard and fast nature of biology. I

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suppose as a result.

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Speaker 2: Of that, deciding to go and where you ended up

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going for grad school, Yes, sorry, got sidetracked a bit,

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So that experience of going on a full bright year

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kind of set my course back towards empirical science. So

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I decided that I wanted to get a graduate degree

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in marine ecology, and first I did that as through

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a master's program. So I got a master's degree at

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the Universilad San Francisco Atquito, which is a university in Quito, Ecuador.

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I was looking at biogeography of inner title communities along

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the coastline of Ecuador, because Ecuador is at the confluence

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of warm water coming down from the north from sort

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of the around the coast of Panama and Columbia and

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colder water coming up from the from the south along

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the coast of Chile Improved. So those two warm and

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cold water currents mix around the coastline of Ecuador, and

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so I was really interested in seeing how intertidal ecological

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communities varied with proximity to these cold and warm water currents.

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Speaker 7: While I was doing my master's degree, I sort of

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just by happenstance met the person who would end up

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being my PhD advisor, who is John Whitman. John was

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a university professor at Brown University where he still is currently,

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and at the time he was doing research in the

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Glopagos at the same time that I just happened to

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be there, and so I got to meet John and

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go diving with him a couple of days and saw

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what his field operation looked like, and I was just

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immediately hooked.

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Speaker 4: I thought, this is for me.

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Speaker 7: The Glopagos Islands are obviously this incredible place full of

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marine diversity, one of the most productive marine ecosystems in

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the planet, and here was this really well renowned professor

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that was doing high level work there. It seemed like

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the perfect marriage of my passions, which was Ecuador.

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Speaker 4: And marine ecology.

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Speaker 7: So I wrote to John and said, hey, I'm looking

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for a graduate program. He said, I'm looking for a

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graduate student, and it just kind of worked out that way.

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Speaker 4: That's awesome.

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Speaker 2: So actually I had one more quick question before we

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take a break. We're going to talk more about some

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of your work with John, But were there any real

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valuable lessons or what would you consider some of the

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most valuable lessons you.

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Speaker 7: Got from John oh Man. John Whitman is a class act.

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Let me tell you, he is one of the most positive, hardworking,

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and personable scientists that you will ever.

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Speaker 4: Meet in your life.

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Speaker 7: From the day that I met him, John has always

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had a smile on his face. And this doesn't matter

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if it's raining or shining outside. One of the first

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and strongest lessons that I learned from John was about

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keeping a positive attitude and seeking out an answer in

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a way of solving things even in the face of

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calamitous circumstances. So the very first summer that I spent

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in the Glopagos with John, I was helping out on

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an experiment that they had running where they were filming

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interactions between fish, urchins, and algae over the full daylight

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and night time period, so twenty four hours a day.

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And so they were filming this using time lapse camera systems,

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and then at night, those time lapse camera systems had

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an external flash that would light up the scene. And

403
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so these experiments were intended to test a trophic cascade,

404
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which is the idea that if you change the abundance

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of top predators, that change in top predator abundance will

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change the abundance of herbivores, and that change in herbivore

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abundance will change the abundance of plants. And this is

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a well known paradigm in ecological theory, but it's been

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rarely tested underwater. So they had this great experimental setup

410
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looking at predators of urchins, so fish that would eat urchins.

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Urchins would eat algae and all lit up with this

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custom made like two hundred thousand dollars video system for

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underwater filming. And the very first night that we set

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this all up, you know, it was probably six hours

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of consecutive dives trying to get this all set up

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perfectly on tripods, filming the whole scene, making sure the

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flashes were working, and we pressed record and saw the

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little red light blinking away, and we went back up

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to the surface and had dinner and a good night's sleep,

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thinking that we had this great experiment rolling. The next day,

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we dove back down, pulled up the system, opened up

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the canister to download the video files, and it was

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full of water. The whole thing had flooded overnight. And

424
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the problem was that we had a canister that was

425
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housing the battery and the memory cards for the video,

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and that had these hoses that were connected to the

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lights and the cameras, and in each of those hose

428
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to compartment connections there were weak points, and with the

429
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waves and the motion in the ocean, all of that

430
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caused it to leak. So this was you know, years

431
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of and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment

432
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up to this point. And what did John do. Well,

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he looked in there, he said one f word expletive,

434
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and then he said, well, we're just gonna get go

435
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pros out and we'll film it during the day and

436
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we'll continue forward with the experiment and we'll just not

437
00:24:03,359 --> 00:24:05,720
worry about the night time stuff. And he did it,

438
00:24:05,799 --> 00:24:08,000
and he got an ecology paper out of it, which

439
00:24:08,079 --> 00:24:11,279
is a really high level journal in our field. So

440
00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:15,079
that lesson to you know, keep your head up and

441
00:24:15,079 --> 00:24:17,839
not take no for an answer when life is going

442
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:19,400
to give you lemons, you got to figure out a

443
00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:23,519
way to make lemonade. And in science, and particular in

444
00:24:23,559 --> 00:24:26,960
field science, you often have these issues arise. You know,

445
00:24:27,079 --> 00:24:30,480
things don't work the way they're supposed to. Natural elements

446
00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:34,680
break things all the time. And just keeping focus on

447
00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:37,640
your goal, which is answering that scientific question and not

448
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:42,839
allowing those types of setbacks to really change your focus,

449
00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:45,720
you can come up with a really good solution at

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00:24:45,720 --> 00:24:48,640
the end. And that was a really fundamental lesson I

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00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:49,240
got from John.

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Speaker 4: Awesome.

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Speaker 2: Awesome, And yeah, for our listeners, I did have an

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opportunity to work with Robbie and I see where a

455
00:24:57,640 --> 00:25:01,319
lot of his coolness in the face of our our adversities,

456
00:25:01,559 --> 00:25:04,680
Kim came from now So I appreciate that, Robbie. So

457
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:07,599
let's take a short break and we'll continue our discussion

458
00:25:07,640 --> 00:25:11,880
with University of Florida Marina collegist and flop expert Robbie.

459
00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:18,400
Speaker 8: Lamb after word from our sponsors. Begging to hear more

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Speaker 1: Also dig us up in iHeartRadio and iTunes. Let's Talk

464
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:39,039
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465
00:25:39,079 --> 00:25:41,799
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466
00:25:42,039 --> 00:25:44,079
Speaker 6: Pet live Radio dot Com.

467
00:25:52,039 --> 00:25:55,880
Speaker 2: We're back in continuing our conversation with my guests, doctor

468
00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:59,400
Robbie Lamb, Marini collogist and research scientists at the University

469
00:25:59,440 --> 00:25:59,880
of Florida.

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Speaker 4: So, Robie, we talked a little.

471
00:26:01,839 --> 00:26:05,240
Speaker 2: Bit about your background and how you got can do

472
00:26:05,759 --> 00:26:09,400
positive attitude that I was able to witness often. Let's

473
00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:12,000
talk a little bit about your research and your current

474
00:26:12,079 --> 00:26:14,599
research and maybe some of the past. Can you explain

475
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:18,119
in general, I guess what questions you are trying to answer.

476
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:21,240
I know, there's many different questions, but maybe kind of

477
00:26:21,279 --> 00:26:23,319
as like a whole what sort of things are you,

478
00:26:23,759 --> 00:26:25,480
you know, trying to look at And we'll talk more

479
00:26:25,519 --> 00:26:26,359
specifics later.

480
00:26:26,720 --> 00:26:27,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think.

481
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Speaker 7: Pretty much all of my research can be summed up

482
00:26:30,519 --> 00:26:35,680
as trying to understand how environmental change is affecting marine

483
00:26:35,759 --> 00:26:39,839
life on our planet. And so I look at a

484
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:43,680
variety of types of environmental change, but for the most part,

485
00:26:43,799 --> 00:26:47,480
we're looking at temperature change, which is really the largest,

486
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:53,799
most fundamental change that humans are exacting upon our planet,

487
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:57,200
which is climate change via the increase in carbon dioxide

488
00:26:57,359 --> 00:27:00,559
concentrations in the atmosphere, and so the warming of the

489
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:04,680
Earth's atmosphere and by virtue of that, the warming of

490
00:27:04,759 --> 00:27:09,079
the Earth's oceans is expected to have all kinds of ramifications.

491
00:27:10,079 --> 00:27:13,160
And I've been trying to test some of those predictions

492
00:27:13,359 --> 00:27:18,559
of how things might change, using either natural variation in

493
00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:24,920
temperature that exists in geographic or temporal change of temperature

494
00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:29,319
over time, and also doing experiments both in the laboratory

495
00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:34,039
and underwater that try to test the mechanisms that explain

496
00:27:34,279 --> 00:27:37,960
why things change when temperature or other types of environmental

497
00:27:38,079 --> 00:27:41,880
change occur. So a couple of examples of this are

498
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:45,720
we're looking right now at how food webs are affected

499
00:27:45,799 --> 00:27:51,759
by temperature change in the Glopagos Islands. So temperature increases

500
00:27:51,799 --> 00:27:56,559
in the ocean tend to stratify the surface waters. And

501
00:27:56,720 --> 00:27:59,599
what I mean by stratification is you get a lens

502
00:27:59,839 --> 00:28:02,279
of really warm water that sits on the surface of

503
00:28:02,319 --> 00:28:07,240
the ocean, and that warm water lens usually has very

504
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:11,079
little nutrients and life in it, especially in the tropics.

505
00:28:11,799 --> 00:28:14,440
So we all know that plants need nutrients to grow, right.

506
00:28:15,279 --> 00:28:18,400
If there isn't a lot of mixing of the surface waters,

507
00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:21,000
that means that the plants that are living up in

508
00:28:21,039 --> 00:28:25,240
the very shallowest band of the ocean utilize the nutrients

509
00:28:25,279 --> 00:28:28,160
that are there. Then they either get eaten or they die.

510
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:33,240
And when they leave the ecosystem because they've been consumed

511
00:28:33,319 --> 00:28:36,960
or they sink, there's very little nutrients to replenish what

512
00:28:37,119 --> 00:28:42,440
they've consumed. So temperature increases in the ocean are expected

513
00:28:42,519 --> 00:28:45,680
to increase that stratification of the surface waters and reduce

514
00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:49,720
the amount of nutrients availability available for photosynthesis. So in

515
00:28:49,799 --> 00:28:54,279
the Glopagos Islands, there is a natural spatial gradient and

516
00:28:54,359 --> 00:28:57,480
temperature of about three degrees centigrade, and three degrees might

517
00:28:57,519 --> 00:28:59,759
not sound like a whole lot, but the ocean is

518
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:03,720
an incredible buffer of temperature change. It takes a lot

519
00:29:03,759 --> 00:29:07,400
of energy to change water even one degree centigrade, and

520
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:09,799
the oceans are enormous, so it takes a lot of

521
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:13,640
heat to change the oceans by one degree centigrade. And also,

522
00:29:13,759 --> 00:29:16,559
most of the organisms that live in the oceans are ectothermic.

523
00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:20,799
That means that their body temperature mirrors the temperature of

524
00:29:20,839 --> 00:29:24,839
the waters in which they find themselves. And so unlike

525
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:28,000
a human which can go from the Arctic all the

526
00:29:28,039 --> 00:29:30,720
way to the Equator and not feel too terribly put

527
00:29:30,799 --> 00:29:32,640
out by that fact, you know, you might have to

528
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:34,839
take off a few jackets. But humans are able to

529
00:29:34,960 --> 00:29:38,720
modulate our temperatures regardless of the external temperature. A fish

530
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:42,920
doing that same migration would suffer a huge physiological change

531
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:47,319
because the rate of metabolic processes is directly scaled to temperature.

532
00:29:48,039 --> 00:29:48,319
Speaker 5: And so.

533
00:29:50,119 --> 00:29:54,160
Speaker 7: If this warming continues to progress as we as we've

534
00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:57,799
seen it progress already, there is this expectation that the

535
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:02,599
surface oceans will become impoverished of nutrients, and that will

536
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:06,400
reduce the amount of primary production and energy available to

537
00:30:06,519 --> 00:30:10,079
flow through food webs and generate biomass at higher levels

538
00:30:10,599 --> 00:30:13,920
for things like seabirds and sharks and so on. So

539
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:17,359
we're using this natural spatial grading and temperature and also

540
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:21,480
temporal change in temperature, because there are years when the

541
00:30:21,559 --> 00:30:23,799
waters are really warm in the Glopagos. Those tend to

542
00:30:23,839 --> 00:30:26,279
be Alninia years, and there are warm years where the

543
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:29,079
waters tend to be very cold, which are the Latinia years.

544
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:32,000
And so we have this temporal change in temperature and

545
00:30:32,119 --> 00:30:34,680
a spatial gradient in temperature, and we're using both of

546
00:30:34,759 --> 00:30:38,799
those to examine how food webs change when the oceans

547
00:30:38,839 --> 00:30:39,279
warm up.

548
00:30:39,839 --> 00:30:42,599
Speaker 2: So, I guess talking a little bit more about the Globigos,

549
00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:46,319
you had some kind of interesting findings when you were there,

550
00:30:46,559 --> 00:30:49,400
I guess twenty sixteen or twenty seventeen. You want to

551
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:51,480
talk a little bit about maybe some of the things

552
00:30:51,519 --> 00:30:54,079
that you see that appear to be temperature related.

553
00:30:54,119 --> 00:30:57,519
Speaker 7: Alnina related, absolutely, So I mentioned this al Nino effect.

554
00:30:58,039 --> 00:31:01,759
So al Nino occurs when the trade winds, which are

555
00:31:01,839 --> 00:31:07,480
normally blowing constantly from east to west, those slow down

556
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:11,480
during al Nino years, and the fact of those winds

557
00:31:11,519 --> 00:31:14,599
slowing down causes the surface currents that those winds are

558
00:31:14,640 --> 00:31:19,400
constantly blowing westward to also slow down. When that happens,

559
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:24,279
the upwelling of cold, nutrient rich water to the surface stops.

560
00:31:24,319 --> 00:31:27,519
It's like a conveyor belt that's driven by these trade winds,

561
00:31:27,599 --> 00:31:30,079
and so when the trade winds stop, that conveyor belt

562
00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:33,559
also stops. And the Glopagos are located at the epicenter

563
00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:36,200
of al Nino phenomenon in the ocean, which is this

564
00:31:36,519 --> 00:31:40,759
eastern tropical Pacific area right off the coast of Ecuador

565
00:31:41,599 --> 00:31:44,440
and where the Glopagos are located in al nino event

566
00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:49,319
signifies substantial warming of the surface waters of the ocean

567
00:31:49,839 --> 00:31:51,640
anywhere from one and a half to three and a

568
00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:54,319
half degrees centigrade and that can last for about six

569
00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:58,480
to twelve months. So I mentioned that most organisms in

570
00:31:58,519 --> 00:32:01,880
the ocean are ecothermic means means that their body temperature

571
00:32:02,039 --> 00:32:05,599
changes with the temperature around them. So there's two things

572
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:09,000
that happen during temperature increases in the ocean. One is

573
00:32:09,079 --> 00:32:13,039
that the metabolic rates of micro organisms, things like bacteria

574
00:32:13,119 --> 00:32:18,000
and viruses, speeds up a lot. Their metabolism is also

575
00:32:18,079 --> 00:32:22,640
link to temperature, and so those microorganisms suddenly are able

576
00:32:22,720 --> 00:32:25,720
to reproduce a lot faster and they become more pathogenic.

577
00:32:26,119 --> 00:32:29,519
That means that they incite and cause disease at a

578
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:33,759
much faster rate than in colder, normal temperatures. The other

579
00:32:33,839 --> 00:32:37,400
thing that happens, as I mentioned, is that the fish

580
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:41,759
and other organisms that are consuming that are out there

581
00:32:41,799 --> 00:32:45,000
trying to forage and feed in the water. They are

582
00:32:45,119 --> 00:32:48,960
also speeding up their metabolic rates because of warmer temperatures,

583
00:32:49,119 --> 00:32:52,119
so they need more food. All of this is happening

584
00:32:52,119 --> 00:32:55,279
at the same time as the waters are stratifying, so

585
00:32:55,799 --> 00:32:58,960
the nutrient availability in the photic zone, which is where

586
00:32:59,079 --> 00:33:01,920
light is available for photosynthesis in the surface of the ocean,

587
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:07,359
also decreases. So suddenly fish have high metabolic rates. They

588
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:10,240
need a lot of food. There isn't much food, and

589
00:33:10,319 --> 00:33:14,640
the microorganisms that might cause disease are just going like gangbusters.

590
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:18,160
So this is a perfect storm of conditions where you

591
00:33:18,279 --> 00:33:22,960
have basically starving fish that are immunocompromised because of the

592
00:33:23,079 --> 00:33:26,440
lack of food, that are being infected at higher rates

593
00:33:26,480 --> 00:33:29,960
by these microorganisms that are more pathogenic than normal because

594
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:33,960
of warmer water temperatures. So in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen,

595
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:36,039
in the Glopagos, we had one of the strongest al

596
00:33:36,079 --> 00:33:42,480
Nino events in recorded history. That event sparked what we

597
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:46,799
know now to be this alterative skin disease that affected

598
00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:50,640
at least sixteen different species of fish in the Glopagos.

599
00:33:51,119 --> 00:33:53,559
And what I mean by alterative skin disease is these

600
00:33:53,640 --> 00:33:58,039
small patches of skin that start off looking almost like

601
00:33:58,119 --> 00:34:01,160
a patch of mold that starts to grow in a

602
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:04,599
spherical shape, and then the scales start to fall off,

603
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:08,079
and you get X. You get this exposure of the

604
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:12,320
subcutaneous tissue. It's red, it's kind of leeching blood out

605
00:34:12,360 --> 00:34:16,000
into the water. It's really ugly, and those lesions grow

606
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:19,079
and they combine, and eventually you can get most of

607
00:34:19,159 --> 00:34:21,119
the body of the fish has lost its scales and

608
00:34:21,159 --> 00:34:25,119
it's looking really bad, and they can lose the ability

609
00:34:25,199 --> 00:34:28,639
to swim if it affects their fins. So it's a

610
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:32,719
really ugly disease that fortunately disappeared as soon as that on.

611
00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:36,280
The new events subsided and the water is resumed back

612
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:43,280
to their normal, cooler temperatures. But certainly it's an issue

613
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:46,599
that is becoming more common with warmer oceans that we're

614
00:34:46,599 --> 00:34:51,039
seeing more of these wildlife disease outbreaks, and you know,

615
00:34:51,360 --> 00:34:55,159
a lot of ultertive skin diseases are common in conditions

616
00:34:55,159 --> 00:34:59,159
where you get high densities of fish and a sort

617
00:34:59,159 --> 00:35:03,320
of stagnant water conditions, So places like aquaculture pens, even

618
00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:05,960
aquaria that aren't properly cleaned, you get these kinds of

619
00:35:06,039 --> 00:35:10,480
ulcerative skin diseases quite commonly. But in contrast, the Galopagos

620
00:35:10,559 --> 00:35:14,880
Islands are this oceanic island group that's a thousand kilometers

621
00:35:14,920 --> 00:35:18,400
off the coast of mainland South America, really really far

622
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:23,079
from any sources of coastal contamination or pollution, really well

623
00:35:23,199 --> 00:35:26,719
mixed water with a lot of wave action and currents,

624
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:29,920
So certainly not the conditions that you would expect would

625
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:34,119
generate this type of an alterative skin disease outbreak. But

626
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:37,360
in this twenty fifteen to sixteen event, this al Nino,

627
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:41,280
such an outbreak occurred and in some species and in

628
00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:45,440
some places, the prevalence rates reached over fifty percent, I mean,

629
00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:48,159
the over half of all of the fish in some

630
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:53,400
islands showed these ulstertive skin lesions. So certainly it's something

631
00:35:53,440 --> 00:35:55,559
that we know is linked to these warm water events

632
00:35:56,119 --> 00:36:00,440
caused by allino, but the exact mechanism of that disease

633
00:36:00,519 --> 00:36:02,920
pathogenesis we still haven't figured out yet.

634
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:06,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely definitely a challenge doing anything kind of

635
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:10,400
with wild fisheries. So since you mentioned that obviously and

636
00:36:10,519 --> 00:36:13,960
started talking about the Galapagos, maybe can you describe a

637
00:36:14,039 --> 00:36:17,119
little bit about what makes the Galapagos kind of so unique,

638
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:18,800
you know, biologically, so.

639
00:36:19,159 --> 00:36:23,599
Speaker 7: Tropical waters normally have this really strong thermicline, which means

640
00:36:23,639 --> 00:36:27,519
that the surface waters are very warm, and there aren't

641
00:36:27,559 --> 00:36:31,159
many nutrients available in those warm surface waters for photosynthesis

642
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:34,280
to occur. The Glopagos are located right on the equator,

643
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:39,559
so that means that they have tropical solar radiation year round.

644
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:42,159
They have all the light that you could possibly want,

645
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:46,599
and in contrast to most other tropical seas, they don't

646
00:36:46,679 --> 00:36:49,280
have as much nutrient limitation. And the reason for this

647
00:36:49,599 --> 00:36:52,480
is that there's a couple of cold water currents that

648
00:36:52,679 --> 00:36:55,599
hit the Galopagos Islands, and it just happens to be

649
00:36:55,760 --> 00:36:58,760
that that archipelago is located at the confluence of two

650
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:01,239
of these cold water currents. One of them is called

651
00:37:01,239 --> 00:37:04,960
the Humboldt Current, which comes from Antarctica up the coast

652
00:37:05,039 --> 00:37:08,559
of Chile and Peru and then starts to diverge westward

653
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:12,719
and hits the Glopagos Islands. There's also the Cromwell or

654
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:16,760
Equatorial undercurrent, which is a subsurface current that's traveling at

655
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:20,960
about three hundred feet depth across the Pacific from west

656
00:37:21,000 --> 00:37:24,440
to east. Now, when that current hits the Glopagos platform,

657
00:37:24,519 --> 00:37:27,559
it's pushed up to the surface and again brings cold,

658
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:31,280
nutrient rich water up to the surface where photosynthesis can occur.

659
00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:37,440
So you have the combination of tropical sunlight and really

660
00:37:37,559 --> 00:37:40,880
high levels of nutrients being delivered to the surface, and

661
00:37:41,079 --> 00:37:46,159
that fuels a unique, highly productive marine ecosystem, one of,

662
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:49,320
if not the most productive ecosystems in all of the

663
00:37:49,360 --> 00:37:53,360
world's oceans. Another reason why the Glopgos are unique is

664
00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:56,719
that they have not really been inhabited for that long.

665
00:37:57,079 --> 00:38:00,840
There's only been permanent human habitation of the islands for

666
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:03,639
about one hundred years, and for most of that time,

667
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:08,119
there weren't many people moving to the Glopagos because there

668
00:38:08,159 --> 00:38:10,920
weren't many services, there wasn't much water, it's a really

669
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:15,679
difficult place to make a living. And then in the fifties,

670
00:38:15,880 --> 00:38:19,599
Ecuador declared the entire archipelago as a national park. And

671
00:38:19,679 --> 00:38:24,840
this was a really forward thinking move by the Ecuadorian

672
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:28,719
government because as a result, the Glopagos Islands are incredibly

673
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:32,079
well preserved. Ninety seven percent of the land area of

674
00:38:32,119 --> 00:38:36,159
the Glopagos are off limits national park. You can't move there,

675
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:39,400
you can't cut down forest, you can't have agriculture there,

676
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:41,960
and so only three percent of the land area is

677
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:46,159
available for cities to grow, for agriculture to take place,

678
00:38:46,599 --> 00:38:50,599
for industry to have its home, and that's really limited.

679
00:38:50,639 --> 00:38:53,119
The growth of the population in the Glopagos, all that

680
00:38:53,519 --> 00:38:57,239
has translated into minimal effects of humans on the marine environment.

681
00:38:57,599 --> 00:38:59,719
So it's still a place that you can go and see,

682
00:39:00,360 --> 00:39:04,719
you know, large sharks, large group or large snapper. If

683
00:39:04,719 --> 00:39:06,960
you go for a snorkel or a scuba dive anywhere

684
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:08,920
in the Globgos, you will see all of these things.

685
00:39:09,239 --> 00:39:12,159
And in contrast, much of the rest of the world's

686
00:39:12,199 --> 00:39:15,159
oceans and coastal reefs are fished of many of these

687
00:39:15,239 --> 00:39:18,519
large predators because they are the most attractive for recreational

688
00:39:18,559 --> 00:39:22,000
and commercial fisheries. So we have a really intact marine

689
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:26,960
ecosystem that's fueled by one of the most productive combinations

690
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:29,719
of nutrients and solar radiation in the entire world.

691
00:39:30,119 --> 00:39:34,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely a beautiful place. I appreciated your having me

692
00:39:34,719 --> 00:39:36,800
work with you there. Let's shift a little bit back

693
00:39:36,840 --> 00:39:41,039
to the US and North America. You had a chance

694
00:39:41,119 --> 00:39:42,719
to do some work in the Gulf of Maine, and

695
00:39:42,880 --> 00:39:45,360
we had the opportunity to watch you and John and

696
00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:48,360
some of your other colleagues on the relatively recent PBS

697
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:51,480
series see Change Parallel the Gulf of Maine when we

698
00:39:51,519 --> 00:39:54,280
were over in the Galapagos. So how did you get

699
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:56,880
involved in that work in the first place, and what

700
00:39:57,119 --> 00:39:59,960
was kind of the goal of the research there. Yeah.

701
00:40:00,199 --> 00:40:03,400
Speaker 7: So Cassius Ledge is a seamount right in the middle

702
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:06,119
of the Gulf of Maine. It's about eighty miles east

703
00:40:06,199 --> 00:40:09,280
of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and much of the Gulf of

704
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:13,320
Maine is a sediment bed, and it's really it's the

705
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:17,559
outflow of the Appalachian Mountains as they've been eroded over

706
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:22,440
millennia by glaciers and rainfall. All of that rock and

707
00:40:22,599 --> 00:40:25,239
mud has been piling up in the Gulf of Maine,

708
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:28,519
and so it's this really productive but sedimented that means

709
00:40:28,599 --> 00:40:32,719
like a soft bottom area that's relatively shallow at about

710
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:36,039
two hundred and fifty feet deep. Now, Cassius Ledge is

711
00:40:36,119 --> 00:40:41,440
a rocky seamount that sticks up from this surrounding soft

712
00:40:41,559 --> 00:40:46,360
bottom habitat. And there's a major difference between hard and

713
00:40:46,599 --> 00:40:51,679
soft habitats in the ocean. Hard structures, things like rock

714
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:56,119
or coral, are places where both plants and animals can

715
00:40:56,199 --> 00:40:59,440
attach themselves and grow, and there's a lot of organisms

716
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:03,320
things like kelp, things like corals, things like barnacles that

717
00:41:03,519 --> 00:41:07,000
require a hard substrate to attach to in order to grow.

718
00:41:08,199 --> 00:41:11,480
Other things require sediment. Then they burrow down into sediment

719
00:41:11,519 --> 00:41:15,119
and live in sediment habitats. But the fact that Cassius

720
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:17,360
Ledge exists in the middle of this sediment at habitat

721
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:20,719
means that there's suddenly this rocky, hard substrate for things

722
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:23,719
to attach to. It also comes up to about forty

723
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:27,360
feet deep below the surface, so it doesn't actually break

724
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:29,280
the surface. That's why it's a sea mount and not

725
00:41:29,400 --> 00:41:32,079
an island. But it comes to pretty close to the surface,

726
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:35,039
which means that things like algae and kelp can grow

727
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:38,880
on this rocky platform and take advantage of light coming

728
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:42,239
down from the sun. So Cassius Ledge as a result

729
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:48,360
supports one of the largest and most productive kelp forests

730
00:41:48,400 --> 00:41:53,880
in the entire Gulf of Maine. These beautiful lamonaryan Lamonary

731
00:41:53,960 --> 00:42:00,480
digitata and lemon area laun cruris. These kelps reach up

732
00:42:00,559 --> 00:42:04,119
to fifteen feet in length and they do form a canopy,

733
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:06,119
so you can be hunkered down at the base of

734
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:08,880
these celp fronds and look up and see them swaying

735
00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:12,760
back and forth over your head. Kasha's Sledge also supports

736
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:16,079
one of the last healthy cod populations remaining in the

737
00:42:16,119 --> 00:42:19,559
Gulf of Maine, and the fact that it supports these

738
00:42:19,599 --> 00:42:24,440
healthy cod populations suggests that Kasha's Ledge could be a

739
00:42:24,639 --> 00:42:28,039
refuge for cod and that those individuals living at cashus

740
00:42:28,119 --> 00:42:30,880
Ledge could actually seed other places in the Gulf of

741
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:34,639
Maine that have been overfished and fished completely out of cod.

742
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:39,760
So my PhD advisor, John Whitman at Brown University, has

743
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:41,760
been working at cashus Ledge and in the Gulf of

744
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:46,199
Maine since the seventies. I was brought into working there

745
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:51,719
by him in twenty fourteen when we embarked on an

746
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:57,679
effort to describe why cashius Ledge scientifically from a scientific perspective,

747
00:42:58,119 --> 00:43:00,960
how is it ecologically important, what is unique about it,

748
00:43:01,079 --> 00:43:02,840
how does it compare to the rest of the Gulf

749
00:43:02,880 --> 00:43:06,960
of Maine, And should we be considering protecting Casha's Sledge

750
00:43:07,079 --> 00:43:10,360
as some form of marine reserve in order to protect

751
00:43:10,400 --> 00:43:13,159
these unique kelp forest and cod populations that we know.

752
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:13,920
Speaker 4: That it supports.

753
00:43:15,199 --> 00:43:17,960
Speaker 7: So we started doing these surveys in twenty fourteen comparing

754
00:43:18,039 --> 00:43:20,159
Casha Sledge to other parts of the Gulf of Maine,

755
00:43:20,679 --> 00:43:23,519
and we've continued that work today to look at not

756
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:25,960
only how does Casha Sledge compare to other parts in

757
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:28,960
the same region, but how has it changed, How has

758
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:31,920
it changed since the seventies and eighties when John Whitman

759
00:43:32,039 --> 00:43:35,039
was first working there until now, and also how has

760
00:43:35,079 --> 00:43:37,960
it changed since twenty fourteen until now because this last

761
00:43:38,039 --> 00:43:42,360
decade has seen some of the rapid warming that we

762
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:44,880
know that climate change is responsible for, and the Gulf

763
00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:47,079
of Maine is one of the fastest warming bodies of

764
00:43:47,159 --> 00:43:51,760
water in the entire world's oceans. So this effort is

765
00:43:52,719 --> 00:43:55,000
scientific at its heart. We are trying to describe this

766
00:43:55,159 --> 00:43:58,159
unique place, what makes it unique, some of the processes

767
00:43:58,199 --> 00:44:01,199
that help sustain it, And we're also working on the

768
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:05,880
legislative side, so we're working with a variety of lawmakers,

769
00:44:07,440 --> 00:44:13,480
nonprofit organizations, and local stakeholders to actually gain protections for

770
00:44:13,719 --> 00:44:18,719
Cash Sledge as this sanctuary as one of these last

771
00:44:18,800 --> 00:44:22,000
holdouts of a healthy ecosystem in the Gulf of Maine.

772
00:44:23,519 --> 00:44:26,480
Speaker 2: It was great and you had a really colorful cap

773
00:44:26,559 --> 00:44:28,719
I have to mention for the folks that haven't seen

774
00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:32,159
it yet, but definitely encourage our listeners to watch it.

775
00:44:32,519 --> 00:44:35,519
Speaker 4: So, yeah, I was working with the PBS crew. Well,

776
00:44:35,559 --> 00:44:36,320
it was kind of funny.

777
00:44:36,320 --> 00:44:38,960
Speaker 7: I gotta say. We didn't really know what to expect

778
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:40,719
when we hit it out there. There were great people,

779
00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:45,079
really friendly, really curious and genuinely interested in the work

780
00:44:45,119 --> 00:44:45,760
that we were doing.

781
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:48,000
Speaker 4: But it was also kind of silly.

782
00:44:48,039 --> 00:44:48,159
Speaker 1: You know.

783
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:50,840
Speaker 7: You'd go through twenty thirty minutes of getting all your

784
00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:53,519
Scooba gear on and checking and double checking everything, and

785
00:44:53,559 --> 00:44:55,599
then getting your gear and you're about to jump in

786
00:44:55,679 --> 00:44:57,199
the water, and then a cameraman.

787
00:44:56,840 --> 00:44:58,440
Speaker 4: Comes up and says, hey, hey, that was really great.

788
00:44:58,639 --> 00:44:59,599
Can you do all that again?

789
00:44:59,639 --> 00:45:01,360
Speaker 7: But let me film it, And so then you'd have

790
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:03,239
to take off all your setup and your you know,

791
00:45:03,360 --> 00:45:06,320
forty pounds of scuba gear. But in the end it

792
00:45:06,440 --> 00:45:09,000
was it was obviously worth it. They got a great

793
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:12,039
product out of it. I highly recommend that you guys

794
00:45:12,119 --> 00:45:15,440
check out the documentary. It's free, it's on PBS. It's

795
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:18,400
also on YouTube. Just look up a parallel the Gulf

796
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:21,599
of Maine or Sea Change Gulf of Maine, and again

797
00:45:21,639 --> 00:45:25,679
it's on PBS and Nova. But it was also quite

798
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:31,119
something to work with the underwater filmographers. These are, you know,

799
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:35,119
professional videographers that do work for documentaries and things, and

800
00:45:35,519 --> 00:45:38,679
they have these ultra high speed cameras. They also use

801
00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:42,559
rebreather systems, which means that you don't exhale bubbles and

802
00:45:42,639 --> 00:45:45,360
it recirculates the air back into your system and that

803
00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:47,840
allows them to get really close up shots of fish

804
00:45:48,039 --> 00:45:51,559
and other organisms that might otherwise be scared off by bubbles.

805
00:45:52,639 --> 00:45:56,280
So the footage in this documentary is really spectacular, and

806
00:45:56,400 --> 00:45:58,760
I think it really conveys the magic of what it

807
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:01,400
feels like to be down there on cash a sledge

808
00:46:01,400 --> 00:46:02,199
on this culp forest.

809
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:05,679
Speaker 2: Thanks and yeah, although See Change was the title of

810
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:08,360
the series, I think that's kind of appropriate for what's

811
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:11,000
happening all over the place. Can you maybe give us

812
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:15,440
a brief perspective on how you think things are going overall,

813
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:18,239
and maybe what you think can be done or is

814
00:46:18,280 --> 00:46:21,280
being done to try to maybe mitigate or stabilize some

815
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:21,920
of these systems.

816
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:25,199
Speaker 7: Yeah, we know that we're changing things at an ever

817
00:46:25,400 --> 00:46:27,800
faster rate and in so many different ways. You know,

818
00:46:27,880 --> 00:46:30,039
I just talked about temperature change, but there's all these

819
00:46:30,079 --> 00:46:33,880
other things that humans are doing, things like overfishing, pollution,

820
00:46:34,239 --> 00:46:36,639
We're changing the pH of the oceans and making them

821
00:46:36,679 --> 00:46:39,840
more acidic, and all these things. While they have happened

822
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:43,320
in the past over longer time scales and due to

823
00:46:43,400 --> 00:46:47,079
natural reasons, we're making all of these changes go a

824
00:46:47,159 --> 00:46:49,639
lot lot faster, and they're so fast that they're faster

825
00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:52,480
than the capacity of organisms to evolve to adapt to

826
00:46:52,639 --> 00:46:56,400
these new conditions. So I think we're really facing some

827
00:46:56,559 --> 00:46:59,679
catastrophic change in the very near future, and we've already

828
00:46:59,679 --> 00:47:03,440
seen some catastrophic change. But at the same time, we've

829
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:07,159
seen all kinds of new adaptations by humans to try

830
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:10,679
to make things better for us and for the wildlife

831
00:47:10,719 --> 00:47:15,000
that we rely on. So, for instance, aquaculture the production

832
00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:20,639
of fish food for humans as opposed to extractive fisheries

833
00:47:20,679 --> 00:47:23,519
that are simply going out there and catching wild animals

834
00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:29,280
aquaculture productions surpassed wildcought fisheries in twenty fourteen, and that

835
00:47:29,599 --> 00:47:33,400
trend will never reverse again. So from now on, aquaculture

836
00:47:33,440 --> 00:47:37,280
will produce more food for humans than wildcot fisheries forever.

837
00:47:38,039 --> 00:47:40,119
And that's actually a good thing. That means that we're

838
00:47:40,159 --> 00:47:42,719
actually starting to take more responsibility for the production of

839
00:47:42,760 --> 00:47:45,039
seafood as opposed to simply going out there and taking

840
00:47:45,119 --> 00:47:45,519
what's there.

841
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:48,159
Speaker 4: Also, I see a.

842
00:47:48,159 --> 00:47:51,280
Speaker 7: Lot of hope in places like the Glopagos, places where

843
00:47:52,199 --> 00:47:55,000
I see school children that are, you know, five ten

844
00:47:55,119 --> 00:47:59,360
years old walking to school with backpacks where they've made

845
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:04,320
a little drying of a hammerhead shark or a manta ray,

846
00:48:05,119 --> 00:48:08,840
and you see murals decorating the walls all along the

847
00:48:09,000 --> 00:48:11,559
road saying, you know, let's take care of our oceans,

848
00:48:11,639 --> 00:48:14,320
let's take care of our resources. So there are places

849
00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:17,280
in the world where people are actively working to make

850
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:22,000
solutions and generate a different mentality with regard to our

851
00:48:22,079 --> 00:48:25,960
natural resources, one of stewardship, not one of extraction. So

852
00:48:26,079 --> 00:48:27,719
I do see a lot of hope for the future,

853
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:33,559
especially in our youth, and these new movements to place

854
00:48:33,639 --> 00:48:38,119
more value on intact ecosystems. Also from a scientific perspective.

855
00:48:38,119 --> 00:48:40,320
We're starting to understand a lot more about what makes

856
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:44,840
ecosystems tick, what's required for a healthy ecosystem. How can

857
00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:49,159
we utilize things like living shorelines, so the use of

858
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:54,559
organic materials like mangroves that are growing along shorelines as

859
00:48:54,599 --> 00:48:58,000
opposed to simply putting a concrete barrier there to protect

860
00:48:58,039 --> 00:49:02,199
things from storms. Starting to learn ways to work with

861
00:49:02,440 --> 00:49:06,440
nature as opposed to against nature, to address issues that

862
00:49:06,519 --> 00:49:09,119
are affecting all of us, things like coastal erosion.

863
00:49:09,199 --> 00:49:10,159
Speaker 4: And storm impacts.

864
00:49:10,519 --> 00:49:11,800
Speaker 7: So I do see a lot of hope for the

865
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:13,840
future in these new initiatives as well.

866
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:14,960
Speaker 4: It's good to hear.

867
00:49:15,199 --> 00:49:17,559
Speaker 2: Unfortunately we're out of time, but I definitely want to

868
00:49:17,559 --> 00:49:20,440
thank our guest doctor Robbie Lamb and our producer Mark

869
00:49:20,480 --> 00:49:23,920
Winner for making the show possible. So Robbie, any final

870
00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:26,880
words of wisdom for anyone interested in studying marine life

871
00:49:27,239 --> 00:49:29,440
and or who wants to help push things in the right.

872
00:49:29,360 --> 00:49:31,960
Speaker 4: Direction, well please stick with it. We need you.

873
00:49:32,760 --> 00:49:35,639
Speaker 7: We need good people working on solutions. We need good

874
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:39,519
scientists trying to better our understanding of how the world works.

875
00:49:40,559 --> 00:49:44,440
We need advocates for our oceans. We need storytellers and communicators.

876
00:49:45,679 --> 00:49:49,119
We need people out there doing positive stories, not just

877
00:49:49,239 --> 00:49:53,239
negative stories. But where are we finding victories, where are

878
00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:58,360
we seeing change in the right way. We really need

879
00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:00,559
to highlight those stories, because you can only get so

880
00:50:00,679 --> 00:50:03,559
far with these stories of doom and gloom. So I

881
00:50:03,679 --> 00:50:05,679
always like to end things on a positive note and

882
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:08,079
just say that I see a lot of a lot

883
00:50:08,119 --> 00:50:11,400
of potential for improving the way that we interact with

884
00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:14,079
our oceans and with our natural resources. And I really

885
00:50:14,159 --> 00:50:16,800
thank you as well, Roy for having me on your

886
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:19,519
show and for having this podcast in the first place,

887
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:22,920
which I think has really reached a large audience of

888
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:27,199
folks that are that much better informed about marine issues

889
00:50:27,239 --> 00:50:29,480
and aquarium issues. So thank you and thank you again

890
00:50:29,559 --> 00:50:30,000
for having.

891
00:50:29,920 --> 00:50:32,639
Speaker 2: Me No problem of pleasure. Please be sure to check

892
00:50:32,679 --> 00:50:35,000
out Robbie's weblinks, which will be found on as a

893
00:50:35,199 --> 00:50:38,480
Quarumina episode page. If you have any questions, comments, or

894
00:50:38,559 --> 00:50:41,480
ideas for a show, email me at doctor Roy at

895
00:50:41,519 --> 00:50:44,920
petlife Radio dot com. That's Dr ro o Y at

896
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:48,599
petlife radio dot com. Until next time, please visit your

897
00:50:48,639 --> 00:50:51,360
local quam stores and keep your tanks clean and your

898
00:50:51,400 --> 00:50:54,000
fish healthy, and do your part to help restore and

899
00:50:54,119 --> 00:50:57,599
foster our marine ecosystems, diversity and beauty for both the

900
00:50:57,639 --> 00:50:59,800
health of our planet and for future generations.

901
00:51:00,519 --> 00:51:05,119
Speaker 6: Let's Talk pets every week on demand only on petlive

902
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:06,400
radio dot com.