 Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart Turner and this is Sustainable Hawai'i, airing every Tuesday at noon on thinktecawaii.com. For decades, scientists worldwide have known that coral reefs, which are the breadbasket for over 500 million people, are being destroyed by development, overfishing, pollution and increased ocean temperatures. In 1998 alone, a bleaching event caused by very warm water killed more than 15 percent of corals worldwide. For much of the 20th century, Kanyohi Bay was used as a sewage dump. By the 1970s, a majority of the Bay's reefs that once provided food for thousands of people had died. Sewage dumping was eventually curtailed, leading to a temporary recovery, but then invasive algae took over and again suffocated the reef. In 2005, the State Department of Land and Natural Resources partnered with the Nature Conservancy and the University of Hawai'i to remove most of the algae from the Bay. The water cleared up and patches of reef began to grow again, but in 2015, unusually high water temperatures caused widespread coral bleaching, actually in 2014, all around O'ahu, and again in 2015, water temperatures in the Bay spiked by almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit. These events set the stage for the phenomenal coral reef research being done by my guest today. I'm delighted to have back on the show again the world-renowned coral biologist, Dr. Ruth Gates. Dr. Gates began her studies in her native England at Newcastle University, just inland of the North Sea. For years, she studied corals also in the Caribbean Sea. Today, she leads research as the director of the University of Hawai'i's Institute of Marine Biology on Coconut Island in Kanyohi Bay, where she's globally recognized for her cutting-edge work on corals. She was awarded the University of Hawai'i Board of Regents Medal for excellence in research in 2014, was honored as the 2015 ARCS Foundation Scientist of the Year, and this year was identified as Islander of the Year for Science by Honolulu Magazine. Her work is the subject of several recent documentary shows on National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, and the American Museum of Natural History. That's where I first discovered her. Dr. Gates is the elected president of the International Society for Reef Studies, which held its International Coral Reef Symposium in the United States for the very first time right here in Hawai'i in June, and she's about to participate in the World Conservation Congress starting this week. Aloha. Welcome, Dr. Gates. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm delighted to be back. Well, I'm delighted you're always willing to partake in these opportunities to share your work with the world. Absolutely. You're certainly plastered everywhere now, and we're all appreciative of it because there's always something new we're learning. The one thing I'd like to say is that, you know, I follow my passion. I do what I love to do, and I've been lucky enough to have the opportunity to pursue a career like the one that I have here at the University of Hawai'i. Well tell us so that the viewers who haven't seen you know exactly what your work is on Coconut Island. So I'm a coral biologist. I've been one for 25 years, and I've studied one feature of the biology that has become particularly important as climate change has intensified. And that is, why does one coral do better than another when they are stressed out? You know, and really you can analogize that back to humans. When two people are faced with the same problem, often they respond very differently. And so my group and many others around the world has been focusing on the biology that underpins those differences in the ability of individuals to perform or even individual reefs to sustain damage. And we think we've identified three characteristics. It's to do with their genetics, just like with humans. It's to do with their past experience. Have they survived a stress event in the past? And it seems that if they have, it makes them better able to withstand an event in the future. This is what I love about your work. Instead of focusing as many of us have in the years trying to get people to pay attention to climate change, instead of focusing on the 70% of the corals that are stressed out or dying, you're focusing on the smaller percentage that are surviving and why. Absolutely. And I think that this is a, you know, I've monitored the changes on reefs over the course of my career. I've seen reefs that I have dove on and loved be annihilated by the actions of man. You can spend a lot of time documenting it and getting depressed about it, but my opinion is if we do the science for a reason, that's to better understand the system, it's really an imperative for us to actually take that knowledge and move that forward and think about how that knowledge tells us about a feature that will be important to address as we move forward in ever more increasingly stressful conditions. And so let me just back up a little bit with that. Climate change is intensifying. The planet's getting warmer and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing as we burn more fossil fuels. What that translates to in the ocean is warmer than normal seawater temperatures and a change in the chemistry of the water. That's something I learned recently. I didn't realize that the actual fossil fuels leaking in the water as well as the CO2 they're emitting is changing the chemistry. Exactly, it's dissolving into the CO2 dissolves into the water and it makes the water more acidic and that acidity coupled with temperature is now starting to interfere with very basic biological reactions that are critical to the maintenance of reefs. That is their ability to actually build the structure that creates the reef that protects the land directly behind them and of course creates the home for all the things that live on reefs. And we've talked about on this show several times the importance of that reef as a barrier for the large wave events, the monster waves that are eating away at our infrastructure that's so important to our economy as well. You know, this function of reefs as natural seawalls is something that actually doesn't often get much play. And we are living in a time where we're trying to react to what seem to be really urgent problems associated with sea level rise and my perspective is if we take care of our natural seawalls it's a much more cost effective solution to rising sea level. If we can make our reefs survive into the future and continue to create these big structures that protect our land then surely that is a much more appropriate action than pouring in an enormous amount of concrete. Absolutely and one of the other things that I've taken in from all the different talks that you've given is that you really are all about systems thinking and a systems approach whereas most academics who are that deep into research as you are are very stove piped and are really focusing because it takes all their energy to do that. Somehow you've been coming out of that stove pipe and connecting the different kinds of research and the different ways in which policy can be developed using that research. You know as an academic as a trained academic you are sort of forced down these stove pipes being an expert at something is really the way you get promoted through your career. I think you know I'm lucky enough to have gone through my career I've done that I've published a lot of papers in the peer reviewed literature but I could see that I'm more comfortable in the broader conversation of I've got this knowledge how do I combine my knowledge with the knowledge of others that may be quite different but very complementary and then when you put all of that together you end up with a pie that addresses a problem that we need to address as a society and so I think that I have been lucky enough to sort of take the science forward into a more solution oriented our projects right now are focused on harnessing our basic understanding of biology to develop corals that are provisioned for the future that we know can survive the future we call this an area called assisted evolution. It's very controversial. Yeah I was going to say when it applies to humans people cringe but what do they have the same reaction well you know it's so funny because I think that you know often I'll discuss and say well do you have a dog and people say I have a dog I say well what type of dog do you have golden retriever I said that's great that did you know that that golden retriever was selected to look like a golden retriever we breed things to create the look that we want for those dogs and the behaviors that's right and in the context of corals then one of the things that we're doing is saying well if we know that two individuals that are different individuals in the same species are doing really well it's better to breed those two individuals than it is for them to randomly breed with somebody who's doing really poorly because through the process known as natural selection that individual of the mixed positive and negative will probably not survive the future as well as a positive positive so it's not a radical thing that we're doing at all we've done it with everything that we eat on our food in our food supply we do it with trees we go to the garden center everything is selectively bred for the feature that we as humans deem important and what I'm saying is why shouldn't we be doing this to help coral reefs so when you worked with or presided over I think you were one of the key people to get the international coral reef symposium here correct yes and so when you were involved in that I know one of the principal goals of that symposium was to get out of the academic silos and start getting the attention of policy makers to look at the science and get the academics to talk to the policy makers that's right was that successful and and what were the outcomes of that symposium I think it was very successful and actually I think this is a conversation that our international coral reef symposium was explicitly sort of contextualized by bridging science to policy and there was a leaders summit that brought some of our Pacific Island leaders to the table to discuss the needs of their islands and then convened with scientists and science that could potentially meet those needs this conversation has been going on in a number of different arenas on the west coast with the fisheries very successful management are very positive management of the fisheries I think it's what what's happening is the problems with nature or the problems that are occurring because we've driven the planet down a pipe that is really scary with climate change and we're now we have this tension of developing the land and all that that means for the natural systems that are directly adjacent to them the coral reefs are immediately adjacent to where we live I think to where we live but the problem is that so many people in the world don't live near coral reefs so they don't have the appreciation for how important the reefs are for a global ecosystem well how do we engage the people who don't have this immediate access and visibility to the reef so that they're aware that this provides basically the food source the economic resource you know tourism other things well that's crucial for all of us I mean maybe the most direct interaction between most people and a coral reef is is really the drugs that are being developed from the organisms that live there and this is a smaller part of the picture that people don't often we don't we don't usually say well coral reefs do this for humans they do medicines coastal protection food tourist economies we don't usually put the medicine at the top of the list and yet probably if you look at the number of people affected by that particular service that the reef provides to humans it's many wow a very broad reaching and so we don't really think about it that way we often talk about the the importance in terms of biodiversity and the maintenance of biodiversity and I've often said to people well biodiversity doesn't actually tell people what we mean really what we mean is the variety of organisms that live on the planet and the eco services that they provide for all that's right are you can you think give us some examples of some of the medicines that might come from the reef so there's some medicines that are being developed that are for anti cancer drugs there's many many many scientists who were involved in taking small pieces of all organisms off the reef and doing these ever more intense fractionations of the the homogene we basically smush them up in a big tube and you look and see whether that's a bioactive thing can in a test we're essentially growing cells from different cancers you put this solution in and if it inhibits those cells growing then you know it's an anti cancer to that particular cancer so how can we get folks to pay attention to that value in our public policymaking so that we translate the the incredible resource that is the evolving information about the reef because you're discovering new things every day yes well you know this is the sort of the field of biomimicry that we've we understand the biology of these organisms really well we see whether they serve as a variety of ways if the answer is yes say with a drug often what happens then as a pharmaceutical company will come in and will mimic the chemistry of that particular compound because you can't obviously go out and take a lot of things off the reef continually but at that point it sort of disconnects from the reef and you no longer know that that compound actually originated from a finding that was from a reef organism so that tracing of how did we get to this endpoint it's a little bit like the labeling and food you know people are always saying we want to label the food we want to know where it came from whether it's genetically modified it's the same kind of thing with drugs we should know where those ideas and where that biology was first discovered is that going to take a policy change so that we require those now that would certainly take a policy change and do you think that's feasible I think it's very feasible you know another issue that has come to light very recently is the influence of some suntan lotions on corals and the coral health and that there are chemicals in those suntan lotions that are really poisoning corals and because we have areas that are so heavily heavily used by tourists yeah one of the things that we try and demonstrate out at chemical a year for our visitors is take your sunscreen hand if you put it on the reef the next day you will see the imprint of your hand where that reef is now that coral is now bleached right people are astounded they have no idea that's right and I think very if we can educate them they won't be doing that but how do we translate that into policy well you know there's maybe I think we need to take a break and then we'll come back to that and say how are we going to get this to make a big difference in the policy realm we'll be right back hey how you doing welcome to a bachi talk my name is Andrew Lening I'm your co-host and we have a nice program here every Friday at one o'clock I think tech studios where we talk about technology and we have a little bit of fun with it so join us if you can thanks aloha aloha everyone I'm Maria Mera and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual so Viva Hawaii every other Monday at 3 p.m. we are here to show you news issues and events local and around the world join me hi I'm Ethan Allen host of likeable science on think tech Hawaii I hope you'll join me each Friday afternoon as we explore the amazing world of science we bring on interesting guests scientists from all walks of life from all walks of science to talk about the work they do why they do it and more why it's interesting to you what the science really means to your life its impacts on you how it's shaping the world around you and why you should care about it I do hope to join me every Friday at 2 p.m. for likeable science hi we're back with world-renowned coral reef biologist doctor Ruth Gates and we're just talking about the importance of translating the research into policy and I know that you've been working with the local legislature on some issues that we might be able to make changes yes I and many others have been sort of highlighting things in the water that are actually causing problems with corals health and one that has come to light very very recently is the is suntan lotions and the chemistry are the chemicals that are in suntan lotions which I should mention if they're not good for corals they're definitely not good for us that's right because we actually have evolved from a common ancestor of corals so they are quite biologically similar to us so but what's happening is is that science is basically being massed to show that the the reef itself is not doing well in important ways and that knowledge is now being moved into policy makers hands to develop new bills to move through our local legislature and I think eventually through federal policy makers to actually develop guidelines for how suntan lotions can be used and which ones can be used and there's a particular set of chemicals that are really bad and I think there's a real move to ban those chemicals what are some of those they're oxybenzones there is a particular site a cyclical group of chemicals that just appear to stop corals from reproducing and we know that endangered species are like the canary in the coal mine that's right and when they start to suffer we know that we're going to be suffering that's right I mean you know humans we rely on other organisms we're part of the general biodiversity we're not special things that are going wrong for other organisms will eventually go wrong for us right we know that our health is being influenced there's a lot of discussion of GMO there's a lot of discussion about how environmental pollution affects our function certainly the increases in cancer and both the diverse number of cancer as well as the huge number of people that are coming down with it it's it's kind of scary our world is a much more environmentally complex place and a lot of that complexity is man-made it's stuff that we've developed that is now coming out into our atmosphere or being eaten by us and you know one area that I think you know is is so present for many people is plastics you know we get talked about talking about you know removing plastic bags but you know plastics go into the ocean either in large or small pieces even if we collect them and recycle them we're recycling them into another plastic-based product and as you recycle it becomes ever smaller and smaller and smaller and now we know that microplastics are starting to appear in the internal organs of marine life and it's only a matter of time before plastics inside our own bloodstream become an issue yeah this is something actually that that's very prevalent in Hawaii is when you even when you're fishing and you catch the fish and got it you see a lot of microplastics one of the things that I think is really important that came out of the coral reef summit is the legislation you were talking about for Hawaii but is there also this move for legislation in other coral reef-centered countries and are they going to be coordinating with us are we going to be doing sort of an international or global effort to educate one another about what the policy solutions might be I mean I think that the the fabulous thing about reefs is they are global they are distributed around the middle or the belt of the planet and what's so great about convening international conferences like the international coral reef symposium or the World Conservation Congress is that essentially you're bringing players together to talk about success stories or failures in attempting to preserve natural systems across the globe and so what that enables that level of conversation is is a much more coordinated effort to take really lessons learned that a positive translate them rapidly to other places to make more of a difference across more of the planet and that's an exciting thing in which I think science and scientists are in that conversation very actively at the moment saying our science tells us that this is the right direction to legislate to generate policy around of course every conference is only as good as what happens in between the conferences and particularly the World Conservation Congress and the coral reef symposium are every four years and we need to be abreast of and make sure that we push and pursue the activity in between the Congress is so that there's that carry-on effect what is happening to make sure that well I mean I would say from my own perspective from the corollary fields within this sort of smaller subset then of the environmental settings that we would want to protect we have an international society that is really now tasked with making sure our community advances agendas collaboratively so we're really pushing a much more collaborative framework for our society trying to engage specifically with our younger population of scientists who are very committed to doing something about the problems that are on course there's socially networked like never before so there's many more avenues to keep that going than we ever had as young students and you know as well as the social networking there's much more technology that is being thrown at these problems than has ever been used before you know we have NASA coming in and funding really large-scale acquisition of imagery on reefs for the first time so using satellite satellite and then retrofitting aeroplanes with special cameras to be able to fly over large areas of reef there's a big project called coral that's been it's a 15 million dollar project being pushed out from NASA focused on coral reefs but and I understand the coral reefs but maybe it's just the great barrier reef can actually be seen from space oh absolutely and many of the reefs in the world can be seen from space I mean which is an astonishing thing when you think that they're created by microscopic animals that have even tinier little plants living inside of them I mean that's an astonishing natural feat of biology that I think many people think that a coral is a rock and walk all over it thinking it's a rock because it looks like that but actually it's a dynamic living organism that is actually building that rock from and it's an organism that's a whole world unto itself because one of the things you share in one of the many documentaries I've seen about you is is that every time you peel a layer you see layers more of living organisms that are depending on a symbiotic relationship all the way through they're masters of symbiosis and that is the just the tight interaction by two very different organisms and you know symbiosis as a feature for humans is critically important we'll all have talked to each other over the over the dinner table about what do we mean microbiome what does that mean that the bacteria in our guts can potentially be beneficial to us that is a symbiosis and that symbiosis can be knocked off by a bad diet into something that makes us physically unhealthy same thing can happen in carls when they change their symbionts they can be basically transitioned into an unhealthy state again exemplifying the tight linkage between the biology of humans and the biology of these rock-like creatures on the reef so you've been working on these different new growth patches in Kaneohe Bay I'm wondering if you're going to get to take some of the World Conservation Congress folks out to show them the work you've been doing so we do we are entertaining quite a number of visitors high-level visitors policymakers who are coming in to have a look at just the amazing resource that you know the Hawaiians to bring biology is an a marine institute sitting on a living car reef one of the patch reefs there's about 50 of those in Kaneohe Bay being able to see the car from where I work is an astonishing thing and having the kind of infrastructure that we have on the island to do cutting-edge science acquire new knowledge that is really purposeful about why certain reefs are doing better than others and what that means for all the other biodiversity that uses all the fish and of course the marine mammals that use our coastal waters so astonishing place so we're hoping to we are definitely touring we have two press tours going on next week that will be involved in one on coconut island with national geographic another one with the state talking about the state's plan for managing coral bleaching as we move into unfortunately what looks like it's going to be a third consecutive bleaching event in 2016 we are already seeing signs on the reef in Kaneohe Bay that corals are changing from their characteristic dark brown color to much lighter white yeah we're seeing that out on Mokule'i on the reef as well it's really awful so you're going to be bringing international scientists but the press as well out to see this one of the things that's so astounding about your work in Kaneohe Bay is that you have a very accessible site in a large area for a lot of people and we in Hawaii are smack in the middle of the Pacific that makes us very accessible actually despite our remoteness yes to all the Pacific countries that are key in this as the largest ocean and some of the biggest economies of the world so will you be having China and Japan and other countries it's very very interesting I already am hosting Chinese scientists in my group we have we are a site for Fulbright exchange where we're inviting scientists from all over the world to come my perspective is we need to be collaborating with as many people from as many places as we can as we actually advance a plan for how we're going to respond to the problems on reefs not just watch them but respond well this is so exciting and in the last 30 seconds I just would like to thank you so much for coming on again invite you to come back again after the Congress so we can talk about what your experience was with hosting these folks from around the world and hopefully learn more about the more funding international funding and state and federal funding that you're getting because I know you're getting much more support than ever before yes realizes thank you so much customer's been a pleasure to be delighted and wish you all the best conservation Congress thank you aloha and join us again next Tuesday on sustainable Hawaii