 Can you guess how I fell in love with electric cable bacteria? Let me tell you the story from the beginning last year. I went snorkeling a little out of town up north the place called Lekton Strand The water was so clear and there was seagrass with these long green leaves everywhere the water Was so nice and I actually saw a big trout hiding in between seagrass leaves Seagrasses and other aquatic plants not only provide shelter for fish, but also have long roots Borrowing organic carbon deep down into the sediment where it is captured helping to fight against climate change So a couple of days later. I really wanted to dive into that beautiful world again and I Drove to Marsilis bohaber jumped into the water and I was shocked not a single seagrass leaf around instead murky water What happens in between Lekton Strand and Marsilis bohaber happens gradually on a global scale Human activities cause huge die-off events of aquatic plants for instance human activities Like dredging cause murky water and with murky water the plants receive less light are less active and that is When the roots Become vulnerable to sulfite and you know sulfite smells like rotten eggs and is actually toxic for plants so Now I would like to convince you that with the help of electric cable bacteria The sulfite around the roots could be efficiently removed, but how? To imagine this Let's pretend that everyone here in this room is a single cable bacterium cell and the wooden pillars on the on the outside are the roots and You self sitting close to the root actually can breathe the oxygen which gets released from the roots All the other cells however you cannot reach that oxygen, but you are surrounded by sulfite and luckily You like to eat sulfite So the only way to breathe and eat at the same time is to cooperate So please everyone let's cooperate and bring our hands up and hold your neighbor's hands Forming long cable bacteria filaments and now you're producing electric currents which may allow To eat up all the toxic sulfite around the roots and keep the plants happy so next time You go out for a swim mind your step avoid walking through the seagrass meadows because now you know they protect fish and Climate and there's a whole electric world underneath. Thank you