My Favorite South Florida Neighborhood Isn't On Land...

https://v.beanstem.org/w/mP6jzAAj9QA5EpbdFZ3bvq

Short: IVF for coral works!

Table of Contents

• Short
• Transcript

Short

https://youtube.com/shorts/UHB-Kv4LFiY

Transcript

I have some great news! IVF for coral works!

Coral spawning season occurs in late summer, around August, and usually happens a few days after the full moon, but since 2016 coral have had some help from scientists during spawning season!

IVF stands for “in vitro fertilization,” and for coral that means taking coral spawn and either fertilizing them in a lab or putting them in pools like these to promote reproduction. Once the offspring are released and attached to the reef, these younger IVF-bred coral are far more resilient to climate change!

There was a huge marine heat wave in the Caribbean in 2023, and the bad news is that about three-quarters of the native colonies of coral were bleached or paled. You see, coral is a symbiotic organism and it gets most of its nutrients (and its color) from algae that live within it, called “zooxanthellae.” When a coral is stressed — say by extreme temperatures — it might get rid of that algae. And that’s what bleaching and paling is.

But 90% of these younger, IVF-bred coral were totally fine! We don’t know why yet, but one of the theories is that these younger coral are more exploratory, and they’ll try different types of algae, some of which are more heat resistant.

Not only that, but we know that these IVF coral can reproduce in the wild — because they did for the first time in 2021 in the Great Barrier Reef!

IVF is just one of several ways that scientists have found to help protect and repopulate our threatened coral populations, and it’s great to hear that it’s working just swimmingly!

If you’d like to learn more about coral restoration, check out my full length video on YouTube, and follow for more cool science!

#beanstem #marineBiology #science #shorts

This is what saving coral looks like

https://v.beanstem.org/w/8wGMVLGCVLZ37uCHJSiWRf

Video: This is what saving coral looks like

Table of Contents

• Video
• Transcript
  • Intro
  • Definitions
  • Sexual reproduction
  • Sexual reproduction
  • Looking forward
  • Outro
• Attributions
  • B-roll
  • Music
• Video credits
• References

Video

https://youtu.be/J4mePLG67qs

Transcript

Intro

I’m gonna get the bad news out of the way first so the rest of this video can be fun. I’ll be quick, I swear, put 30 seconds on the clock!

Coral are bleaching and dying at an alarming rate due to pollution, warming oceans, and ocean acidification. We’ve lost about 50% of coral by area since the 1950s, and species extinctions are happening far faster than the natural rate.

While it’s a complicated subject, let me be clear: there is no doubt that human activity is largely to blame for these trends.
But that’s not news, and that’s not what I want to talk about today. I’m going to talk with some of the people who are actually doing something about it, and I want to share some of the cool science that’s going into their work to make it happen. So let’s get started.

Definitions

Coral are neat little guys because they’re not really 1 thing? They look like some weird cross between an animal, a rock, and a plant. And that’s ’cause that’s exactly what they are!

Coral is made of 3 parts: an animal, a rock, and a plant. The coral animal is a cnidarian, meaning it’s related to sea anemones and jellyfish. The animal part is just the jelly-y bit on the outside.

The coral animal builds up mineral and rock to form a skeleton for itself, and that ultimately forms the solid foundation of the entire reef.

For the last part, tiny photosynthetic algae called “zooxanthellae” live inside the coral animal.

They’re only… kind of? plants? But what’s important is that they photosynthesize, and that ends up providing energy to the coral animal. The zooxanthellae are what give coral their color, and they could give you 32 points in Scrabble even without a double word square wink.

Sexual reproduction

Coral can reproduce in a bunch of different ways, which gives restoration scientists a lot to work with. But most importantly they can reproduce asexually or they can reproduce… sexually. Follow me 😉

Asexual reproduction is awesome! It means that coral can reproduce without sex! There are several ways they can do this, but the most useful to restoration scientists is fragmentation. I talked with Shane Wever from Reef Renewal USA about what that means.

SHANE: So fragmentation is an asexual reproduction methodology used by corals. You can think of it a lot like propagating a plant. When you cut off a small chunk of the plant, and you create that propable that you’ll stick into potting mix. We do the same thing with corals except we cut off a little piece and we can stick it back on the reef.

BEN: Shane is the restoration program director for the upper keys. Reef Renewal has been building out coral nurseries and replanting coral for about 5 years now.

SHANE: Reef Renewal USA was started in 2019. Its focus is to make resilient corals for the future. Our goal is to outplant 100,000 corals a year.

BEN: But what does that work look like?

Well a lot of it is diving! They’ll carefully break or saw off pieces of coral and then bring those to the nurseries. The nurseries are where the fragmented coral are grown, and Reef Renewal USA’s workers or community volunteers will keep a close eye on them.

Shane told me about 2 different types of nurseries that they use

SHANE: When we propagate our corals, we grow them on a couple different structures. We have PVC trees, and we have VERNs, which are Vertical Rope Nurseries.

BEN: The PVC trees are exactly what they sound like — they’re tree-shaped structures made of PVC piping. There are two types of these.

SHANE: One is going to be hanging corals from these branches with fishing line. The other is going to have trays that are modular units that we can actually stick corals on where we can organize corals on these little frag plugs.

BEN: But that’s a more traditional approach. The Vertical Rope Nurseries, or VERNs are being used more commonly these days

SHANE: Vertical Rope Nurseries have become our standard for growing branching corals. Basically, you put some buoys on the top of a rope, and the bottom of the rope is going to be secured to the sea floor. That rope is kinda spun up, and when you unspin that rope, you can stick a fragment of coral inside of it.

BEN: What’s really cool about these VERNs is that they’re able to move with the tides and waves! That’s also why they’re often preferred over the trees: The PVC trees might break during a storm or rough waters, but the VERNs will move with the water and help buffer out that stress

SHANE: When hurricanes or storms come through, it doesn’t smash them around, and it makes these VERNs a lot more resilient. And it also gives them a thinner profile, so they take up less space in our nursery, which means- which means we can have more structures.

BEN: Coral restoration isn’t easy work — there are lots of early mornings, long days of diving, and you’re kind of fighting against the environment

SHANE: You have to rely on good weather, you have to rely on the ocean having good conditions — not just for the divers, but for the corals.

BEN: On top of the weather, there’s also diseases, parasites, and…

SHANE: Unfortunately in 2023, we had one of the worst bleaching events that the Caribbean has ever seen

BEN: Wait, what’s a bleaching event?

Remember the zooxanthellae? The algae that give coral its color? When coral get stressed, they’ll get rid of their zooxanthellae. And that’s. Bad.

SHANE: So without it, they would look white. And so when you see coral bleaching, that is a coral that has, from some stress event, lost all of its symbiotic algae, and it’s starving itself.

BEN: Yeah, not good. Coral bleaching won’t immediately kill the coral, but it will kill them pretty quickly if the stress continues.

The 2023 marine heat wave in the Caribbean was really bad — some coastal temperature sensors reported water temperatures reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

SHANE: I think it was the worst that we’ve ever seen. And so years of restoration work was wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of coral that were stored in nurseries were gone.

BEN: It can be a tough job, with climate change seemingly working against you. But these guys don’t give up.

SHANE: But, that didn’t stop us. We, ya know, we pivoted, we made adjustments, we made changes. We were able to salvage some of those corals. In doing this, we have also been able to revolutionize some of our techniques to make our propagation more successful

We have a facility that used to create live rock and they’re now creating a gene bank of all of the corals that we can salvage out on the reef, but also turning it into a propagation pipeline where they’re generating hundreds and thousands of corals to then send down here to practitioners so we can really boost the effort and the capacity that we have to restore the reef at scale.

Sexual reproduction

BEN: Part of the problem with fragmentation is that the offspring don’t have any genetic diversity. The new coral are clones of the old ones. You can expect them to perform about as well as the parent coral! The problem is, with the changing climate, the parent coral might not be doing so well.

HANNAH: The problem with this asexual reproduction method is, all of the new individuals that are created are genetically identical.

BEN: That’s Hannah Ditzler. She’s on the research team for SECORE international.

HANNAH: Corals are quite fragile, so if a disease comes through, a stress event, etc, all of those corals can get wiped out because they’re genetically the exact same.

BEN: SECORE is an organization that’s taking a different approach. SECORE literally stands for “sexual coral reproduction,” and that’s exactly what they’re doing.

HANNAH: This is a different approach because we’re creating a lot more genetic diversity, um, and it has the potential to basically breed in qualities that we want the corals to have.

BEN: This method allows for genetic diversity, and that might give these young coral a better chance at surviving different stressful events.

As a matter of fact, SECORE published a study just last year showing that their IVF-bred coral were far more resilient in the 2023 Caribbean marine heat wave!

BEN: I asked Hannah to tell me the story of coming to these findings

HANNAH: I think a lot of us during the 2023 mass bleaching event were really, really impacted by the state of the reefs. I know people were literally crying underwater watching these, ya know, giant [Acropora] palmata that have been around for tens to hundreds of years bleaching and reproducing. So we saw corals that were literally completely bleached actually reproducing and then pretty much dying. So, it was really, like, an emotional experience for a lot of us. And it was really hard to see, it was really hard to see. But, at the same time, we were seeing that basically corals right next to juvenile outplants that we had created were completely bleached and dying and recruits that we had outplanted were actually fine. We kind of started seeing this data in Mexico and Curacao, which are our 2 other main office locations, and so we decided to investigate with our partners that are all over the Caribbean. We had people go out and collect as much data as they could on the different recruits that were out there and try and get good comparisons of adult colonies, parent colonies, or other close corals that were in the area. We essentially found that the recruits were bleaching at a much lower rate than the adult colonies were, even, ya know, within meters of each other. So, colonies that were right next to each other that were juveniles were totally fine and these adult colonies were bleached and hit really hard by the warm waters.

BEN: So how does this technique differ from using fragmentation?

Well, fragmentation is pretty simple — you break off a piece, plant it, and wait for it to grow. Assisted sexual reproduction is a lot more complex, but let’s break it down into 4 main phases: Collection, Larvae, Attachment, and Planting — or CLAP!

applause

FANCY BEN: Oh, thank you so much! Thank you!

BEN: In the collection phase, scientists are monitoring the reefs and can predict roughly when the coral will reproduce.

HANNAH: They basically release their gametes in a synchronous event based on full moon cycles and sunset times. So, all corals of one species will essentially time their reproduction so that it happens at the same time. We are basically able to predict when certain species of coral are going to reproduce within an hour or two on a specific set of days.

BEN: These scientists will go out on the water in the middle of the night to monitor for the synchronous spawning event, and when it finally happens, they’ll be out there with nets and other equipment to collect the gametes

HANNAH: We will bring collectors and basically place them over the coral. They look like a little tent made out of mesh, and they have weights on the bottom so they sit on top of the coral, and then they have a little floating tube that sits on the top of them.

BEN: Once that’s collected, we move onto the Larvae phase. The gametes are mixed together to allow them to fertilize, and then when the eggs hatch, the larvae are put back out in the ocean in what are called CRIBs

HANNAH: SECORE uses CRIBs, which are coral-rearing in-situ basins. They are essentially these big, blue, floating pools that go in the ocean, and they allow for half a million larvae to be settled at a time.

BEN: After that, it’s more waiting and monitoring development. Part of what they’re looking at is the fertilization rate.

HANNAH: Sometimes we can actually get fertilization rates of near 100%, which is great, and that’s not something that would necessarily happen in the wild.

BEN: When the larvae get old enough, they turn into planulae. During this phase of their development, they start looking for a place to settle, bringing us to the Attachment phase.

HANNAH: They basically start swimming around in circles on the surface of the water, and then right when they’re ready to settle, they will swim down to the bottom of whatever container they’re in.

BEN: The planulae are looking for a hard surface to attach to. At this point, they’re still in captivity, but they’ll settle on a substrate and start growing into the animal/rock/plant combo we all know and love!

After more waiting and monitoring, these new recruits will be ready to outplant

HANNAH: Once they settle, we’re able to check their development and their growth, and then either outplant them or keep them in captivity to rear until we decide to outplant them.

BEN: This technique does come with its own unique challenges and drawbacks

HANNAH: I mean, asexual propagation is much simpler. You’re taking a coral, you’re cutting it up, and you have 2 corals. And it produces a lot more biomass a lot more quickly than sexual reproduction ever will. So that’s super important, ya know. Fish won’t hang out on a reef that doesn’t have any biomass.

HANNAH: Sexual reproduction, it’s definitely not an easy way of doing things, um, but it is kind of the only option especially when we’re, you know, losing genetic diversity on reefs at such an alarming rate. It’s a much more lengthy process, it’s a lot more technical, and a lot more difficult and requires huge amounts of man-hours and a lot of technical knowledge on how to do it. And so, while we are able to produce a lot of corals, they take a long time to grow to reproductive capacity and to have any real impact on a reef.

BEN: So in summary: Asexual reproduction is simple and well-proven. It can be done at-scale and it restores biomass quickly, BUT all the new coral are clones. Sexual reproduction is complicated and it takes a long time, but it can also be done at-scale and it’s able to restore genetic diversity.

Looking forward

So what does the future look like? Well, there is a lot to be concerned about, but there is a lot of hope.

We’re still losing coral, but the rate has slowed down a lot in the last 20 years.

We also got some really good news in 2021, when we saw these IVF-bred coral reproduce on for the first time on their own in the wild.

HANNAH: Curacao was actually able to see their- one of their earliest rounds of recruits reproduce. This basically shows that we’re able to close the loop of sexual reproduction with the work that we’re doing. That’s hugely important, that’s really the goal of all of this work is to restore reefs to a point where they are able to do it themselves, and we don’t really need to be involved.

BEN: With all the good and the bad, how do our experts feel about the fate of coral?

SHANE: I think they have seen so much devastation in the last 50 years, um, but we don’t know much devastation they’ve faced in the 100 or 200 years before that.

HANNAH: Yeah, that’s, ya know, that’s a tough question. Um. I think that it kind of depends on what’s going on. We are doing the work that we’re doing now because the reefs are so degraded that in some places, there are not enough parent colonies to successfully reproduce.

SHANE: The coral reefs of tomorrow aren’t going to look like the coral reefs of today or the coral reefs of, ya know, my grandparents. As a community, locally, we need to look ourselves in the face and figure out how we can make our marine environments healthier. And as an entire country — and even farther as an entire world — we need to really look in the mirror and say “do we really want to be doing this to the food that we’re eating? To the places that we’re swimming? To, ya know, the- to the place that regulates our climate, honestly?”
HANNAH: But, I do have hope that we can do it, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing this. And there are reefs out there still that are incredibly beautiful and healthy.

SHANE: I can’t be helpless, right? I have to be hopeful because hope is all I got right now, and as long as there’s still one coral out on the reef, I’m gonna keep on working as hard as I can to keep that coral healthy.

HANNAH: So I think there is a lot of hope, um, out there as well, and we’re really learning a lot. So I have hope that, ya know, we can figure this out. It’s not gonna be easy, and, you know, we need to continue to get funding, we need to continue having people dedicated to doing this, and we need to address the concerns of climate change. Ultimately, coral reefs are not going to continue to exist if we don’t get a handle on climate change and… make sure that our oceans don’t warm to 100 degrees like they did here in the Florida keys last- or 2 years ago.

SHANE: Community engagement is gonna be the most important thing. We have partnerships throughout the community, working with dive shops, recreational divers, and volunteers in so many capacities to really get the community as a whole to be a steward for the ocean. But more awareness and more engagement, and teaching the people that you love and the people around you about coral reefs is- is free, and is one of the most impactful things. Letting them fall in love with coral reefs is gonna be my best bet to making everybody else care about coral reefs the same way I do.

SHANE: You know, I can’t help but have hope for coral reefs.

HANNAH: It’s, you know. You gotta keep going. You gotta keep going…

BEN: So the future depends on us, it depends on you. We need to be funding science — if governments won’t do it, we need to be helping with volunteering and fundraising. Shane talked about community-building, getting your local community to care about the local environment and to care for it.

But also… governments do need to be doing it — contact your representatives and make sure they support funding science foundations. I’m gonna leave a link to 5calls.org in the description below. They make it really easy to contact your representative about about specific issues.

There’s so much work being done, and like Shane and Hannah said, we really need to keep it going. I’m really excited to see what we can do together moving forward!

If you’d like to learn more or get involved, there are plenty of organizations in the US to donate to or volunteer with. YOU can be the one to go out on the reefs, dive, and plant new coral, that’s so freaking cool! I’ll link a few of these organizations in the description below.

Outro

Thank you so much for watching! I had a blast working on this video getting to talk with these experts who are clearly so passionate about what they do. Huge thank you to the teams at SECORE, Reef Renewal USA, and the Tennessee Aquarium for being so generous with their time.

If you’d like to see more of this, you can support me in all the usual ways – like, comment, subscribe – OR you can join my brand new Patreon! I’m launching my Patreon with this video, which can get you early access to videos, a look behind the scenes, and occasionally blog posts about just my video creation process and what I’m working on at the time. Contributions start at $1 a month, and every little bit really does help.

But that’s enough of a sales pitch! The link for that is below, along with links to the full transcript and bibliography. Thank you again so much for watching, and I’ll see ya in the next one!

Attributions

B-roll

• Diver in coral: Jackdrafahi/Pixabay (Pixabay Content License)
• RRUSA 2025: Reef Renewal USA/YouTube (Used with permission)
• Coral VERN close-ups/boat drone shot: South Florida Reporter/YouTube (Standard YouTube License)
• CRIB footage: Reef Patrol/SECORE (Used with permission)
• Fish swimming on reef footage: Reef Patrol/SECORE (Used with permission)
• Coral reef flyover: RomanDiesel/Pixabay (Pixabay Content License)
• Fish on coral reef: Jackdrafahi/Pixabay (Pixabay Content License)
• Crowd walking stock footage: AlexKopeykin/Pixabay (Pixabay Content License)
• Ocean full of trash: Engin_Akyurt/Pixabay (Pixabay Content License)
• Woman swimming: Aiky82/Pixabay (Pixabay Content License)
• Coral bleaching: Frost Science/YouTube (Standard YouTube License)
• Coral spawning and nursery footage: Shane Wever (Used with permission)

Music

• Russian River: Dan Henic/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)
• Gonna be gone: Kjartan Abel/freesound (CC BY 4.0)
• chill background music: ZHRØ/Freesound (CC BY 4.0)
• Simple step: Slenderbeats/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)
• Half Past Murder Time: Kjartan Abel/freesound (CC BY 4.0)
• High noon: TrackTribe/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)
• Background music: ZHRØ/Freesound (CC BY 4.0)
• Mysterious Things: kjartan_abel/Freesound (CC BY 4.0)
• April Showers music: kjartan_abel/Freesound (CC BY 4.0)
• Mood ring: National Sweetheart/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)
• Candy Apple Town: National Sweetheart/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)

Video credits

• Ben Rankin (Host, research, writing, editing, graphics)
• Amanda Dyar (Camera, script review, video review, special thanks)
• David Crompton (Fact checking)
• Shane Wever (Interviewee, Reef Renewal USA)
• Hannah Ditzler (Interviewee, SECORE International)
• Caden McGee (Video review)
• Austin Lord (Video review)

References

Coral Diseases & Health Consortium. (n.d.). Coral Reproduction. Coral Disease & Health Consortium. https://cdhc.noaa.gov/coral-biology/coral-reproduction/

Eddy, T. D., Lam, V. W. Y., Reygondeau, G., Cisneros-Montemayor, A. M., Greer, K., Palomares, M. L. D., Bruno, J. F., Ota, Y., & Cheung, W. W. L. (2021). Global decline in capacity of coral reefs to provide ecosystem services. One Earth, 4(9), 1278–1285.

Goreau, T. J. F., & Hayes, R. L. (2024). 2023 Record marine heat waves: coral reef bleaching HotSpot maps reveal global sea surface temperature extremes, coral mortality, and ocean circulation changes. Oxford Open Climate Change, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfclm/kgae005

Harrison, P. L., dela Cruz, D. W., Cameron, K. A., & Cabaitan, P. C. (2021). Increased Coral Larval Supply Enhances Recruitment for Coral and Fish Habitat Restoration. Frontiers in Marine Science, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.750210

Miller, M. W., Mendoza Quiroz, S., Lachs, L., Banaszak, A. T., Chamberland, V. F., Guest, J. R., Gutting, A. N., Latijnhouwers, K. R. W., Sellares-Blasco, R. I., Virdis, F., Villalpando, M. F., & Petersen, D. (2024). Assisted sexual coral recruits show high thermal tolerance to the 2023 Caribbean mass bleaching event. PLOS ONE, 19(9), e0309719. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309719

NOAA NESDIS. (2023, August 18). Extreme Ocean Temperatures Are Affecting Florida’s Coral Reef. National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news/extreme-ocean-temperatures-are-affecting-floridas-coral-reef

Thirukanthan, C. S., Azra, M. N., Lananan, F., Sara’, G., Grinfelde, I., Rudovica, V., Vincevica-Gaile, Z., & Burlakovs, J. (2023). The Evolution of Coral Reef under Changing Climate: A Scientometric Review. Animals, 13(5), 949. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13050949

#beanstem #biology #climatechange #coral #marine #reproduction #science #video

Blog: A salad full of glitter

After reading A Poison Like No Other by Matt Simon, I knew I wanted to make a video on microplastics. The overwhelming feeling I got from reading that book was dread at the building realization that microplastics really are everywhere. They’re on the top of Mount Everest, the bottom of the Mariana Trench; they’re in the air and the water; they’re in our lungs and in our blood.

For A salad full of glitter, I wanted to take a more cinematic approach. This was partly because I wanted to stretch my creative chops, but also because I wanted to tell a story of sorts: I wanted to tell a simple story about a person going about their regular day-in-the-life, but everywhere he turns, he encounters plastics and microplastics. I want the viewer to have the same journey I did during my research, realizing that we are absolutely surrounded and there is no escape.

The video has some useful tips for how to reduce your own exposure, but the truth is that you cutting out plastic straws and bringing your canvas bags to the store isn’t solving the problem. This is a global issue, and we need to be taking it seriously and pressuring policymakers around the world to do better.

I put a lot of love and effort into this project, you can check it out here!

https://youtu.be/neR4ZuuCywE

#beanstem #ecology #health #marine #microplastics #science #video

I recently learned about GHOST SHARKS!

A paper published this year (Finucci et al., 2024) announced the discovery of Harriotta avia, a new species of ghost shark native to New Zealand and Australia. I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Dominique Didier, who helped discover them! She was super helpful, a ton of fun, and clearly very passionate and excited about what she does. She helped teach me about ghost sharks in general and spoke with me about the process of finding, documenting, and announcing a new species.

Check out the short here (transcript) and the full video here (transcript)!

https://beanstem.org/blog-ghost-sharks/

#beanstem #biology #ghostShark #halloween #marine #ocean #spooky

Watch the short here: waiting for public URL

Check out the full video

Transcript

• Telemachus: If so then, give me chimeras!
• Okay, here ya go!
• These are Chimaeras! They just… have an extra “a” in the name
• Chimaeras are a class of fish that live deep under water. They’re related to rays and sharks, and they’re perfect to learn about for spoopy month because they’re also called SPOOKFISH and GHOST SHARKS!
• Like rays, they have a long, whip-like tail. That snake-like tail might be why they’re called “chimeras” — like the snake tail on the greek chimera
• Dr. Didier: “They’re weird looking, they have these strange snouts and sensory systems”
• That’s Dr. Dominique Didier. She’s studied ghost sharks for just over 3 decades.
• And she helped discover a new species of ghost shark THIS YEAR in New Zealand and Australia!
• Dr. Didier: “We’re coming to the conclusion that what we thought was this one, global species, Harriotta raleighana, is probably not”
• Hariotta avia, or the Australia narrow-nosed spookfish, used to be thought of as the same thing as Hariotta raleighana. Then this year, Dr. Didier and colleagues released a paper (Finucci et al., 2024) that discovered that some of the populations near Australia and New Zealand are their own, unique species!
• H avia looks very similar to H. raleighana overall. But the skin color is distinct, as is some of the morphology — that is, the shape and structure of the body and its parts.
• Genetic analysis also played a role in identifying the new species.
• Dr. Didier: Now we have a lot more evidence, partly because we can do molecular studies to say, “this is probably something new”
• This figure from the study maps some of the genetic mutations between individuals. You can clearly see that the Harriotta avia specimens are very different from the rest of the Harriotta specimens collected.
• Given the morphological and genetic data, the team was able to confidently declare the new species.
• Before I let Dr. Didier go, I had to ask one more question:
• Me: So what’s your favorite thing about these weird little guys, about ghost sharks?
• Dr. Didier: “Oh my gosh, there’s so much to love about them! I just think they’re, like, cool to look at! … They’re ancient, so looking at their anatomy can give us clues to the evolution of vertebrates… Even now, after working with them for these decades, there’s still, like, tons of stuff to be done! So that’s why I like them, I get excited about all this neat stuff”
• Me: Anything else you want to share for the end of the video?
• Dr. Didier: Coming up, on October 30th, is national ghost shark day! So break out your ghost shark juju and have a great day!
• Thank you so much to Dr. Didier for helping out, check out the link in my bio for references, and follow for more cool science!

B-roll/image credits

• Deep see chimera: NOAA/wikimedia (Public domain)
• Hydrolagus colliei: Linda Snook/MBNMS (Public domain)
• Greek chimera: Carole Raddato/flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
• Harriotta raleighana: NOAA Okeanos/wikimedia (Public domain)
• Spotted eagle ray: John Norton/wikimedia (CC BY 2.0)
• Hydrolagus alberti: SEFSC Pascagoula Laboratory/wikimedia (Public domain)
• Reef shark: NOAA/wikimedia (CC BY 2.0)
• Cute ghost shark illustration: Me
• Hammerhead ghost shark illustration: Zoe McGee

References

• AMNH. (2015, February 26). Type Specimens: An Overview | American Museum of Natural History. American Museum of Natural History. https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/from-the-collections-posts/just-our-types-a-short-guide-to-type-specimens
• Bottaro, M. (2022). Sixth sense in the deep-sea: the electrosensory system in ghost shark Chimaera monstrosa. Scientific Reports, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14076-2
• Didier, D., Kemper, J., & Ebert, D. (2012). Phylogeny, Biology and Classification of Extant Holocephalans. Marine Biology/CRC Marine Biology Series, 97–122. https://doi.org/10.1201/b11867-6
• Finucci, B., Cheok, J., Ebert, D. A., Herman, K., Kyne, P. M., & Dulvy, N. K. (2020). Ghosts of the deep – Biodiversity, fisheries, and extinction risk of ghost sharks. Fish and Fisheries, 22(2), 391–412. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12526
• Finucci, B., Didier, D., Ebert, D. A., Green, M. E., & Kemper, J. M. (2024). Harriotta avia sp. nov. – a new rhinochimaerid (Chimaeriformes: Rhinochimaeridae) described from the Southwest Pacific. Environmental Biology of Fishes. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-024-01577-4
• Halstead, B. W., & Bunker, N. C. (1952). The Venom Apparatus of the Ratfish, Hydrolagus colliei. Copeia, 1952(3), 128–128. https://doi.org/10.2307/1439692

https://beanstem.org/short-ghost-sharks/

#beanstem #biology #ghostShark #marine #ocean #science #shorts #spooky

Watch the short here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBeOuMtMZZm/

There was 1 topic that got cut from the main wetlands video, and that was vernal pools! Vernal pools are a seasonal wetland that are usually about the size of a pond. They dry up in the summer, but over the fall, winter, and spring, amphibians like salamanders, newts, and frogs use them as breeding grounds that are safely isolated from predatory fish. They’re super weird and super cool!

Transcript

• Wait, I almost forgot! There’s actually a secret FIFTH option for wetlands, and they’re really weird! It’s like a shiny wetland!
• Vernal pools are halfway between a bog and a seasonal pond. They form in shallow basins that collect rainwater, but they go through phases of being flooded, waterlogged, and dry (Keeley & Zedler, 1998).
• One of the things that makes vernal pools so weird is that the temperature and pH of the water swing wildly throughout the course of the day. The layer of water is usually pretty thin, so conditions can change rapidly based on exposure to sunlight (Keeley & Zedler, 1998).
• Vernal pools flood during the fall from rain and melting snow, and over the course of fall and winter, they play a vital role in the forests around them. You see, amphibians bridge an important gap in the food chain between invertebrates and larger animals (Liles, 2021).
• And every year, all sorts of newts, salamanders, and frogs use vernal pools to lay their eggs for the next generation. Vernal pools provide a safe breeding grounds because they’re temporary and they’re isolated from freshwater sources that would have fish (Liles, 2021).
• Over the summer, vernal pools dry up and just look like any ol’ patch of land. It’s then that they’re the most vulnerable — developers who either don’t care or just don’t know better will come along and build on top of them.
• We’re losing vernal pools rapidly: we’ve already lost over 90% of the vernal pools in California (US EPA, 2024), a state where they used to be incredibly abundant. After all, it’s hard to put protections in place for an ecosystem that’s only there some of the time.
• Check out the video in my bio to learn more about the other types of wetlands, and follow for more cool science!

B-roll/image credits

• Rainy wetland: mraltamimi/Pixabay
• Golden stag beetle: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos
• Raccoon: Paxson Woelber/Wikimedia
• Construction site: bellergy/Pixabay
• Vernal pools diagram: California State Parks
• Newts courting: Steven David Johnson/stevendavidjohnson.com (NON-FREE LICENSE)
• Wood frog: Steven David Johnson/stevendavidjohnson.com (NON-FREE LICENSE)
• Salamander egg clutch video: Steven Johnson/stevendavidjohnson.com (NON-FREE LICENSE)

References

• Celebrezze, D. (2016, May 27). VernalPoolGuy. Vernalpoolguy.org. https://www.vernalpoolguy.org/archive.php
• Holland, R. F. (2009). California’s great valley vernal pool habitat status and loss: rephotorevised 2005. Placer Land Trust Report, Auburn, California, 23pp
• Keeley, J. E., & Zedler, P. H. (1998). Characterization and global distribution of vernal pools. In Ecology, conservation, and management of vernal pool ecosystems, proceedings from 1996 conference (Vol. 1, p. 14).
• Liles, L. (2021, May 28). The Birth of a Salamander. The Nature Conservancy. https://www.nature.org/en-us/magazine/magazine-articles/vernal-pools/
• Mooney, H. A., & Zavaleta, E. (2016). Ecosystems of California. University Of California Press.
• US EPA. (2024, May 15). Vernal Pools. US EPA. https://www.epa.gov/wetlands/vernal-pools

https://beanstem.org/short-vernal-pools/

#amphibians #beanstem #ecology #science #shorts #vernalpols #wetlands

https://youtu.be/6f4mQb29C4A

I just published a new video on Wetlands! It’s the first in a series called Ground Work, which is about how each biome contributes in its own way to the stability, biodiversity, and beauty of the planet.

This is somewhere between a surface-level look and a deep dive on the differences between different wetlands and why wetlands as a whole are so important to us humans. From providing food, to filtering water, to buffering storm surge, to sequestering and storing carbon, these things are amazing!

I’ve really grown to love the wetlands of Florida as I’ve learned more about them. They really are beautiful. The wildlife, the calm waters, the shade from the mangroves. It’s just so nice to be on the water out there, and I hope this video can share my passion for these ecosystems while also sharing some awesome facts!

This was my first real project aside from the shorts, and it was really ambitious, I don’t think I realized how much it would be to make a 25-minute video with multiple locations. But with a ton of help from my amazing friends, many many hours of research, writing, shooting, and editing, and a last-minute push to just get it done, it’s finally out!

https://beanstem.org/groundwork-wetlands/

#beanstem #climate #climatechange #groundwork #science #video #wetlands