Coral Sex in the Sea (With Guest Marah J. Hardt)

Sure coral reefs are rich, vibrant ecosystems, but did you know they also have a kinky side? In this episode of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast, "Sex in the Sea" author Dr. Marah J. Hardt returns to chat about coral reproduction and the role this vital, threatened organism plays in our world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from housetop works
dot com. For corals that live beneath to see their
days are marked by celibacy, excepting one night when the
moon is just right, they engage in a million strong orgy.

(00:24):
But for them to secure the prize, corals must be
ever wise, for there is a catch. In order to dispatch,
their orgasms must be synchronized. Hey, welcome to stuff to
blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Christian Seger. And that may have sounded like the Dr.
Seuss version of Coral Sex, but actually it was a

(00:47):
bit from mar j Hart Sex in the Sea, which
we've talked about on the show before and we're gonna
do again this episode. Yeah, it's a great book. We
talked about it in our previous episode that was devoted
to the weird sexual ways of the Asso Docks, the
bone Worm, the bone eating worm of Ocean, And in
that episode, Corals came up and we said, hey, there's

(01:09):
a lot of stuff to discuss here. Why don't we
just have you back on in the summer, We'll do
a whole episode on corals, and we wanted to time
it for this summer because we're in corals spawning season
right now, as mar will discuss with us. So the
way this episode is going to be set up is
we're gonna give you just like a brief primer on
corals and their reproduction, and then we're gonna talk tomorrow

(01:31):
because she's the expert on this, and we really get
into all the details, especially because Mara just got back
a week ago from the what sounds like the world's
biggest conference on coral ecology, so she had a lot
of like groundbreaking news for us. Yeah, some of some
of it rather sobering, but some of it very exciting
as well. You know, I think one of the big

(01:53):
tay comes here that I got out of the research
that I hope that that that listeners get to is
this idea that and I feel like this sometimes lost
in our media absorption of the information, is that coral
reefs corals are not just like a background organism. They
are the bedrock of these ecological systems, making life possible

(02:15):
in areas that would otherwise just be barren and lifeless.
I think for a lot of people, the way that
they think about them is almost as if that they're
like plant life and I have to admit, even for myself,
until we sat down and really did the research for
this episode, I didn't quite understand their anatomy. And so
maybe that we can sort of help set that up

(02:36):
for the audience for you out there. And uh, then
when we talk tomorrow about just how dire the consequences
are right now for coral ecology, that'll, you know, drive
home the importance of trying to help these critters out. Yeah.
I feel like at times we almost have an amateur
aquarium um view of it, where we think, oh, I'm

(02:57):
the fish is what I'm excited about. Anything else is
just like a plant that we throw in, or maybe
like a ceramic Buddha that flows to the bottom right.
And then in looking at the coral reefs to we
we see the finished picture. We see the corals, we
see all the fish and all the creatures. I feel
that it's kind of like looking at Las Vegas and
seeing all this life, all the light and the fountains
and saying, look at that life is just splendid there.

(03:19):
It's just going just going splendidly without realizing that without Hoover, damn,
without the with the necessary um um, you know, water
system in place, there would be no life there at all. Yep, yeah, exactly.
Corals are a hugely important ecosystem for and this is
a stat a quarter of all marine fish species, so

(03:42):
they're very important. They're not just pretty structures that happen
to be underwater. They also benefit us, and by us,
I mean human beings by buffeting coastal regions from strong waves.
And I'll get into it a little bit further. Uh,
they promote our economy and huge way is too. So Uh,
these are super important. And they have totally weird, bizarre

(04:05):
orgy sex too, which is fun to talk about. So
let's get into it. Let's talk about coral reefs and
coral polyps and what's the story here. So they're actually
made of two things. Now, when we think about corals,
or at least the way I did, I always thought
of just the limestone skeletons, right, these these formations. But

(04:26):
corals themselves are actually tiny little polyps. Uh, and they
excrete the limestone that creates these skeletons. Now, I said earlier,
we talk a lot about sort of the dire threats
that they're facing. They're actually being destroyed at a rate
that will see seventy of them gone in less than

(04:46):
forty years. That was one stat that I read when
we just talked tomorrow. She said ten percent of all
reefs are already permanently lost are expected to be lost
in the next few decades. So that's that's the lot um.
And why is that? Well, we talked to her about
that as well. But real quick primer, if you even
shift one degree of temperature in the water that they're in,

(05:10):
it can damage them, causing them to expel the algae
that's within them, which they have a symbiotic relationship with
this and this is the key to their ability to
colonize these these rather hostile regions. Absolutely, yeah uh. And
they're also facing external threats from hurricanes, predators, pollution, over fishing,

(05:32):
and from us. Just talking tomorrow, she did a great
job of explaining what a bleaching event is, which is
the actual impact of these temperature changes causing the algae
to separate from the coral polyps and basically either killing
them or making it so that they don't have enough
energy to reproduce. So why should you care? Here's why.

(05:53):
If you want just a purely selfish reason, If all
you care about is your own well being. It's import
to our economy. Actually, uh, they provide jobs for fishing, construction,
and believe it or not, pharmaceuticals. There's an estimated three
hundred and seventy five billion dollars a year that come

(06:15):
out of coral reefs, So that's pretty huge. We don't
want to lose these, even on just like a purely
selfish monetary level, outside of any kind of like altruistic
ecological level. Okay, alright, let's roll into the basic biology
of corals. Okay, So corals were originally thought to be planted,
so I wasn't alone in that. And if you're out

(06:37):
there and you thought the same thing, scientists thought that too.
But they're actually tiny, little soft bodied creatures and their
carnivores too. They're fixed to one spot as a polyp,
and it's they basically have these barbed stinging cells that
are called nematocysts, and these are what they used to
capture food, like little tiny fish or zoo plankton. They're

(06:58):
only about three millimeters long, and they grow to become
reefs that stretched from miles. When they combine together with
their limestone and their huge colonies, the polyps themselves are
basically and and Mara says this as well. They're basically
just a gut with a mouth that's surrounded by tentacles.
So it's like a teeny tiny little Lovecraft monster. Yeah,

(07:18):
the thing that you discredited as a mere plant turned
out to be closer to your heart exactly. Now, we
talked about the symbiosis that they have with algae. Well,
the algae that they live together with are called zoos
in Theelli and uh Um I believe Mara says that
it's okay to refer to them as zooks. That's that's

(07:39):
kind of like the the in crowd nickname that they have.
But they're an algae that lives inside the cell walls
of corals, and the algae provides them with byproducts of
photosynthesis that then feeds the polyp. The polyps subsequently shelters
the algae and provides them with the chemicals that they
need for photosynthesis. So up to of the algaees energy

(08:04):
is transferred into the polyps. So you can see now
why if that algae is forced to flee because of
coral bleaching, why the polyp would be weakened significantly. Okay,
so this energy helps them to do things like produce
the limestone that they are covered in, and that's made
of calcium carbonate. They secrete it from their base and

(08:25):
it creates a protective skeleton that they basically hide in
from predators. And because they rarely exist alone, they also
joined together with other polyps as a colony and act
basically like a single organism colonies. Now I just told
you one polyp is like three millimeters. Colonies can weigh tons.

(08:45):
These things are huge, uh, and they have many branches
that form out, and this is what we call reefs. Okay,
so let's get to the nitty gritty of what this
is about, all right. That today's episode is about coral
sex re production. And they reproduce in two ways, or
they grow in two ways. The first is they just

(09:06):
keep adding limestone to their base and they secrete upward
and outward, right, so the reef gets bigger that way.
The main way what we end up talking to Ma
about primarily is reproduction, and they produce a sexually and
sexually a sexual reproduction is where they divide and create
identical clones of themselves. And we're gonna talk tomorrow about

(09:29):
why that's not always such a good thing. But they
can basically make fragments of themselves and then reattached to
different parts of a reef and then continue to grow.
Sexual reproduction this is the weird stuff, and this is
what we spend a lot of time talking with Mara about.
This is basically when they send out their eggs and sperm,
and it works like this. Their sexual reproduction only occurs

(09:52):
once a year, shortly after a full moon. It's called
broadcast spawning, and this is where the colonies release a
cloud of rightly colored eggs and sperm into the ocean.
And these bundles are not only buoyant, but they are
also attached to their parental polyps by like umbilical strings
of mucus. Mara describes it as being like this pink

(10:13):
cloud of snow flakes floating upward. It it sounds kind
of beautiful, actually, if if you get the opportunity to
see it. Shrimp and worms that are around there part
of the ecology of the coral reef. They're gonna eat
this stuff as it floats upward. But but basically the
polyps turn pink right before they release it. One of
the articles that I read for research on this described

(10:35):
it as milky, pink waters. The eggs are then ejected,
they float upward to the surface and they wait to
get fertilized. But they have nothing to protect them, so
the first twelve hours that they're out there in development,
they're real fragile. Mara actually describes these globules. She says
this in her book and in our interview with her,
and I like it. She says they look like pink

(10:56):
orange nerd candies, which is pretty fun um and gave
me like a really good picture because I, I don't
know about you, Robert, but I've never been to a
beach area that has coral reefs, and I grew up
on the ocean. Um. I had not really experienced it
until earlier this year when I went to Jamaica and
got to Snarling h with the with my wife and

(11:17):
see some of it in action, and I was just
really blown away by it. Because there's one thing to see,
like the super HD footage and it's beautiful, but it
seems like another world. It's like watching Avatar, but totally
to actually poke around there and see it in real life,
it's it's quite amazing. So one of the things we
talked tomorrow about that no one quite has the exact

(11:37):
answer to is how these corals are timing it so
that they all spawn at the exact same time every year.
And there's a theory that the solar they're they're taking
solar cues or wind cues to figure out the month
that they should spawn in, and then they're taking nooner
cues somehow to figure out which day they should spawn in.

(11:59):
Us Alian scientists have recently found out, however, that when
they're exposed to even tiny little waves, that coral can
break into identical pieces that can each develop their own larvae.
So this is the clone process. It's similar their stem
cells then reassemble and continue to develop. So there are
a lot of identical twin coral polyps out there. But

(12:22):
as we talk about with Mara, that's not very that's
not exactly a good thing if you need diversity to
sort of protect you from ecological problems. So, but we
have billions of naked embryos on the surface of the
ocean during these spawnings, there's a potential to create even
more clones. When they conducted this first experiment that I
was speaking of in Australia, fifty of the embryos that

(12:44):
they exposed, fragmented and then reorganized so they could develop larvae.
So the cloning thing is is fairly prevalent. Now. Sent
of the zooks algae corals, those are hermaphrodites, and they're
basically both male and fee male. They can release sperm
and eggs, but some are only male and some are
only female. Uh. Some even fertilize their own eggs internally

(13:09):
if they can snatch up the sperm. This is called brooding.
They also release fully developed larvae. Now, the sexuality of
these uh particular polyps tends to be consistent across the
different species of corals that we're talking about here. Another
number seventy of the zooks corals also spawn eggs and

(13:32):
sperm for external fertilization. So the broadcast spawning we're talking
about is their majority of their reproductive process. So this
is this is contrary to the brooding that I was
speaking about earlier. Now, when species brewed like I'm talking
about this is when they're fertilizing their eggs internally, they
can store the unfertilized ova for weeks at a time,

(13:56):
whereas spawning species requires this very specific time frame of
hours that we talked about with Mara, sometimes colonies of
different species spawned simultaneously. This is when hybridization occurs. We
know that it happens, we just don't really know the extent.
And as we'll talk about with Mara, most hybrids are sterile,

(14:19):
but it's hopefully avoided when most species of polyps spend
their time spawning at different intervals. Um we talk about
that as well with particular kinds of species the boulder
coral and what was the other one, lobe star coral
and and indeed there are also some some interesting twists
and turns with hybridization that I think everyone will will

(14:40):
be rather delighted by. Yeah, and we were totally surprised
by two because it's a brand new research. Another thing
that's super fascinating about this broadcast spawning. It can happen
over vast distances. Corals can basically take extended sea voyages
once they float to the top, and they can survive
for months before they fully integrate and sink back down

(15:01):
to the bottom. Now, when an egg does get fertilized
after the embryo forms, it's it actually swims, so so
sinking isn't really the right term I should have used there.
It swims to the bottom to anchor itself. And scientists
thought until four that all coral reproduction was internal like
this brooding method. But then in Science magazine somebody published

(15:24):
a description of the mass spawning event at the Great
Barrier reef. And here we are now, you know, spending
an entire episode talking about it. So this is relatively
new science to humans. A study in a Smithsonian article
that I read for this that's called watching Coral sex
indicated that if corals spawn just fifteen minutes out of

(15:47):
sync with their majority of the rest of their species,
it greatly reduces their chance of reproductive success. So you know,
this is why it's so important that it happens all
at the same time and that the area is protected.
Just a lot of factors that go into the ecology
of keeping these reefs safe. Uh. And then to go

(16:07):
along with Mara's nerd candy example, one of the other
scientists described it as being a little bit like tapioca.
That like, you're basically floating in a sea of I
think tapioca. It's like swimming and bubble tea essentially. Yeah,
that's a good one. I like that bubble tea. All right, Well,
we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,

(16:28):
we're gonna call up Mara and discuss coral sex. Hi, Mara,
thanks so much for coming on the show again for
a summertime discussion of corals. So we had such a
great time chatting with you before on the the Oppidas
episode that we recorded, so it's nice to have you

(16:49):
back on to discuss corals. Thank you so much for
having me. I'm I'm really excited to be here and
to be able to chat with you guys about definitely
one of my favorite animals, which are corals somorrow. I
didn't realize this until like almost five minutes ago. I've
read through the book, We've talked to you before, but
you have a background as a coral reef ecologist, right,

(17:10):
that's right. Yeah, They're where I really um got started
in my career doing me in science. So they hold
a very special place in my heart. Quarrels and sharks. Okay, awesome,
Well good, because we got a lot of questions because
because quarrels have a very strange reproductive practice. This is true,

(17:31):
they do. They're they're pretty amazing, especially given that they
can't move, and they are pretty simple animals that I
don't like to use the word simple, but you know,
basically they're they're sort of this jelly like blob that
sits with extending little tentacles out of a little hard
cup that they manufacture themselves. So for folks out there

(17:53):
who are familiar with finding Demo um and know that
he lives in an anemone, which is uh, I don't
want my it up, and then with me, uh, they're
they're close cousins of those animals, and so they fit
in these little cups all day long with their tentacles
outstretched into into the environment, sort of taking little particles

(18:14):
out of the water to feed on. But they have
some other cool tricks up there. The sexual reproduction and
corals is pretty amazing. Yeah, you you presented so well
in the book. I almost almost hate to ask you
described to describe it here, you know, I'd almost rather
encourage the readers to read it. But can you take
just a few minutes to describe for us the synchronized

(18:35):
hotel orgy of the corals? Sure, i'd be to So again,
corals can't move right, so they're stuck. They're cemented to
the sea floor. This means they can't go out in
date to find their mates there. They have to allow
their gammets, which are their eggs and their sperm, to
do the dating and meeting for them. And I should

(18:58):
say there's two types of coral in the when I'm
about to describe it does this big synchronized orgy. These
are called broadcast spawners. So they release both their sperm
and their eggs into the water column. And the best
way to ensure that their sperm and eggs are going
to mix the sperm and eggs of other corals and
be able to make the next generation is to time

(19:20):
that release with their neighbors. So if you imagine that
corals are sort of sitting in their little cups, and
their cups sort of form these big colonies, and then
there's multiple colonies along the reefs, it's kind of like
thinking that, um, the sperm and eggs are are getting
together in a hotel room, right, and these corals have
to make sure that they're going to synchronize their mate

(19:44):
their release. But then it's also like that couple in
that hotel room that synchronizing their release is also coordinating
with their neighbors maybe in the two rooms on either side,
and then those neighbors are also synchronizing with their neighbors,
and so the whole floor of the hotel are all
coming together and being able to synchronize their climax exactly

(20:05):
the same time. And then actually, because there's miles and
miles of reef and millions and millions of corals, you've
actually got to blow it out to imagine that every
single hotel room across say, the entire city of New
York is full of couples that are all climax thing
exactly the same time. So it's pretty phenomenal when you

(20:26):
think about the scale at which this synchronization is occurring.
And you know, given uh sort of bar pop culture,
and again I talked about you know, if you look
at any cover of Cosmo, it's all about how to
you know, connect better with your partner. We we seem
to struggle to do this on a one on one basis. Meanwhile,
corals are doing that's across millions of individuals, no problem,

(20:48):
year after year, down to you know, really really fine timing.
So we're talking within you know, within moments uh of
of their their sort of buddy colonies up and down
the reef, and this is a once a year occurrence,
it is. So what happens is coral sort of spend
the entire year celibates, building up the energy and storing

(21:10):
the energy to make these staddy balls of sperm and eggs.
So it's called a bundle. And the bundle looks like,
for those of you who know nerd candies, kind of
a small pinkish orange colored spear, and it takes a
lot of energies to pack all these eggs and sperms together,
so they wait and again. Um, it's a once a

(21:31):
year event and it normally happens um for different species.
It'll happen within a two to three day window around
the full moon, and it normally happens in the summertime,
so there's likely some water temperature cues. There's definitely cues
from from the sunset. It often happens at night after

(21:52):
sunset and moon phase also coordinated around that that full
moon time, so there's a whole bunch of virominal cues
that they're using to kind of start to align and
then and then let it all go. But it's yeah,
so each coral will only go once they've got one
little sperm egg bundle to release and that's it. Uh So,

(22:13):
within a colony you might have one or two days
of different polyps going off, but in general there's one
peak night where the vast majority of of all these
animals are releasing at the same time. Now, of course
there's a reason for all of this. So what what
are the core advantages to this once a year sexual blowout. Yeah,

(22:34):
so again, um, it's really expensive to manufacture these, especially
the eggs um and all the sperm, and you really
want to make sure that in the environment like an
ocean where there's lots of currents and lots of predators,
so that you are getting your your sperm and eggs
to mix with other sperm and eggs from your fellow

(22:55):
species so that you can make next generation. And by
coordinating the timing really precisely, you up the odds that
your sperm and eggs are going to bump into another
coral sperm and eggs and be able to fertilize and
make make that viable a little larvae. But it also
helps to release all these millions and millions of gammets

(23:17):
all at once because it's sort of swamps out the
predators as well, and the sex facts of coral. That
sort of starts really peacefully, and it's just really it's
really quite a miraculous event to witness, and and folks
can see this because it happens on shaller wreaths. You
can take a flashlight and even just snorkel um down

(23:38):
in the Caribbean or off the Great Day or reef
and be able to actually watch this happen um. But
it starts off really beautifully where these little bundles form
and then it's sort of this slow release and the
sperm and eggs are buoyant that they slowed up, and
it creates sort of like the snow storm underwater, but
the snowflakes are bright pink and float to the surface,

(23:59):
and it's really quite magical. And then all of a
sudden it turns into this like crazy. I think I
refer to it as like a rave where shrimp are
coming in and worms are coming in, and fish are
coming in, and then bigger fish are coming eat the
little fish that are eating the corals. You know, it's
it's chaos. And if you're if you are diving down there,

(24:19):
you stop is hitting your mask. It's going in your face.
It's like bumping your regulator out of your mouth. I mean,
it's like it's a wild all you can eat, say,
And so for the corals, it's helpful to know that
everybody else is releasing their stuff too, so that it's
not just your sperm and eggs that are going to
get sort of focused on. But hopefully you'll satiate all

(24:42):
the mouths out there and a couple will make it
to the surface where they can break apart and and
sort of mix and and and form that next generation.
So doing it all at once has its benefits for
a couple of reasons. So, Mara, I got a question,
just for clarification, can you explain for our audience what
we mean when we're talking about gam meats. Are we

(25:03):
talking about the sperm the eggs both? Is this the
bundle we're referring to, right? Yeah, So gam meat is
the scientific term for a sex cell, and it's either
a sperm or an egg, so it counts for both. Yep.
So the bundles are there gam meats because it's the

(25:25):
sperm and eggs um sort of tightly wrapped around each
other in these in these little balls. And when they
get to the surface, they actually break open and the
sperm and multiple eggs. Do you have lots and lots
of sperm and lots and lots of eggs inside each bundle,
and when they break open at the surface, that's when
the sperm and eggs can actually bump and mix with

(25:49):
the sperm and eggs of other coral individual to make
a new a new offspring. And one thing that I
think we should quickly clarify here too is you mentioned
this already, but we're spece typically talking about broadcast spawning
coral reefs. There's other forms of reproduction for coral reefs,
right right, Yeah, So corals are They're really cool animals.

(26:10):
There's hundreds and hundreds of species of coral thousands, I think,
and um, the ones that build the big reefs, the
ones that we think of when we think about coral reefs,
tend to be these broadcast spawners that do these mass
um spawning events, these big orgies. There are others, however,
that are brooders, which mean that they release their sperm

(26:33):
into the environment, but they actually hold eggs so that
the sperm will have to come into the coral colony
and fertilized there's also some corals that are so again
the broadcast spawners are hermaphrodite. They're producing both um sex
cells right spur and eggs. But there are some corals

(26:56):
that the colony is either female or male. They have
separate sexes, in which case they'll release um into the
environment the sperm, and then the females again hold the eggs,
and there's tons of varieties sort of in between. UM.
I just came back from a coral conference, the Big

(27:17):
Coral Conference happens once every four years and it was
just last week in Hawaii, and I thought this great
presentation by Dr Kristen Marhavior who works out of Karmabi
in Curse Out, and they're finding some corals that seem
to be doing this weird kind of in between where
they don't really brood, but they're sort of holding the

(27:38):
eggs up in the tentacles but not really letting them go.
So it's like the funky yeah in between. So one
thing with corals is that they do it all, and
they seem to do it in lots of different ways
that we're still learning about. Uh, this seems like a
good opportunity for us to hone in on two particular
species you bring up in the book. Yeah, indeed you

(28:00):
make a special mention of the lob star coral and
the boulder star coral. Which I found this particularly interesting
because we're talking about this sort of this broadcast orgy
of reproduction here, but it seems like it doesn't pay
to bump into just anybody in a broadcast orgy. That's right,
This is definitely true, um. And it's again it's not

(28:23):
something that we mammals tend to have to worry about
because we are pretty certain of who it is that
we're mating with, who are gammetes are sperm and eggs
are mixing with at the time of sects. But for corals, um,
they don't have that control. Right, they release their sperm
and eggs into the water column, and they're hoping that

(28:44):
they do it in the right time period so that
it bumps into other sperm and eggs of not only
fit healthy other corals, but corals of the right species.
So coral. There are corals that are very closely related,
and the low as a boulder star are examples of that.
And it is possible that if the sperm from say

(29:07):
below star coral bumps into the egg of a boulder
star coral. Uh, you know, they could they could fertilize
that egg and a barbacaus form. That's a hybrid. And
hybrids are not always the best outcome for four species
for a couple of reasons. And and folks may be
most familiar with, um sort of the cross between a

(29:30):
horse and a donkey that creates a mule, right, mules
for sterile, Like a mule can't go on to reproduce,
And so that sort of idea that hybrids of these
genetic dead ends, Um, it kind of defeats the whole
purpose of having sex in the first place, right, which
is to create future offspring and hopefully that those offspring

(29:51):
will be fit and create the next generation, the next generation.
So hybrid sort of um squelched that in many cases.
And UM, I don't know if you guys want me
to go into it, but there is actually some really
cool work that has been done since the book came
out about some coral hybrid stuff. So we could we

(30:11):
could talk about that if you want. Yeah, yes, certainly,
especially because like one of the things that I'd like
to clarify just from the book itself is like getting
back to the Lobes star and the Boulder star coral.
There's very specific ways in which they are compatible, right,
but it's not always so easy for one to fertilize
the other. Right. So, because of this risk of forming hybrids,

(30:38):
corals have come up with a couple of tactics and
there is a level of screening that happens at the
level of the eggs um. Some eggs um some species
are very prude and they won't let sperm in from
other species or they make it very difficult. But other
eggs are are much more promiscuous if you will and

(30:59):
are if sperm from another species is around, it can fertilize.
So to help kind of create more barriers to hybrids
and really separate the species corals, the timing of these
uh orgies is very very specific. So again the load
star coral and the Boulder star coral are a great

(31:20):
example of this because they spawn on the same night.
You know, they use the same environmental cues the warming temperature,
the moon phase and then the timing of sunset. But
what happens is with the low star coral there was
no start with the Boulder star coral. The Boulder star

(31:41):
are the early birds, so they will start to release
um it's about two hours after sunset, so if you're
down in the Caribbean, sunsets may be around seven. So
the Boulders first start to release their eggs around nine o'clock.
And it really is that precise. You're on year, it's
within two to three minutes of the year before that,

(32:03):
the same colony will spawn at the same time. I mean,
it's you absolutely could think you're nice your watches to
it's it's pretty awesome. And then the Lowe Star coral
is about an hour and a half de lad from
the Boulder Star, so they would be you know, maybe
ten thirty leaven ish And that separation and time turns

(32:24):
out to be just about the time it takes for
the Boulder Star sperm fizzle out after about an hour
and a half. So the fact that they go first
at around you know, say nine o'clock, by the time
the Lobes Star go off and they release their eggs,
there's not a lot of the Boulder Star sperm left

(32:46):
that has a lot of you know, much energy you know,
to get out there and find their eggs. UM. So
that hour and a half spacing seems to be just
enough time to allow the first coral in this case,
the Boulder star, for its eggs to be fertilized by
its own sperm, and then by the time the next
species goes off, there's there's really not too many of

(33:09):
their eggs left to be fertilized by any new sperm
coming into the picture from another species, and any of
the first sperm that are around sort of are a
little wizard at that point and unlikely to go and
fertilize the new eggs that are released by the second species.
So I know it's a little a little complicated, but

(33:29):
that's why I asked, Yeah, so tell us about this
new hybrid research that you said that's come out, because
maybe it answers a question that I was going to
ask you anyways, which is how frequently are coral hybrids
actually sterile? Yeah, so it's a it's a really important question.

(33:50):
And Dr Nicole fogerty Um is studying this extensively and
and this is her work at all I'll summarize here,
and she again just presented sort of a new component
of it just last week at this big coral conference,
and she has been setting this question in two species
of endangered corals in the Caribbean called elkhorn and staghorn,

(34:12):
and these are the beautiful, big branching species that used
to dominate some of the shallow reef crest environments and
have been really quite wiped out. They were the first
um invertebrates to ever go on to the endangered Species list,
I believe, or one of the few um so they've
really been hammered and we're trying to figure out why

(34:34):
and try to figure out what this means for their reproduction.
And what Dr Bobodies found is if you look at
the fossil record, which is for corals, really um pretty
robusts because they create these these hard skeletons. They actually
are captured really well and represented very well in the
fossil record. If you go back, you see that hybrids

(34:55):
between elkhorn and staghorn are very rare. And they can
look at this by epe colony shape in different um
aspects of their morphology sort of the shape and the
way that um polyps are arranged, and hybrids, yeah, they're
just they're just not around very much. But if you
come now into and we also know from early surveys

(35:17):
in the seventies and eighties on coral reefs, there's not
all the hybrids, but recently there are. We see a
lot of hybrids going on, and they've done some genetic
tests and they're actually finding that these hybrids, so this
is a cross between an elk horn and the staghorn,
makes a hybrid. These hybrids are actually able to breathe

(35:40):
with other hybrids and make a second desperation that seems
to be viable. So that's a really neat kind of
twist on the whole Hybrids are always bad thing. Now
the catches we don't know if that second generation of
hybrids is viable, so we're still sort of aiding to see.

(36:00):
You know this, this can happen where the first generation
of hybrids is viable and seems really um fit and
actually does very well, but then it's kids peter out.
It is it's like a it is, and it's in.
What happens also is that these these these vigorous hybrids

(36:23):
can often compete with their parents, right, So they're competing
with the elk horns and the stag horns that maybe
aren't doing as well, and if they start to take
over those environments, but they don't have the ability to
reproduce successfully for multiple generation. Then you wind up with
hybrids actually being another threat to the parent. Now, to

(36:47):
put another spin on it, which is what corals love
to do, these hybrids can also meet back with the
elk horn or with stag horns, so you get what's
called a back cross, which gets even you know, you, guys,
your guys show is stuff to blow your minds and
get really so wait, I'm trying to envision this, given

(37:09):
that the elk horns and the stag horns release at
different times on the same night, do the hybrids release
like somewhere in the middle there, You know, that's a
really good question, and I I don't know the answer
to that. They are going to be spotting the full
moon this month. July is a big month for elk

(37:31):
horns and stag horns July in August, so I can
I will send you guys an update or maybe we
can throw it in the comments, but I will ask
down there doing the study right now. But that's a
really good question. I'm not sure whose timing they take
or if it's a combination. There their shape is definitely
um a range of in between the two parents between

(37:54):
the elk horn and stag horn, that there's sort of
a whole variety of shapes that these hybrids seem to
be taking. And when the hybrid back crosses, so when
the um the combo coral of of elk horn and
stag horns, then fertilizes or mixes with an elk horn
or a pure you know, stag horn and make this

(38:15):
sort of back cross species um, they tend to have
slightly different shapes and sizes as well. So the good
news on this is if there's not too much competition
with the parents and there's not too much back crossing,
the little bit of gene mixing and the little bit

(38:36):
of hybridization that's happening could actually really help the species
and could be a way that this species, the two species,
the elk horn and the stag horn, are trying to
adapt to these changing environments and are actually dealing with
some of the impacts. It's one way that species may
be evolving, and we do see some you know, Dr

(38:58):
Brogan is starting to see some very preliminary evidence of
higher disease resistance, higher heat tolerance to you know, with
some of the global warming issues and mass teaching issues.
This is a positive um and and that we will
be able to see new forms of these branching corals

(39:18):
based on this hybridization, or it could go the other way,
where again these hybrids actually wind up to be not
viable multigeneration and multiple generations down the line, and they
wind up contributing to the decline of the two parents species.
So it's UM, it's something that she's studying really intently

(39:40):
and watching and it's a fascinating um sort of I
don't know who. I don't know who to root for, really,
but it's important for us to keep an eye on,
especially given the threats to coral ecology that are going on.
So I've there's a lot of biologicals sort of hypothetical

(40:01):
question for you, because you say in the book the
same question that immediately popped into my head as I
was reading it, which is, if corals don't have brains
or eyes, how is it that they're seeing light, how
is it that they're uh sensing lunar patterns things like that? Um,
And my question was we just did a piece here

(40:24):
recently about new research that came out about two months
ago on underwater slime and algae and that they're able
to on a cellular level sense light and move toward it.
That like each cell on its own can quote see
light and then like subsequently sort of crawls forward. And

(40:46):
I'm wondering if you think that maybe is something like
that possible with corals. That's fascinating. I will have to
go and listen to your story because I don't know
much about the the how that kind of a a
slime can do that. That sounds really cool. With corals,
they definitely have light sensors, Um, I'm not up to

(41:11):
speed on like the the detailed physiology there for whether
it's at a cellular level, whether it's um sort of
a very primitive kind of organ nolle that that we
see in some worms that can you know, tell if
a shadow moves across, you know, light and dark. But
they definitely definitely have a way of sensing the light.

(41:31):
But I'm not sure exactly how it works, to be honest, Um,
I can I can dig into that a little further.
But the reason why we know it's cued by light though,
and pretty specifically is not only because the timing happens
after sunset year on year so precisely, but it's also

(41:54):
that we've done some experiments, um, and these were initially started. Yeah,
the garbage bags, right, so simple as best in science.
And Dr Nancy Knowlton, who's now runs the the Marine
Science Hall over at the Smithsonian. So when she was

(42:14):
studying some of these systems, she was like, all right, well,
if we wanted to see whether or not these corals
can actually fertilize one another, and what's going on between
these different species. She looked at the Lobes and the
Boulder Star corals and was like, okay, well they're delayed
about an hour and a half apart, so what would
happen if we tricked the Lobes Star coral, which is

(42:36):
the later spawner in the thinking sunset happened sooner. So
they took colonies and they put black garbage bags over
them about an hour and a half before sunset, so
they sort of faked the corals out into thinking that
sunset had happened at day six o'clock rather than seven thirty.

(42:57):
So low and behold it right. An hour and a
half later, when they were que to go off, they
went off. And what they were able to do by
by kind of sort of shifting the time of sunset earlier,
they were able to actually get the Load Star coral
and the Boulder Star coral colonies to spawn at the

(43:18):
same time, and then they were able to check and
see sort of what happened if if that were to occur.
So we know that the light queue is key because
if you, if you sort of could unquote mess with
when sunset happens, it literally shifts exactly the timing of
the release of the sperm and eggs. So it was
pretty cool. Indeed, Now in discussing these elaborate reproductive methods

(43:43):
that the coral use, Um, there's a weakness in all
of this, right now, how does this reproductive strategy make
corals so vulnerable to pollution, climate change, and these other
influences that are are making so many of them threatened. Yeah,
so there's a lot of reasons why corals are vulnerable

(44:03):
to to these threats and why they're being threatened. Um,
but when it comes to their sexual strategy. So this
idea of the broadcast spotting these mass orgies, the real
issue is that it all depends on everybody releasing their
egg and sperm at the same time, and that all
these neighbors are coordinated across the reefs, so we know

(44:27):
that it's not only are there their cues from the
moon phase and the sunset, but as the actual release
is happening, there's likely some some level of chemical communication
to really get that timing very very tight and very exact.
And what happens is corals are starting to decline due

(44:51):
to threats such as overfishing um which is creating more
algae on the reefs, and there's climate change which is
warming the waters and acidifying the waters, and all of
these things um pollution and runoff that they're wiping out corals.
So coral colonies that are still left are spaced farther
and farther apart. This means that their ability to really

(45:14):
sink up and their ability to get their spermag bundles
to meet and mix at the surface is it's harder
and harder to do that the farther apart their space. Again,
if you think about the hotel example, it's easier to
coordinate with your partner when you're right there with them,
and it's definitely if you were to try to coordinate

(45:35):
with your neighbors, you know it would help to be
able to see where they were in the process, and
and and no kind of what that timing was like,
so you could adjust. And the farther and farther apart
these these species are the coral colonies are spaced, the
harder it is to do. And this is this is
known as density dependence. So the the amount of corals

(45:57):
in in proximity to each other actually affect how successful
their fertilization rates are. And the farther apart there's space,
that level of fertilization goes down. So it's sort of
a double whammy. Not only are you not only are
we wiping out coral colonies, you know, putting less less adults.

(46:19):
Less adults are out there able to spawn because they're dying,
but the ones that are left or space farther apart,
and so there are odds of having successful sex go down.
So it just winds up being a double whammy. Now,
some listeners might be wondering, well, if the if the
corals can reproduce a sexually, then that's their backup plan, right,

(46:39):
Why doesn't cloning solve the problem? Yeah, And it's a
really good question, because coral colonies grow through a sexual reproduction.
So you start with this one little larvae that settles
down on the sea surface will swim down attached somewhere
on a hard up straight on the hard bottom rocky
botty um but old reef and creep this one single

(47:03):
cup with this one polyp, and then that polyp will
divide and divide again and again in ace and that's
the a sexual reproduction. It clones itself. But um clones
are genetically identical, so there's no diversity in that coral colony.
All those individuals are individuals that they have the exact

(47:26):
same genetic identity. So this helps the colony grow, and
there's benefits to being a big colony, but it doesn't
allow the species as a whole to have variety and
genetic diversity. And diversity is nature's insurance policy against all
the changes that are are rough against us. So if

(47:49):
a new disease develops, you need genetically diverse individuals in
the population, some of who may have a natural resistance.
If um there's a big shift in in uh, say
predator or prey, say there's there's a different food supply,
you need individuals who might have slightly different morphology or

(48:10):
slightly different genetic ability to digest a different type of
food source so that they can survive. So as these
different changes occur in the environment and different threats arise,
that genetic diversity is really critical that the species as
a whole can survive. And genetic diversity is created through

(48:31):
sexual reproduction, not a sexual reproduction. So it's when the
sperm from one individual mixes and meshes with the eggs
from another that a whole new DNA blueprint is formed.
And that is where the diversity of genetic uh, that
is where the diversity that these scis needs comes from.

(48:54):
Without sex, there's no diversity. So given what we learned
from you today about what's going new research that's going
on with hybridization, I'm starting to wonder now if maybe
that's the role of hybridization in some species is to
further the diversity. Yeah, and I think it might be.

(49:14):
I think that's that's one of the questions that Dr
Folky is really um digging into to say, could it
be that under certain circumstances, hybridization does work to help
increase that genetic diversity in a way that allows for adaptation,
that allows for species to withstand a changing environment or

(49:38):
changing threats so that it can then move forward and
maybe it will form a new species eventually. That's you know,
collected over time from the genes from the two two
parents prior to it, you know, in this case of
tag Horn and elk Horn. Yeah, I think it's still
it's possible, and that's what makes it a really intriguing

(49:58):
space to investing. Eight Um, but we we just don't
know yet, but it absolutely is possible. So where are
we right now in terms of coral loss? So well,
what are we doing and what can we do to
fix them or at least to address the problem. Oh yeah,
So you know, this is where I try to find

(50:20):
that balance between staying optimistic while also being really honest
that the data coming in it's sobering. So last week's
conference again, Um, it's really alarming how quickly we are
losing coral reefs and they are being hit by every

(50:40):
it's sort of a perfect storm. So, um, we're losing
them due to over fishing, which has removed a lot
of the grazers on the reefs, so the equivalent of
the cows that chomped back the seaweed. So we're getting
corals overgrown by seaweed because we've taken out things like
parrot fish and sea urchins. Um, we're losing corals extremely

(51:03):
quickly now to bleaching events. These are um the result
of global warming. It's when waters warm. Corals exist naturally
right at their edge of thermal tolerance. Um. You know,
they don't have air conditioning or heating systems in their houses,
so they live right at that perfect window where they

(51:25):
are just warm enough. And if you crank up the
heat of the ocean too much and we're talking one
to two degrees celsius, so not a lot of change,
coral stress and that stress um disrupts a really unique
relationship that they have with a tiny microscopic little algae

(51:48):
called those in selly you can calm zoaks, and these
zooks are food factories for the coral. They actually live
inside the coral tissue and they photosynthaesize just like a
tree eat um, turning sunlight into energy. And the energy
and the new in the sort of uh nutrition that
those those lly produced are what the coral can then

(52:11):
use to have extra energy to build their really massive
and impressive skeletons. Because the truth is the water environment
where corals exist. The reason why that water is like
that amazing clear, beautiful tropical turquoise blue that we all
love to swim, swim through and see for hundreds of

(52:32):
feet because there's nothing in it. It's a desert, which
makes it ideal for the right, right, which makes it
perfect for that this coral algae relationship, because they can
make their own nutrients and be able to build build
these reefs and have really clean clear waters. And when
we throw pollution in there, it disrupts that that relationship,

(52:55):
and when we heat the water, it especially disrupts that relationship.
And the bleaching is literally the coral kicking out the
zoaks and it turns the coral white. They get their
color from having these symbiotics algae in there, and so
when they bleach, they don't necessarily die. The coral does

(53:16):
not necessarily die right away. Sometimes they can recover, but
oftentimes they will die. And even if they do recover,
it can take them several years to regain those symbionts
and regain enough energy to them be able to reproduce,
because again, producing those sperm egg bundles takes a long

(53:37):
a lot of energy. And you know, it's just like
us if we're sick and we're not healthy, We're not
going to do the the extra things, you know, we're
gonna every all the energy we have goes through just
esic survival and sex is not basic survival, so production
of sperm and eggs drops or the number of sperm

(54:00):
you know, sperm and eggs that are produced will go down.
So all of these things, and climate change, especially UM
is really really threatening the reefs. The Great Beery Reefs
off Australia, the largest restructure in the world. UM. We
just had the worst bleaching on record UM. So it
was their summer right in February in March, and we're

(54:24):
seeing rates of severe bleaching that are just off the charts.
We've never seen it like this before. I mean we're
talking well over half the reef UM and that's really
really alarming. You know, some of these colonies are hundreds
of years old and if they go, it's going to
be a long time before that, you know, before a

(54:47):
new coral colony can can take over that role and
perform all of the benefits that that type of structure
can provide. Clarify for our listeners, and my understanding is
even at their growth rate when they're they're broadcast spawning
something like that would take thousands of years to regrow
a reef. Oh absolutely, I mean coral colonies are slow.

(55:13):
These are slow growing. Think of an old growth forest,
you know, where where your tallest trees are hundreds and
hundreds of years old. UM. To get that level of
perplexity takes for for centuries and centuries. And to build
something as big as a gray faery reef, absolutely, a
thousands You can drill down and scientists will core down

(55:35):
to see, you know, colonies that have built and staffed
up on top of each other over over time, and
it's thousands and thousands of years. So it's um a slow,
long process that has worked really really well and has
allowed them to withstand quite big changes, you know in
the environment. I mean we we've had big changes in

(55:57):
the past, but those changes haven't happened so quickly. And
so the problem with you know, climate change caused by humans,
caused by us, is that it's happening very very quickly,
and so the ability for these corals to adapt, um
seems to be pretty compromised, and we're seeing some pretty

(56:17):
pretty sad state of affairs. UM. I think there's over
six hundred species of coral now that are being considered
for threatened or endangered status UM because of the losses.
So that's that's a bummer, But there is some good news, um,
you know, it's I definitely and we can talk about
that UM for sure, because it's it's not the kind

(56:40):
of situation where we should throw our hands up and say, oh, well, um,
it's the bummer that my kids won't get to dive
on a cool reef, because that's that's not necessarily the case.
You know, the door is not closed UM with coral
restoration uh in places where they're actually it's sort of
like I VS. For corals. They go out when they

(57:01):
when the corals spawn at night, and they they're collecting
some of the sperm and eggs and they're bringing them
back to labs um and and going through a whole
process that actually increases the fertilization rate. And then they're
rearing the larvae and then the juvenile corals up to
sort of a bigger size so that they'll they'll have

(57:21):
a better chance to survive on the reef and not
get overgrown by algae or not get eaten by a predator.
And then they outplant these corals and they're finding that
they're really successful and some of the ones that they've
done over the past two to three years, those corals
now are spawning in the wild, which is great. So
there's some really neat um examples of coral farming for

(57:44):
for restoration that are are helping to sort of repopulate
areas that have been hit hard by by some of
these events. There's also um a lot more work in
attention now and fishering management to protect herbivores. So like
then these are the grazers the cows of the reefs.
And you know, for the listeners out there who do

(58:07):
like to eat fish, do not eat parrot fish. That's
one great thing you can do to help corals is
encourage folks to leave parrot fish um on the reefs
where they can be doing their job to eat back
this algae. And you know, we can talk more extensively.
There's some great resources out there, but you know, using

(58:27):
tourism dollars if you want to go to the Caribbean
or go to the Great Theoryes, support those countries that
have good management and plates that do abide by certain
fisheries policies, that do have protected areas that do enforce
their their pollution and clean water rules so that the
reefs there are given the best chance they can and

(58:51):
we have seen that. While we've seen that local management
can make a difference, it's absolute be a way to
help corals resist and get through some of these these challenges.
That said, without addressing climate change, there's no way. So

(59:11):
we have to deal with climate change. We have to
support you know, legislators and policies that are really progressive
at this stage, and there's fantastic proposals out there, there's
great clean energy technologies. Really its political will at this point,
and that actually can be a very hopeful thing because

(59:32):
that means all of us we get together kind of
like the corals do and synchronize our actions. We can
actually turn turn down feet and try to change the
tide on this um. And it's really important that we
do so. So that I'm trying to think of I
like that that's a nice boat to put on. It

(59:52):
isn't like for us to be able to help them
out so that we can continue to have this ecosystem together.
We need to sort of learn and how to behave
like them. Yeah, sink sink up a bit for bigger impact. Another,
I know, you know, it's always nice to give very
practical things. Um. Another really important, uh, especially coming into

(01:00:15):
summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, that folks can do
is when you go to the beach, if you are
swimming or diving in areas around coral reefs, don't use
sunscreen with oxybenzonate benzonate. Excuse me, oxybenzonate is um oxybenzone.
I think it's also called They're finding more and more

(01:00:36):
that the impacts of sunscreen, especially very sort of shallow
bays with lots of tourists is significant. And again that's
a local impact we can all be much more conscious of.
And if you just google you know, coral safe sunscreen,
you'll there's you know, tons that come up. Um, this
is new work that's been done. We just didn't realize

(01:00:57):
how sensitive again that that coral's works of these chemical inputs.
So just be smart about your sun screen choice. That's
a really simple way, um, to try to be more
conscious and give give corals a bit of a leg up.
Cool And is here a particular organization Coral Advocacy group
that that that that one should follow or even you know,

(01:01:20):
contribute to monetarily that can also help. Well, those are great,
that's a really great question. There there are several really
excellent groups out there that are doing wonderful work. UM.
There's a group called REEF which is the Reef Environmental
and Education Foundation. They do a lot of science but

(01:01:42):
also volunteer work, so folks can go check out reef
dot org. UM there's coral monitoring monitoring networks and groups
like the Nature Conservancy and others, especially in the field
of Nature Conservancy in the US Virgin Islands and the
Nature Conservancy of or to Are do call on on

(01:02:02):
volunteers to help UM monitor for bleaching. So if you're
someone who goes diving or snorkeling or wants to take
a trip, you can go and report what you've seen
so that we can help keep track of where bleachings
occurring and and try to understand those patterns better. So
I think it's called Coral Reef Watch, and I believe

(01:02:24):
it's run UM by Noah, which is the you know,
the US government's federal arm that studies oceans. But again,
folks like the Nature Conservancy I know, help train volunteers
to execute on that program. So those are those are
some that come to mind that are doing you know,
direct work with corals. UM. There's other great work by

(01:02:48):
UM groups like Moat Marine Lab in Florida that are
doing some of these UM farming and restoration techniques. So
if you if you're sort of more towards wanting to
support UH some of the science behind how we're studying
and learning, there, they're a great a great place to look.
There's a lot, but I would say that UM that

(01:03:10):
those are the ones that kind of immediately pops pop
into my head. UM. Oh, there's another there's a wonderful
initiative by um UH the Weight Foundation called the Blue
Halo Initiative, and this was initially started by a woman
named doctor Ayana Johnson and they it's island wide Marine

(01:03:33):
policy um in marine sort of management for Caribbean countries.
At this point, it's in the Caribbean, but it's really
great because it's it combines education and outreach, it combines
fisheries management, and it combines sort of typical conservation all
into one so that these island governments are actually implementing

(01:03:53):
a very holistic policy that works to protect their waters.
But all so you know, support fisher livelihood, but make
sure that they're they're taking all interest into account. So
that's another really neat initiative to look into or again
see where the blue Halo projects are and support going
to those countries, um for you know, for your vacation,

(01:04:16):
because they're ones that you know, um, your your tax,
your tourism tax is going to two governments that are
really trying to do the right thing. Um. Trying to
think if anything else comes to mind, Um, well, if
any additional ones come up, you can always you shoot
them to us via email and will include them, uh

(01:04:38):
you know on the landing picks for the episode. Yeah,
there's I think there's. Um. The last thing I'd say
is there is the Coral Restoration Foundation, which is I
think just Coral Restoration dot org. And they do some
really great work as well, um in terms of trying
to against farm out corald and I think they might

(01:04:59):
also have volunteer opportunities, which is it's fun. I mean,
they're it's neat to get to go and spend your
vacation helping to grow baby corals or outplant them honor
reef or ten to ones that are out there. It's
it's a nice nice way to really feel like you're
just like going and doing um, you know, tree plantings.
On Earth Day you can go do coral plantings and
and help reef to recover cool well. Um, is there

(01:05:22):
anything else you want to get out there before we
close it up here? Um? Um, I don't think so.
Just for folks to know that, unlike so much sex
and to see coral spawning is something we can actually
see pretty easily. Again, it happens in the shallows. You

(01:05:44):
just need a mask, you don't even need thin go
right offshore. There's lots of places in the world that
are you know, face and easy to get to and
and you can just swim out with a flashlight water
waterproof flashlight. Um. And you can watch this. It happens
right after sunset and it's starting now, I mean from
now through October and the Caribbean there will be different

(01:06:07):
mass spawning events. And if you go online and google them,
there there are schedules and you can go and and
watch this happen. And it really is. Um. Not only
is it magical and sort of mystical and ethereal and
just how it looks visually, but there's something that I

(01:06:28):
find incredibly uplifting and inspiring. And knowing that despite all
the threats, despite all the negative impacts that we are
having on these animals, every year, they continue to soldier on.
These mass spawnings still are happening, and that rhythm of

(01:06:49):
nature that has been established for thousands and thousands of
years continues to hold strong so that the next generation
can be possible. And you can witness that, and you
can see all that potential and all that hope floating
up right before your eyes. And it's um to me,

(01:07:10):
It's it's what it keeps me going cool. Well, Sex
and the Cy is the book. It is currently out
on hardcover, e book, audio book, and UM. As we've
stressed a several different times on the podcast on past
podcast episodes, it's just a delightful, insightful read full of

(01:07:30):
just some mind blowing but also entertaining content. We've recommended
it as as just a perfect bit of summer reading
for our listeners. Yeah. In fact, we just did our
summer reading episode a couple of weeks ago, and uh
we recommended this book Maraw to our listeners. And and
also I just want to say that I really appreciate

(01:07:50):
the work that you put into your prose in this book.
And just the analogies and similes and metaphors, the kind
of work that you do there make it so much
more readable than the hundreds of articles that we read
on similar topics and really kind of picturesque too. Yeah, oh,
thank you. I appreciate that, and appreciate so much the

(01:08:12):
support you guys have have given for it, and I'm
I'm just hopeful that your listeners will find it entertaining
and inspiring and hopefully some really good cocktail party fodder.
So definitely unfacts around the barbecue, all right. So there
you have it, a whole lot of coral biology, a

(01:08:34):
whole lot of coral sex, if you will, and some
some sobering but indeed hopefully optimistic information about where we
are in terms of coral loss and um readjusting pivoting
if you will, to try and um and and and
say these species that that do so much for our ecology.
And one of the things that I really loved about

(01:08:55):
this interview is that while we had done research ahead
of time and prepton, we'd read her book, and we
were we were ready to have this conversation. You know,
Mara in just the last week could already looking new
stuff because the science is moving so fast. So you
heard it here first, folks, or maybe maybe there are
some articles that came out of that conference she was mentioning.
But you know, I'm glad that we were able to

(01:09:17):
talk about all these changes with hybridization that scientists are
realizing about. Indeed, yeah, some some really cool data from
the book and and and some stuff that has just
come out in the last couple of weeks. So Okay,
you out there, maybe you have an experience like Robert
where he went to Jamaica. Have you been up closing
personal with coral reefs? Tell us about it based sent

(01:09:37):
us your pictures, let us know what you think about
the coloral bleaching effects that are going on. You can
do that on social media. We are all over the
place on social media. Were lousy with social media, as
Josh Clark likes to say. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
and Instagram as Blow the Mind. And you can always

(01:09:58):
visit us at our home base at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. And I want to throw into
you know with Facebook, the algorithm is always changing. Uh,
if you would visit us Blow the Mind on Facebook,
visit us there. Make sure that you're subscribed, but also
make sure that you've hit the adjustment so that we
show up in your fee, because that's going to ensure

(01:10:18):
that no matter what changes in the Facebook algorithm, we
can still get our content to you. Yeah, And basically
this is so that you can be updated whenever a
new podcast episode comes out, or we can let you
know when Robert or I or Joe have recorded a
video about something related to the show or published an article.
And if you're fed up with all the social media stuff,
as one can can be in this day and age,

(01:10:39):
there's always email. That's the way to get something directly
to us, no in between third party, and you can
reach us via email at blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com or more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com.

(01:11:15):
Fou