Did I ever tell you that this is my favourite day of the week? We have another episode of Ocean Talk Friday with myself, Andrew Lewin, and Nathan Johnson. We choose 4-5 articles that we feel made a big impact this past week and talk about them, their science and their conservation implications.
Today we discussed the following:
1) The resurgence of the Ross Sea MPA proposal;
2) Mussels smell before they settle;
3) Mussels battling Ocean Acidification with Food;
4) Researchers find out more about the Sea Star Wasting Disease; and,
5) 5 Pacific Islands disappear into the Ocean due to Climate Change.
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Show Notes: http://www.speakupforblue.com/session158
welcome to the speaker for blue podcast session one hundred and fifty eight what's up everybody it's ocean talk friday one of my favorite days of the week not only because it's the end of the week but we get to talk with our buddy nathan johnson and we're talking about a lot of cool articles today the first article we're going to talk about is the rossy protection that was rasi marine protected area that's been proposed there's been a couple of changes in the winds in terms of some countries who have who have been against in the past and that is is bringing some optimism we're also going to talk about how muscle larvae use odor as a cue for settlement a little bit of scientific fact for some invertebrates which i know will please nathan uh... we also have some more shellfish articles in terms of the response to shellfish uh... to ocean certification on the west coast this is a very important because ocean certification is affecting a lot of things and a lot of things and it's coming up in the media more and more so it's good that we have a study to look after that we're going to talk about sea star wasting disease and if we have time we're also gonna touch upon what we talked about on wednesday the five islands that disappeared in the solomon island and six more that are on their way so that's all up on the next episode of the speak up for blue podcast stay tuned welcome to the speak up for blue podcast helping you get involved in ocean conservation and now here's your host loves football so much i mean he really really likes it andrew luen hey everybody welcome back to another exciting episode of the speak up for blue podcast your voice for the ocean i'm your host angelon found a speaker for blue dot com rini colleges and self-proclaimed ocean printer and today is ocean talk friday which i think i said before is one of my favorite days as because we have nathan johnson here to co-host this episode with me and talk summary conservation some marine science nathan how you doing buddy doing well thanks for bringing me back you bet now nangana i'm going to say this right off the bat nathan's not feeling well now feeling a hundred percent today but still decide to make the appearance so i appreciate that nathan uh... we all appreciate it nice nice that's his that's his dedication people to to ocean talk friday i like it i like i like the idea so uh... also the massive salary you pay me all all in canadian dollars my friend all in canadian dollars so it may not be worth as much as you think uh... but we are we've got a lot to take care of today and talk talk about so let's get into it uh... let's go with the first one i'll describe the first uh... the first article and it's tight that we found on the guardian which i i'm really liking the guardian i find a lot of articles on there uh... this isn't uh... titled the ice cold war fight for sea life in remote wilds of ant article and essentially this is talking about the resurgence of the proposal to put in a marine protected area in the raw sea something that uh... silvia earl and her organization mission blue have really been pushing and i think uh... for the right reasons with the raw sea and parts of the and other parts of the arctic are really it was some of the what's what's understood to be some of the last uh... sort of intact ecosystems in the world and i think that's important to know because we need to do a lot of we don't know much about these ecosystems but we do a lot more research on them to understand them uh... find out what's ticking especially in the light of climate change are they doing well are they not doing well how they're changing and without a marine protected area we can't do that and this article really touches on the fact that there's some fishing pressure major fishing pressure from two countries russia and china in that area one uh... russia is after tooth fish which are very large fish i i believe what was the size that they said here i think it was like they can get up to like five kilograms i believe is the size anyway it's a big size uh... of this fish sorry they can weigh they can get into two meters in way up to 150 kilograms which is massive and they're eaten by seals and whales so important to the ecosystem but they're also important to the russian economy they sell it to not only to uh... parts of asia but they also sell it to the united states but that's a lot of pressure and that can affect the ecosystem uh... china is actually after the krill not that much krill but they're actually they use it uh... in their growing aquaculture uh... industry and what's what's concerning to scientists is because that industry is growing for china and because china has to feed so many people aquaculture is going to grow their demand for krill is going to be extremely important as that's going to grow as well and of course krill is a very big part of the food chain in antarctica for not only whales uh... and and other species smaller fish and so forth and that kind of has a big chain effect to the larger species like sea lions or seals and penguins but it it really is part of the in an extremely important part of the the food web so we have a lot of problems here and russian china in the past have blocked any kind of proposal for the rasi marine protected area as well as some protected areas a lot of smaller protected areas that would equate to about one point nine million square miles of protection uh... or square kilometers of protection uh... but they keep blocking these these proposals because of their interest in this fishing so now there's a resurgence and the resurgence is because china has had didn't block in the latest vote trying to didn't block the m_p_a_ in the rasi but they blocked the east antarctica m_p_a_s so there's a bit of a change in inflow here and it's becoming really really important so nato what do you think is going to happen what do you know what do you think about this article uh... well it sounds like from what the the article goes into is that there is progress being made you mentioned that uh... china was one of the more staunch opponents of of a lot of these protections because i would imagine because of the fishery that they have down there for krill but date the people who are involved in these talks do seem to think that you know we keep if we keep coming back to this we might be a little bit more ground every time from a a protection standpoint uh... against china and and russia where the two major countries that they mentioned so you know it it it's promising in that regard it seems again one of those situations where uh... it really depends on what type of perspective you take you know if you take sort of a financial perspective or or financial stake in these areas then right uh... it's it's more straightforward protecting these areas would cut down on countries revenues you know there's also an argument to be made that protecting these areas would increase these revenues long-term because it would be a piece of the populations of a lot of these stocks the two fish in the krill that you mentioned uh... the interesting thing is so if you look there's there's another story from a_b_c_ that the previous article links to about when russia blocked the last time this proposal came up uh... and the uh... gentleman named mark Epstein who's the executive director of the Antarctic and southern ocean coalition said that there are reasons a country might not be supportive that have nothing to do with with what's happening here in hoebert or down in the southern ocean and that this has to be played out basically saying that this could have something completely with like nothing to do with conservation or with the fishery there could be other diplomatic other political reasons why china and russia may oppose these these measures right so i think until you're unless you're actually at the table where these discussions are having place we're taking place it's difficult to say exactly what these could be but it really reminds me of the interview you had with uh... chris parsons about the international whaling commission yep a few months back where you basically talked about you know there are some situations where it's uh... fishery or industrial activity that really uh... conflicts with conservation of protection but there's also just as many if not more situations where strictly politics or diplomacy that seem to get in the way so i i kind of imagine that's what's going on here as well yeah i agree i think uh... i think this is something of a long haul i think we're in we're in for the long haul like a lot of other things that happen on a on a very high political level uh... and i think there's a word there's ways to attack this and it's been done in the past and and especially like if you think about countries like china russia who are very set in their ways uh... they they tend to kind of go by their own beat of their own drum and and it's difficult to sort of influence them and to say look you know we need to protect this this this ecosystem because it's going to have some problems and right now it's sort of pristine as pristine it gets and uh... with climate change you know having some of those changes having maybe some some acute effects like we've talked about before with coral reefs i think you take out the chronic problems like overfishing then you have something uh... more of uh... of of of a way to adapt to climate change and i think you know works with corals it should work with with other ecosystems as well and that's the big problem in other places so uh... you take out the chronic leave the acute happening because you can't control that and hopefully overtime that will they will adapt and that acuteness will go down in in terms of uh... uh... frequency the way i see this being attacked or or the strategy involved is you hit you you need to educate at different levels start off with the politicians with the debt the the diplomats that are you know representing china and russia in the at these meetings there's that level the political level the scientific level the other level is the people you get into the people you talk about what's happening china has over a billion people and they need to feed their people so they have a big need figure out how they can feed their people without over exploiting the antarctic educate the people and saying look you guys have a major effect on things when you go after something look what happened with shark fins right at a major effect but when you had wild-aid and other organizations in their partnering with local organizations to educate the kids educate the public educate the parents educate anybody now they realize holy cow we have such an effect all for soup that we don't really need you know this is something that we can change and seventy percent decrease happens so that change happens a happens over time but that change happens this might be a little different because look they have to feed their population and that's going to be a very difficult thing to do so now you know this this could be this could make things a little more different however you know china is actually saying look let's protect the rossie but let's put less protection on the on the eastern at the artic so i think there's there's some wiggle room in there and i think the fact that they've changed their minds has something to do with maybe little bit of education little bit of pressing and just perseverance you know always bring up the rossian rossian not giving up bring up the n_p_a_'s and how much they'll benefit and look it will benefit you know a lot of them in ways that have been set up have been able to benefit everyone and i think it could benefit china and can benefit russia all in their own in their own rights so i think uh... the education on different levels will be extremely important the other thing that i find interesting i'm not sure if you've been following in the news but you see a lot of chinese uh... illegal fishing vessels have been blown out of the water uh... there was an article that just came out yesterday that i read yesterday were in argentina navy ship blue uh... or sunk intent intentionally and illegal chinese fishing boat that it was chasing indonesia is is blowing up fishing boats as they come into their their area to fish illegally we're seeing china gain pressured and they're all over the place it seems in argentina there indonesia and they're all over the place so seems like they're getting really uh... some bad press and obviously a lot of pressure you know in physical pressure military pressure from other countries because of their over fishing in their legal activity so i think this is going to be interesting to play out uh... on this kind of scale russia they're always a wild card you never know what they're what they're trying to do uh... but i think if you explain to them the benefits of rain protected areas and how and and not necessarily take away the fishery but control it and make sure we protect those vulnerable areas once we identify those then i think we're i think we're in for for a good compromise at at the very least yet now i agree i think it's it's tricky with these i mean these large countries these international basically powerhouses at this point that play such a huge role in and not only the activities that happen around the southern ocean but also just globally you know if these fisheries get affected i guarantee you it's not just russia china that are affected by them so um... but i agree i think a lot of it comes with awareness and uh... communicating the benefits and the the actual risks not that you see risks with these and it seems like we're seeing uh... more of that information communicated over time but but i agree i think it's just going to take some take some more negotiating take a little bit more time yeah i think also to is we need to have uh... uh... a black fish type documentary come out about the rossian what's happening and allow people to make up their own minds uh... just like we do a black list just like we do a shark water needs something that shows the importance of of the antarctic people we don't know a lot about the antarctic and scientists don't know a lot about the antarctic but people themselves don't know a lot about the antarctic and people have shown that they can make a change once they understand things once they realize what is right and what is wrong and what we need to do i think that having that worldwide pressure could influence some parts of it uh... and i think it's that i think it's extremely important so uh... you know maybe some kind of campaign where you take a penguin you know like a like they did with uh... shark stanley you know uh... we when we interviewed um... uh... angel of the legomas and he was working with pew and he came up with this cutout of a hammerhead shark and uh... he would give it to everybody he and you can actually you know you can print it off on their website cut it out gave it to kids all over the world um... people would take pictures on instagram and on facebook and then he collected all those printed them and gave it to the siteies uh... voters voting commission uh... who were about to vote on protecting sharks and specific shark species and rays and mantarice and stingrays and that there was an end up the first vote was what by one vote you know for protection and the rest just kind of cascaded into more votes for protection these type of campaigns have that type of influence you know that one voter that went above that that one it may have been influenced by those by those pictures so explain to the people how important it is you got some charismatic species uh... in in the Antarctic and i think you can make a very good uh... sort of worldwide campaign to to protect the species so i think it could be it could be done and really get into the public to to put on some pressure to not only the i mean if you think about one thing i found was interesting is that the tooth fish was sold to the u_s_ and aisha parts of asia doesn't specify where in asia but when we had the whole shark fin thing a lot of the u_s_ cities ban shark fins and canadian cities and cities all over the world well why do we need to fish you know do we need to eat tooth fishes at that much of an important like what if if it's being fish to the point where it's it's being over fish then maybe the u_s_ can be like hey well we're not going to accept it or parts of a jet agent countries can be like no no we're not going to accept it so i think that i thought i was a kind of an interesting fact about this uh... well i mean the tooth fishes is chalet and seabats at least in the united states yes and yeah well because nobody wants to eat with tooth fish looks like right now we we literally created a market didn't exist yet just change in the name so i i don't part of the kind of things like if you get rid of chalet and seabats from the menu people might be bomb for like a few months but we get over it yeah absolutely i think that's i think that's the thing too and it's it's funny 'cause if you show what a chalet and seabats a_k_ tooth fish or tooth fish a_k_ chilli chalet and seabats looks like it's an ugly fish i think it's so that's why they said well let's make it you know the name is ugly the the fishes ugly it's massive but let's make it you know a seabats because everybody's used to seabats and let's market differently you know that's like saying all you know here's some poop but we're going to call it a mars bar right and serve and be like this is awesome it takes like crap but it sounds like a you know a king-sized mars bar you know with with you know with some yellow candy in it or something you know it's it's that kind of stuff right there goes mars is a potential sponsor yeah yeah sorry mars but you know it's it's her she or her she will will take your money no we won't know they've got some they've got some major problems with their water management uh... but yeah like it's it's it's one of those things though where you just like you change the whole marketing of the of the fish to to give it a nicer and prettier fish and you don't show pictures of what it looks like and then you know you've got all of a sudden you've got this this this commercial fishery for it and then we don't know what effect we're doing and we've done it in the past with other fish and we've fished out the car not knowing that you know thinking that it was it was highly abundant this is a fish that takes fifteen years to get to adulthood and it's massive and so it's a slow growing fish it will not recover fast and these fish tend to be terrible commercial fisheries you know they just don't last and it's not sustainable so why just do it just for the fact of what's exploited as much as possible and then go for and then and then we'll go into the next fish when you don't really have to i mean i think there should be a a huge exploitation uh... in the in the documentary on this fish alone to say this is the ugliest fish you've ever seen and you are eating it and it's called a tooth fish not a Chilean sea bass you know i mean like there should be something like this is the truth of what you're doing so right anyway let's move on to be spent a lot on this uh... let's move on to uh... how how muscles since odor yet this is uh... an article from journal experimental marine biology and ecology by scott morello and and phillip eun from university of main and it talks about settlement queues in uh... blue muscle larva which are or historically have been really abundant around the gulf of main area and and they bring up that so when you look at uh... for benthic invertebrates like like muscle of types of shellfish things that uh... typically don't move as adults where they settle is a huge decision because you know they don't have the ability to step up and move if things get bad they have to pick their their place really carefully and a lot of this is determined when they're in their level stage when they can float around the water column and then they somehow decide a this is the place for me and they begin their metamorphosis into adults where they attached to the bottom and there's been a lot of studies that look at what type of positive cues they look for yeah are there chemical cues or visual cues or auditory cues that say this is the place to be you should settle here uh... but not a lot has looked at negative settlement cues things that may deter larva so uh... you know those same senses chemical auditory visual that may say no this is this is not the proper place to settle keep looking uh... so what these researchers did is is kind of look at some of those negative cues in blue muscle larva to see if they exist and they found that uh... they set up a couple different experiments basically putting muscle larva in different tanks and expose them too cues that they would be exposed to in an environment and not only uh... you know just a positive key so for blue muscle positively uh... react to cues released from adult larva from adult muscles right so adult muscles send off the signal that larva can pick up and if they sense that then they'll settle an area that's pretty well known but they also looked at negative cues or cues from things that could be negative so post settlement adult predators so organisms that feed on adult muscles uh... they showed that marva tend to react negatively to that so they will avoid areas that exhibit those cues uh... bill also uh... they react neutrally to some cues like those given from a herbivorous gastropod things that are really going to affect muscles uh... they respond positively to some algae potentially because they feed on that algae or just indicates suitable settlement uh... and then the other unique thing is they looked at combinations of these so when you're in the wild you're most likely to encounter not only a positive cue from adult muscles but also some other negative cues from different areas or positive and negative cues from the same area and they want to see how they react to that the long uh... the short version of that is basically uh... they responded how you would predict based on these individual ecological cues just on a more holistic level so if you're getting a positive response on the left-hand side and a positive and negative on the right hand they're going to go to the left uh... kind of just imagine what the net impact of this but so it's it's really interesting research trying to get the more holistic view of what determines the settlement because in areas like the northeast united states the gulf of main these type of uh... shellfish settlement things are really important yeah no i i i i i think this is interesting uh... you know blue muscles are not just in main i mean they're all over the place they're all over the Atlantic uh... gulf main uh... bay of fundy uh... you know the the Atlantic close all the way to canada and and i think uh... i think it's interesting how you have a muscle that looks just like a shell consents you know smell you know i i i think that's that's kind of interesting uh... actually really interesting and and i was very surprised when i first when i was like what this is impossible uh... but i think it's interesting and i think also not only are they trying to smell for adults that are the same species that could basically tell them yes it's safe to come here uh... but they also look at cues like negative cues of you know some of the dog welks that you know essentially are predators where they drill into their shells and we're going to talk about them and and in the next article as well uh... and then i think uh... what was the other what's the others so there's there's gastropods muscles and there's two that dot yet dog welk i think was one of them yet which is essentially a snail uh... and there's another one to you i forget what it was though uh... hold on a sec here uh... dog well two prayers shoot it was right here anyway you know but obviously you know that they look at these predators the and and other competitors that could you know compete for space maybe send off some bad cues that can harm them in the future and it's essentially it's it's increasing their rate of survival and i think it's a great extremely important for muscles to to survive the they tend to be found where other muscles are uh... and when you look if you come across any any area in the ocean where you find muscles uh... especially blue muscles which i have uh... experience with you you look and you see just different ages of muscles and obviously the more you find you know the healthier that area that that colony would be uh... so it's obviously an important part to their survival you find them uh... together uh... because you know you know it's almost like a schooling fish together masses you'll be protected and then the next generation could go on and and and essentially continue that gene flow and hopefully any kind of that would would that would help survival would would kind of win out so uh... i just think it's interesting with that you know obviously it's an evolutionary trait it's you you sense different different cues and uh... and you settle down i think this is one of those things where it's like it's an invertebrate and it's got a sense of smell and it uses it to survive which you know we kinda use it to survive or you know as a human species right now we're just like oh that's mac and cheese that smells delicious or that's where i'll settle yeah right that's where i'm going to settle on this couch where there's dorito chips and i'm gonna eat myself uh... to get fat right while watching t_v_ and not move where these guys like no hey there's no dog walks here so we're gonna we're gonna survive here i also think it's interesting in one of the experiments how it was almost like a double negative they had to negative cues and that's it there are no positive cues and the larva actually just stayed in place so that's more of uh... i'm not gonna go anywhere and i'm hoping for the best to survive uh... which can make them a little more vulnerable i guess in in in that kind of way but if they stay still and they don't go into the negative cues that probably increases their survival rate yeah and and and one other interesting thing was that these the the other predator by the way is green crabs the pregnant crabs thank you it's an issue that's an invasive species to believe yeah and and those they're not they don't feed on anything but adult muscles so if you're they don't go after the smaller juvenile muscles so uh... you know it's not like these larva are actually thinking at this point later in their life that they're gonna be threatened by these predators you know it's just more of a natural selection process but at the same time it's it's a pretty unique adaptation to have these larva specifically avoid predators that will affect them later on in life not immediate threats right these are things that you know once they're fully mature will affect them so you know it's just kind of another interesting uh... result of of these years and years of selection acting on these these types of stimuli absolutely and i think uh... yeah and i just think it's a good i think it's a great article and it's great choices just makes you think that's not just a shell it's a it's uh... sort of an animal that survives and knows to survive and i think that it especially in the wake of ocean acidification we're gonna see these these animals are very vulnerable to those things and which we're going to talk about leads kind of segue into our next uh... our next uh... an ex-article which is essentially looking at the shellfish response to ocean-specific ocean acidifications uh... and and also depends on other stressors so what they this study did and is a university of california Santa Cruz uh... essentially is a study of california muscles uh... key rocky intertidal species in the in the rocky intertidal ecosystems of the west coast and what they looked at this study was to assess how vulnerable these uh... these muscles were too ocean acidification on the west coast there are a lot of upwelling areas um... and it stretches from washington where there's a lot of oysters and muscles all the way down to california and there are pockets of these upwellings happen in certain areas where they're like what i like to call distinct of quote-unquote distinctive areas uh... very important because they bring up cold uh... nutrient rich waters which the muscles tend to filter feed out uh... but they're also more acidic now what this uh... what this with this uh... study figured out or so i want to look at was based on the variability of the coastline and what how much food each each colony of muscles are getting what is the response to ocean acidification along the west coast so in other words as these muscles are all getting different doses of ocean acidification some higher in some places than others depending on the currents depending on how much upwelling waters coming in how are they reacting looking at other factors and what they notice was some of the colonies we're doing we're actually doing pretty well they were growing they had thick shells and so what the the effect of ocean acidification on these on these bloom on on the muscles on the muscles in general is that their shells are are very become very thin they cannot build their shells they cannot find the calcium to build their shells because the water uh... it has a low ph and the way that works is that you just can't get any kind of carbonate from uh... these chemical reactions that happen in the ocean so it's very difficult for these shells to grow which make them more vulnerable to predators like what we talked about in the last article dog well and crabs who tend to the dog well tends to drill through the muscles so as you can imagine any kind of thinner shell we get drilled in easier than uh... thicker shell and of course the same thing with the crabs they essentially just cut you know they they they cut open the uh... the muscles so if they have a stronger shell they'll less likely be able to cut open compared to the the thinner shells so what they looked at here was like okay well what how why are some areas doing well in the face of the ocean acidification same concentrations as other places that are not doing so well and what they found was that the actual food source was more plentiful in some so areas that had a low ph that would affect other areas the same with the same page they compared the two and they notice that the food availability the nutrients uh... that were available to them the the final plan that were available to them were more plentiful in the areas where the uh... the muscles were doing well what does this mean nathan what are we looking at now with these with this variability we're looking at areas i think if in my opinion is ocean acidification may not be as bad in fact in certain areas it just affects a certain areas more than others depending on food what are you what are your thoughts yeah i i mean i agree with you i think it depends on the the variation based on well the environmental variation so that the physical conditions at each site right the communities that you have cuz i mean we're again we're just looking at muscles we're not looking at any other sort of intertidal species in the area uh... i i think you know of a good headline would be like acidification uh... effects are different in different areas you know it's not like a surprisingly sexy headline but that's kind of what it is that's what the study showing is that things are different in different places yeah and as much as ocean acidification i still think you know this doesn't say that it's good it just says that it's not as bad in some areas as others so i i think you know ocean acidification is kind of like any other environmental stressor in certain areas it's much worse um... you know like it's a driving affect or driving force for the ecosystem in the area and in other situations it may be present but it may not have as much of a determining impact on the system and it makes sense because you know when you're looking at acidification as it limits the resources available for these invertebrates that are aligned on calcium carbonate uh... it makes it so that they have to spend more energy to build their structures to build shells so if there's more food in the area that may not be a huge deal they may be able to you know still build their structures still build other shells in their skeletons uh... whereas if there's less food or if there's high variability so you have a lot of times there's low food and then a lot of times there's high food where they can't really predict what the food availability will be then again it's going to be more difficult for them to survive on a day-to-day basis um... yeah i think that's kind of my my thoughts on it is that it's sort of a long way of saying it depends why and i think to be honest i think this is good news you know normally when we talk about a solo ocean acidification we're talking about the essential uh... decrease of all animals that a major decrease of all and maybe extinction of all animals that require calcium to build their their their shells or their skeletons we have been like every time i read anything but also a certificate is going to devastate the world it's going to devastate the oceans as we know it reefs are going to go oysters are going to go instead it has it has affected a lot of places uh... just a couple years ago in in vancouver they lost like two million oysters to oceansification because they couldn't build their shells and you know when you hear that you're like holy cow you know what are we going to do in the future well this kind of show some light it it allows us to detect vulnerability of right now for muscles but maybe other species as well like oysters that have a huge commercial commodity along the west coast you know by mapping out where area where you get a lot of nutrient rich or upwelling areas uh... and looking at the populations and mapping out the populations of these uh... shellfish of these muscles you can target protected areas of this of these muscles take away any other chronic effects like we've talked about before chronic effects to this area take that out allow them to feed and allow them to respond to the decreasing ph the the more acidic waters because if they feed they grow and they can fight it off in other areas you may not want to protect because it could be a lost cause they're not getting a lot of food i'm not saying inject the water full of nutrient which rich food that's kind of silly we've shown that in the past i think you're looking at some ways to identify some vulnerable areas for muscles california muscles in this area now will that trans uh... transpose to other shellfish i don't know but it's something that is is hopeful to me that we can actually protect some of these areas that we don't lose california muscles or maybe any other kind of muscle along here that will be affected or oysters or anything that's commercially valuable uh... of course you know a lot of oysters and a lot of muscles they essentially solidify the coastline because they they fuse to that coastline uh... and their strings that their their base strings that actually you know uh... allow them to stick to that coastline really protects it and uh... they're very important species or very important species to actually as a functional species they're very important for us as a secure coastline so uh... in terms of erosion and other sea level rise and so forth so they're very important i think this is a great article i think this provides us with some hope it's the beginning and there's still a lot more work to do but i think this provides us with some hope yeah i uh... and and the one thing that i would add that i don't think i saw in the study was you know it's a field based study and the good thing about it is it seems very applicable to management strategies because they looked at sites that are being impacted right now by this type of acidification and they also measured things that are pretty easy to measure in a system as far as like the availability of nutrients the uh... hydrology of the area what type of upwelling or how much upwelling you get uh... based on data they observe through whether different seasons or different years or ever but i don't think they actually compared it to a an area with less acidification so they had their city site was basically high acidity or present acidification so lower p_h_ and high food or lower p_h_ and low food availability but it'd be interesting to compare that to no more normal p_h_ or the normal range of p_h_ before acidification came into effect to see if there's you know because there could be a steep drop off and now we're really just measuring between the lesser of two evils or you know maybe there is a whole lot of difference between the abundance of muscles with higher low p_h_ provided that there's a good amount of food right so i think that would be a really interesting thing but you're right it's it's good to know that while acidification certainly not good it's not it may not be as harmful as some of these stories seem to make it out to be for sure depending on other environmental variables absolutely absolutely i i i like this article i think that's it it's a it's a hopeful article and i i'd like to see more more work done on that so that'll be a lot of fun to see uh... okay let's go to the second last one i think we might have time to put into more uh... let's talk about c-star wasting disease you want to give us a little little breakdown try and make this as brief as possible by giving that's paying for a buck here alright uh... yes we've talked about this in the past but c-star wasting syndrome is this really detrimental and disease or bacterial infection or something that's impacting c-stars all on the pacific coast of north america but mostly around or again uh... they think from about twenty thirteen through twenty fourteen it caused about ninety percent reduction in biomass of of the keystone c-star species around this coastline so they uh... you know they're they're learning a little bit more about the these they've tracked the symptoms uh... you know it starts with twisting arms of the c-star then deflation and or lesions lost arms uh... losing grip on the substrate and then death another really interesting thing though is that so in twenty fourteen when they had this loss the one of the main prey items of these of the c-star species was was muscles i think it was some some type of benthic uh... inter-tidal shellfish so that leaves the door open for greater juvenile survival and larval survival which is what we're seeing now there's articles going out saying there's a baby boom of the c-stars that it's up to like three hundred times more abundance than you would expect to see and it's not because they're birthing any more larval c-stars it's that these larva are surviving more than they typically are and they think it probably has to do with there's just so much more food but the only reason there's more food is because all the adult c-stars have died off from this disease so it's very much not saying that this wasting syndrome is no longer a threat because these larvae that are surviving could ultimately succumb to the disease when they reach adulthood we don't know but it just sort of opens up this niche which kind of the other thing that this paper talks about is what type of ecological impacts the syndromas had because c-stars are keystone predator in the area so they're not really sure yet it's too early to tell you could get in abundance of muscles their major prey item uh... which could change a shift in the ecosystem you could get an abundance of muscles in some areas but then other types of maybe barnacles or lint bits in other regions uh... based on what type of interhidal zone you're looking at so it's kind of an article that tries to look more deeply at what are the not only the causes of this but how is this going to affect these communities ten twenty thirty years from now and this is what we need uh... we know we've needed this information for a while and i'm glad this article came out and of course that this is recent this is recently published on p_l_s_o_ one and uh... i think i think it's just it's just needed we need more information on the c-star wasting disease i think it's interesting how c-star wasting disease in the past i have to talk about this even though it's it's absolutely ridiculous has been uh... associated or falsely associated with uh... the uh... fukushima nuclear power plant leak uh... saying that all the you know c-stars are are having this disease because of the radiation water which is absolutely false has been proven by uh... a lot of other different scientists deep sea news dot com did a whole expose a on this uh... they had christmas who is probably one of the if not the best uh... expert on c-stars uh... in the u_s_ he works at the system smithsonian institutes goes on blogs on just on starfish and c-stars uh... and he's actually amazing will put that link in in the uh... on the blog was in the shown us on speaker for the dot com for slash session one fifty eight but uh... you know this is something we just need more information we need to know what's caught you know which animals are more affected where they're more affected uh... obviously you know tide pools are more affected because or they're highly affected because there's not a lot of water being being exchanged because the type was essentially stale our own uh... depending on when the time comes in when it goes out uh... but you know we're we're figuring out different aspects of it you know some some orange c-stars have been found to uh... be disproportionately higher really highly affected so uh... compared to other individuals so you know we're looking at you know some some differences who's getting affected more that will lead to question of why are these animals getting the why the specific orange c-stars getting more affected why the tide pools getting more affected what's in the water what's the difference and maybe understand more about this wasting disease what's causing it the c-star associated then so virus uh... and what those ultimate factors are to triggering this epidemic so you know this is this that this is these are the articles these are the studies that we need uh... to do and we need to fund to make sure we understand cuz it's not just a anisco like a west coast of the u_s_ thing this is something that's happening along the in along many areas in the pacific and we need to understand because it's having up a very big effect on c-stars which in the articles states that c-stars on the west coast have a huge role in shaping the community in the intertidal area so i think this is going to be something that's uh... you know it's kind of crazy that this is happening but it's something that we need to we need to focus on studying so this is just a great article to to do that and we'll put all these articles will put them in the the links that you can read this one you can read the entire article which i think uh... is extremely important uh... by the way on a side note have you watched uh... john all of us uh... news sort of monologue slash that is on scientific studies i'm gonna make a video especially for that but on our youtube channel but i find that the major point of that that rent was read the science don't just believe morning talk shows and don't necessarily just believe us when we give you breakdown like on our youtube channel of ocean news read like p_l_s_a_ one is available to anybody read the studies the ocean studies read the medical studies go in and ask questions and challenge these articles because that's that's the important part we really need to understand what's happening don't just go and believe the samples uh... i'll believe a study that says you know i don't know what it was but i think it was like you know drinking champagne three times a week can cure cancer or something like that you know when there's only one individual rat that was tested like be smart about it look up the article they always linked a lot of the link to the article they don't wonder why uh... and don't just go for the more convenient answer be a scientist get that your scientific mind working and challenge everything you read so that you have to read the scientific article and and chances are usually good that if you read an article with the headline that this means this yeah like if if it says sea stars are dying off because of radiation yet that's probably science usually isn't that black and white but so chances are they're already kind of elaborate a little bit i think i i think also would you have like oh coffee cures cancer helps cure cancer and the next week you have one coffee causes cancer you know question why is one studies thing one thing and in the other states in the complete opposite anyway let's go into the last one quickly i covered this yesterday or uh... wednesday uh... for the speaker for the podcast uh... but five islands have disappeared in the pacific ocean there part of the solemn and islands which are like i think of a set of you know four five hundred islands uh... and then six more following suit now the six islands that are following suit have people who are living on them and they have already had parts like swaths of the islands taken away uh... and they've had to actually taking their entire village their entire like history on that island that to uproot and move to a different island or move to a different place which of course imagine like taking galveston and moving it because it's gone because of sea level rise and you know the whole point of the of wednesday's podcast was to talk about sea level rise because we don't talk about it enough or i find we don't talk about it enough uh... what are your thoughts on these disappearing islands and of course the six more that are following suit and i'm sure there are many more that we haven't really discovered uh... i think it kind of shows that i mean first of all this is it's happening now it's not something that you can't say sea level rise is a threat in the next one hundred years uh... you can say maybe it won't impact our specific area right in a hundred years but that the world is so globalized now that it doesn't necessarily just have to impact where you live uh... to have an impact in your life and i also think that i think one common thing that a lot of people are sort of skeptical or hesitant to agree with all these climate change warnings and sea level rise warnings and acidification is that when it becomes a big enough deal they will know about it and we will figure out a way to address it i think what this article shows is that you know we these these islands have already completely disappeared granted they weren't major metropolitan areas so there's a lot of their their smaller islands they're kind of in a remote area but they're already you know there there wasn't any sort of uh... major presidential address announcing this this is just it happened that they're gone uh... you know it's already happened so i think it just kind of shows you that if you're expecting at some point to reach a crisis level and us to take action at that point it might be too late b i don't necessarily think that that's going to happen so uh... you know it's really unfortunate that these communities have had to relocate uh... as we've talked about in the past it's going to hit these low-income uh... sort of underdeveloped or or not fully economically developed areas first and it's going to hit them harder then some more first world areas but uh... that doesn't mean that it's not hitting us it's not going to have said some point yeah i mean uh... this is something that we have to address uh... you know you could argue that islands uh... small and maybe get uh... swept away every fifty years or so because they're small that they're not very high above sea level however is happening more frequently uh... or it seems to be happening more frequently this study you at what i like about this is the study used satellite data to monitor the how like how long it took uh... as well as you know how these on scott you know can i guess what the way they're in had their uninhabited uh... but these were detected as land masses on satellite image when they started to the study whatever year they start i think it was in the eighties and now they're under water uh... so i think it's interesting that we can monitor this i think uh... i think it's necessary for all land masses to be monitored especially in the south pacific because it seems from studies that i've read that these are areas that will be more affected just in terms of the way it's happening just that it seems to be uh... the civil or a sea level right seems to be going higher faster in these areas and of course they're the most vulnerable the one article that i read from the marshal islands where people had to go out uh... that low tide and sort of readjust their makeshift seawall because if they didn't the water would come into their house that's scary you know that's some scary stuff and in lake here in the great lakes uh... you know you have areas that are being eroded away and people are losing like fifty feet of their backyard you know and so this is not just happening in the south pacific it's happening other places for different reasons uh... but however it's happening and we need to monitor it and we need to address it and we need to figure out where we're going to put people who need to be moved around and i think also people need to think about where they're you know if they're moving close to a close they need to think about that look out you know the trends gets gets some scientists like it were it's it's probably worthwhile to pay for a scientific study on your area if you want to live near the coast just to find out if it's going to be there in fifty years you know i mean we're thirty years for however long you're going to be there so um... that's something that because you're going to pay a lot of money to be close to the water i mean we have here people in hamilton harbor you know one of the worst polluted harbors in ken history uh... people are paying a lot of money to live on the water and they have their backyard directly looks onto this you know this steel mill and you know and you're just like why are you paying that much money for that kind of stuff um... and so you pay but you do pay a lot of money pay millions of dollars for these for the water uh... whether you can swim in or not but now you're looking at protection you're looking at how much how is this going to be affected so i think this is something that we need to address i think it's something that we need to monitor and especially as individuals living near the coast i think we definitely need to monitor this make sure you're not in a floodplain make sure uh... you have natural areas that are along the coast of that it can help as a deterrent uh... but yeah we we definitely need to to worry about this any last words on this last article i actually think that would be a really interesting documentary to have a group go to some of these i_l_s_ that are like directly within the next ten years may be and habitable and you know cover that and cover the you know policies that you know govern these types of things the leaders who uh... either in the regional islands or you know countries like the u_s_ who honestly are major contributor of climate change uh... and you know talk about how what these people are going through maybe different than what our experiences but at the same you know at the same time we're all working towards combating a larger problem they're just more on the front lines that we are exactly yeah i think it's also one of those things were i think we have to you know i talked about some ones they were we have to unite as a as a species and protect our species and say look you know uh... the western world of the developed world because a lot of asian countries are producing a lot of a lot more uh... emissions uh... we really need to take care of other people who are being affected by our mistakes uh... these small islands don't have manufacturing they don't have coal mines you know they're living off the land they're really living a very basic life but now they have to change because of us and i think we need to help take care of them i think that's what the paris accord was all about was to take care of other other areas that are being of directly affected by climate change and i think that's what the important thing is i think we need to put in politicians need to be put into power that also have that same kind of mindset and not just about you know uh... local taxpayers money we need to take care of each other as a species not necessarily as cut different countries and take care of your own country so that's the final world i have to say on that uh... nathan thank you very much uh... for joining us for this o_t_a_ or t_f_ uh... i really appreciate it uh... what is ocean ocean talk friday to our our little uh... verbiage that we talk about when we when we email each other uh... but i know you're not feeling well but i appreciate you coming in and giving us uh... giving us your all uh... and uh... thank you very much and uh... hope you have a great weekend and and the audience members thank you very much for your continued support uh... you know we really appreciate all the feedback that we've been getting uh... i got to have to share some of the emails we got uh... nathan from from people who have just been the amazing and say hey you know what i've just start listening to your your podcast and i'm addicted to keep listening to the haven't seen anything like this before so we really appreciate that 'cause we put in a lot of effort yet we put a lot of effort to put this together for you guys for the audience just to kind of keep it where i mean we have a you know we have a little bit of a selfish motive because we like talking about this kind of stuff but it's also we need to get out there as scientists as conservationists we need to get out there and we need to make sure you understand it so uh... we appreciate your feedback and and we're gonna read more of these uh... compliments as they can come in so i really appreciate you guys sending those into either on our facebook page you can email us through our website at our contact us page and we'll put all that in the description in the uh... podcast show notes so that speak up for blue dot com for slash session at one hundred and fifty eight in this was ocean talk friday you are listening to the speaker podcast i am your co-host angel in here with the johnson happy friday happy concert uh... 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