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- [00:00]
Narrator
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Josh
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- [00:41]
Josh
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- [01:10]
Advertiser Voice 2
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- [01:39]
Chuck
I hope you're enjoying your Saturday morning and your weekend so far. And I hope this episode makes it a little bit better because it's about
- [01:45]
Advertiser Voice 2
one of my favorite trees, the mangrove.
- [01:47]
Chuck
I discovered mangroves in person when I went to coastal Mexico for the first time and I tell you what, I fell in love with these things. They are amazing mangroves. Colonial. Nature's best tree, I think so.
- [02:05]
Narrator
Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.
- [02:15]
Josh
Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there. So let's get to it. While we're talking about mangroves, everybody, mangroves. Gather round while we talk about mangrove.
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Chuck
My new favorite tree.
- [02:30]
Josh
It's a great tree. It's a good favorite tree to have.
- [02:33]
Chuck
It is and this is one of those. I think this is the second and probably final, that was inspired by my recent trip to Mexico because we were surrounded by mangroves, literally surrounded by mangroves, and we couldn't get enough of them in, like, riding the bikes around and looking in these mangrove forests and considering what it must be like to try and navigate through them. Nearly impossible, I would say, because, I mean, you've seen them in person, I'm sure, like, just how dense these things are. And, you know, we're going to be talking about different kinds, but really sort of the money. Mangroves sure are the ones that we're going to focus on. And they are just. I was knocked out just by how they looked, and I could tell that they were a remarkable wonder of nature and evolution. And then after this stuff, Dave Ruse helped us put this together. After learning everything that they're capable of, it's just like, what kind of tree is this? It's amazing.
- [03:34]
Josh
It's an amazing tree. Like I said, it's maybe one of the best trees to have as your favorite tree, because there are very few trees that are this amazing. Chuck, man. And we're talking mangroves. And we should say mangroves aren't necessarily like a species or. Or even a family of tree. One of the other things that makes them such a cool tree to have as a favorite is that there's something like 80 or 90 species of them, and they're not genetically related in every case. Instead, biologists classify them by their ability to survive and even thrive in salty water, in soil that has little to no oxygen, which are two things that most trees can't do, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. And what makes mangroves so amazing.
- [04:21]
Chuck
Yeah, but like I said, we're talking mainly about those amazing trees that sit up above the water with this network of, you know, look like fingers just sort of propping up the tree, which are the roots. They are a woodland tree, also could be called a shrub. And they grow in a pretty narrow area between. Well, they're subtropical along the coastlines, first of all, but they grow between, literally between the terrestrial and the marine environment in salty, brackish water.
- [04:56]
Josh
Yeah. And there's, I want to say, a lot of them. It's really not, though. I think they make up like 1% of the forests of the world. Mangrove forests are. But it's still 85,000 square miles, which is a pretty decent amount of area for, you know, one kind of tree. It's about the size of the state of Arkansas. And the largest mangrove forest in the world is. Is at the mouth of the Ganges near the Bay of Bengal. It's called the Sundarbans. And that's where the Bengal tiger lives, which is pretty cool.
- [05:27]
Chuck
Agreed. They exist in 118 countries and here in the United States in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. And I thought, oh, surely the Georgia coast, so close to Florida. Surely they've got some mangroves.
- [05:44]
Josh
Don't even try.
- [05:45]
Chuck
Not quite. I did see some people that were like, oh, so mangroves. But it's not true. It looks like the closest Mangroves are about 40 miles from the Georgia border, near the Georgia coastline. So I was really sad that we don't have our mangroves.
- [05:59]
Josh
That is sad.
- [06:00]
Chuck
But they do have them in Florida and Louisiana and Texas and in Mexico.
- [06:06]
Josh
That's right. And again, you said that they grow subtropically. And Chuck, I want to share that. It was just today that I finally stopped and was like, this subtropical thing is driving me crazy. Like, it's above the tropics on either side. It's either above or below, depending on where your perspective. But it's not below. It's not below the equator. And then I realized if you're on the equator, from the perspective of the equator, it's below the equator on either side. So it's subtropical.
- [06:37]
Chuck
You've never stood on the equator.
- [06:39]
Josh
I never have. And I think I should be to blame. I've never been to Ecuador.
- [06:44]
Chuck
Well, we should go sometime. We should do a podcast live. Live from the equator.
- [06:49]
Josh
Yeah. And see if we melt.
- [06:51]
Chuck
I know I will.
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Josh
Yeah, I would, too.
- [06:53]
Chuck
I'm melting this week. As far as the money mangroves that I was talking about, we're talking about red, black, and white. And for my money, I love those red mangroves. Those are the ones that grow along the water's edge. They have those prop roots that. And if you've never seen a mangrove mangrove, please just look up red mangrove. And they're called prop roots because they prop that tree up off the ground. They are fully. Well, not fully exposed because they also go into the water, into the soil, but they're largely exposed. And they are just tangled, gnarly, beautiful roots that again, I can't imagine trying to navigate through a mangrove forest. You probably had to go around.
- [07:37]
Josh
Yeah. It can be really, really thick, both above water and below water because of those roots. So those roots, if you see them, that means that it's low tide. At high tide, they're usually covered up with water. But it's like you said, they prop the tree up and so for that reason, because at low tide you can see the bottom of the tree and it's above ground, they're sometimes called walking trees, but they're pretty neat. And the red mangrove is. I think anyone who knows about mangroves or seen a mangrove probably is what they're thinking of as a red mangrove because there's just. Those roots are just so characteristic and unusual, you know.
- [08:14]
Chuck
Yeah. The black mangroves are still really cool looking because they have these protrusions coming up out of the water called pneumatophores and just, you know, put a pin in this. But they allow the plant to basically breathe. And we'll talk about that later. But if you look at a picture, picture of these, it looks sort of like almost like little, just spiky roots sticking up out of the ground all around the tree.
- [08:37]
Josh
Yeah. Almost like stalagmites.
- [08:40]
Chuck
Yeah.
- [08:42]
Josh
And I got that right too, by the way. That's right. White mangroves are. It's weird, I don't understand fully why they're considered mangroves. Aside from the fact that they must still thrive in brackish or salty water and poor, poor oxygen soil.
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Chuck
That's it.
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Josh
But I guess so. But they grow inland and they have normal shallow root systems like any other terrestrial tree. But they're still considered mangroves.
- [09:08]
Chuck
Yeah. And I don't think I mentioned the black mangroves do grow a little bit further inland than the reds.
- [09:13]
Josh
Yeah. So if you are, you know, looking at a cross section of the ocean hitting the land and going inland, you would see at the ocean or at the bay or wherever red mangroves are on the shoreline, actually growing into the ocean. Depending on where the tide is behind them, you would have the black mangroves on slightly higher ground and then behind those on the highest ground, you would have the white mangroves. And that's what it would look like. You put it all together, what you have is a mangrove forest, also known as a mangal.
- [09:46]
Chuck
A mangal, which is one of the more amazing. We're going to be talking about a lot of amazing things about mangroves and mangoes, but it's the only species of tree that can grow in saltwater. And big time they grow. It's not like they love the salt. We'll see in a minute. They have some great ways of getting rid of it, but they figured all that stuff out. But they can grow in salinity levels of 75 parts per thousand, which is about twice as salty as ocean water.
- [10:17]
Josh
Yeah, that's pretty impressive because I mean, where are they growing? That's twice as salty as ocean water. You know, I think it's just kind of showing off at that point.
- [10:28]
Chuck
Well, I didn't know if like that inland water like just accumulates salt or something.
- [10:34]
Josh
Yeah, I would. Yeah, you might be right. Yeah, yeah, I think you've hit upon it. Okay, so they're not show offs, they're just doing what they've got to do.
- [10:41]
Chuck
They're, I mean that's, they're making, they're
- [10:43]
Josh
making lemonade out of the lemons that, that they were handed by natural selection for where they grow.
- [10:49]
Chuck
So what about the salt? How do they get rid of it?
- [10:51]
Josh
So you would think like they just, they can drink salt water and use it like, you know, terrestrial trees use water. Not true. There's actually two techniques where they can either keep salt from entering their roots or they can take the salt in and then get rid of it in certain ways. And so that means that there's two types, secretors and non secretors. And black mangroves are secretors, I believe. Right?
- [11:16]
Chuck
That's right. Those are the ones with a little nubby. They look like sticks almost sticking out of the water. They filter it out and they secrete it on the leaves. So that means if you see a black mangrove and you see some, you know, kind of chalky white stuff on the leaf that is salt, like go. I don't know if I should say go, lick it because I don't know if that's dangerous at all. But it's, it's salty. Just trust me.
- [11:39]
Josh
It tastes like salt and ddt.
- [11:42]
Advertiser Voice 2
Gosh.
- [11:43]
Josh
Red mangroves, they're, they're non secretors, so they actually just don't allow salt to be taken up by their roots. Now that's easier said than done because their roots are planted in the water, right? So there's water, they're taking up water from the ocean, from salt water. And what they do is they have cell walls that actually act through reverse osmosis. It lets water through, but it doesn't let solids through, which is quite a trick. I mean, that's something that humans have only recently figured out how to do. Mangroves have been doing it for who knows how many hundreds of thousands or millions of years. But they do it in part because they have this hydrophobic lipophilic material called suberin that really serves them well.
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Chuck
That's right. It allows them to get rid of more than 90% of the salts in the water. Which also means, which I didn't really think about until just now, that they can. They can literally tolerate, I guess, about 10% salt content.
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Josh
Yeah, I saw 90 to 95%, but, yeah, that's still a lot of salt for a plant.
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Chuck
Totally.
- [12:47]
Josh
Yeah. So they have at least adapted in some ways to tolerate salt more than other plants. But for the most part, they're just really good at keeping salt from being taken up by their roots. I just find that fascinating.
- [13:01]
Chuck
And I love how Dave puts these. He. His sections are labeled either Mangrove Magic tricks or what was the other one? Mangrove superpowers.
- [13:11]
Josh
Yeah, they're both apt.
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Chuck
They are. So this is magic trick number two is we mentioned, you know, I mentioned earlier that they actually breathe through these roots. I think typically you might like to think about plants as, you know, just eating up that CO2, which they definitely do. But plants need oxygen, and they need to get oxygen from the roots. And, you know, with a regular tree in a regular forest, they're getting that, like, through the soil. And these little gaps between the soil in mangrove or mangols, I guess you would say, they can't do that because the tidal sediments come in and it's all waterlogged and compacted. So they don't have those air gaps that you have in a normal forest. So they kind of came up with a brilliant little trick to get around that.
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Advertiser Voice
Right?
- [14:04]
Josh
Yeah. So the pneumatophores that black mangroves have those stalagmites that are coming up in spikes around them. Those act as snorkels, so they stick up out of the water and they're covered in these little cells called lenicels. And that's where oxygen exchange happens. So they actually absorb oxygen through these snorkels. They get taken into the snorkel underground into the other roots of the tree and used for aerobic respiration, which is converting food into energy, which is pretty nuts.
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Chuck
And pneumatophore actually is Greek for air carrier, so.
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Josh
Makes sense.
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Chuck
Pretty on the nose.
- [14:45]
Josh
Yeah. Some of those pneumatophores can reach up to 10ft tall. Did you see that?
- [14:49]
Chuck
Yeah, I looked at a lot of pictures. I didn't see any that tall with my eyeballs, but I looked because I wanted to see that.
- [14:57]
Josh
Yeah, I didn't see it either. Could be made up.
- [15:00]
Chuck
So then you've got this. I don't think so. Then you've got these red mangroves that we talked about, for my money, like the money mangrove. And those prop roots serve the same purpose as the pneumatophores. They, you know, like I said, they sit up on those long sort of curvy stilts and they stay above water. Like a lot of it stays above water even at high tide at times. And they are also covered with those lenticels and they do the same thing. They allow for that oxygen exchange to take place.
- [15:31]
Josh
Yeah, so that explains also why there's so many roots and so many nematophores that, that spread around these trees. It's like if you dug up a tree of roughly the same size, it would probably have a similar sized root structure, maybe a little less, but you don't see it. It's all underground. This is above ground. So it like looks like a lot of roots and it is a lot of roots, but it's not necessarily more than a terrestrial tree would have. We just don't see them.
- [15:59]
Chuck
Yeah, it's like a tree that has dropped trowel.
- [16:04]
Josh
That's exactly right. It's porky pig in it.
- [16:06]
Chuck
Should we, should we take a break at Mangrove? Magic trick number two leading into number three.
- [16:12]
Josh
Yeah, we'll come back with number three right after this.
- [16:26]
Advertiser Voice 2
In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster and level up every tool in their arsenal.
- [16:33]
Josh
And T Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network according to the experts at Ookla Speed Test. And they use that network to launch Super Mobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built in security and seamless satellite coverage.
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Advertiser Voice 2
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- [17:12]
Josh
That's your business. Supercharged.
- [17:14]
Advertiser Voice
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- [18:31]
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- [18:59]
Chuck
Your first year.
- [19:00]
Advertiser Voice 4
Terms apply on covered repairs.
- [19:14]
Josh
So, Chuck, which mangrove is your favorite kind?
- [19:18]
Chuck
Well, I think I've been clear. I know you're teasing me because me and my red mangrove tirades. To me, this is the best part of the episode and the most amazing thing that besides. And we'll get to carbon sequestration because that's amazing too. But to me, this just knocked my socks off that mangroves kind of give birth to baby mangroves.
- [19:44]
Josh
I think the only reason you want to qualify it with kind of is because our mind rails against accepting that that's what's going on. But that is what's going on. For all intents and purposes, that some mangroves are viviparous, meaning that it means live bearing to where they have seeds on their, on their plants that they develop. They're about acorn sized. But then rather than the seed falling off and dispersing and then eventually growing into a seedling, something much more mind blowing happens with mangroves.
- [20:17]
Advertiser Voice 2
That's right.
- [20:18]
Chuck
The seedling is actually produced on the tree itself. And they, they sort of. That's sort of. I keep qualifying it. They self plant themselves. Yeah. Eventually this thing is gonna fall off. You've gotta look up the video on the Internet. There are many out there where it shows These, you know, acorn like things, they grow down to these sort of long arrow, like, you know, green arrows that are pointing down and eventually they just go boop. And they snap off and they go straight down. And they either stick into the ground at low tide, or I saw them in two feet of ocean water, just going straight through and sticking into the sand. And they plant themselves.
- [21:00]
Josh
They do, they plant themselves in that sandy bottom and then they sprout roots really fast. I saw that they can start growing roots within hours, which means that also if they don't fall straight down, if they fall and they land on their side, they can actually stand themselves up by growing roots on the ground facing side and then grow roots on the other side as well, which is pretty amazing. But what's even more amazing is that if they, they fall, they happen to fall at like high tide and it's pretty deep and they never touch the bottom in any way. They'll float along, they'll go out to sea, and as they're out to sea, they're a little tree growing, like growing leaves, getting water from the ocean and doing photosynthesis in the sunlight. And they can float around for up to a year before they make land and stand themselves up and grow roots wherever they land.
- [21:53]
Chuck
It's just unbelievable because this was an evolutionary adaptation. Because my first thought was, well, why don't, why doesn't the acorn like seed, just fall into the water and float around? But it must have just not been able to survive and got waterlogged and died and adapted to grow on the tree itself and get that little seedling started.
- [22:15]
Josh
Yeah, because think about this, Chuck. A seedling is a small, viable tree. It has everything it needs to grow. So it's an individual organism. And when the mangrove is growing the seedling on its tree, on itself, that's gestation. Because when it drops off, it's like a giraffe dropping a baby out like three or four feet above. Above the ground. It's the same thing. It's gestation. It's a live birth of a plant. It's nuts, man. I love it.
- [22:45]
Chuck
And the baby giraffe sticks its nose into the ground and grows from there for months and months.
- [22:52]
Josh
Plant some roots out of its head and there you go.
- [22:55]
Chuck
Let's talk about the mangals a little bit. We've talked about the fact that these forests are very dense, but it is a dense ecosystem that is dense in more ways than one. It's not just all these gnarly roots that you see everywhere. There are all kinds of fish habitats and wildlife habitats that exist in these mangals.
- [23:15]
Josh
Yeah. One of the reason why these like, root systems and why the above water parts of the trees are all just so thick, like you were saying, it's so hard to get through is because of the way that they drop seedlings right off of their tree right around them. So these mangoes develop into these really thick deposits of trees and shrubs above water and below water because they grow so closely together. And as they grow, they migrate one way or another or they just spread out one way or another, sometimes toward the ocean, sometimes behind them, sometimes to either side of the shore. But that's how they grow and that's why they're so dense too.
- [23:53]
Chuck
And that provides a lot of protection for these habitats. There are all manner of fish. If you're in Florida, you're going to see gray snapper in there or, well, you probably won't see him. Snook tarpon. This is pretty remarkable. The goliath grouper, which is actually endangered, spins their first six years in that mangal before it goes to open water.
- [24:15]
Josh
Yeah. And it's not just like a few kinds of fish, like things like octopi, sharks, shrimp, mollusks, just tons of different kinds of fish. Like this is their nursery ground because these roots, these tangle of roots provide a place for juveniles to like hide out of reach of predators and get bigger and bigger because it's also a very nourishing place for them to eat too. So they're really, really important as nurseries for all kinds. Kinds of sea life.
- [24:45]
Chuck
Yeah. And if you're talking about eating seafood, the commercial fishing industry, and this just sort of shows you how important these mangals are. A one square mile loss of mangrove forest would lose about 275,000 pounds of fish every year. And then that's not even to speak of. All the indigenous communities that, that are, you know, rely on these fish to provide their sustenance.
- [25:13]
Josh
Right. And so that's just the below water part of the mangal. The above water part of the mangal basically does the same thing, but for terrestrial and arboreal animals like monkeys, insects, reptiles, birds, they make their home and their nurseries in those. The mangals too, the branches, the leaves, the trunks, those are really just as important for above ground animals as they are for below water animals.
- [25:40]
Chuck
Yeah. And you mentioned that Bengal tiger, this was also in the some darbins, right?
- [25:47]
Josh
Yes.
- [25:48]
Chuck
And this is the largest single population of Bengal tigers on planet earth and it's only about 100 of them. But they live in these mangals.
- [25:58]
Josh
Yes. And also attention, Kristen Bell. If you are ambivalent about mangrove forests, prepare to care. Because in Panama the pygmy three toed sloth, critically endangered by the way, only makes its home in mangrove forests down there.
- [26:15]
Chuck
That's right.
- [26:17]
Josh
So you gotta care now.
- [26:19]
Chuck
I still watch that video of her in that sloth about once every two years.
- [26:22]
Josh
Yes.
- [26:23]
Chuck
It's just one of the great human reactions to something.
- [26:26]
Josh
Yeah. And I remember how heartened we were when we realized that she didn't touch it, even though she clearly wanted to more than she's ever wanted to do anything in her life. But she doesn't, she didn't do it, you know, too good for her.
- [26:37]
Chuck
That's pretty great. I think we can move on to some superpowers, right?
- [26:41]
Josh
Yeah, Mangrove superpower number one, which is coastline protection, which is pretty important if you live along the coast.
- [26:48]
Chuck
Yeah, this is a big one. One great benefit of all those above ground gnarly mess of roots that are everywhere is, and it just makes perfect common sense when you look at them is they make great wave breaks, any kind of wave, even like a tsunamic. Is that a word?
- [27:09]
Josh
It is now. I think it's a great word.
- [27:11]
Chuck
Or a tsunami's wave is going to be cut down big time when it hits this stuff. It's just going to just cut through and disperse it in a really profound way.
- [27:21]
Josh
Yeah. Because there's so many different routes and individual things to bump into on the way to the shore that it's going to reduce its energy, which means that it reduces one of the pernicious effects that waves have onshore, which is erosion. And not only does it reduce erosion because the waves don't have enough energy to take stuff back out to sea, it actually has them deposit the sediments that they're bringing to the shore in the mangrove swamps. And if you compare, if you combine that, I should say, with the really low oxygen environments that make up the mucky bottom in a mangrove mangal, I guess you can kind of flashback to our coal, the Mystery of Coal episode where we talked a lot about how swamps work like that. So mangrove swamps are very much like that as well. But then in addition to that they have ocean sediments being brought, all this organic stuff being brought from the oceans layering with the mucky sediment from the mangroves falling into the muck, which means that they're like holding onto a lot of stuff and building up soil as a matter of fact, so much so that they outpaces sea level Rises in some areas.
- [28:34]
Advertiser Voice 2
Yeah.
- [28:35]
Chuck
I mean, this kind of falls under one of their other superpowers is the fact that they are literally sequestering carbon. But I think that they add about. And we'll get to that in more detail in a minute. But in Australia, some mangrove or some mangoes in Australia and belize, add about 10 millimeters or more of coastal soil each year.
- [28:57]
Josh
A hundredth of a meter.
- [28:59]
Chuck
Yeah. I mean, that doesn't sound like that much, but sea level rise is coming in at about 3.2 meters a year. So in parts of Australia and Belize, it is actually outpacing climate change.
- [29:10]
Josh
Yeah, that's pretty cool. And that's really, really important because the sea levels rise, if the soil level is rising, we don't have to worry quite as much about sea level rise there. But that's only in some spots, as we'll see.
- [29:21]
Chuck
Yeah. And as far as the waves go, and we're talking about tsunamis. Well, with just regular waves, for every hundred meters of a mangrove forest that a wave will hit, its height can decrease by as much as 66%.
- [29:36]
Josh
Wow.
- [29:37]
Chuck
And if you're looking at storm surges, which is, you know, one of the big dangers, it's not just the wave, it's that, that water surge. If you listen to our tsunami episode, there was a study that found that storm surge depths were reduced about a little over a foot and a half for every little more than a half a mile. 50 centimeters over every kilometer. And that doesn't sound like a ton, but if you've got a mangrove forest that's several miles deep, then we're talking six or seven feet of less storm surge happening. And that can make a really big difference in flooding.
- [30:17]
Josh
Oh, yeah, because the storm surge is what gets you. I mean, it can flood miles and miles inland. It carries all sorts of debris with it. It has so much energy, it can just rip buildings down. It's a real problem from hurricanes. It's that flooding from the storm surge. But because those mangroves are there to absorb a bunch of that energy, it just doesn't have the opportunity to come nearly as far. And so mangrove forests, especially thick ones, save human lives and you would guess animal lives, too.
- [30:46]
Advertiser Voice 2
Yeah.
- [30:47]
Chuck
And we've seen the sort of this bear out in very sad ways when mangrove forests have disappeared. I think it was in the Indo Pacific region in the 1950s. They used to have about five miles, like deep of mangrove forest. By the 1990s, they were depleted because of shrimp farming. We'll talk about that later as well. But Basically human caused depletion. And in 91, there was a cyclone that hit the coast of Bangladesh where there were no longer any mangrove forests to cut down on that impact. And there was no buffer and there was a big 20 foot storm surge and almost 140,000 people died.
- [31:28]
Josh
Right. I saw that they had a lot of those people died because they weren't, they didn't use storm shelters in addition to the mangrove buffer being gone and that. They had built the storm shelters, chuck, after a 1970 cyclone that killed 500,000 people in Bangladesh.
- [31:48]
Chuck
Wow.
- [31:48]
Josh
Can you believe that? Can you imagine a storm killing half a million people in your country or your little area? That's insane.
- [31:57]
Chuck
It is. That's devastating.
- [32:00]
Josh
Like it's biblical, you know?
- [32:02]
Chuck
Yeah. They did some studies too with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, and they found that the mangroves there were about 100 meters deep and they at least helped reduce those waves between 5 and 30%. So that's, that's a big deal. You know, 6ft of storm surge up to 30% of wave height. And the initial rush in from the ocean is. You're saving a lot of lives in that case.
- [32:31]
Josh
Yeah. And I mean, you saw how bad the, the Indian Ocean tsunami was too. It just makes you wonder, like how much worse it could have been without mangroves. So I say we take our second break and we come back and talk about carbon sequestration.
- [32:46]
Chuck
That's right. AKA superpower number two.
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Josh
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Josh
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- [36:18]
Chuck
All right, we had promise of Superpower number two and we teased a little bit early earlier I did about carbon sequestration. So we need to talk a little bit about what people are calling a blue carbon ecosystem. Blue. Sort of referencing the ocean.
- [36:38]
Josh
Yeah, it's basically the same thing like Trees inland, capturing carbon and storing them in their. Their bits and parts. This is. This is just coastal vegetation doing the same thing. And the thing is, is, like trees, they're really efficient at capturing carbon and storing it, but because of our friends, fungi and rot, when the tree dies, that carbon gets released back into the ecosystem and even possibly back into the atmosphere if, say, like a wildfire happens. Atmosphere, Hot Wheels.
- [37:16]
Chuck
That is Right. But you know how we mentioned before that with that soil that the water is basically. That ocean water is just sitting on top of it is not. It's just building up to that salty peat, and that carbon is not being released like it does in a terrestrial forest, and it's not breaking down. So it is a champion at storing carbon. Not only good at it, but really good at it.
- [37:41]
Josh
Yeah, it's like the Judah Friedlander of forests. As far as carbon sequestration goes.
- [37:49]
Chuck
I. I love Judah Friedlander. We actually met him once, but I don't get the joke.
- [37:53]
Josh
Oh, he always wore a hat that said world champion. Okay. And he was always boasting about stuff like that.
- [37:59]
Chuck
Yeah, Yeah, I love that guy.
- [38:00]
Advertiser Voice 2
When we.
- [38:00]
Chuck
We met him at a event with Jesse Thorne and Hodgman many years ago, and this was kind of during his run on 30 Rock. 30 Rock. And this is when I was also wearing my last chance garage hat all the time, which I haven't put on in a couple of years, I hate to say so, probably a few years. But he. I remember when I met him, he went into that face of his. He kind of peered up at my hat in that patch and he went, all right, okay, cool.
- [38:29]
Josh
That was a great cheetah, Friedland.
- [38:30]
Chuck
I was like, hey, I got the stamp of approval from the hat guy.
- [38:34]
Josh
Yeah, definitely the hat guy, for sure. So. But yeah, so mangroves are the champion of carbon sequestration. So much so that they are four times more efficient than terrestrial vegetation at storing carbon, which makes them like a bona fide carbon sink. Mangrove forests are. And again, it's because there's just no decay, there's no fungus, there's no rot. All the stuff that all the vegetation that dies and falls down into the muck just gets stuck there and covered over and doesn't get a chance to break down. So as long as you don't dig up or destroy a mangrove forest and cut up the peat to use it as cheap fuel, you've got a really good carbon sink on your hands.
- [39:17]
Chuck
Yeah. To the tune of. Worldwide mangals account for about 6.4 billion tons of carbon that's being held in check. That means when you do do something like you hinted at, it can have devastating effects for the world. Surprise, surprise. If you cut down a mangrove forest, that carbon is going to be released. That sequestered carbon is slowly going to creep back into the atmosphere. From 2000 to 2015, roughly 122 million tons of carbon, extra carbon were released into the atmosphere because of the destruction of mangrove forests. And between 80 and 2000, 30% of the mangals of the world have been stripped away. And it is outpacing, like the tropical rainforest construction.
- [40:08]
Josh
That's mind boggling because if you just hear the figures on how frequently and how much rainforest is cut down, the idea that mangrove forest is outpacing it is pretty nuts. But apparently Myanmar is the current hotspot for Mangrove deforestation. Between 1996 and 2016, Myanmar cut down 60% of its mangoes. Just gone. And part of the problem is you can restore mangrove forests. Fortunately, we'll talk about some people who do that, but it can take a while. And sometimes when you restore some mangroves, you put the seedlings in and typhoon or a cyclone or a hurricane comes along and just washes them all away. So if your timing's right, it might take a very long time for you to restore a mangrove forest. So it's not something you want to cut down willy nilly? Basically.
- [41:02]
Chuck
No. Shrimp farming is something we mentioned earlier in passing, but they are the biggest culprit responsible for 35% of mangrove forest loss. And you know, people love shrimp all around the world and in Thailand in the 80s and 90s and other places as well, but especially Thailand, they cut down a lot of mangrove forests to make these shrimp farms along the coastline. And then you've also got the sea level rise that's causing destruction. We mentioned parts of Australia and Belize that those soil deposits are outpacing it, but that's only in a couple of those places. It is not doing that in other areas.
- [41:42]
Josh
No. So that means that sea level rises, outpacing soil deposition there. I want to say one more thing about shrimp farming too. I looked a little bit into it. I cannot decide. Maybe it deserves its own episode. Who knows? One of the other problems with shrimp farming, in addition to a shrimp farm sharing the same kind of land or a mangrove forest, that land it occupies being desirable for a shrimp farm. So you cut down mangrove forests to build a shrimp farm is that when you harvest shrimp, you basically have to refresh the water. So shrimp farmers typically just basically open a damp and Let all the water out. And that water is filled with tons of nutrients that overwhelm the carrying capacity of the ecosystems. The mangrove forests around the shrimp farm. And you get what's called an algae bloom, which sucks up all the oxygen, kills off all the fish, and has just this devastating effect on the ecosystem surrounding it. So shrimp farming is really hard on the areas where it takes place, not just from the shrimp farms themselves, but from what comes out of the shrimp farms as well. And there's just so many basic good best practices that could be followed that just aren't followed. That there's almost like a general like, duh coming out of the shrimp farming industry. As far as I can tell, that really needs to be fixed.
- [43:05]
Chuck
It's almost as if they just want to continue to make as much money as they can before they're regulated in some way.
- [43:11]
Josh
But, I mean, what are you going to do if you tried to regulate them at all? You've got a nanny state on your hands, and who wants that?
- [43:18]
Chuck
Yeah, and shrimp farming is just one tiny fraction of the great amounts of harm that are happening to the ocean because of lots of things, but commercial fishing is certainly one of them.
- [43:30]
Josh
I will say, though, it's really hard to turn down shrimp on pizza. Have you ever had something. No, no, that's. That was from years back. I used to love shrimp on pizza.
- [43:42]
Chuck
All right, talk to me more about this. What are we talking? You just throw some shrimp on a regular cheese, or is it like a barbecue pineapple thing?
- [43:49]
Josh
No, no, no, no, no, no. Regular pizza. But you don't want to use just any shrimp. You certainly don't want to use jumbo shrimp. You want to use the little tiny salad shrimp because they cook just enough with the pizza. A bigger shrimp might still be partially raw. It's going to be too big to eat.
- [44:03]
Chuck
Oh, you put it on the raw?
- [44:05]
Josh
Yeah. You just throw some of this? Well, no, I think they usually come already cooked, now that I think about it. But you just throw a couple handfuls on your pizza, put it in the oven, and they thank me later, basically.
- [44:17]
Chuck
Oh, man, I love shrimp. I don't know about shrimp and pizza.
- [44:19]
Josh
Well, now I feel bad about eating shrimp knowing how bad shrimp farming is.
- [44:23]
Chuck
I know, it's. Yeah, it's another wake up call, isn't it?
- [44:27]
Josh
Well, yes, and I've been awoken because I'm now farming my own shrimp here at home in a very sustainable manner so that I can have it on my pizza.
- [44:36]
Chuck
Ah, bathtub shrimp.
- [44:37]
Josh
That's right.
- [44:38]
Chuck
This is Delicious.
- [44:39]
Josh
We don't take baths anyway.
- [44:41]
Chuck
Yeah. Yummy's like, why do you have an out of order sign on our bathroom door?
- [44:45]
Josh
Right. I'm still trying to figure out how to break the news to Yumi. We don't really have a working bathtub anymore.
- [44:52]
Chuck
So. There are also invasive species that can totally wreck the health of a man gall. In the 70s in China, they were trying to do the right thing. I think there were conservationists that transplanted some marsh grasses that were from the United States there to try and slow erosion, but it crowded out mangroves. And then in Texas, they weren't trying to do the right thing. The Fish and Game officials there, they said, hey, people like hunting this exotic Asian antelope. It's called a nilgai, I guess. N I L G A I so let's put them in Texas so people can hunt them. And it turns out they love to eat mangroves.
- [45:34]
Josh
Yeah. So they're being deforested by the game that was imported to Texas to hunt. Which means. I'm sure there's huge bounties on these things now too.
- [45:43]
Chuck
Yeah. Isn't that funny how that all works out?
- [45:46]
Josh
So there are people who are like, we really need to work on this. We need to get mangroves back. And there are places where this is the good news. Mangrove deforestation, globally speaking, on average, has actually stopped progressing and is now starting to decline.
- [46:02]
Chuck
Yeah.
- [46:02]
Josh
The deforestation is. So people are kind of getting hip to the idea that we really need these things. They provide countless services for us humans. So even the most selfish human can get behind mangrove restoration, right?
- [46:16]
Chuck
Yeah. I mean, I think there's about 42% of the worldwide mangals are protected now. But you need that number at like 92. Well, at 100. But I would feel much better if it was like in the 80s or 90s, you know? Yeah.
- [46:30]
Josh
And not only that. Like, areas that have been developed coastally need to replant the mangroves that they cut down to build because they need them really bad. You need mangrove buffers, as we've found. Whatever you can get is helpful.
- [46:46]
Chuck
That's right. But there's another kind of clever financial instrument, as they call it, called blue bonds. It is a subset of green bonds. Green bonds came around a while ago. And these are basically, if you have money and you want to invest responsibly in a way that not only doesn't impact the environment, but can help the environment, you invest in a green bond. Or if you're really into the ocean, the subset of blue bonds which were first introduced in 2018.
- [47:17]
Josh
Right. And so if like you want to offset your emissions, you buy a blue bond and all of a sudden you've just paid somebody to go plant some mango or not mango, maybe mango too, but mangrove forest, right?
- [47:31]
Chuck
Yeah, mango forest. That sounds delicious.
- [47:35]
Josh
I'd be like, plant it in my backyard. That's where I want you to plant it with my blue bond.
- [47:40]
Chuck
So look into blue bonds and green bonds. I saw something depressing the other day when they were. I don't know what they were talking about on the news, but they basically said like, if you have an ira, like you are supporting all kinds of companies that you would probably never support in real life.
- [47:54]
Josh
Oh, yeah, definitely. Mutual funds.
- [47:56]
Chuck
Yeah, mutual funds. Just everything's all lumped in. So they were trying to encourage people, if they're able to, to be a little more selective in what they choose to invest in.
- [48:05]
Josh
Well, there's a lot of sustainable mutual funds too.
- [48:08]
Advertiser Voice
That's right.
- [48:09]
Josh
That where they're very carefully selected. Unfortunately, that means the management fee is going to be higher. But if you care, it doesn't really matter, you know.
- [48:18]
Chuck
Oh, is it really a higher management fee?
- [48:21]
Josh
Yeah. Anytime it requires any additional thought or effort, the management fee just automatically goes.
- [48:27]
Chuck
I had to click on three extra things.
- [48:30]
Josh
Right. I had to find out what these blue bonds were. That's my impression of a mutual fund manager.
- [48:35]
Chuck
Yeah. Financial advisor. If that's your financial advisor, you're going to the wrong person.
- [48:39]
Josh
I meet him at Burger King every couple of weeks in the back. Yeah.
- [48:45]
Chuck
Where else would you meet?
- [48:47]
Josh
You got anything else?
- [48:48]
Chuck
Got nothing else. Up with mangroves.
- [48:50]
Josh
Up with mangroves. And since we both set up with mangroves, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail.
- [48:59]
Chuck
This is a thank you from a Satanist. We had a great podcast that we must have put this on a select recently, I guess.
- [49:06]
Josh
Yeah, like two weeks ago.
- [49:07]
Chuck
Okay. Hey guys. Discovered your podcast in 2011. Have been hooked ever since. Your informative banter filled episodes remained a welcome constant in my life throughout college adult years. And now parenthood is helping me stay sane during sleepless nights with my newborn. When I saw the episode on Satanism, I guess I hadn't listened to it previously. I was simultaneously excited and nervous. I would hope you'd give it the usual Josh and Chuck treatment and I was not disappointed. Over the years, I've been given a lot of grief being a Satanist. People often assume that I'm a very devout Christian based on the way I look and often go from praising me to threatening my family. Upon learning that I follow the tenets set forth by the Satanic temple by shedding some light on the true nature of Satanism, I feel that you have given many people a look into the practice in a non threatening way. And hopefully this will help people choose kindness over fear based hatred when interacting with Satanists in the future. And thank you for being bold enough to put this episode out in the world. I'm sure it wasn't that easy, but this long time listener appreciates it. Your friendly Satanist Donna.
- [50:12]
Josh
Thanks a lot, Donna.
- [50:13]
Chuck
Donna a Satanist.
- [50:15]
Josh
Yeah, that was, that was a good one because I went back and listened to it to QA it before it was a select. I was like, this was a really good episode.
- [50:23]
Chuck
Yeah.
- [50:23]
Josh
But there was one thing at the beginning, Chuck, that now I wish we had back because a couple of people wrote in and it was that we, we co8 at the beginning saying like, if you're, you know, a Christian, you probably don't want to listen to this. And people wrote in and said no, like you, you should not have said that because there's plenty of people out there who should hear this and you know, change their views on people who hold these views. So if you go back and listen to that, just plug your ears for that first part and then listen to it through again.
- [50:50]
Chuck
Yeah, that was 40 year old Chuck talking, right? Not 51 year old Chuck.
- [50:56]
Josh
That's right.
- [50:57]
Chuck
That's a weird number to say.
- [50:59]
Josh
It is, Chuck. 51 is a weird number and it's going to be a weird time in your life, I'm sure of it.
- [51:08]
Chuck
Shark.
- [51:10]
Josh
That's it.
- [51:11]
Chuck
That's the one thing I'll always hate, is you'll always be younger than me. No matter how much I want you to speed up the aging process, you'll always be younger.
- [51:18]
Josh
You would have to travel to Mars in suspended animation and I would just do that here on Earth for me to catch up.
- [51:26]
Chuck
All right, I'm gonna look into that.
- [51:28]
Josh
Thanks a lot, Donna. We appreciate that big time. If you want to be like Donna and send us some kudos, we'll take them. You can send it in an email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com
- [51:41]
Narrator
Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [51:57]
Chuck
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Chuck
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Do you have an emergency?
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Josh
I am a year old daughter. Can't get a hold of her. I am scared to death.
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Advertiser Voice 5
We wanted to talk to Skyler's friends.
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Chuck
They're not telling the full story.
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The truth is gruesomely horrific.
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Narrator
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Chuck
There's a darker secret that's not been said.
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Advertiser Voice 4
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