 the state of clean energy. I'm your host, Mitch Ewan. Our underwriters high energy policy program is a very natural thing to do. I'm really pleased to welcome our guest, the co-founder of the Legacy Refoundation, and we had him on just before COVID started in 2020. I was checking my record. So like a week before it was discovered, you were on the show Bill. And today we're going to be talking story again and updating everybody on what's happening with our coral reefs and with the Legacy Refoundation. So welcome to the show, Bill. Thanks, Mitch. Always a pleasure to be here. Thanks much. And you have a great background there. I love it, Ben. Thank you. Yeah. I went to your website and getting ready for the show. I was telling you before the show started, I saw the Ted presentation by Dr. Vaughn out of Florida. And I highly recommend everybody go to that and check it out because it really gives us hope. So I want to use that as my opening is really tell us about what's the current status of our coral reefs, Bill? Why are we here and what can we do about it? No, it's a great question. It's an important question. We've been at this for about five or six years now and we've seen a lot of good things, a lot of not so good things. But the one thing that we have seen is the coral seems to be hanging in there for the time being. One of the probably the biggest notes of interest that I have run across when COVID started, all the beach and water activity just ceased immediately. Within a few months of that, something that our divers found was the coral immediately recovered. And we're not even sure exactly why because there's not a lot of traffic out here, I'll just say to Honolulu. But without a doubt, the lack of human intervention and use of the ocean made a huge difference in the marine life and the coral health. So once again, you know, we go back to if we're going to be in the water, which we will, we love the ocean over here for the ocean. We've got to be careful and we've got to treat the coral with gloves because if it continues to degrade at the rate it's going, we're going to have major problems out here. Large areas of reef will die off and die off permanently. And that's a big concern of ours. We've seen this in Australia and other parts of the world. What people feel like well if coral, if coral dies off and there's 10 or 20% left, it will find a way to recover. The truth is coral is actually intelligent enough to know if there isn't enough coral in an area to survive, it stops spawning. It may live, but it will stop reproducing. And usually that magic number is right around 30%. And we have areas in the state right now we're really close to 30%. So there are some real concerns about it. But there are things we can do, all can do to help protect it. Yeah, that's one of the things I really enjoyed about that presentation by Dr. Vaughn is what he's doing. And I guess you guys have studied it and you're working with him as I understand it from our conversation before the show started. We worked with him early on, consulted with him. Right now we're doing our own thing. He's doing his thing. But we certainly have been involved with him since he's worked with him personally at Key West a couple of years ago. But certainly he's sort of the father of coral restoration. We have a great deal of respect for him. And he's a great guy to work with. He's a lot of fun. So why should we care about the coral reefs? I mean, what do they add to the world? Well, let's take Hawaii to start with. For one thing, coral reefs are the only reason that we are here. And as far as the tourists go, we wouldn't have fish. People would be coming to Hawaii and we would not have white sand beaches. We would not have the marine life that people enjoy when they're snorkeling. And a lot of the sea life that we bring home to the dinner table, that would go away as well. Those are real concerns of ours. As I mentioned earlier, we're not that far away from that collapse happening out here. And what it does, the one thing that you'll find is that the coral reefs will start to disintegrate very quickly, which means we'll have an abundance of sand for five or 10 years, maybe longer, and then it will all start to disappear. And imagine this state without any sand. And in theory, in 10 or 15 years, 20 years, maybe at the outside, we could be looking at just rock, rock beaches, kind of like what we have in Kona, except all around the state. And that is a real concern because people come to Hawaii, tourists, to enjoy our oceans, enjoy the snorkeling out here. That may not happen. If we don't have coral, we're not going to have the local marine life. If we don't have the small local fish, we're not going to have the larger fish, which means when you want to go home and then order your plate of sushi or sashimi, you may not be able to get it, or it may be very, very expensive. So some real concerns that we have out here with the condition of coral. So can you dive in a little bit into the technology that you're using and are developing yourself as well to restock or bring the reefs back to life? What do you do and how does it work? And what kind of results are you getting? When we opened up Legacy Refoundation a few years ago, we had a permit from the state to go out and do coral restoration work, or at least the research aspect of it. We did that for two years. And during that two years, one of the things we proved that one, that we could grow coral successfully in a closed environment, which we did, we also proved that we can use the community resources to take care of it. We realized that was important because we had opportunities in Fiji and the Dominican Republic for the parts of the world. And we knew that if we had to send scientists out and only scientists, it may not be feasible, it may not survive. And what we found is we can actually train late people out here in a matter of a couple of weeks of classes and then a few months of working with us. And ultimately our lab was run by, even though we did have a marine biologist, the lab was run by local volunteers, very successfully. And we felt that was a real important point because anybody can grow coral if you have the right scientists and the right tanks and the right equipment. But if we take this to an outline country like Fiji, if we don't have the local people buy in and they're involved in it, it's probably going to fail. But I think one of the biggest accomplishments that we did, and this was Suzanne's idea, which I think was a great one, is we realized that we could develop a program, teach the local people how to grow and maintain their own coral, and let them take it over and we supervise it from a distance. But I think that was the most important thing we did. After two years, the permit ran out and we no longer growing live coral. But the technology that we've proven, thanks to Dr. Vaughn, we used that in Hawaii very successfully, all the way to the point that literally on the last week that we had the coral in our office, our lab, before we turned it over to the Marine Biology Center in Hilo, is we have to watch what's very rare in captivity. We have to watch a spawning event with coral. And I can tell you it's something that doesn't happen very often. It's very rare. And it was kind of a thank you that the coral gave us is, you know, you've worked with us for a couple of years. We just wanted to say thank you. That's my read on it. But certainly, we're very excited about it. And certainly, as we do more expansion work, and restoration work around the world, we hope to take the same things that we used here and bring them to Fiji and the Dominican Republic and other areas of the world that be held. So tell us a little bit more about how you plan to expand your program. What's the actual plan? And what kind of resources do you need to have to be able to implement that plan? Yeah, no, great question. Right now, we've we switched gears a little bit from restoration to more education for the moment. Something we realize is we can we can now that we know we can do rest or restorative work and plant outplant coral here in the state when when if the time comes and permits are allowed without educating the local public on items that they need to know to protect the coral, all the work we do could be for not. So we realize that we need to teach people to use proper sunscreens that were in the water, make sure you don't stand or touch the coral, literally just putting your hand or a foot on a piece of coral, you can the whole coral head can die off that it just it can become diseased very quickly. So we with COVID and everything we went from doing in-person training, we've had well over 1000 local people and students through our lab. It's been very successful, but of course COVID stopped all that. So now we're switching gears more into educational purposes. We're opening up a children's museum here in Kona, which we'll talk a little bit more about later. We're looking at doing sites over on the east coast from Florida up into the North Carolina, maybe of Maryland to educate people on things that they need to know to protect the reefs and protect the environment. So we're finding that's for us at this point in time, that's really a thrust of what we're doing. The restorative work will probably be back into I would say by the end of 2023. We're looking at Dominican Republic and Fiji going back in there that we're walking slowly because until the pandemic it allows us to be able to travel freely. My concern is that I don't want to be half-baked and have everything shut down on us again. We're hopeful, but I think it's still a year out before we do that. As far as the resources for us, it's going to be looking for volunteers for donations and just other collaborators in different parts of the world. Unfortunately, Suzanne's efforts have brought in dozens and dozens of people from all over the world. So we do have a great network out there of very involved people that are really eager to help us into the next phase that we're going to be looking into the next year or two. So what kind of a budget do you need to run a program like this, Bill? I mean, this is, you know, you're traveling around the world, you've got to buy equipment, everything. Kind of what's the order of magnitude and how much money do you need to raise? We're probably going to be looking for the next year raising about half a million to $700,000 to kind of sustain the efforts that we have now. As we grow and hopefully we'll have a core restoration site in Fiji and one in Dominican in the next year, that number will probably double to be able to cover those operations. So you need some funding. So what kind of leadership do you need? I mean, what kind of help do you need from aid, the state of Hawaii, and from other organizations? I mean, what kind of people do you need to have help you implement these programs? And what are kind of the barriers? What are the speed bumps that stop this from being really ramped up quickly? Sure. Obviously financial is one because we're always working on fundraising and that's going to be an ongoing effort for us forever. Finding talented people who are interested, other marine biologists that have an interest in coral, whether they're fresh out of school or have five or 10 years behind them, those are folks we like working on because they have enough knowledge to be curious and to learn and how to do the program. So certainly we're always looking for folks that are talented in marine biology. As far as barriers, when the time comes to do out planning out here, we'll have to work with the state and get it repermitted for that and that for us that may be a few years out. Now, fortunately for us in places like North Carolina, Florida, and other countries, they're working with open arms. They're very, very excited about our efforts and they've encouraged us to do what we can and there's a lot of money out there for this sort of thing. So we're probably going to have a little more success a little faster out there. Things in Hawaii are taking a little bit of time, but that's how things work here. But this is our home base and this is where I was born and raised. So I will be plugging away at this as long as I'm here. So tell me a little bit more about permitting. I was surprised to hear that you actually require permitting. I mean, what kind of elements or what kind of things do have to be permitted? Well, as far as the state of Hawaii and the DLNR is that if you're dealing with any marine life out here, you have to go through them and then although the process is arduous, I wholeheartedly endorse it because if it doesn't happen, anybody could go out there and cause problems. And they've had issues in the past where scientists thought, well, let's try this new seaweed, particularly in Kanioi Bay, turned out to be a disaster and it's something they're still dealing with. So the fact that they're very conservative, I applaud them. I think it's important because we've got to protect what we have. And so they are very cautious and we appreciate that we really do. But as far as doing coral restoration work out here, there's a few firms that are talking about doing some nonprofits. We'll be back at the game when the time comes, but it's probably, like I said, probably a good year out. So one of your slides, I see a lot of nice looking equipment. I mean, is it complicated equipment? I mean, is it highly scientific or is it stuff that you can make out of tubs and plastic pipes and things like that? Just a little bit of a feel for it. Mitch, it's a great question because the answer to the question is it can be. And Dr. Vaughn has a lot of very sophisticated equipment and we were very impressed with it. Something we realized very quickly is we needed to be able to design and build things that were pretty much off the shelf or in the military parlance, you know, cots, basically basic items that you're going to get at a local hardware store. So when we built the lab down there, we didn't really copy what David, Dr. Vaughn did. We took what his ideas were, but we felt we had to source things that were readily available with a true value or an HPM because if we're in an island nation like the Dominican Republic, there's a lot of things they just don't have. So we use horse troughs, we use the standard PVC irrigation piping. For the most part, everything that we got was something you could order on Amazon or pick up at a local store. And we felt that was really critical because if we designed something that's too complicated, these people are going to get roadblocked and then the program could die. So anyways, the point is that the lab that we have, although it looks very sophisticated, I think it was, most of those items could be bought and ordered into wherever you're anywhere in the world. And what you see in this picture here, we have regular aquarium glass tanks and we have special LED lights on there which were tuned to the frequency that coral likes as far as the type of light that they like. So that's what you see. It gives off this beautiful blue hue. But again, there's just special grow lights that you use for aquariums, but they're available on places like Amazon. So the net of it is, it is not a lot of a complicated equipment. We just couldn't see doing that. We felt that would be an injustice to the people we're going to work with. So everything that you saw down there was things that we bought at a local store, donated to us, or we ordered in from the outside. Great. So I'd like you to talk a little bit about your kids program that you started up. So I think you call it the Kids Museum. It's Hawaii Keiki Museum and it's basically a showcasing marine life. We're doing a large coral exhibit down there, not live coral, but basically the whole, you know, talk about all the things that we do. So we'll be front and center in the museum. And it's down at the Kona International Marketplace down there. It's just going to be opening up officially, I think in September, still finishing up the details. In fact, we've got a big work party this weekend. If anybody's out there is interested, give us a call. We're doing a lot of work down there. But anyway, it's very exciting. It's about 10, 15,000 square feet of space. It's going to be one of the largest museums that is typed in, certainly in the state and possibly in the country. So we're spending a lot of time on that. And the hope is that it's designed for local kids and local adults. When we say it's a kids museum, it's geared to children, but it's certainly the material and everything in there is very much apropos for adults like you and I. We're also going to be hoping to bring a lot of the tourist tip. We feel it's super important. A tourist on island, we're going to encourage all the hotels and the conventions in town to bring their guests down. It's a chance to teach them about good coral health, good marine health. When they're out in the water, what to do to use the proper sunscreens, not step on the coral. And just how to live a little better life to protect the oceans that we all depend on. But anyway, that's the museum. And then certainly we can talk about that one more time. Once it's opened up, we'd be real happy to share that with you. Now, I haven't flown for a long time, but we all have that little screen on the back of the seat in front of us. And really a wonderful opportunity for a public service announcements and all that kind of stuff. So have you guys been able, are you aware of any program that we've started here in Hawaii to tell people, A, about the sunscreen, don't step on the coral, and the programs that are being done in Hawaii that they may be able to support. Has that been done yet? Before the epidemic, we were involved with something with HTA out here that was going to do just that. Again, once everything happened, COVID, everything is kind of in sidelight. I know there's individual efforts out there, and there may be some larger efforts I'm not aware of. But at this point in time, I don't think there's anything substantial out there. And that is something we need to spearhead, at least legacy reef does, because we've got to make sure the tourists know about this before they touch down. And that's such a great point. So yes, we will be talking to HTA again about that, and also the airlines themselves to promote the fact that we're now, basically, this is one of the first state in the country that basically outlawed the appropriate sunscreens. Several new laws have been passed to make it more difficult to get the improper sunscreen. The net of it is that we're taking really big steps out here to protect the coral. And we want to make sure the tourists know that so they can take big steps. Our big concern is most tourists are going to buy their sunscreen at their local diamond food store out there and bring it with them. They're not going to know any better. So you're absolutely right. We've got to catch them on the airplanes before they land and at the hotel. So that is something we'll be working on the next few months. Great question. So I've been coming over the big island a lot to support our hydrogen station over there, and I keep on trying to buy sunscreen at the airport, which is all is impossible. Like at the Kona airport, there is no sunscreen there. So why aren't we doing that, you know? Like I don't know who runs the airport, but they need to get the word, but get some of their concessionaries to start promoting the right kind of sunscreen. Maybe there's an opportunity there for Legacy Reef Foundation. I'll talk to Suzanne about it. But yeah, there's definitely an opportunity there. And hopefully we'll be spending more time with the local convenience stores out here and the chains out here so they understand exactly what needs to happen. So again, that's an effort that we'll be working on in the next few months. So not to continue pinging on the sunscreen, but you know, Senator Dabber did a great job in passing that legislation. But one of the fascinating things I found was that like one drop of this kind of sunscreen. In a swimming pool, four times an Olympic swimming pool is enough to poison the coral. Yeah, it's amazing. You know, and one of the challenges with the sunscreen thing is there's a lot of debate among scientists. Some buy into this, some don't. But the one thing that we do know is that this is the only country in the world, only major developed country that has allowed this to happen. It's illegal here in the EU and other parts of the world. It has never been legal. And so I look at that as, okay, I realize in our country we allow a lot of things to happen with the FDA that maybe we don't elsewhere. But if it's not happening anywhere else in the world, there's got to be some reason for it. And one of the things I look at is we know it's an endocrine disruptor. Anyone that gets into your body, which by the way it does. So besides, you know, you've heard in the coral, now you see you're correct. One drop can be detected throughout a huge, huge body of water. Now if you're putting on several tablespoons on you and your children, and we know that those chemicals have been absorbed to your skin, and we know that they can affect your endocrine system, what is that doing to us? They don't know, but I don't want to find out. So my kids, my children, my grandchildren have never had that on. And I discourage people from using it even in the mainland, you know, in the interior. It's just, if it's not used anywhere else in the world, it shouldn't be used here either. That's my opinion. You've designed some special swimming suits or diving suits, right, that are reef friendly, so that you basically are able to float kind of face down and see all the stuff without having a step on the coral. Yeah, we endorse the product. We call them floaty wetsuits. Basically it's a standard neoprene wetsuit, but it has a small degree of floatation in the chest, which allows you to stay prone above the water. And we feel that's important because you're less likely to step on the coral. It's going to keep you more comfortable when you're swimming, and you don't need as much sunscreen, if any at all, just your face and your hands. Yes, that's the product that we endorsed, and we still believe in it. I think it's a great idea. So I want to circle back a little bit on how quickly the coral can reproduce. I understand that it was just natural. It would take like 25 years to get to a certain size, but given the techniques that you guys are working on, to give us hope that we can actually save the reef, how quickly can we actually propagate it if organizations like yours are in there helping to seed, call it seeding the reef or propagating it? That's a great question. It's a very important question because the coral in Hawaii grows very, very slowly. Unlike the Caribbean, where coral can grow in just a matter of years to regenerate itself, a reef out here can take 10, 15, even 20 years to regenerate itself. And during that time, it's susceptible to storms and rain and all kinds of things. So we kind of got short into the stick out here as far as being able to grow coral. What we did learn in the lab here in Hawaii is that we're able to grow coral substantially faster. By doing Dr. Vaughn's technique of fragmentation, we take small pieces of coral and then chip them into little sizes, the size of your fingernail and your little pinky. And then we glue them on little substrates, little rocks. We put them in those tanks that you saw and using light cycles and temperature and certain things. We've been able to grow reefs that probably within two years would take 20 years out of the wild. And the answer to your question is technically, it's there. We've proven it with Hawaiian coral. We all know we can do it in the Caribbean, but it's a different animal out here, literally. We had quite a bit of success with the corals we worked with. So it can be done and it will be done. I think there's going to be a lot more effort. I believe the DLNR is very open to the idea of the restoration work. So we hope to see more of it out here. We certainly encourage it, whoever is doing it. The big issue will be the people that get in the water. As you mentioned, the sunscreen, all the effort, we spend millions of dollars outplanting coral, but if it's damaged by the issues that we have to do, which are sunscreen, walking on it. And of course it's runoff and outfall and things like that. There's a number of factors we're trying to work with, but right now, technically, it is very feasible. Something that can happen and we certainly want to be involved with it. Okay, that's great. So one of the questions I had was the uptake of carbon dioxide. So do corals actually absorb carbon dioxide out of the seawater? And that makes the coral rock that they live on eventually. What's their effect on the absorption of carbon dioxide? Yeah, again, I'm an engineer, not a scientist, but what I understand through our scientists, the coral, which is calcium carbonate, basically takes in carbon dioxide and it sequesters it into the actual body of the coral itself. So all these resod here are storing great deals of carbon dioxide, which is great. One concern I have is if they start to break apart and crumble, that carbon dioxide may be released and also the ability to store more carbon dioxide is going to be affected. So right now, even though coral is being affected by high amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, if we lose the coral race, which were that we potentially could see happen, we're going to lose the ability to sequester what's already in there and then bring in future carbon dioxide. So we could see a triple threat where high amounts of carbon dioxide raises temperatures. We've seen that now. We're seeing record temperatures across the globe right now. If the coral starts dying off and giving off that CO2, it'll be re-released in the atmosphere and unfortunately also not be able to restore it in the future. So the coral reefs are incredibly critical when you think of it that way. We've got to maintain them to protect what we have. And if we lose them, then we're going to lose that ability to uptake all that carbon dioxide. And a great deal of the ocean's carbon dioxide resides within the coral shelf out here around the world. So keeping it going is important. Right. So one final question, because we're getting down to the wire, is I thought I also heard in some of the stuff I've been reading that coral actually breathes out and sends out oxygen. Is that correct? Do they help the oxygen in the atmosphere? It definitely does help the oxygen. It's an important, as the trees do on land, coral does in the ocean. And I think anybody out there would never argue the fact that the rainforest and the South Americans and around the world are critical to our ecosystem. The corals the same thing. So what the trees do for us in the rainforest, the coral does for us in the ocean. So that is correct. Okay. Well, Bill, we've worked our way through 30 minutes. And I'm going to give you one last opportunity. If you can pull up the last slide, let us know how we can contact you and how we can donate money. I mean, you're 501C3. Does that mean I can get a tax deduction if I help you guys out? It certainly does. Yes. So if you make a donation to our foundation, which we greatly appreciate, it is a tax deduction. You'll be set to form so you can file it with your next year's taxes. And certainly it would be a large help to us. And we also appreciate in-kind donations. If you have a talent or resource, something we can use, please give us a call. We're always open to ideas. As I said, we've got hundreds of volunteers all over the world that are helping us out. There's always room for another one. That's great. I know a couple of candidates right off the top of my head. Well, anyway, that's going to be a wrap. We're going to have to leave it there. You've been watching Hawaii, the state of clean energy on Think Tech Hawaii. And today we've been very fortunate to be talking to Bill Coney of the Legacy Reef Foundation and what they're doing and making a healthier and sustainable coral reefs. So thank you for all the good work you're doing, Bill, and your foundation. And thanks to all our viewers for tuning in. I'm Mitch Ewan, and in two weeks we'll be back with another edition of Hawaii, the state of clean energy, aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.