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Ologies with Alie Ward
Cnidariology (CORAL) Encore with Shayle Matsuda
01:21:59
Will changing your sunscreen save coral reefs? What even IS a coral? Where do they grow and what do they eat and why are they so pretty? Is it reefs or reeves? The wonderful and charming coral biologist and cnidariologist Shayle Matsuda takes time out of his busy schedule during a coral spawning event to chat about how magical and beautiful coral can be and why reef health is important. Also: whether or not "Finding Nemo" got coral right, making transitions during grad school, and how to pursue your ambitions while being bravely authentic. He'll quickly become your favorite cnidariologist.
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Guts are incredible. We've talked about them a lot on the show. It's working for you 24. 7. Doing a lot behind the scenes. When it's doing its job, it's quiet, which is great because a boring gut leaves more room for an interesting life. And they have these new culturel complete three in one biotics. They're mini chews you just easily pop in your mouth every day, no water needed. They help with occasional bloating and gas and let's just say, digestive discomfort. So culturel probiotics, the science of a boring gut. That Etsy website for details. Okay, so this one time I booked a vacation rental for my husband's entire family. And it wasn't until after the trip was over that they told me a few of the windows didn't open and one of the beds collapsed. I was on the wrong app. VRBO has a loved by guest search filter for their top rated vacation rentals with near perfect ratings for cleanliness and location and all the good stuff. So no surprises. What you see is exactly what you get. So search click done book today on the VRBO app. If you know you VRBO terms apply. See vrbo.com trust for details. Oh, hey, it's 2026. This is Allie. I'm in the American Southwest. I'm in New Mexico. This is my 49th out of 50 states I visited. You're thinking, which one's next? Which is the final one? West Virginia. I got a crayfish guy that I'm gonna go out there to see eventually. Anyway, I'm in New Mexico. I'm interviewing a skunk expert that I have been waiting to meet for over six years. I'm meeting him in about an hour. I'm wearing black and white striped socks. I'm so nervous, my palms are sweating. I knew I was getting married for about six months before I got married. Wedding day jitters. Now imagine six years of waiting to meet a skunk expert. Can you believe it? Imagine how I'm feeling. Nervous. I'm shaking. I hope I say the right thing. Jared's coming with me. We're gonna talk skunks. But because I'm in New Mexico, I'm hopping around. We are giving you this encore episode of one that I love, love, love. This was absolutely a joy to record. It was a beautiful setting, wonderful stories about fieldwork, personal stories. This one is just an absolute banger. So just get into it. Enjoy. Okay, so this episode was recorded in beautiful Hawaii. Ever heard of it? You're about to just get an earful of coral. But before I recorded it, honestly, I knew neither jack nor shit about coral. Now all I want to do is stare at videos of coral. Honestly, I used to just consider them to be like the really plucky kind of quirky settings of a snorkeling jaunt. Kind of like a. Like a splashy backdrop in a community theater play. Like, oh, that's nice, but you know what's happening in front of them. What kind of fish do we have? Au contraire. After this episode, you'll be like, move out of the way, fish. I'm staring at a polyp. And yeah, it's totally fun if you don't know what a polyp is. We will get to that. But first, thank you to all the folks that support the show at patreon.com ologies for as little as a dollar a month, you can submit questions. Also, thanks to everyone who buys and wears shirts and hats and such from ologiesmerch.com we have some new denim dad hats. If you need a new lid that says, I like weird facts, good intentions, and bad puns. It doesn't literally say that. I'm just saying that. It's like people will go, oh, that must be what you're into. Although that's not a bad idea for a hat. Stay tuned. Also, thank you to everyone who tells friends and co workers about the show and who rates and subscribes and leaves reviews, which, you know, I read. Okay, it's me again. 2026. This is a fresh review from a longtime listener, an elementary school teacher, senior Serena G. Who wrote that every one of your episodes inspires awe, even when it's a topic I didn't think I'd be interested in. Serena G. Let's get you some coral. Also, if anyone needs kids safe Ologies episodes. No swears. We now have smologies S M O L O G I E S. They're shorter G rated edits of classic episodes. They're out weekly for free. They're just in their own feed, so go to your podcast app and search smologies S M O L O G I S. There you go. Okay. Cnidariology. Totally a word. It's a well documented, legit term. It's a study of animals. There are over 10,000 species who have cnidocytes, which are these specialized cells for catching prey. And where does this lovely, silent, consonant, weird word come from? It looks like when your mom tries to weasel a fake term into a Words with Friends play and you're like, no, way Nancy, that's not enough vowels, but it comes from the Old Latin, which means a nettle. And it might also have ties to old Latvian and Lithuanian words meaning to itch and to tickle. So corals are cnidarians. They're underwater animals that poses these kind of beautiful plant looking things from Mars and they want to just tickle you to death. I'm already sold. I already love them. But let's hear more. So I was introduced to this ologist by your favorite toothologist, squid expert Sarah McAnulty. Sarah Makatac on Twitter. Follow her. Love her. And she invited me to tag along on a squidding trip to Hawaii, a research trip she was doing. A company called Atlas Obscura was facilitating it. They were awesome. They do wonderful science and history trips. It was a joy. Rachel, she led it. I love her. Anyway, one day the group got to take a little boat to Coconut island and the very island featured in the opening credits of Gilligan's Island. And this was once a weird getaway for Hollywood types, but now it's a research station where grad students tend to marine life. We spent the day looking at these gurgling outdoor tanks and watching a bay of hammerhead sharks strolling some beachy trails to stations with urchins and sea cucumbers and cowrie snails. They're all being monitored by these wonderful marine biologists there. This ologist got his bachelor's at UC Santa Cruz, double majoring in environmental studies and feminist studies, got his master's in biology and ecology, evolution and Conservation Biology in San Francisco, and is working toward his PhD right now at this famed Gates Lab at the University of Hawaii Manoa and the Hawaiian Institute of Marine Biology. The Gates Lab is a coral lab. This dude has his hands full. The coral were in the middle of a spawning event that very week. But he is amazing and took an hour out of his day to come to my hotel and chat about corals. I was waiting so excitedly in the lobby and I thought like he was maybe five or 10 minutes late, which is fine. But it turns out we were in the same lobby exactly on time, but just perfectly obscured by a pillar. So once we figured that out, it was all smooth sailing. We talked about what coral even is, why they're important, how he feels about diving, what a dead reef looks like, the state of some reefs around the world. If it's reef or reefs, perhaps the importance of balancing work with being your true self. Some advice for aspiring marine biologists. How screwed are coral? What movies get it right? What's up with sunscreens. What is bleaching? And what else can we do to help our hard squishy pals beneath the sea? So anchor down. Get ready for a wave of coral info with the amazing cnidariologist Shayl Matsuda. 09:59 shales. Due here at 10. I'm sitting by the pool. He has so little time. I'm just essentially gonna throw this microphone in his face and, like, start rolling before we even hit the elevators. Wait, were you behind the column? How long have you been here?
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B
Like, five or ten minutes.
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A
Oh, my God.
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B
Me too.
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A
Oh, my God. What doors.
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B
But I came in the other side.
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A
I was literally, like, 10ft away reading about microplastics and coral and wanting to cry.
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B
But, yeah, everything's awful.
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A
Here's my basis. And you are a cnidariologist.
- [08:13]
B
Did I say it right? Sure, I was thinking about that earlier. A coralologist, maybe.
- [08:19]
A
I mean, are corals cnidaria?
- [08:23]
B
Yeah, the cnidarians. Okay, Cnidarians, the phylum they're a part of. And what unites all of those animals is their stinging cells, their cnidocytes.
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A
Oh, that's the common thread. We must be related.
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B
Yeah. So like, anemones or jellyfish and corals all produce these little stinging cells that they use in defense of prey capture.
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A
I've already learned so much about corals. I didn't know that they got little stingies. And so what exactly is a coral?
- [08:53]
B
That's a great question that we think about all the time, actually. So corals are animals first and foremost, but the corals, when you think of a coral reef, corals, they're much more than, like, the sum of their parts. So the coral animal looks white, they have clear tissues, and they secrete a white calcium carbonate skeleton. But the reason that when you're snorkeling around a coral reef, they don't appear white to us is because they have symbiotic algae, which live inside their tissues that provide up to, like, 95% of their daily nutritional needs. And the algae's color themselves are what we're looking at when we see corals.
- [09:30]
A
Oh, my God.
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B
And just like you and me, corals also have a microbiome. They have bacteria that live inside of their tissues that also play a lot of really important roles.
- [09:40]
A
Okay, so to recap, corals are animals, and they often have a calcium carbonate white skeletal structure and a squishy skin bag that can be filled with colorful algae and bacteria pals that live under their skin and provide their nutrition. So if you pitch that creature and in a sci fi series, people would be like, no, that's too weird. What about just like a short, skinnier human with bigger eyes? And everyone would be like, yeah, yeah, that's more plausible. Now what is with them being a skin bag?
- [10:12]
B
This is. This is like the hardest question I know. It's like, oh, man. Like, we have a term for this. It's called the coral holobiont. And that is like the coral animal itself. It's symbiotic algae, it's bacteria, they're fungi, they're archaea. There are a lot of different obligate symbionts that these corals have that are critical for their life and function.
- [10:30]
A
So it's kind of like a skeleton, a soupy mix of goodness, and then like a little transparent skin over it.
- [10:38]
B
And the transparent skin is the animal itself. So if just like trees that grow in the forest, if you count their rings, you get an idea of how old they are. Corals actually work the same way where they are constantly secreting this calcium carbonate skeleton and growing. And researchers will actually take a core of that skeleton and you can actually count the different layers and get an idea of the age of the corals and also what was going on on the planet at the time.
- [11:03]
A
Oh, my gosh. Is it similar to trees in that there's a ring for every year of growth because of seasons, or is that different?
- [11:11]
B
It's kind of like seasons in the ocean. Different corals will grow at different rates. So kind of like different plants as well. In a nutshell, like as a coral begins to grow and keeps putting down these layers of calcium carbonate, we can use things like carbon dating to get an idea of, like, what was happening in the atmosphere and in the oceans at those times. And so it kind of. It gives us a geologic history of what was happening in these environments.
- [11:34]
A
Wow. So when you see, let's say, a coral out of the ocean and it's like a piece on a. Well, yeah, I know. Number one, it's not a happy coral. But when you see, like a decorative coral, are you seeing essentially just its skeleton?
- [11:51]
B
But when we say coral reef corals, they're a particular type of a group of corals that live in the shallow waters that have these algosymbionts that rely on photosynthesis to get their food. But corals are a really large group of organisms, and we have deep sea corals that don't have these symbioses that just feed heterotrophically by eating plankton. Or things in the water. And a lot of corals can have pigments, and their skeletons do have pigments of their own. And so black corals, you know, red corals, those things that you see in the stores, like, that's still the skeleton, but those are the organisms themselves, which we shouldn't pull out of the ocean,
- [12:29]
A
which we should leave in the ocean. Now, are those getting harvested just for decorative purposes?
- [12:35]
B
Yeah, very often. There's a lot of protections in different places about corals, but it's not everywhere.
- [12:43]
A
Okay. So side note, some figures have estimated upwards of $200 million annually worth of coral is poached from the oceans for things like jewelry and decor. And in some place, just taking a coral skeleton bit from the beach is illegal. So if you're gonna get arrested on a beach, do something else. Have a better story, you know, so maybe don't have coral decorations.
- [13:06]
B
Yeah, okay. You know, but what you can have is that we're, you know, with technology increases, where we're doing a lot of work with like 3D imaging and you can like go home or go to a museum or, you know, tech place and get a coral printed and put that in your house.
- [13:22]
A
Yes. You can admire them in a way that's a replic.
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B
Yeah, absolutely.
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A
That makes sense.
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B
This is beautiful, right?
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A
You can, I'm sure you can even cast them and pour a little plaster of paris in there.
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B
Exactly.
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A
We fixed it. Psds. I did look it up. And there are hollow coral shaped molds. You can pour plaster or paris in them. And it just. It seems more convenient than getting yourself to an ocean and then out of jail. And now, how long have you been studying corals?
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B
I've been studying corals formally for four years during this degree, but I've been interested in corals for much longer. And I've studied corals as a volunteer researcher at the California Academy of Sciences on expeditions, and volunteer expeditions actually kind of like Alice Obscura as a younger person.
- [14:15]
A
And were you always maybe drawn to the sea? Were you always like an aquatic person?
- [14:21]
B
That's a good question too. So I grew up just outside of Chicago, where even though I felt like I was growing up in a body of water like Michigan, it's not a marine environment, it's freshwater environment. So it looks like I wasn't growing up swimming on coral reefs. But for me, looking back, my first taste of the ocean was growing up and going to the Shedd Aquarium and seeing all the exhibits there. And I think that's a really common thread that you hear For a lot of us who pursue degrees in marine biology that most of us in the United States aren't lucky enough to grow up on a coral reef. And so a lot of our first exposures to this, especially those of us before the YouTube era and whatnot, was going to our local aquariums and really seeing these organisms that you don't even read about in the ocean.
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A
If you're wondering where are Corals, I asked corals.org and it said essentially, around the equator, plus where currents flow out of the tropics, like in Florida and southern Japan, it's a little bit warmer. They make up 0.2% of the ocean floor. But they're home to this blew my mind. 25% of marine life. What? So if sea animals were, like, the cool kids, the coral reefs would be like the mall. If this were a movie from the 80s. And so was there a moment, like, at the aquarium where you thought, I would love to do that in life.
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B
It's an interesting. I'm gonna give you my journey story, and you can, like, hack this up however you want to.
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A
I love a journey story.
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B
It's a journey story.
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A
Okay, let's get to know Shayl's science background. Settle in.
- [15:54]
B
So I had one of those moments where, like, I. I was always drawn to nature, to being outside and playing outside. I was a very, like, I was not a video game kid. I was a wanted to get muddy kid. But when I got to college, I kind of went a different science route. I studied water policy and sustainable organic farming, and that was something that I was really into and really excited about. And I never. I just. Like, marine biology wasn't, like, something I thought I could really do, and I ended up actually pursuing a different path. I had a dual degree in environmental science and women's studies, and I kind of went the second route and just kind of worked with youth in nature, in underserved, underserved communities. And I kind of got to this point my little bit later. 20s, I decided to quit my job and move out of my house, sell all my stuff and travel and figure that out. Something that happened for me on that trip was I finally decided to learn to scuba dive. I'm a really claustrophobic person, so I kind of put that off for a while. And I really explicitly remember that first time I descended into the water, and this was in Thailand. And I remember, like, being so overwhelmed with how beautiful all the corals were and how this environment, like, different than just snorkeling, just, like, opened up in A really three dimensional dynamic way. And then I also remember seeing a lot of garbage on the reef too. And so I was having a lot of. I was having these like, you know, push, pull moments of being like, so overwhelmed with the beauty around me and so curious about, you know, what these animals were like, what, you know, what is this environment that I'm in. And I want like looking at everything, but also being really struck by how polluted it was as well.
- [17:40]
A
Yeah.
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From there basically went. I wanted to make sure that was the right choice. And so I applied to sitting these little Internet cafes, like applying to these like coral reef monitoring like volunteer ships just to like learn a little bit more, make sure this is the like big life switch I was ready to make. And I joined one that was in the Yucatan in Mexico. I went out and lived for three months and learned to identify all the species of coral out there. And we participated in monitoring transects that were then used by local NGOs to compare the protected sites that they had gotten protection for versus the sites that weren't. And so that experience really kind of solidified that I moved back to San Francisco. I went to City College to make up on some coursework that I hadn't done the first time. I was volunteering as a diver at an aquarium to get more hands on experience. Started volunteering in a research lab at the California Academy of Sciences. And then I was bartending to pay the bills. And then from there I realized that, you know, being, being at a museum was such an exciting place because you've got researchers studying everything, right? You've got that, you've got tourists and like community folks from the neighborhood who are like right upstairs that you can just go upstairs and talk to about like all the really cool things that we're working on. And then moving on, you know, from there to my, to my PhD where I am now was, you know, I was at that point I was like pretty much sold.
- [19:03]
A
So I have never been yet snorkeling in an alive reef.
- [19:07]
B
Oh, you gotta do that.
- [19:09]
A
What is that like? I mean, you do that for your job and also as a passion. Like what is it like to be underwater like that?
- [19:18]
B
It's so beautiful. Yeah, it's so beautiful. Corals come in like all shapes and sizes and just like, you know, you have your favorite city or your favorite, you know, nature trail you like to walk on. Every reef is gonna be a little bit different. They have huge structures and these corals will have these, you know, these big branching corals. You just Look a little closer, and you see they're. They're homes to all these different kinds of animals. Like, the more, you know, the more structure you have in your. In the ecosystem, the more different types of organisms you're gonna see when you're down there. And it's. It's just. It's. It's so exciting. Like, there's so much to see. And, you know, you'll see your turtle and your shark every once in a while, which is really exciting. But for me, it's like, kind of just like swimming up to one kind of coral and just, like, staring at it for a while. And then things will start to come out. You'll see, like, crabs that live inside the coral. You'll see, you know, snapping shrimp. Sometimes you'll see eels or octopus. And just, like, you just. It is like. It's like you can think of it almost like a, you know, a metropolis in the ocean and full of a diverse cast of players.
- [20:22]
A
When you're doing research, is it ever difficult for you to say, okay, all right, Shel, we're done. We're get out of the water? Are you, like, one more thing?
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B
Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, and sometimes you forget, like, there have been times when I, you know, since I work on corals and I'm working on an experiment right now where I'm focusing on individual coral colonies, I can be, like, upside down in the reef for, like, an hour at a time just staring at this one coral. And then we'll come to the surface, and people be like, oh, did you see that shark that went by before? And I'll be like, what are you talking about? You know, so it's always still really nice to go out when you're not working and just really appreciate, you know, how lucky we are to be able to see these environments. You know, I've worked with researchers who, you know, I'll go to a coral reef and I'll say, this is beautiful. Look at all the diversity here. And they'll be like, you should have seen it 20 years ago. Because we're seeing these changes at such a rapid pace that we're witnessing them in our lifetimes. And that's. That's new.
- [21:10]
A
Yeah. So what is Shale working on in terms of protecting these bony, soupy, squishy, mysterious, gorgeous little critters?
- [21:19]
B
What we're working on, like, our lab group is working on is, you know, really a whole wide range of questions, but we're really curious about, you know, what's gonna happen to corals under these Future climate conditions. And what can we do to intervene to give them a better chance of surviving? I'm trying to say if I want to go like broad or like my
- [21:35]
A
stuff, actually let's go broad a little bit. Just cause people don't know shit about corals.
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B
That's true, people don't. But they're the coolest animals I know. Yeah. So corals are all. Coral species are all really, really different. That's something that makes them super exciting and interesting, but makes it also a lot harder to come up with strategies to help them survive because they reproduce differently. Some will brood, releasing coral larvae into the water. Some will spawn, releasing coral gametes, eggs and sperm into the water. Some are large and they grow in these really big shapes. Some are very small, even single polyped corals. And they have very different life strategies. They're so different. They associate with different types of these symbionts. And so what we're really interested in is doing is seeing if are there types of interventions that we can kind of scale up that managers and conservationists all around the world who work with these different corals and these different coral reef environments that are all widely different can use or can use as signals for what might happen in the future or to use to kind of help those corals that are, that are out there survive. Some of the stuff that we're working on in the lab is looking at like can we expose corals to non lethal stressors to condition them to then be put out in the reef? And if they experience these higher temperatures downstream, will that initial exposure help them survive?
- [23:06]
A
What is coral bleaching? You're asking? I get it. We're going to explain that in a second. Don't worry, I got you.
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B
And with coral bleaching, what's really hard about that is it's, it's this whole balance of how hot and for how long. So if there's like a really short high temperature spike, how does that affect these organisms versus if this is more of a prolonged only a degree or two above that thermal maximum that they have, how does that affect if they're gonna bleach, the severity of that bleaching and then also their ability to recover afterwards. So we haven't really talked about what coral bleaching is.
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A
Yeah, I know. Next question.
- [23:43]
B
I was like, okay, that probably doesn't make any sense yet. So corals have these symbiotic algae that are obligate. That means they're required for the corals to live. They provide up to 95% of their daily nutritional needs. Everything. When the temperatures are good, everything is happy. The corals get what they need, the symbionts get what they need. But when the water temperature rises, like I said, just even slightly above that thermal maximum that the corals can handle, the corals are starting to stress out. I'm freaking out. And one of their stress responses is to expel these algae. So kind of how when we get sick, we'll get a fever, and that's good. It's our body's way of helping protect us. But if that fever gets too high or goes on for too long, that can actually be detrimental to us. And the same thing's true with coral bleaching. So as the corals are purging out these algal symbionts, it's not just all the time. Like, you'll see, you can watch a coral start to pale, losing its color, right? Because as the symbionts leave that white skeleton showing through, and then as that's happening, the longer it goes on, the corals aren't getting the energy and they can begin to starve.
- [24:54]
A
Okay, so under temperature stressors, corals toss their internal friends and they bleach because they lose that color. So they're not dead, but they're certainly weaker and they're in danger. It is not cute.
- [25:06]
B
And what you'll see is if you go out into a coral reef when this is happening, if you see these corals that are white, you're seeing that skeleton through the tissue, but the tissue's still there. The corals are still alive. And if that stressor leaves, the corals have a chance to recover. Those symbiont communities can proliferate again in the corals. They'll repigment and be okay. But if that stressor goes on too long, the corals can die. And we've seen this happen on massive scales on a reef. And once the corals die, you'll start to see macro algae growing on top of them. And that's when you know, the structure of the reef environment will then start to really break down. And also, some corals aren't bleaching. Some individuals, like in Kanye bay, during the 2014 and 2015 bleaching events that we had, there would be two corals, the exact same species, right next to each other, like, touching on the reef, and one of them would be bleached and one of them would be visibly totally normal. And so we're really trying to understand what is it about that coral's genetic makeup. Or symbiont communities, that is allowing these corals to perform a lot better.
- [26:11]
A
And so when you're looking at, say, two different examples of coral next to each other, are those different individuals genetically, or are those different groups of a bunch of individuals? When you're looking at a fan of coral, how many people are you looking at that are coral?
- [26:27]
B
Yeah, it's a good question. So a coral colony is a coral. You can think of a coral of itself as a coral polyp.
- [26:33]
A
What is a polyp? Well, it's a squishy little bugger with a feathery head, and it secretes calcium carbonate at its base to anchor it on a surface, kind of like a cup holder filled with one of those gas station wind sock dancers, only made out of Jell O salad. Also, as long as this train has toot toot made a stop into polypville. It comes from the words poly, many, and p, meaning foot, so polyp. And in old Latin, it meant cuttlefish. I personally tend to associate polyps with bad news about colons. And that's because a polyp is a little intestinal dingle dangle that can grow, and if not checked, it can turn into a tumor. So get checked. Okay, let's get out of our butts and back into the ocean, though. What is a polyp in the ocean?
- [27:18]
B
So you look a little mouth, kind of like if you took an anemone that kind of structure, mouth in the middle, tentacles on the outside. And as a coral grows, it buds off and creates a genetically identical polyp. And as those polyps continue to multiply and spread and grow, you've got a coral colony that is made up of polyps that are all one genetic individual.
- [27:39]
A
Do you think that that's all the same person, or do you think it's a person and a bunch of clones?
- [27:43]
B
Yes, that's a hard question.
- [27:45]
A
I understand that a coral is not a person too, but do you know what I mean?
- [27:48]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And that's. That's a hard question. And actually, people in the lab are looking at that too. Like, at what life stage are corals able to fuse together and share resources or not? Do some species do this more than others? So there's. That's definitely a really good question.
- [28:03]
A
Okay, good.
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B
But we don't totally know the answer to that. You can't just, like, look at one and be like, that's three or four genetic, like, genetically distinct individuals. It's like we're literally the same person. Sometimes when they do grow up next to each other. You can see kind of like a scar between colonies where one individual ends and the next one begins. But we're also like, we're also seeing evidence of fusion.
- [28:27]
A
And how much do you think research has changed in the last five or 10 years with DNA sequencing and how much cheaper and faster that's gotten?
- [28:36]
B
So much.
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A
Yeah, that's cool.
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B
I mean, it's a really exciting time to be a biologist right now and asking questions that we couldn't afford to ask before, didn't have the technology to ask before on these really large scales.
- [28:48]
A
And now what about their stinkiness, their little stinger stingers. Stinger stingers. How is that helping them survive or thwart predators or are there predators to coral other than just humans?
- [29:04]
B
Our mantles. Yeah. So corals don't have a lot of predators. There's a lot of fish that will, like, you've probably heard of parrot fish that will try to eat the macro algae around coral. Sometimes they will nibble the coral too, but for the most part, there's not a lot of animals coming towards them to eat them in that sense. They use their stinging cells a lot to, in prey capture. So if you see, if you like, stare at a coral long enough under the scope and you know, if your piece of plankton swims up, you'll, you'll see it almost like kind of like a, you know, Venus slide trap. You'll see the, the plankton get stuck to the coral tentacles and then the coral tentacles will pull it into its mouth and suck it in and digest it. It's really neat to watch, but those, the stinging cells, if you touch a coral, which you shouldn't do, it will try to sting you too, but our skin is too thick. But other animals, like Portuguese man of War, for example, there are stinging cells that can affect us too. But corals are pretty safe. Don't touch them.
- [30:08]
A
Shale says that one thing that changed in his academic lifetime is that gene sequencing technology has improved vastly. So they're able to get hundreds, thousands, millions of reads. Getting a much better idea of what bacterial communities associate with corals. Just imagine your haircut six or seven years ago. Like, yikes, right? Just imagine what gene sequencing thinks of its TBDs. So embarrassing.
- [30:34]
B
And what this will do is I can go out there and take a really small tissue sample, extract the DNA, sequence the DNA, get back like, you know, 10, 20,000 reads of all these different organisms that we were able to amplify. And from that I can see, you know, who is there, who's there. Who is it? Get an idea of like, what the, what are the functions of these organisms and like, how important might that be to the health and survival of a coral? A lot of the bacteria, like, you know, bacteria have different, different roles like in us, like your skin bacteria is gonna be different than your gut bacteria. You don't want those to mix. And like, corals have bacteria that, you know, help in like defense and nutrient cycling and things like that. So we're interested in like, what, what those are doing there. We can get a way better idea of what's going on now than we could, you know, 10, 15 years ago.
- [31:21]
A
Warning. Bummer question, bummer question ahead. And what do you think is the biggest coral bummer for the coral? Would it be a rise in temperature or ocean acidification, pollution? Like, is there, what's their biggest, what's their big sad trombone?
- [31:41]
B
So corals are dealing with a lot of threats right now, the biggest one being the impacts of climate change. And we're seeing this on reefs today in the form of sea surface temperature warming and ocean acidification, as you mentioned. And why this is so bad is that we're seeing an increase even in our lifetimes of these massive coral bleaching events worldwide. And coral bleaching event can wipe out entire reef ecosystems in like one season. We're seeing them not only, you know, it's not just like a one off anymore. And here in Hawaii we've had, we had the events in 2014, again in 2015. The Great Barrier Reef has also experienced these successive events. And so while, you know, we're seeing corals that are able to survive one round of this warming and recover, it's like you keep on hitting them. What is that affecting? Like, we've got research groups at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology who are looking at like, how does, how does the reproduction production affected by these events? Like, are we going to see a lot more downstream things that are happening? And you add things like the local stressors like overfishing or sedimentation and pollution runoff from a lot of the local environments that are there. Those are kind of the added pressures that corals are facing. And it is so good, it is so good and so important to mitigate some of these local stressors, right? Like, you know, diverting pollution and sedimentation. Really important. Like a coral can't live if it's covered in sediment.
- [33:13]
A
Okay, quick aside. What is up with sediments? Well, apparently it's been long known that sediments and coral, they are not happy roommates. Sailors would know that they could enter a freshwater river because that's when the reefs would stop because the sediment in their outflows would kill the coral. So why can't coral deal with a little river dust or erosion or storms caused by weather events or, say, tsunamis? So in a paper titled Mechanisms of Damage to Corals Exposed to Sedimentation, researchers say that sediment blocks sunlight, which means that their photosynthetic inner algae buddies get blocked. So there goes their nutrient and energy source. Now, if there's also organic material in the sediment, it tends to hog all the nearby oxygen in the water. And then those byproducts lower the ph, and then other organic compounds in the sediment get digested. They release toxic hydrogen sulfide. So the sediment covered coral can die in 24 hours. It can happen really quickly. Okay, so even though coral is an animal, just like imagine a favorite houseplant, and then imagine coating it in heavy spray paint and dipping it in an acid bath and then pumping poison in the room. Your plant would be like, wow, can you not?
- [34:30]
B
The most important thing that we need to address if we want corals in the future is climate change.
- [34:36]
A
And why are coral reefs important? Also? Is it reefs or is it reefs? Is it reefs? I always want to say, like Reeves. Like roofs or like hooves.
- [34:48]
B
I like that. I haven't heard that, actually.
- [34:51]
A
I always want to say Reeves. And I know that's not graves. Okay. Like, you know, like.
- [34:55]
B
Like multiple Reeves. Okay.
- [34:57]
A
You know foots or feet.
- [34:59]
B
Ah, fair. I don't know, but it Reeves. Okay.
- [35:02]
A
I've asked an expert, and it's not Reeves. Listen, if elves had hooves, the second halves of their lives, would they be tall enough to reach the shelves? Would they kept their knives to cut up loaves of bread? Or would their wives have to put down the scarves they're knitting to get them themselves? I can't believe it's not Reeves. So why are reefs important? Why do we want to save the reefs other than they're fucking gorgeous and awesome and fish live there, but clearly they are important.
- [35:30]
B
Yeah, they're. Yes to all of that. Yeah, they're really important. And they're really important for a lot of different reasons that are really personal to many people, but also then on a community and national, international scale as well. So having a coral reef environment is. They're one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world. They're a bank for biodiversity. And within that, the coral reefs themselves are the breeding grounds and homes for tons of marine life. We've got animals that will come in from the Deeper oceans to breed fish is a really important food resource for a lot of coastal communities. It's their main source of protein. Main source of protein for many people in the world. And the reef environment is where a lot of those larger game fish reproduce and come back to coral reefs. And a lot of our coastal ecosystems are really important for mitigating coastal damage. So you've got. They. They absorb a lot of that, you know, wave action, that wave power that's coming in. We've all seen really awful things that have been happening in a lot of our coastal communities around the world because of, you know, flooding and coastline erosion and things like that.
- [36:49]
A
Shale stresses that he doesn't like to focus too much on the potential pharmaceutical benefits of nature because there are other intrinsic reasons for conservation.
- [36:58]
B
But, you know, a big something that we are learning more and more about the ocean in general is that there's a lot of these chemicals out there that can be used to help humans. And so for me, like, one of the most exciting moments that I had actually during my master's degree, I studied sea slugs. Needle ranks. During that time was I was, like, in my advisor's office looking through some old papers, and I found this paper where one of the. So the slugs that I study, really cool animals, they will eat things like sponges or different organisms that produce these toxic chemical compounds, and they will slightly alter them when they eat them, and they'll put them in their own tissues and use them to fend off their own predators. Really cool.
- [37:39]
A
I did a little digging, and for more information on this, you might want to dip into just a light beach read entitled Selective Toxicity of a Persian Gulf Sea Cucumber on Human Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia by B lymphocytes by Direct Mitochondrial targeting. Okay, spoiler alert. I'm going to let Shail tell you the plot of the paper.
- [38:00]
B
But these toxins that are, like, antimicrobial, antiviral also can be used in medical, biomedical research that it benefits humans. And so I'm, like, looking through this box of papers and found this paper, and I'm like, oh, my gosh. I, like, call my mom, right? And I'm like, on the phone with my mom, and I'm like, mom, like, guess what? Like, there's this nudibranch that they're studying that they're using to see if they can treat the adult form of cancer that I had as a kid, which is, like, mind blowing to me. Wait, what? Like, this organism that I, like, didn't think I was gonna study, and I don't study pharmaceutical things or anything like that, but just that, like, this kind of a group of animals that I didn't know much about before could actually have such, like, a personal impact on me. And there's, like, tons of things out there that we haven't discovered yet.
- [38:46]
A
Oh, my God.
- [38:47]
B
What kind of cancer was that? Childhood leukemia. Oh, my God. It's wild, right? So it's like, I was like, this all came full circle, but it's those kind of moments where they're, you know, the reasons to protect coral reefs. We might not even know all the reasons yet. Right. And are we going to lose these opportunities because of, like, you know, it's not because we don't know better, but it's because, like, we're not ready. Politicians aren't ready. It's not for a lack of science. I should say that we're not making these big changes, But I'm hopeful that we're getting there, we're getting in the right direction.
- [39:25]
A
Do you think having had that experience with cancer as a kid changed the way you approached what you wanted to do in life and at all, or.
- [39:34]
B
Yeah, not in the way you'd expect. Like, everyone thought I was gonna grow up and want to be a doctor.
- [39:38]
A
Right.
- [39:38]
B
That's like a really typical narrative that people ascribe to childhood cancer survivors. For me, what was hard or I think the way that it affected me the most in my personality is that I, from a very early age, didn't have this idea of, like, all the time in the world. I was like, if I want to do something, I have to do it now. And so I was, from a very early age, I was very, you know, for better or for worse, like, everything that I want to happen has to happen now. So it resulted in me being a very driven human being. But then at the same time, it also, you know, causes a lot of anxiety, too, and pressure. And I think that it got me really curious about science, about answering questions, and about the fact that, you know, like, oh, man, this story, too. So leukemia is a really interesting thing because for, like, you know, centuries or whatnot of studying this thing, we didn't know what caused it. And there's been a lot of hypotheses out there that have talked about, you know, it's going to be like an environmental thing, whatnot. And it was only. It was very recently that a paper came out with, like, this new hypothesis that it was. It's kind of like a combination of things. It's like A genetic thing, like a genetic predisposition. And then also the hypothesis is that babies who are not exposed to the right bacteria in their first year of life were more prone to this. Oh, my God. And so that was super interesting because a lot of bacteria is another really big thing. In my research today. There's a lot of work going on with coral probiotics. I'm studying what bacteria is there other groups are working on? Can we take the bacteria that we know is helping corals survive and inoculate them with that at an early age, and then will that help them down the line? So this whole idea that, you know, maybe we could prevent childhood leukemia by creating a probiotic cocktail for babies, and then all of a sudden like, can we solve, you know, or help mitigate, you know, coral diseases by also creating like a probiotic? Like, there's the amount of knowledge we're gaining about bacteria just in general right now has just been like a huge, a huge driver for knowledge.
- [41:47]
A
Right. And the notion that it's, it's not just one necessarily species you're studying, but its interaction with several species that almost makes it able to survive and adapt. Shale says that some corals even need both bacteria and certain viruses present to survive these thermal events. So the symbiotic connections go deep, they get complicated. Kind of like a group of adults who've been friends since college, just like a girl's weekend without Steph thinks that a coral party just aren't the same. Without both bacteria and viruses, the ocean
- [42:20]
B
is full of different things. And, you know, we're looking at like a lot of these, like, interactions, like how many partners need to be in play to get this result or to prevent something from happening. It's just a, it's a really exciting time to be studying, like, all of this stuff.
- [42:32]
A
So home to 25% of the world's marine species potentially home to a cure for cancer. Weird, interesting alien, like live sculptures full of other beings. And also, also our new friend coral is just plain really pretty and nice to look at. So there's that factor, Shale explains.
- [42:53]
B
And they're also, you know, really important for tourism in the economy. And that's also a really great way to kind of switch our way that we think about, like our economy. Instead of extracting from the reef and damaging the reef, we can actually like, do, you know, eco friendly tourism, bring people, educate people to see the reef. And, you know, it's hard to find an appreciation for something that you have never seen before. You know, we can all kind of relate to that. And we all have those moments where, like, you know, you saw something for the first time. Even, you know, any, any place in nature, like, we can have those kind of moments. But I think that's really important also. And especially like here in Hawaii, the coral reef ecosystems are incredibly important culturally. And there's a lot of history, there's a lot of stories, a lot of history wrapped up in these ecosystems. And it's, you know, there's a lot of reasons to protect them.
- [43:57]
A
And with 85% of the US coral reefs surrounding Hawaii, there's also a really big cultural necessity of protecting and preserving those ecosystems. And there's a piece called Pukamai Hekaua, the Significance of Corals in Hawaiian Culture. And it's featured in the book Ethnobiology of Corals and Coral Reefs with an F. Reefs Fine. And the lead author of it, Tony McConney. Greg writes, quote, hawaiian people consider coral to be an akua, something that provides birth and death to both the people and the islands and possesses much mana, which is the essence of spirituality. Corals are considered the beginning of life and are thus the most ancient ancestors of all living things in Hawaii. And that's something that Shale seems to approach with a lot of reverence. He seems to have a lot of empathy, which may be from feeling conscious of ping ponging between a few science subjects before he landed on reefs. But also he plays through grad school with challenges that most of us don't face.
- [44:57]
B
Not only did I not have a, you know, a direct, like, go to undergraduate, go to your master's, or go straight to your PhD kind of experience, but I'd experienced also a lot of the obstacles and challenges that, you know, folks who don't typically see themselves in science face as well. And that's not something that you would necessarily get from looking at me today. And for me, I experienced a lot of sexism when I was younger, so I didn't transition until I was, just until I was in my master's program. And so I had the experience of being a woman in science for, like, my entire coming into science. And, you know, in high school, I was put on, like, the, not the honor science track and took me a while to realize that this is something that happened. Those experiences in particular, like, really came to, to head for me when I showed up at my PhD program, like, well into my medical transition, and all of a sudden had access to, like, conversations in space where people really kind of let you know what they really think in ways that I didn't before. And those, you know, it's. It has been a very interesting experience to see on the other side. You know, really a lot of the things that I thought were happening, you know, the old ways of thinking and kind of the gatekeepers for a lot of opportunities in STEM from. From this point of view. And so I think that like, the taking a longer time in your journey is something that's very typical for folks, you know, from many underrepresented backgrounds in the sciences, especially after decades, centuries of, you know, being excluded not only from science careers, but also like, you know, science research. Yeah, the medical industry is a great example of that.
- [46:55]
A
Yes. P.S. side note, I had heard that women weren't included in some medical research trials, but I didn't know how big a deal or how recent this was. Like cell phones existed by the time a law called the National Institutes of Health Revitalization act of 1993 passed, stating that the Director of NIH shall ensure that A women are included as subjects in each project of such research and that B, members of minority groups are included in such research. A 2016 article in Pharmacy Practice said that when studying diseases prevalent in both sexes, males frequently of the Caucasian race were considered to be the norm study population. And that was a direct quote from a journal article there. But psychological heads up. I didn't know this until this past year, but the word Caucasian has super racist origins. It's no longer widely used. So scrap that white works. And nearly 20 years ago, the Institute of Medicine clarified and made a really important distinction between sex and gender, gender being the self representation, social and cultural views of sex. So if anyone ever tells you that they know your gender based on your body, tell them that science says that is hogwash. Thank you very much. Also, Shail says that having a mentor you trust and respect is so important. He had situations that called for allies like preparing for field work in countries where certain identities could put you at risk or navigating passport issues. Just things that some of us might
- [48:29]
B
really take for granted because it's really hard to be alone and struggling. I'd say for me, the hardest things have been, you know, personal in this journey as opposed to like, you know, science is hard. But I have lots of people to talk to about my experiments. And so like, I think that like, you know, besides all the, like, systemic things that we need to do to help make STEM actually more inclusive, we need to find our communities and like, lift each other up in that sense.
- [49:05]
A
Do you find that maybe underrepresented folks tend to Have a little bit more imposter syndrome.
- [49:12]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, imposter syndrome. Yeah. Yes, definitely. And sometimes you see it, like, it's very obvious. You're like, oh, I know. You walk into a room and I feel like every person of color, probably every woman, probably every LGBTQ person, when you walk into a room, whether it's a new class or a conference, you kind of look around the room and you look for your allies.
- [49:34]
A
Totally fine. I just got my back here.
- [49:36]
B
And I think that, you know, so, like, there's these. Imposter syndrome is never, like, it's a standalone feeling. You know, it's. It's built up over, you know, over so much that's going on in the world. Like, do you. Are there people like you that you have as role models? Do you see people? Are your. Are the interests of your communities being addressed in, like, societal science?
- [50:01]
A
Did you end up at a lab that you felt you had a little bit more community? And also you work on Coconut island, which is a beautiful place in Hawaii. I mean, it's also this little isolated pocket of marine science. How did you end up there? And what was your feeling when you found out you'd be researching there?
- [50:25]
B
That's a good question. So I only actually applied to one program. You did for my PhD.
- [50:29]
A
That's great.
- [50:30]
B
And 100%. I applied because I wanted to work with Dr. Ruth Gates, who's an excellent coral biologist and also someone who really valued science communication and connecting to communities and the public and inspiring people to care so deeply about reefs. And those are two things that were very, very important to me. I also really wanted. It was very important to me to work in a large collaborative lab where there's a lot of. Yeah, collaborative work and a lot of sharing of ideas and support, and also in a place where I would feel safe. And safe means, you know, access to safe health care, finding, you know, community on the islands, university, or a place that actually has, you know, anti discrimination policies in place. There's a lot of places that don't have a lot of friends who are part of universities that, you know, are in places that you can be thrown in jail for using the wrong. Restroom. Wrong. Right quotes. And we've seen a lot of actually some really great response around that from the scientific community, canceling conferences and areas that are putting up these really discriminatory policies and things like that. And that's wonderful. The UC system has done a lot of actually great work in that sense by saying we're not funding travel to these places.
- [51:49]
A
One professional mentor who meant so much to Shale was Dr. Ruth Gates of the Gates Coral Lab he's at now. And she was a veteran coral biologist. She apparently had such a zeal for her work. She passed away just this past October at age 56 of cancer. And when we went and toured the labs in Hawaii, Ruth's name was brought up a lot. And you can tell that she's dearly, dearly missed. But it seems like he ended up in the right place. Oh, and also before Patreon questions, it's a big day for you because they started spawning last night.
- [52:22]
B
What? Oh, that's funny. I was like. Cause it's pride.
- [52:24]
A
Well, oh yeah, happy pride
- [52:28]
B
they did.
- [52:29]
A
But spawn, it's spawn a palooza right now.
- [52:31]
B
It is, it is. So something really amazing about corals. There's not enough amazing stuff is coral spawning events. And so corals, right, you're a sedentary animal, you're not moving around to find your mates. You're in the ocean. How are you going to reproduce, you know, besides fragmenting off? And so the way it works is it's this combination of cues. It's the moon cycle from the moon looking back at the planet, moon from the planet.
- [52:55]
A
Isn't the moon a star?
- [52:56]
B
It's the temperature, it's like the pressure in the environment that will all come together and cue the corals to release their gametes into the water column. And for the coral species that we study, the rice coral, Montipra capitata out here in the lab, they spawn two to three months during the summer on the night of the new moon and a few nights after. And if you're lucky enough to be out in the bay, you kind of peer over at around 8:45pm and you'll start to see these little cream colored bundles slowly floating to the surface of the water like the size of a pinhead. You were so little and on a really big night, the entire surface will be just like covered in these little white dots. After about like half an hour, the wave action will cause them to burst. Their little tiny eggs inside will float and the sperm will start to sink. And in the next day or so there will be swimming coral larvae, these little itty bitty jelly beans. And then those larvae will then, you know, swim around and look for some suitable substrate to metamorphose into the first polyp which will hopefully grow into to many to form the next colony. We didn't get a lot of spawning in June. Usually we see it like June, July, August. And since we didn't see a lot in June. We thought, you know, maybe this will be our big month. And so going out of last night, we decided just to, like, take a quick look on the bay, see what we saw. And it was a pretty big event. So. So that kind of being a coral biologist, you have to be kind of ready to respond to whatever's going to happen. So we've kind of changed our plans and we'll go out and see what we can do. And this is a great time for us because a lot of the questions we have about early life stages we can only ask during the summer months. And so right now, this is a really exciting way for us to get a lot of genetic diversity and to run some of these preconditioning tests to see if you cool them down, if you heat them up, what it's that gonna do to their settlement or survivorship.
- [54:47]
A
So you can kind of scoop up and run them in tubs and in the lab and see how they respond best?
- [54:53]
B
Yeah, yeah. The technology that we use, you know, for like DNA sequencing is like one end of the spectrum. And then on the ground in the lab is very like diy, you know, grab some buckets. We make these big scoops out of like, like these, like plastic shoe boxes where you cut, like windows and hot glue on mesh. Kind of use those to scoop out the bundles, carefully put them into, like, little containers where they do the fertilization. And then oftentimes we'll even just leave them to sit overnight in buckets and see, you know, and then carefully clean them out the next morning. But a lot of our tools are stuff that we have to kind of just come up with on the fly to use. They don't sell coral spotting supply kits.
- [55:37]
A
There's a lot of Home Depot five gallon buckets.
- [55:39]
B
Yeah, lots of buckets everywhere. Many lab. Yeah, absolutely.
- [55:42]
A
Oh, my God. Shale wrote a blog post last June about coral spawning. And in it he describes setting out on the night of the new moon with life jackets and a first aid kit and headlamps. They use red lights so they don't interfere with any lunar cues for the coral. And they have as many two and a half gallon buckets as will fit on the floor of a small whaler boat. And he says in it, our tools are not glamorous, but they get the job done. And there are photos of these milky trails of coral bundles popping to release eggs into the water, and a glimpse what field research looks like. So for more of that, I'm going to link the post in the Show Notes and on my website. Now we're about to ask your Patreon questions, but before we do, a few words from sponsors of the show. These sponsors make it possible for Ologies to donate to a charity of each ologist's choosing, and this week she'll pick two. The first one is Pepe Ohei. It's a private nonprofit organization caring for an ancient Hawaiian fish pond located on Oahu, and its vision is to perpetuate a foundation of cultural sustainability and to provide intellectual and physical and spiritual sustenance for their community. This fishpond serves as a place of learning to weave ancestral knowledge together with Western ways of knowing to achieve their goals. And a second donation went to Point foundation and PointFoundation.org is the nation's largest scholarship granting organization for LGBTQ students of merit and Point promotes change through scholarship funding, mentorship, leadership development and community service training. And links to both those charities and to our sponsors who make that possible will be in the Show Notes okay, some things I'm liking this week Introducing Toyota's family full of all electric rides as cool as you are, the adventurous BZ Woodland, the trend setting C HR and the versatile bz. Zip around town in the BZ with a smooth and sporty driving dynamic. Explore the outdoors in the BZ Woodland with dual motors and available all terrain tires. Be bold on the road with the C HR's sharp handling. Imagine what you can do with an all electric vehicle that gets you. Learn more about the new all electric family@toyota.com toyota let's go places There once
- [58:00]
B
was a magic sorry at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. We don't do fairy tales. We do real like real adventures to Mars or real journeys into the future to see how imagination can really take us to strange new worlds and real trips into the past where we meet heroes and legends way ahead of their time. Real rockets, real astronauts, real adventure. All at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
- [58:27]
A
Discover Something Real this podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all in one website platform. Whether you're you're trying to grow a business you have, or if you're just a baby business getting started, it has everything you need. That's where I secured my domain name. It helped me build a professional site. I can update it so easily. I've been using Squarespace since before ologies existed. After procrastinating for years, I literally built my website in one evening. They have templates. They have flexible editing tools. Squarespace also makes it easy to share your work. You can book clients, you can get paid, they have built in tools for scheduling and invoicing, and email all in one place. Whenever someone I know needs a website, whether they're a scientist that needs to put their work up or someone who's just starting a business, I'm like, dude, Squarespace. So head to squarespace.com ologies for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code ologies to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You can do it. You know what I love? I love a mystery. Some events from history still don't have answers, and Dr. Harini Bhatt is a clinical pharmacist obsessed with the ones nobody can explain. Every Monday on the podcast Hidden History, she investigates medical oddities, vanished civilizations, mass hysterias, which are some of my favorite, and phenomena that keep repeating across centuries. So she digs into the evidence. She tells you exactly what she thinks happened and she asks what if it happened today? So follow hidden history with Dr. Harini Bhat wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss miss a mystery. It's summer. How you feeling? Are you too hot? Are you feeling itchy? This is where quince comes in. It's getting warmer. You want lighter fabrics, you want better materials. You want things that feel good exactly when you put them on and don't stop feeling good until you take them off. This is why I love quints. They focus on high quality essentials. Like they have breathable linen, they have soft cotton that's organic washable silk. But they're not trying to break your bank. They cut out the middlemen they source from great factories. Everything feels elevated. Classic quality pieces that you want to wear and that you're going to keep in your closet. And it's not just clothing. I was just talking to my niece about things she was getting for her home and her kitchen. They also have bedding. I just went to the Webby Awards recently and I wore a quint silk dress. I love quints so much I literally wear them on the red carpet. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to Quince.com Ology for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Quince Q U-I-N-C-E.com Ologies for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Ologies okay, your questions now. First question we got from Laura Crippens and a bunch of other folks including Jessica F. Fritz, Jennifer Alvarez, Caitlin Fitzgerald, Jenna Martin, Ira Gray, Jessica Czarninski, Dakota Harriman, Crystal Mendoza, Topher Hennis, Casey Kaiser, Lauren Krupens and Jesse E. Scott. Asked, how harmful is sunscreen to coral? This is a big question. How harmful or what does it do? It's oxybenzonates, certain non chemicals, some non mineral sunscreens. It's a tough question. It's a tough question.
- [61:49]
B
It's a tough question. People have definitely seen movements in different coastal communities to ban unsafe sunscreen. And this is a field of research that is, is beginning to grow. It's a new thing that we're seeing. And it's really important to consider these kind of stressors or these daily things that we're doing that may or not be harmful to reefs. Right? Considering what sunscreen you use, just like considering any type of chemicals that you're introducing to a natural environment is a really important thing. However, where a lot of what we are concerned about is that, you know, in the grand scheme of the impacts facing corals, it is a very small drop in the bucket compared to climate change. And that, you know, can be a really, that's always a really hard thing. Like we're still, like we're, you know, the research is ongoing with how bad these chemicals are and the effects that they have. But what we, the danger is when that's where we stop, right? Like, you know, considering your sunscreen choice is a really great point of departure. Same thing with plastic straw bands and things like that. For people who might not consider how their daily actions affect coral reefs, to begin to learn more and to understand how are my actions affecting the reefs, what else can I do? And to figure out what it is that each of us are doing every day that affects the planet. But if that's the stopping point, that's a really dangerous thing because just changing your sunscreen is not gonna slow down our loss of reefs.
- [63:17]
A
Afterwards, Shail sent me a link to a piece written just a few weeks ago by two coral scientists in Florida who said that people being led to believe that there's extensive scientific evidence about the impact of oxybenzone on corals, and it's simply not true. So it went on to cite three main factors that are actually killing climate change. There are biological changes like diseases and invasive species. There's overfishing. And the overfishing depletes the fish that eat the algae that overgrow on corals. There's also water quality issues like wastewater and land runoff that dump those pollutants and sediments into the reefs. So sorry, everyone.
- [63:57]
B
Right.
- [63:58]
A
So don't just change to a mineral sunscreen and be like, nailed it.
- [64:01]
B
Yeah, let me. So, actually. Okay, I got permission to tell this part of that story.
- [64:05]
A
Oh, okay.
- [64:05]
B
And, like, an example of that is a colleague of mine recently went into a local classroom to talk about corals and the research we do. And she asked the. The students, like, what was the biggest threat facing coral? And everybody said, sunscreen.
- [64:19]
A
Oh, no.
- [64:20]
B
And, you know, that's a really. That is like the kind of oh, no moment. And she actually spoke with some of the teachers and they were like, we had no idea. Like, this is what people have been telling us. This is what we've been telling our students. And that's. And that's where, you know, that's not good. You know, it's a great way to get people to understand that, you know, small actions that we take every day can have really big impacts. However, you know, in no way is like, we have to focus on climate change.
- [64:46]
A
This next question was asked by a listener who started making these beautiful paintings inspired by Episodes. So to see them, you can check out the Ologies Instagram and then follow her too, because she is wonderful. Maria Hancocks wants to know how excited are you that Pantone's color of the year is coral?
- [65:01]
B
Super excited. Anytime that corals can go, you know, make it into social media, get across people's radar, like, why is that? You know, do I want to learn more? It's really great because there's a lot of animals in the world that are endangered. Right? Like, corals are, you know, part of why corals are such a great, you know, organism to talk about these kind of things is that they're gorgeous, you know, and so, like, having having, you know, companies celebrate coral bring attention to coral is always greatly appreciated and really exciting.
- [65:38]
A
I didn't know that it was Pantone's color of the year.
- [65:40]
B
I'm excited. Yeah, we're always excited.
- [65:43]
A
You also, side note, huge ups to Pantone for naming the color, not just coral, but living coral. A live, non, dead, non, bleached, thriving, magical coral was too long. But living coral works. Sarah Terry asked, what makes them so colorful? Is it that symbiosis?
- [66:00]
B
Yeah. So very often, like most there's. I feel like with everything I'm saying and every coral thing, you're like, except then this other thing does this something totally different that we didn't expect. So, yes, in general, a lot of the color we're seeing are these symbionts. However, corals also do produce their own colorful pigments. You can take a black light and shine a black light on corals, and oftentimes you'll see fluorescence. If you've seen Chasing Coral, the movie, you'll see actually during some of the bleaching events, as the corals are bleaching, they actually will start to glow in these blues and purple colors. And there's been a lot of hypotheses on why they're doing that. It could potentially attract new symbionts. It could sort of like their own kind of like, sunscreening method to protect their own tissue. So we're still learning more about that. But the corals are able. Some species are able to also produce their own pigments themselves.
- [66:53]
A
So that was a doc called Chasing Coral. And if you want to see what coral bleaching looks like and just get hyped to mobilize other folks to care, this is a great doc to watch. Are there any movies, any fictitious movies that. That honor or really fuck with coral that you're like, Come on. Any movies that you're like, I was
- [67:14]
B
actually really impressed with the Coral and Finding Nemo.
- [67:17]
A
Really?
- [67:18]
B
Yeah, they did a really good job. Like, there's some other, like, inaccuracies in their biology, but they're. But I remember, like, when I first saw it, it came out, like, right when I was graduating college. I was really like, do you think this is like, the. They did a really nice job with some of the, with the forms. So I was like, that's. That's pretty awesome. Corals don't tend to get a lot of spotlight in a lot of mainstream, you know, films.
- [67:41]
A
I'm going to go on IMDb and find out who the coral consultant was. And chances are you probably know that quick aside. So I tracked this down and I think. I think it was a very passionate ichthyologist who's done research on the Great Barrier Reef now at the University of Washington. And he's credited as Adam Summers, fabulous fish guy in the special thanks of the 2003 film Finding Nemo. And yes, I found him. I called his office to ask him. He was out of the office, so I sent him an email. I didn't hear back from him yet, but, yes, I do want to be his friend. Brooke Reddinger wants to know, does coral
- [68:16]
B
have a smell you can. So right now, if you go out to Kaneohe Bay, you can smell their gametes. So Usually, yeah, after a big spawning event, you can definitely smell them. Nice coral. Mucus def. I mean, I feel like the longer you work with anything, the more you gain a nose for it. Yeah. Underwater, you know, we're not really smelling anything, but, like, once you're covered in it, you definitely. It's a little earthy stink, you know, musky. But that's actually a great question because, you know, a lot of. While we might not smell the corals, like, a lot of marine organisms use chemical senses to, you know, interact with their surrounding environments and things like that. So there's a lot of smells in that sense going on in the water.
- [69:04]
A
In the oceans. In the oceans. So this next question was also asked by listener Grace and Allegra Violeta Bennisman wants to know what role does concrete truly play in the health of our coral?
- [69:15]
B
And I know nothing about this concrete's composition. And we'll look this up is it has a lot of same attributes as, like, calcium carbonate coral skeletons. It's a really great substrate. It's also kind of porous. So a lot of times you'll see, like, I think in Mexico, where they have that underwater sculpture installation made out of concrete that, you know, different corals and sponges and whatnot are all recruiting to. So it can actually act as a pretty good substrate. It's a really great substrate for artificial reefs.
- [69:42]
A
So he's talking about an underwater museum in Cancun, Mexico. It consists of nearly 500 sunken sculptures, and they serve as a base for new coral. Why did they make this, you ask? Because too many tourists were snorkeling in the natural local reefs and destroying them. So they were like, hey, hey, look over here, look over here. Look at these. Look at these sculptures. And it worked. So people go there now, and coral can grow on it.
- [70:08]
B
Ding.
- [70:09]
A
Perfect. Also, some of the sculptures serve as scathing environmental critiques, like the ones of men in tuxedos burying their heads in the sand. Ooh, a burn. So sick it scorched underwater. Zane Librum wants to know. Hello. Oh, hi. Is the news about the Great Barrier Reef being declared dead true? And if so, is there anything that we can do about it?
- [70:35]
B
That's a great question. So there was that article that came out, I think, a couple years ago now that declared the Great Barrier Reef dead. It's not dead. That's the answer. However, it's not doing so great. Right. And that's why articles like that can be challenging to the overall conversation, because we don't want everyone to say, oh, Good. It's not dead and move on, right? But the Great Barrier Reef, it just experienced two horrific bleaching events back to back. And, you know, a new paper by Terry Hughes Group out in Australia showed that the recruitment of like baby corals to the reef post those events has significantly declined. And so that's one of those, like, you know, not only are we dealing with the impacts of dying coral on the reef, who's going to replace them? Right? And so these like that, these are these kind of the smaller impacts that we're looking at. So the Great Barrier Reef, you know, it did experience this massive bleaching event. Lost like, you know, in some regions lost like, you know, 50% or more of the coral on the ground. And they're, you know, they're trying to come back. Different sections of the reef are still healthy. You can still go out and see corals in the Great Barrier Reef. But if it keeps getting hit by these events, like, there's not gonna be enough time for things to recover just to go back to what they were. Educating yourself on the politicians and on the laws and bills that are coming up that would directly impact the reefs here. And where we are like, that's where we have the most sweat is a really important thing. Like going to town halls also, not just voting, but like actually showing up and becoming parts of the conversations that are directly influencing the legislators in your own area can be a really good way to start. And then also if you're going to a place like the Rate Barrier Reef, you know, essentially voting with your dollar, doing your due diligence to look up operators that are eco friendly, that with some of the funding from that might actually go to research reef frustration, but looking for making sure that your footprint in those spaces are supporting organizations that are doing it right.
- [72:40]
A
And our tour operator for Atlas was saying that they don't provide fins because so many times tourists will just absolutely slap a coral reef with a fin. And so I thought that was great. I didn't know that.
- [72:53]
B
Yeah, definitely. And that's the thing. Like some corals, their structures are big. Ask any surfer. Like, they hurt when you, if you get hit by one.
- [73:02]
A
Okay, side note, I just watched a bunch of videos of surfers bailing on coral. Not only are the corals hurt, but. Oh, man. Oh, the blood. Oh, the scars. So there was one video of a Tahitian pro surfer who got a pretty bad scrape up and they show her on the boat afterward and they have to brush the coral bits out of your skin. And then for Some reason they have to rub citrus in it, and she's, like, biting a towel. I cannot imagine the pain. Now. Other remedies for this reef rash, according to some survivors, for message boards that I just totally lurked on, are hydrogen peroxide, alcohol. People use iodine. Others say just baby shampoo. And scrubbing it with a toothbrush. And antibacterial ointments work, but you have to treat it right away because you can be left with a staph infection, which would be hella gnar, Gnar. Not in a good way. Please note, I am neither a surfer nor a doctor, so consult one of the two or both. Also, as for the coral, I don't think they have a strategy for first
- [74:03]
B
off, but they're also super fragile. Some of them that have those really nice, like, branching shapes. You know, just a tiny cake. You can kick over a colony that's been growing for over 100 years in, like, one kick. And so that's, you know. That's great. Yeah, that's great. It's a great way to educate people on that. A lot of people think they're rocks.
- [74:22]
A
Yeah.
- [74:22]
B
So they're, like, flailing around, like, oh, I'm gonna go stand on that. And the polyps, like, they're just thin layers of tissue, so.
- [74:28]
A
And you can crush them like face bone. Other patrons, like Erica, Sarah Peck, and Izzy M. Had questions about Shale's favorites. Hufflepuff, Hillary wants to know which reef has been your favorite to dive in. Do you have a favorite? Can you pick a favorite?
- [74:42]
B
Oh, man.
- [74:44]
A
All the other reefs are gonna be, like, really?
- [74:46]
B
I know. I know. What's a favorite? Ooh, this is really hard. So I was lucky enough to dive the Blue Hole in Belize, which is, like, a big ETO that you can just like, sink down into. Like, there's all these sharks everywhere. And that dive and the surrounding reef there, I saw way more. If you. For someone like me, like, in this environment, if you see, like, a shark, that's really cool. Like, way one. And that's because we don't have as many anymore. Right. And, like, sharks are actually a really good sign of, like, a healthy reef environment. You want to have all the levels of the food chain. And I had never been in a reef before that environment where there were so many apex predators just living there. So, like, the coral was beautiful. There was diversity of fish, but then also, like, there I got to see it all together. And so for me, that was just a really exciting moment.
- [75:47]
A
Oh, my gosh. Have you ever been scared of a shark bite. Are you like.
- [75:50]
B
No, not really. Like sharks have a really. Sharks are doing awful. We're shark fitting is decimating world shark populations. And so much of you know, like we're talking about how do we change these laws, how do we ban shark finning, how do we like not allow shark fins to be sold in commercial senses in our country. It relates to our own like emotional reaction to sharks. Are we scared of sharks? The majority, vast majority of all shark species want nothing to do with, with us. They've got very tiny mouths or can be bottom feeders or they're just not, you know, they're just as scared of us as we are of them. Anytime you go into the ocean or nature in general, you have to respect the environment where you are and respect the organisms there. And so, you know, it's always important to know what the, like what the threats are or they could be or the, what dangers there could be anytime you go. So whenever I go diving in a new place, I look up like what organisms could I possibly encounter? And if you work with a good operator, you go to areas that are safer.
- [76:46]
A
Right.
- [76:48]
B
But I always feel incredibly lucky every time I have the opportunity to see sharks anywhere. They're beautiful. They never, you know, they're doing their own thing. They're swimming over there, not disturbing me. There are some shark species that might have like a case of mistaken identity. Like if we're swimming around like a seal at the surface and in, you know, white shark territory, they can't come up and like, you know, poke you to see if you're food or not. And the way like their strategy for getting food is they don't have arms, right. So they, they use their mouths to grab onto things so they'll come up and you know, if you think you're a seal, like try to take a bite. But people aren't dying of being. You're not being eaten by a shark. Right. You know, unfortunately it has to do with like, you know, succumbing to a wound from that shark bite but not scared of sharks. And you shouldn't be either.
- [77:36]
A
For more on this, see the Sella macamorphology episode on sharks. Also, I snuck in this teeny tiny question about itty bitty garbage. Sorry, this one's a bummer, but it's good to know. How about plastics and corals? I was reading a little article when we were waiting for each other on opposite sides of a pillar about microplastics being found in coral.
- [78:01]
B
Yeah, unfortunately, microplastics so plastic in general is awful for the marine environment, right? You hear these stories about straws getting stuck on turtles noses or, you know, animals getting caught in plastic bags or eating plastic bags thinking that they're jellyfish or other kinds of food. And so those are a big problem. However, what we've learned, you know, recently is that the plastics as they start to actually break down so they're not like necessarily visible to the naked eye. These microplasties are having like a huge impact on these lower trophic levels on like a lot of these. You know, the plankton are eating the plastics, the larger animals are eating those plastics. And there have been some studies that are looking at our corals eating these plastics as well. And what does that mean? Right? Like you can't, there's no nutritional value. If you can't expel those, then all of a sudden there's something inside of your gut that's taking up space where nutrition could be. And so these are huge, huge problems that are also unfortunately global.
- [78:57]
A
Anything that you've seen research wise in the last few years or any turnarounds that have given you hope, you're like, no, everything sucks.
- [79:07]
B
I think the answer you're going, yeah, absolutely. Like I was telling you earlier when we, you know, when you see a coral bleaching event and you're like, like so many of these corals died, there's all those corals that didn't die. The corals themselves are, there are some winners, there are some survivors. And that's really exciting because without any intervention from us, there are organisms, there are individuals that are already able to withstand these. You look at an environment like, you know, the Red Sea, which is on average way warmer than anywhere else, and corals that are living up to temperatures that can't hear. And the difference is that this happened over geologic time. Whereas we are speeding things up. Can these animals keep up for that? But just the fact that these things exist is very exciting. Also in the last 10 years ago, if I had said coral bleaching to somebody on the street, they might be like, I have no idea what you're talking about. But there's been a huge push and education and excitement around coral reefs in the last handful of years where people have heard about this, people know, people are starting to really care about it and understand why it's important, why it's important to them, why they want this for their future generations. And so corals have really come into the national, international conversation in a way that they haven't before. And because of that, there's a lot more hope for these big overarching changes that we need on a systemic scale to potentially start to have.
- [80:39]
A
And I always ask these last two questions, but what's the shittiest thing about your job? What sucks in a way that's either, like, annoying? Is it moldy wetsuits? Is it early mornings or more infrastructure or something? Like, what sucks?
- [80:56]
B
The thing that sucks most about being a coral biologist is watching something you love die and not being able to do anything about it. It.
- [81:05]
A
Yeah.
- [81:06]
B
And like, and that's something that's, you know, shared by probably everyone in our field. Like, you know, I love corals, like, biologically speaking. Like, I'm so fascinated by them. They're such interesting animals. But so much of my research is around keeping them around. Right. And it's. Anytime you dive on a reef that's bleaching or a reef that's been devastated by any kind of impact, especially one that, you know, you'd seen flourishing before, it's, you know, you have an emotional reaction. It's. It's a very devastating feeling. And that pressure of. It's not just, if I don't finish my dissertation, then I don't get to graduate. But, like, so much of this work that we all are working on is gonna have an impact right now or not? And are we doing it right? Are we asking the right questions? You know, and that's definitely the hardest part for sure.
- [81:59]
A
What's your favorite part? About your job or about curls?
- [82:03]
B
Oh, man, you do a whole podcast on that. My favorite part of my job is I'm answering it in two part, which I know you're not supposed to do.
- [82:13]
A
No, answer however many parts you want.
- [82:16]
B
It's like, it's the daily life in the people I work with, for sure. Like in the community, when you're working on an issue that that's this important, people are really passionate and really excited. And because we're trying to solve something really quickly, it's a very creative place to be. People are coming up with really creative out of the box solutions and being able to be part of new technologies that are coming in, new ways of addressing these questions, trying just crazy ideas that just might work, maybe something that we might not have had the luxury to do on a system that is doing fine somewhere. But you know, that that kind of creative thinking and passionate environment is a really exciting place to be. So I. That's. That's something great. And then also I take a boat to work every day. I can Just like, walk into the water and see the reef. And while that's amazing for research and asking questions, it's also just. It's a luxury. I feel so lucky to be able to be in a place where this, my study environment is right here. And I can appreciate the. Just the beauty of the reef on an everyday basis.
- [83:19]
A
Maybe that's why marine biologists are a little bit more chill.
- [83:23]
B
I don't know. I feel like we're like, you know, we're like, we're really chill and they're also, like, super stressed out.
- [83:27]
A
That's a good point. That's a good point. You're doing such great work. I'm so excited that I got to talk to you. Thank you for taking a sliver of your time. I know that it's a busy day for coral. Are you going back out tonight?
- [83:39]
B
I am, yeah. Definitely.
- [83:40]
A
Are you excited?
- [83:41]
B
Very excited.
- [83:42]
A
So as ask smart, amazing people sometimes stupid questions. And also just if you can, please vote, let's just. Let's try to turn this boat around. Also, for more about Shale, you can follow him at Wrong underscore whale on Twitter. That will be linked in the show notes. We're logies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Alieward with one L on both. And thank you to Atlas Obscura for the really wonderful time in Hawaii learning about all this stuff. And thanks to the world's most charming toothologist, Sarah McAnulty, aka Sarah McIntyre, TAC on social media for hooking me up with this really wonderful nadariologist, Shale. I look forward to calling him Dr. Matsuda soon. Thank you also to Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltus. They have a comedy podcast called you are that if you like funny, amazing people. They also manage my merch@ologiesmerch.com. thank you to Aaron Talbert for admin in the Ologies podcast Facebook group. I was also recently told there's an Ologies podcast subreddit now, just in case you're on Reddit or you want to go discuss episodes and share weird, illogical facts there. So. Hi, Reddit.
- [84:48]
B
Hi.
- [84:48]
A
Thank you to Jarrett Sleeper of my Good Bad Brain podcast for assistant editing and being wonderfully supportive on not the easiest week. And thanks to the host of podcasts See Jurassic right about dinos and the Purrrcast, which is all about kitties. Stephen Ray Morris, who's a pillar serving as a sturdy substrate and putting this all together. The theme music was written by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands, which is a great band. All right. 2026 me. Did you love that? How about you? Loved that? It was so good. I just want to hop in here and thank scheduling producer Noel Dilworth, managing director Susan Hale, and our current editors Jake Chaffee and Mercedes Maitland for putting this encore out. While I'm scooting about the American Southwest, I'm not just interviewing a skunk expert. I got four interviews planned. Maybe there's gonna be some capsaicin involved. Perhaps we're gonna hear a little bit about neuroscience, maybe some nuclear history. We're gonna see. I might try to throw in one or two extra. Okay. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. All right, now, if you listen until the end of the show, you know, I tell you a secret. This week's secret is that when it comes to apples and baked potatoes, my favorite part is the skin. Like, I want to eat other people's discarded potato skins at the table. I'll eat the whole shebang. But I'm just. I'm like a goat. I just love, like, the chewy roughage. I don't know why. But also, in college, my favorite thing to eat in the dining hall. Of all the things they had in the cafeteria, I loved baked potatoes with soy sauce and then sour cream on top of it. I think of it all often, and I'm like, yeah, I still stand by that combo. It was pretty tight.
- [86:27]
B
Bye.
- [86:27]
A
Bye. Pachydermatology, homeology, cryptozoology, litology, nanotechnology, meteorology, olfactology, mapology, serology.
- [86:48]
B
I may look like a rock, but I'm certainly not. I'm coral that's trying to survive.
- [86:54]
A
Oh, please don't let me die. Oyendia entender los planes de las compagnas. El simplicity plan. Un solo plan. Un solo. Courage. I learned it from my adoptive mom. Hold my hand.
- [87:33]
B
You hold my hand. Learn about adopting a team from foster care@adoptuskids.org you can't imagine the reward brought to you by Adopt Us Kids, the U.S. department of Health and Human Services, and the Ag Council.