How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 106: Ocean Talk Friday
Today's Ocean Talk Friday with me and Nathan Johnson talks about how people still think the earth is flat (WTF!?); The Royal Caribbean and WWF partner for Ocean Conservation; Sea Turtle Males are in demand; and, Microsoft is putting servers under water - is that good for the Ocean?
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Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session106
Welcome to the speaker for blue podcast session one zero six it is my favorite day today ocean talk Friday it not only is it Friday but I get to talk about the ocean with my good friend Nathan Johnson so we are going to talk about a lot of things we're going to talk about the resurgence I think it's a resurgence of flat earthers we're going to talk about we're going to talk about how sea turtle males are maybe in a good situation and we're also going to talk about the world Caribbean how it's teamed up with WWF in an ocean conservation partnership and lastly we're going to talk about how Microsoft is plumbing to the depths to serve us data so all this on the speaker for blue podcast today's episode stay tuned welcome to the speaker for blue podcast helping you get involved in ocean conservation and now here's your host he still puts his hands in the air because he doesn't care Andrew Lewin hey everybody welcome back to another exciting episode of the speaker for blue podcast your voice for the ocean I'm your host Andrew Lewin founder speak up for blue dot com marine ecologists and self-proclaimed ocean paner and today is ocean Friday I'm so excited because we get to talk about four stories that my co-host Nathan Johnson and I really liked these are four stories that we picked that have been kind of resurging in the news this week so we're going to talk about Nathan how are you doing today I'm doing pretty well thanks for having me no problem Nathan we have not seen you in a video in a while because now you've solved your your modem problem but now there's an outage there's an internet outage in your area so you're joining us by phone thank you very much for joining us I appreciate it oh of course I'm not going to let some internet connectivity issues mess us up I just don't understand how you're surviving without internet all this time I could write like a Shakespearean tragedy about the contest issues that I've had over the last month and then maybe I will something maybe maybe I think that'd be I think that'd be very interesting that should be your first blog post back okay so today well first of all actually before we get started I want to thank our supporters from our patreon campaign that is Chris and Claire Jeffert Dr. Judith Weiss Ron and Judy thank you very much for your support we really appreciate it if you want to support a notion conservation message that we're professing to the Speak Up For Blue community along the podcast platform you can do so at Speak Up For Blue dot com slash patreon P A T R E O N the next thing I wanted to do is thank you guys for listening thank the audience member for listening and keep on downloading we just Nathan we just surpassed fifty thousand downloads this week isn't that amazing that's awesome yeah I'm pretty psyched about that we're actually at fifty five thousand because I made an in I made a incorrect assumption in our stats we have more than right though I thought we had which is always a great situation right right always underestimate exactly exactly but seriously guys I want to thank you for for tuning in thank you for downloading thank you for listening and sharing the podcast with your friends and family and your social networks I really appreciate that and so does Nathan and we thank you for that let's get on to the show I want to start off with a little story of mine so as you guys know you know Speak Up For Blue podcast is just one of our outreach outreach areas we have Speak Up For Blue dot com which is our website which is our hub our resource center for all the stories and get all the podcasts and stuff and the session notes will go to there so for instance the session notes for this episode will be Speak Up For Blue dot com forward slash session one zero six so you go there and you get all the notes and get all the details you can read it if you can't listen to it or so forth so I also have Facebook pages I have two Facebook pages associated with Speak Up For Blue one is the Speak Up For Blue Facebook page where we share all of our news and so forth the other is is a Facebook page that's called Ocean Conservation Careers where I help people get started in Ocean Conservation Careers but that's not what we're here to talk about what I did is I put a video on that Ocean Conservation Careers Facebook page a while back I made it as an ad so it gets more reach I targeted everything I did everything I'm supposed to do from a marketing standpoint it's getting continues to get a lot of people who sign up to my email list to get more information on Ocean Conservation Careers that's awesome however on one point I noticed that somebody and I get this every once in a while somebody posted a question and the question was why don't they let so and so a certain certain person sail to the Antarctic by himself without an escort I didn't know the answer I'm not I'm not a mariner I'm not a sailor I I don't know what this was all about I was just like that's a weird question and I responded saying you know politely saying you know what I don't really know the answer to question this is not really the forum you can maybe look for a sailors page or a mariners page that would you know be able to answer that better and then other people responded being like well you know that people there for career information was like what does that to do with careers and it just kind of went on in snowball the the the person put a message back like and essentially alluded to the fact that the the person people are not allowed to sail to the Antarctic by themselves because they and I do that in quotation I guess the man uh doesn't want people to know that the earth is flat I swear to god that's what she said the earth was flat and to be honest I Nathan I didn't even know this actually existed uh did you like like people still thought the earth is flat now I have no idea not the people I hang out with me neither uh it was it was just very interesting and and and so that kind of went on eventually I banned her from the page because she just kept you know this person just kept you know prodding and and people were getting angry and and starting to say some bad things so I I blocked her from the page but then a couple weeks later this week there was uh in the news uh with uh Neil deGrasse Tyson who's a podcaster he's an astrophysicist a very smart guy always on the news uh or always on tv he's on bill mar a lot of times and he basically talks about science and professes and advocates you know people listening to science because that seems to go by the wayside uh lately a rapper made a diss track a popular rapper named b.o.b made a diss track to Neil deGrasse Tyson for saying that the earth is round so this rapper is a flat earther he thinks that the world is flat and he makes fun and disrespects Neil deGrasse Tyson because Neil deGrasse Tyson is professing you know science basically it comes out and says the earth is a sphere just like every other planet and it's not flat and so forth and it was just interesting and you know this got on TMZ believe it or not the the celebrity gossip site and Neil deGrasse Tyson actually went on to be they interviewed him and they said hey how do you feel about that that diss track and he said oh well you know I don't really respond to things apparently his nephews are rappers so he responded um but he said he goes this is was perfect he says I don't really blame the rapper b.o.b I don't really necessarily blame I feel sorry for him because he stuck in a mindset that's maybe you know the year 500 but he goes on to say I am I am disappointed in his the people who educated him throughout his life to allow him to believe that he that that the earth is flat right and I just I was like that's a perfect you know that's that's a perfect response being like the educators that in his life whether it be his parents whether it be his teachers whoever you know mentors whoever if they didn't convince him or they didn't tell him that the earth or correct him that the earth is not flat they failed him and it really brings up to a question of science is not believed by a lot of people anymore especially in the US there's a lot of people out there who are not believing science and scientists especially ocean scientists there are people out there who think that ocean scientists and and and other scientists at apparently this is space scientists like NASA are basically a huge conspiracy to make you believe that the earth is round and not flat I like I am just speechless at this stuff what do you think Nathan and what do you think about this thing I'm mostly surprised that it's getting so much attention because this is by far not the stupid thing that showed up on Twitter and so so like you know I think it's mostly just because he's a famous person he seems to honestly believe these ideas and he's he's given some of what he calls proof to this but I mean I agree with you it's definitely kind of sad in a way I mean you you could poke holes in this so many ways like what would be the benefit of convincing people the earth with a different shape you know how do like GPS machines work if the earth is flat stuff like that yeah but it's it's more just I don't know why this has become such a big thing and I feel like it's not I mean on the one hand you can make the argument that it's beneficial for science because you're getting people at near the rest place and come out in the public and and advocating for science and everything but he said in a couple interviews and I agree with him that it definitely keeps the stem from a larger issue of just our culture our culture's rejection of science in a way and you you mentioned that you know a lot of people don't believe in science and I would argue that you don't you don't get to believe in science right because science isn't a belief you can I mean you are in 100% entitled to your opinion so you can say the earth is flat you can say that you know the oceans aren't warming you you can say all that but the fact that it's becoming something that's not just occasionally spouted on Twitter and is kind of ingrained itself into politics in the sense that like the last few Republican debates they've barely brought up climate change and when they do everyone essentially denies it and it just it surprises me and it's sad in a way because there's no way as a society we would get anywhere without science that's the whole reason we are where we are today yeah and you know it's it's frustrating because the people who are saying these things don't know they're not scientists so they're not well-educated they're criticizing a field that they don't know much about but at the same time I think as scientists you got to take every opportunity you can to educate people so I agree you don't want to villainize BOB he he got me through a long sophomore year of college so I like him as an artist he's had some really good songs in the past and but it's it's just created that this is becoming like a thing I mean just take them all the stupid stuff people say on Twitter and oh yeah you know especially the stupid stuff celebrity say why is that not making around so much of BOB's flat earth thing yeah it's it's interesting um you know I agree I like BOB as an artist but he I mean this is he's just way off base here I mean you just you just can't say this stuff anymore and I think it's nice to see somebody with the um I guess the profile the high profile of the other grass icing to come out and just be like no this guy is wrong this is idiotic and I'm not gonna spend any more time on it and just you know let's just squash it and I and I have to admit I wasn't sure if I wanted to bring it up on Ocean Talk Friday because I'm like I don't want to even you know produce any more media even though we don't produce a lot you know we don't really have a huge influence as much as like say something like TMZ or anything like that but do we need to talk about but I guess really what I want to talk about is the overall and you mentioned it the overall uh you know thought process that science is not real anymore and science is a belief system right like open to interpretation exactly and and I'm fine if somebody wants to say uh you know I don't like this study because and purview and and give a reason and provide evidence that's great because that's what scientists actually do if you could back up your claim that's fantastic if you can't don't say anything uh you know find evidence if you really need to but I mean this is just I mean this is just idiotic the fact that you think the the earth is flat and and not spherical I mean we've seen pictures in space of the planets be all the planets that we know of being spherical not flat so the fact that people are arguing it's just like it's like beating a dead horse you're just like there's really no point in arguing right yes because it's already been solved it's not as if it's some theory or anything it's already been solved and um I'm finding that a lot of people such as Neil deGrasse Tyson and you've got Bill Nye who come out and really push on people to be like no science is real science is all based on evidence and you cannot deny it just on a whim because it doesn't suit your belief system right and it was interesting I read an article today where it a teacher in the UK she's a I guess a Christian teacher came out on Twitter and said and she was a head teacher of a kindergarten class and said I guess it was a response to another teacher or another principal saying you know advising teachers not to put in their own belief systems when they're teaching science because it was getting a lot of flack a lot of people were putting in religion I guess in their science teachings and what I mean by that is the creationist story instead of evolution there's always that that play um and when she she put up the response to that she said evolution is just a theory that's why they call it the theory of evolution there is more evidence of the bible story and this is a teacher like a head teacher of a kindergarten class like shaping the minds of our youth and at an early age and if you tell someone that at like age four and five that this is their this is the problem like you know that this that the bible story is true and evolution is wrong what are you instilling in the future and I was surprised that this came out of the UK I'm not so surprised in no offense to the people in the US but I'm not so surprised when the US comes out with a story like that because people are very like religious and really like you know to a fault really go forward on their religion and that's fine but when you start to say no religious beliefs are more are are better than than science then you just where there's evidence that's produced that evolution is real and it's around it's not a theory anymore it's a theory in a different sense that what we think it is or that what you know sort of non-scientists think it is it's just disappointing so the the what happened with that story is that she got bombarded with just like ridicule and she had to close down her account apologize saying that she she was at a line I'm assuming that's from her school and saying that her views were her own and not the schools then she I guess she just she just took down that account and took down the tweet and took down that account she just off off Twitter now and I guess you know what happens is you know maybe we're seeing the surge of non you know of more of believers than actual fact-based you know seekers because we're seeing more people who have a voice on Twitter on Facebook and so forth and more people are listening to especially if it's controversial people in the media really want to show this off so I think I think it's just I think it's more of that which is disappointing but we have to have people out there not to ridicule but just to demystify some of these myths that people are putting out there and I think it's it's I'm glad that people are doing that and hopefully they can do it in a respectful way but just the flat earthers are just like I said they're beating a dead horse it's just it's not true and I don't I don't know where they're coming from I really don't it boggles my mind but anyway let's move on I just wanted to talk about that I know we spent probably too much time on that I just want to talk about that just to get it over with and because I had to get it out because people you need to listen to the science the good science you need to listen to the good science be able to identify the good science and that's why we have research Thursdays so that we can talk about different types of science projects that are going on and what it means in terms of conservation and application of the ocean so that is my PSA for today but anyway let's move on to the next story we're going to talk about sea turtles again why don't you take us through this one Nathan yeah so this article is talking about how the shifts that we're seeing in global temperatures could be influencing basically the sex distribution of I believe it's loggerhead sea turtle right in in the Atlantic coast along north and south America and so it's similar to other types species I got to be honest I don't know my vertebrates especially my marine vertebrates too well but sea turtle sex is determined during well it's influenced during incubation okay so mostly mostly through temperatures so if it's below if it's between the range of I think like 75 degrees Fahrenheit and maybe mid 80s researchers to say that you tend to see more males being born and if it's higher than that up to like maybe 90 degrees Fahrenheit you see more females and it's sea turtles aren't the only species that work this way but because we're seeing higher temperatures throughout the world even if it's you know just a couple degrees at most Fahrenheit increase researchers are starting to worry that we might see a sex distribution and see more females being born into these populations and males they have noted that there are at times you know or there are certain sub populations that seem to be entirely female during a given nesting season and there are some that are more 50/50 so you know regional differences may come into account but they're basically calling for you know signs to address this issue that you know if we start seeing more females being born than males in these populations that could alter their ecology that could alter you know future generation future generations of sea turtles and the thing that interests me is that you know again I'm not an expert in sea turtles but from my understanding they're not they they don't mate for life um you know they they go lay their eggs and they go out and they might lay more eggs um but the females in the males don't pair up so it's interesting to me is would how would a decrease in males compared to females actually impact that population you know because females don't really seem to be a limiting factor in this sense um so you might have more females but you might have enough males that they're able to still reproduce the same rate and so you're still able to see similar sizes of generations uh for the next few years which is important for sea turtles because as we mentioned before all of them are threatened and danger vulnerable at some level um so they're the future status of their population is a very important aspect of research yeah I agree uh it is I mean it's concerning because you're seeing that shift and I guess the concern is how far is that shift gonna go are we gonna see a lot more females when you get into a lot more females then you have to say okay where the males gonna find these females um are they gonna be in the same places what if the males don't survive the year you got to remember from uh from birth and when they enter the ocean their chances I think it's like what one in 200 or 400 it's a very small number of the survive of survivability to to get to adulthood um so if you have a lot more females and a lot less males within a nest let's say uh then we don't know what the chances are those males getting actually surviving to adulthood so there's that concern then there's also just the regular pressures that a sea turtle will find not naturally and anthropogenically um so there's that concern you know poaching getting caught in this uh fishing net uh you know getting a straw up its nose you never know what what's gonna happen these days there are a lot of things that are facing this this problem of course climate change is already affecting them um the other thing that you worry about from a from a conservation standpoint is the genetic diversity you know if you have fewer feet if you're males mating with females the the male genetics is gonna be starting to get is gonna start to become similar and right right you're looking at a little bit that it probably won't be too much because they're mating with different females if they mate with different females and how many do they mate with uh per year I don't know um more of a sea turtle expert would know that but you know that's those are the concerns that I see coming right off the bat of these sea turtles um and it is concerning especially if it keeps shifting towards a more female dominant uh population um whether it'll balance out or not I don't know um you know you look at food availability should still be the same um so you you never know but it is a concern in a lot of places I know in in the Great Lakes here there's a concern of pharmaceuticals getting into the ocean uh and more of a sort of like from hormonal pills and that's messing up with the fish hormones and you're seeing more of a female dominated um dominated populations in fish and then you so you're worried about the the reproductive rate the survivability rate uh and the genetic diversity rate uh from from generation to generation so there are definitely a lot of concerns here and we're obviously seeing that shift in other animals other than fish around here so um it's it's very interesting at at at what's happening and this again is due to climate change so climate change is not just affecting one aspect of what's going on it's expected it's it's having a problem with a lot of different aspects aspects right so um this is just one more other aspect that we may not have known about um until this study kind of came about it came about and again you know we go back to it it's science science helps us detect any changes um with modern you know through monitoring any changes happening in the ocean this is one of them due to due to climate change so I think this is uh quite an interesting story do you have any uh other other uh words on this i think they're right the the whole genetic diversity thing is definitely an issue if um if the number of males is is a lot lower you know if we start seeing that it's not just a very gradual small change if if we start seeing uh you know an overwhelming amount of sea turtles being female then you're right even you know if that trend continues even if the males do reproduce with a lot of different females at some point you're going to start seeing the effects of just the lack of genetic diversity which you know it there are few animals i can think of in the ocean outside of sea turtles that needed more genetic diversity more badly more bad so like they are in desperate need of of you know any sort of protection any sort of genetic diversity because their numbers are so low that this is definitely not a good sign if that were the case yeah for sure it's definitely scary uh at this point and we need to to make uh you know a better effort in monitoring these populations see how far this shift is going to go um but something that we need to know about for sure um especially when you get a loggerhead sea turtle that is in it's endangered you know so you're looking at another aspect of how vulnerable it can be when it's endangered and it's facing all these other pressures so but when you're looking at species like that you have to be definitely be careful um okay let's move on to the next uh story uh this one is actually kind of a good new story which is nice to see uh we have uh an article of the the mirror uh in the uk uh that's talking about the royal Caribbean that's teaming up with WWF uh to have a partnership in ocean conservation now this is fantastic because and i i'm a little i'm a little optimistic and i'm a little cautious as well i'm a i'm very optimistic but i'm a little cautious as well cruise liners like royal Caribbean have been known to cause a lot of detrimental effects to island communities from taking jobs away from their tourist spots they say they bring jobs to garbage disposal to running into reefs uh you know there's a lot of different things that it's had problems with this time though royal Caribbean is actually showing that it's going more towards a conservation aspect and it might be due to some pressure of people saying you know what you know cruise liners are not good for for the ocean so WWF has has um has partnered up with royal Caribbean for five years it's a 3.5 million pound uh partnership that's a lot of money that's like more than six million dollars uh US so um a five-year deal was announced this week uh from a remote village in the Philippines uh where WWF supports the local tourists uh industry's major attraction which is swimming with whale sharks so they help that stuff to go they help to get bring that stuff around now royal Caribbean also it is is helping that community the Filipino community as it employs 11 000 Filipino crew now Filipinos make up most of the crews on a lot of cruise liners i'm not sure why but it seems like it's a good money for them they tend to go on this boat and i've heard that they send money back to their families they make a lot more than they would at home and it makes it really nice of course the family life must it mustn't be that great because you know you're seeing a parent or somebody go over or seize and and you're not um you know you're not being around your family however you know you do what's best for your for your your family um but yeah so they're expecting to recruit 30 000 new crew from the from the these islands over the next five years they're gonna hire more uh more employees from the Philippine area uh and then the first partnership it's going to be it's going to be kind of cool because they're going to be a WWF station a tv station on the cruise line so you're going to see a lot of what WWF produces um a lot of conservation information bombarding the the guests on the cruise liner with it with ocean conservation information so that is kind of neat to see um it's it says it uh it's going to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 35 percent uh by 2020 um and it said the cruise line will source 90 percent of fish consumed on ships from sustainable fisheries so these are some big plans that the that the cruise liner is making and I think it's good plans in in in the in the right direction whether it's going to be perfect or not I have no idea whether they're going to do it or not I have no idea uh however WWF's uh I guess uh you know reputation is on the line on this so they're going to make sure that the royal cruise lines make their these targets and and and hopefully get them Nathan what are your thoughts on this I agree with you I think you put it well and you said that you're cautiously optimistic about this in that you know it's it's a business partnership so you know do we think they're doing it out of the goodness of their hearts probably not but I think it's good I think the fact that they're they mentioned they're going to try and get 90 percent of their seafood from sustainable fisheries I think that's good I think the fact that they're trying to stress more on eco tourism I think that's good as well um the greenhouse gas emissions if they cut it by that much that would be fantastic I kind of don't have a whole lot of hope for if that will actually happen but I think you know if they're shooting for that and if they make it that would be amazing yeah I think you're right in general cruise ships are just they're just kind of wasteful you know they do a great job of bringing in a lot of money just because of how much you can charge and how many people you can pack on these things so they make a lot of money and you're right they do you know have a lot of contact with smaller island nations around the Pacific and the Caribbean but they're you know from an ecosystem point of view we would be fine without cruise ships but the fact of the matter is they're not going anywhere no people love going on cruise oh yeah so any sort of improvements we can make on them is a step in the right direction and I think the www you have to do a good job in that they're you know by putting they mentioned up with magazines in every room they're going to work on getting TV stations up and you know other sorts of activities through Royal Caribbean but by doing that on the actual cruise ships you're addressing people who you know have an interest in cruise ships right essentially people who will go on cruises and so you can tailor these messages to you know while you're out here try and do some snorkeling or scuba diving try and visit the local communities buy sustainable seafood you know make sure you aren't wasteful make sure you pull your recycling materials in a bag so you can recycle but you get home stuff like that and you know the more you get your message out to people you might even get a few folks who are on the cruise ship saying wow you know the more I learn about this the more I feel like the oceans are really awesome but I probably shouldn't be on a cruise ship you know if I really value these things which they might honestly not have known before so I think it's a step in the right direction I think you're right WWF has a pretty good reputation I don't think it'll be one of those partnerships where it's just a name and they never actually do anything but as far as the extent of their activity and the extent of WWF's influence on Royal Caribbean's business you know we'll have to wait and see but and I mean the more types of these the more kinds of partnerships like these that we see pop up I think the more we'll get the message out to people about you know how the oceans are doing and ways that you can actually help impact it. No I agree I think this is this is a step in the right direction I think both Oregon the organization WWF and the Royal Caribbean have a lot of work ahead of them but I think it's I think it's great I mean there's they're really going that social entrepreneur way by trying to benefit local people they're trying to benefit the environment I think and we've discussed this before and it's the reason why we have pod this podcast is get the information in front of people that is the biggest thing if you have especially with the budget that WWF has if you have some great visuals and some great information to back that up those visuals up you will educate somebody you're going to educate a number of people on that cruise line whether it be one to 10,000 you don't know but if you just do one you've done your job and that's what we do here at speak up for blue when we profess our ocean conservation message if we can get one or two people to listen then that is awesome because we've just had those people change their lives and make it better to live for a better ocean that's what they're doing here and I think that's great so with that said let's move on to the last story another kind of story this is an interesting one why don't you take us through it Nathan it has to do with Microsoft and servers under water has its work yeah so I'm not a technological genius right so I'll try and understand and explain this as best I can but Microsoft is looking into putting data servers that I guess maintain their netter or help with the cloud somehow under water especially in colder waters the idea is that right now they have all these big server buildings kind of out in the middle of nowhere that are a far away from a lot of urban areas which I guess can cause some signal disruption and can you know maybe lead to slow connections or well and they also heat up a lot you know they produce a lot of energy so if the servers overheat then they crash so a lot of these buildings need to have really intense AC units to keep them at a cool stable temperature so by putting them under water you can get them in till two birds of one stone essentially by getting them closer to cities which are tend to be more located towards the coast so you might have fewer signal disruption but then you'll also keep them in a cooler environment which will cut down the cost for Microsoft of maintaining these things and so the article talked about this possibility they you know I couldn't really follow the exact structure of these servers you know they're they're about five to six feet in diameter they're kind of suspended from the ground they'll have to run a bunch more wires underneath obviously they can work they've done a couple prototypes and they seem to have had some success they definitely mentioned in the article that going forward they'd have to address how they're going to make this cost effective and then how this is going to impact the environment so the only testing right now that I understand that they've done is to see if the servers caused any noise disruption in the surrounding ecosystem or if it changed the water temperature at all and so from everything they say then they said something in the article about the noise generated by these servers is less than the sound of a snapping shrimp just passing by so they don't think it'll have any significant acoustic effects and it seems to only heat up the water within like an inch diameter of the entire server apparatus so they also don't think it'll have much of a negative impact as far as rising temperatures go. I am cautious about this because so change in temperatures and noise disruption while significant are certainly not the only things that can affect the ecosystem with these servers so if the server breaks or if there's a leak they mentioned that they put a bunch of high pressure nitrogen in there to equalize pressure and to keep temperatures constant you know I would worry about what would happen if that solution got into the ecosystem I would worry about how the installation would affect these habitats you know are you going to be dredging up a bunch of areas on the seafloor to lay down these cables there's probably going to be a lot of noise disruption when you're installing even if there's not on a day-to-day so again I don't know much about technology it sounds like if you're a computer wiz that these things are out sent and that maybe you know 50 years from now this is where things are heading anyway but you know right now it seems like they've focused a lot more on how this will benefit you know internet worldwide and not enough of how this will impact the marine ecosystem which I think if you're going to do this on a on a profitable scale you're going to have to look into that some point absolutely and and I'm sure NOAA and other environmental agencies are looking into this as well this is innovative I do agree however we need to consider the effects on the ocean you know this you're actually placing a physical object a large physical object a number of large physical objects on the seafloor this is something that will disrupt that particular habitat you have to be able to source a proper spot a proper site to make sure that you're not damaging any habitat it could become a habitat as well usually when you put these structures in the ocean you know corals or sea stars or algae will encrust on these objects and it becomes a habitat with that said it could attack those artificial reefs right but with that said is the actual structure good for this it's going to happen where you know you're going to get some encrustations you're going to get some some habitats on there but is it going to be good for those habitats you know especially with potential leaks you know you're going to have to bring it up and down quite a bit I would imagine especially at the beginning to make sure you have to fix like what if you have to fix a server physically you know there are a lot of questions that I see from a from an ocean science and conservation point that need to be answered have they been answered I'm not sure it doesn't really mention in the article that I've seen however I've only briefly briefly looked it over but I like the innovation I understand that you know the fact that you know you need to cool down servers however you kind of wonder how many servers are going to be put in the ocean with this method you know and and is it is that going to help the ocean or is it going to detriment it so or you know is it just going to stay the same I don't know obviously there's going to be some pilot projects I would imagine before this goes crazy but I hope that NOAA EPA and other organizations around the world really look into the environmental effects of this this is an innovation but there are it seems like they haven't considered a lot of the consequences to putting these things underwater with that said they're probably going to have to undergo a thorough environmental assessment because I know a lot of government agencies are very worried you know when you put something new that they don't know about underwater you know so there's a lot of different effects that that's going to happen you know you you've got a lot of marine mammals that go across those areas you know where they're putting where they're putting these these structures so like you said if it's going to cause noise is it going to disrupt that there's a marine mammal protection act where he says you cannot disrupt interrupt their migration route or any kind of activity will if this does will that come into play will the marine mammal protection act come into play so there's a lot of things that will go into this environmental assessment I'm very curious to see what will happen with this it is a prototype it's a pilot and we'll see what happens but a very interesting innovation but I wonder if it's really going to not benefit the ocean but harm the ocean right definitely it'll be helpful to us but we'll at harm the ocean right and that's the thing I think at this point we still don't know and maybe they don't even know you know this could come out this could turn out to be a project that really has no negative environmental impacts which would be fantastic and in that case you know by all means go ahead but I think you're right we we just got to be cautious about it moving forward make sure that we look at everything and you know to be fair this is also coming from someone who currently doesn't have internet so I'm not you know I'm not technically up on everything and so you know we'll we'll have to see where this goes in this picture and whether they do all the the proper permitting yeah you know check check on everything before they implement it yeah absolutely I I completely agree we're definitely gonna have to check on this stuff and see how it goes or probably be I don't know I don't know how long this is going to take I don't know when they actually plan on on on pointing this thing underwater knowing for the private sector it'll probably be as soon as they can but knowing the government with environmental assessments it'd probably be as long as they can right until they can understand it hopefully unless they get a lot of pressure from outside so I've seen it go both ways you never know hopefully they'll both sides will be very cautious and conservative and and make sure that these structures will not pose a problem or a potential problem to the ocean and and not move too quickly where they don't understand what the disadvantages might be as not only the advantages but the disadvantages so yeah that was a great story well anyway that's that's it for our stories today I hope you guys enjoyed it if you guys have questions you can put them in the comments on speakupforblue.com/session106 you can also contact us through our contact page it's speakupforblue.com/connect and you can actually connect with us through audio you can leave we have a service called speak pipe you can actually leave a message for us if you have a question on anything that you've heard or a comment please let us know we will actually edit it in to one of the episodes and we'll answer it or Nathan and I will answer it on the next ocean talk Friday so if you guys have a question or a story that comes up that you're concerned about or you want to talk about let us know put us you know go to speakupforblue.com/connect and speak your piece and let us let us speak up for the blue that's what we're all about here so you got to speak up for the blue I should come up with a better tag line for that that speak pipe thing anyway I think it's a great tool that we can interact with our audience and I think that's a lot of fun so but if you want to go to the show notes just go speakupforblue.com/session106 and you can leave a message for us in writing on that so thank you very much we want to thank our patreon supporters if you want to support this podcast just go speak upforblue.com/patreon P A T R E O N thank you very much for the 50,000 plus downloads this is awesome let's keep it going keep sharing keep downloading keep listening and keep interacting with us because that's what we love to do so Nathan thank you very much for joining us by phone I really appreciate it of course always a pleasure nice nice all right guys have a great Friday you've been listening to speak up the blue podcast I am your host Andrew Lewin co-hosting with Nathan Johnson we have a great Friday and happy conservation [Music]