Deep Dive: Dr. Marc Slattery, Coral Reef Chemistry and Drugs from the Sea

The future of our pharmaceuticals are from down under.... the surface of course!

Coral reefs are the new tropical rainforests when it comes to drug research. When you think about it, how else do you protect yourself when you are a sea sponge, you can't move, don't have any spines or spikes and are free game for any of the thousands of species living nearby? Well chemistry of course! Turns out some of this chemistry may help with the future of our pharmaceuticals!

In today's episode we chat with Dr. Marc Slattery from the University of Mississippi all about his work trying to uncover the future of pharmaceuticals from reefs around the world.

For more information on the future of drugs from the sea and Dr. Marc Slattery's research click here. To watch his Ted talk "Drugs from the Sea: What do we lose when Coral reefs die?" click here.

Interested in helping our coral reefs? Here are a couple organisations doing great work in Coral Reef Conservation, Restoration and Research!

The Coral Reef Alliance  As one of the largest global NGOs focused exclusively on protecting coral reefs, the Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) has used cutting-edge science and community engagement for nearly 30 years to reduce direct threats to reefs and to promote scalable and effective solutions for their protection.

Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology works on coral reefs, tropical marine ecosystems that protect coastlines, support tourism, and provide nutrition to many island nations. Our focus is on defining biological traits that drive the differences in performance among corals and reefs.

The Coral Restoration Foundation We are actively restoring coral reefs on a massive scale, educating others on the importance of our oceans, and using science to further coral research and coral reef monitoring techniques.

The Coral Reef Research Foundation is based in Palau and does original research to acquire the knowledge needed to understand and make intelligent decisions related to conservation, climate change and resource management.

The Mote Marine Laboratory Coral Reef Restoration Program in Florida, US develops and applies science-based strategies with the goal of restoring depleted coral reefs in our lifetime. Specifically, Mote researchers are working to optimize restoration using diverse coral genotypes (genetic varieties), prioritizing native genetic varieties that can resist SCTLD and other stressors such as increased water temperatures and ocean acidification.

Transcript

David Evans: 0:25

Welcome to today's deep dive episode. Today we're speaking with Dr. Mark Slattery, professor from the University of Mississippi. And he actually works in the School of pharmacology. So drugs, medicines, that kind of thing. But he's actually a classically trained ecologist, and he focuses on coral reefs. And when so many organisms live so closely together, there's always going to be competition. Now, when you're in a marine or a freshwater ecosystem, how can you use other things for competition? Well, you can produce interesting chemistry, to actually make sure that you and your species are successful over others. And so that's what Dr. Mark is so interested in, and how we could use this interesting chemistry from these interesting places. And how we can use this to address human diseases and how we can use it to improve human life. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn a little bit more about why you should care about coral reefs when you go to your local pharmacy. Sir, Barney, G. nippy, Oh, me? No, zero to marry a cheap, Chinese way. Why net? Water we doing? And how can we do better? Your one stop shop for everything water related from discussing water to use in the organisms that depend on it. For all the global issues that you really never knew all had to do with water. I'm your host, David Evans from the aquatic biosphere project. And I just want to ask you something. What are we doing? And how can we do better? I and welcome to another deep dive episode. Today we're talking with Dr. Mark Slattery from University of Mississippi. Mark, would you like to just introduce yourself? Let our listeners know a little bit about yourself and what you do for work?

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 3:00

Sure. So I'm Mark Slattery, I work at the University of Mississippi in the School of Pharmacy. Which is funny, because I'm actually a classically trained marine ecologist. And my research interests are actually well, they've been on coral reefs for a number of years. But more specifically, I'm interested in the chemicals that marine organisms produce and why they produce them. And as an ecologist, I'm more interested in the specifics of how they work for the organism, that's, that's using them. But the School of Pharmacy sort of recognize that the work I was doing had some application to drug discovery drugs from the sea. And so that's sort of become a secondary interest of mine over the years. And yeah, that that's what we'll be talking about a little more today.

David Evans: 3:44

Exactly, exactly. So excited to learn more about this and whole other wonder underwater world that we never really think of when we think of what we're going to get from our medicine cabinet. Really. So can you give a bit of background about how we typically discover new potential drugs and, and how eventually they make it to, to individuals who need them?

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 4:05

Yeah, so drugs as a whole, you kind of think of sort of three different levels in terms of where they're coming from. About a third of the drugs that are on your pharmacist shelves are actually compounds that occur naturally in the environment. Most of them in the past have come from like trees and plants. And there was huge effort in tropical rainforests, which have massive amount of biodiversity. So a lot of different types of life, meaning a lot of different types of compounds out there that might lead to new drugs. And of course, associated with that there were from indigenous tribes and whatever, there was information that oh, if you ate the bark of this tree, or that particular leaf or whatever, you might cure this particular ailment or that particular ailment. And so scientists have used that information over time to sort of drive their efforts in forests in terrestrial plant scenarios. Obviously, the see is a new approach and we'll we'll get to that in a minute. The other two thirds of drugs are coming from sort of two ways that really smart chemists, people that are much smarter than I am. They're actually building them in in the laboratory. Some of the chemists for about a third of those compounds are looking yet nature and saying, Well, this looks like it has in the past yielded something that's interesting as an antimicrobial agent, for instance. And so maybe if I build similar structures, they will have similar activities. And so they've taken their lead from nature, but they're still modifying or building in the laboratory. More recently, there are a second group of chemists and these, these are the guys who really think sort of at the computer level, they're instead taking their lead from the drug targets themselves. So they've gone in and modelled the receptors within the human body and say, well, this receptor is folded in this particular orientation. And so if I build a drug that's going to fit down into that in sort of a lock and key mechanism, then that will be a useful drug, their leads are from physiology of the individual, rather than from just chemistry in nature. So yet, you have a lot of third, a third and a third. And I'm sort of in the group that is, let's go to nature. And let's see what nature tells us. And again, as a chemical ecologist, I recognize that there's, there's things the animals are teaching us. So a lot of these compounds are coming from organisms that are attached to the bottom, like sponges and soft corals and things that can't run away. I mean, in a, you know, terrestrial system, you know, you have animals that run away from predators or get away from competitors, those sorts of situations. But if you're stuck in one place, and you don't have like armor or something to protect you, then oftentimes you got to produce chemistry to the old dousing Better Living Through Chemistry, you got to produce this chemistry to to, to deal with your situation. And even there, some of it. So, for instance, if it's a feeding deterrent compound, there's something nasty there. And then we take it into the lab and say, Well, you know, that didn't taste very good, maybe that'll have some activity. More recently, my wife and I are dealing with with issues and coral diseases. And we recognize that these are animals that have primitive immune systems. And so one of the ways they dealt with diseases, much like we do, their immune system is chemistry. And so we say, well, you know, we're out on the reef, and we're seeing, you know, this individuals disease, this individuals disease, and this one right beside it isn't, isn't picking up the disease, and what is it about it? Well, it's producing more chemistry. And so we'll go in and find the compounds that are knocking out those diseases and say, Okay, well, but knocks out a disease and a coral, maybe it'll lock out a disease and in a human being, and so we've, we've taken those approaches just going in and sort of looking at the environment and, and sort of parsing out what the environment is telling us. That's our approach with with chemistry in the sea.

David Evans: 8:26

That's absolutely fascinating. And when I think of looking for a new drug, my mind immediately would go to another mammal or, or something that more closely resembles a human rather than the sea sponge or coral. But just because we're very vastly different organism doesn't mean that we don't have similar chemistry, that's really fascinating that you focus your research on. Sure.

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 8:50

So if you think about life on this planet, which is, you know, existed now for close to 4 billion years, early on, it was bacteria. And again, they sort of lived in a situation where if they were going to interact with other bacteria, whether it's to, you know, produce new bacteria, so on and so forth, any sort of interaction had to be chemical in nature, right. So they were essentially talking to themselves or communicating by this, by this chemistry. And in some cases, the bacteria, just like, you know, human beings and other sorts of animals, they're going to compete for resources. So, you know, the way they prevent other bacteria from from living in the same space and taking resources that they may want is they were producing chemical compounds that were antibiotics, they killed other bacteria. And so in many ways, the bacteria sort of started this whole craze of, of a chemical ecology but b drugs in sort of dealing with their environment. And so we're trying to take our lead from nature in that respect and move forward. And it's sort of gone that way through time, starting with the most primitive single cell as as life evolved, became multicellular, but again, they hadn't been around long enough to produce shells and spines and big T Then, and such like that, and so they're, they're really focused at this point on on producing chemistry. So, chemistry has really been an important part of life on this planet from the very beginning. And, and it's they're available for us to, to use and in different ways and, and in some ways, very complementary to how it was originally intended.

David Evans: 10:43

When you say like that, it makes total sense. So I guess many people would be very jealous of getting to spend so much time around corals and, and sea sponges, was it a deliberate choice to focus on marine and coral reef ecosystems? Or just happened to be a nice coincidence? Or I guess, do you spend much time out on the reef? Or is it mostly back in the lab where you're bringing back your samples?

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 11:08

Yeah, no, it's an interesting point. So for me, it was very deliberate getting into marine ecology. I actually, when I was five years old, my parents hauled me off to Jamaica, where we lived for about 10 years. And so every chance I had, I was in the water and usually snorkeling along checking everything out, they, you know, my parents couldn't call me out on the water. I just loved it. And so from an early age, I knew that sort of what I wanted to do, I mean, the reefs were spectacular, and, and pretty fish. And I didn't know what I was going to do in marine ecology, per se, but I knew that's where I wanted to be. So I've sort of worked my whole life towards getting to that. And over time, my interests and my direction has sort of evolved and changed. And, and the one thing that sort of came together was, again, this question of, well, how are these organisms interacting, and at a base level, for me, it was all about chemistry. And chemistry wasn't like, an easy fix. I mean, I I'm not a great chemist, but I was, it's just everything that I was interested in, ultimately came down to sort of this chemical nature. And so I've spent some time doing that. As I said, I ended up here at the University of Mississippi, because the people here sort of recognize that, oh, well, drugs that I was looking at for ecological issues might have some some practical lab issues as well. And unfortunately, Ole Miss is landlocked, I'm about 300 miles from the nearest ocean. And, frankly, it's not really pretty out in front of, you know, because we were right at the mouth of the Mississippi River. So it's, it's basically like swimming and chocolate milk. So. So for me, when I go to the field, it's I usually go for two or three weeks at a time, I get a lot of work done there. And then we bring samples back to the lab and spend a lot of time sort of takes me a while to do the chemistry. So that that becomes kind of like the offseason work that gets done here. So yeah, I keep busy. I enjoy doing what I do. I prefer to be on the ocean. I hope to get back to the ocean soon. COVID, as has made it very difficult to do sort of the field aspect of my work recently. But but that's absolutely where I'm where I'm happiest.

David Evans: 13:24

Nice, nice. Are there any drugs that maybe consumers would use? Or people who are listening to this podcast might be more familiar with that originated from a coral reef organism? Yeah, so

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 13:38

let me back up and say that we're still sort of in our infancy relative to drug discovery from the seas. Okay, we're not speaking. I mean, scuba diving started with Jacques Cousteau, what, you know, 5080 years ago, something like that. So we've, we've had far less time doing research in the oceans than we have in tropical rainforest, and so on and so forth. So with that caveat, there are a few examples. But there certainly aren't as many examples. And I guess maybe the easiest way to run through this is just sort of a brief history. And sort of the interesting thing, or one of the most interesting things is, if you look in the ancient literature about 3000 years BC, in China, they were actually taxing the public for a medicine from the sea. And we don't know what that medicine is. It's just written up that way. So, so people have been looking at the oceans as a source of even drugs for you know, the better part of 5000 years now, which is pretty, pretty amazing when you think about it. And so even like I said, you know, whereas tropical rainforest indigenous people have have utilized their plants. For drugs sources, people were recognizing there's things to deal with in the ocean. We know more specifically, a few 100 years ago that the ancient Hawaiians actually used to dip their spears into tide pools into an actual organism looks a lot like an anemone. It's called palate pellicola. That produces a toxin really strong toxin called poly toxin. And they used it much the same way that the indigenous rainfall various tribes use poison dart frog secretions to paralyze their prey and that sort of thing. So there was a recognition that there is something powerful in in these animals that that is toxic, and is ultimately might become a source of a plant. So there's been some use of the oceans over the years with what we now recognizes as a chemical source. And what the 1950s was the first example of somebody who actually extracted a sponge and had an aim, crypto Theca, because it was very cryptic, it actually lives in the sand grains and such. And he isolated two compounds that were known as era a and era C. And then again, like I mentioned, using them as sort of inspiration. He then went to the lab and sort of built his own versions of those, one of them became an antiviral compound used, I think, for herpes viruses, and the other one became sort of an anti cancer compound, but that was sort of the beginning of, of drugs from the sea, as it were. And around that time, there were several chemists who were starting to go in and make collections and, and drag out compounds. And on average, about 5000 compounds every year are found mostly from sponges, sponges seem to be a very rich source of compounds for reasons I can get into in a bit, but they've been finding them and then it's sort of like, well, you have this compound, and you've got a group down the hall that that does some some sort of biomedical assay, let's throw it in there and see if there's any activity. And you know, sorts have been sort of hit or miss. So over the years, and that has meant that we've probably seen less targeted and specific activity, and then we should, nowadays, there's probably a half a dozen compounds that are actually worldwide being used as drugs, not all of them are here in the United States, I think the United States only has one that has been actually approved through clinical trials and whatever else and that's something that comes from the cone snail. It's It's again, a toxin it was used, it's used by the cones to paralyze their prey, and it goes by the name Xin Kona tide, it's used in medicine as a painkiller, it's actually 1000 times more powerful than morphine, it doesn't have the addictiveness or people can become resistant to it as well. And so it doesn't have the right properties. So it's a very, very good compound for pain relief, it's typically given only in in a hospital setting and has to actually go into the spine. And so it's not something that you get on your, on your shelves, per se, but it is a very, very powerful and important tool in surgeries and that sort of thing. But the other compounds that are out there in different countries, there's one that comes from a tourniquet called a kind of sit in that is an anti cancer agent. There is another one that comes from a sponge called disc Thermolite. It's also an anti cancer agent, a lot of these things are actually cancer, because that's sort of been the biggest push for drug discovery for yours. bryostatin is a really interesting one, it comes from a bryozoan on the west coast of California. And more recently, they've realized its symbiotic bacteria within the bryozoan. And we're now starting to realize this is probably why sponges have been so tremendously useful as well, because about anywhere from a third to a half of the biomass of a sponge is actually internal symbiotic bacterial cells. And so a lot of times these bacteria are actually producing the compounds that we get out of the sponges and such Oh, really interesting. One that's out there is something called pseudo terrorists, and it comes from a gorgonian or like a sea fan that occurs in the Caribbean. It's actually an anti inflammatory agent, but it's actually being used in Estee Lauder resilience. So apparently, the compound of interest in that that I guess, makes your face better or whatever, gave sort of an inflammation response. So people's faces would kind of get read and stuff like this. So they actually added some of this pseudo terrorist in in there to actually knock down the inflammation response to everything else that was in the in the compound. So that's being used. So there's there's some interesting leads out there is interesting history of testing these things through time. We're still getting there. I'm not sure if I answered your earlier question on how a drug actually gets to market. But the reality is, is you know, it's often somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 years of well, not just research but try to get through the three phases of clinical trials, because classical clinical trials, you know, you might, you know, get 10,000 People with the drug, but then you're going to want to watch him for four or five or six years to see what your long term side effects are. And so drug discovery efforts can take quite a while, I mean, that the park that I met in, which is in the very beginning, where you grab something from the field, and you start the process in the lab, that might be a year or two, you know, sort of the length of time of a typical research grant, which is how I get to the field. But at some point, we're going to have to pass it off to the sort of the pharmaceutical industry, and then then it really sort of takes on and for every, usually 1000 leads that you put into the pipeline, you're lucky if you get one out. So it isn't, it is a numbers game. And so then if you sort of look at the number of years that, you know, we've been doing drug discovery in the ocean, and you, you sort of map that out, it sort of makes sense that we're only at about five or 10, you know, drug leads at this point, but I guarantee you more, there's there's several in the pipeline right now that are doing pretty well, in phase one, phase two. And, you know, I predict that probably in the next, you know, three to five years, we'll probably see a doubling if not more, in terms of, of drugs from the city.

David Evans: 21:43

Well, that makes it a very exciting field to be in, then you're at the forefront of this push and so excited to be speaking with you about this. Yeah. So I'm curious coral reefs, they seem to be as you were saying, like just these biodiversity hotspots, are there other marine or freshwater habitats that are really being actively looked at? Or is it right now, the focus is primarily on coral reefs, specifically because they have such high diversity, or is there other other habitats that are really being targeted in aquatic environments?

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 22:16

Yeah, no, that's a great point, I think you're correct that coral reefs which are often considered sort of the rainforest of the seas, high biodiversity, and when you've got a lot of life in one area, you're obviously going to see a greater opportunity to, to find new chemical sources. But if you look at it, at least through my eyes, as an ecologist, that isn't necessarily where you're going to find. So again, I'm looking at it from the standpoint of the animal is producing these chemicals to do something for it. And in some cases, it might be because there's a lot of animals all sort of scrunched together on a coral reef, there might be a lot of competition, you might want to be producing some chemistry there, there's, there's no doubt about that. But there are other aspects, other qualities of a habitat, that might mean that you're going to have to put extra energy into the production of the chemistry so that you can survive there. And so right now, one of the areas that I'm most passionate about are what are known as Misa, photic reefs, and these are the reefs, most coral reef ecologist sort of get down to about 100 feet maximum, because that's sort of the practical depth of scuba diving. But the reef doesn't stop there. In fact, the reef goes pretty deep. And so I'm very interested these days in what's happening from 100 feet to 300 feet, which there's still very active reefs down there, but they're below sort of the depths of wealth, where we see a lot of the anthropogenic disturbances. And a lot of people look at those reefs and say, those might be sort of seed banks for future reefs, right. And so there's animals down there that are surviving under conditions that are less than optimal. And when conditions are less than optimal, then it often makes sense to put some energy into making sure that you're going to be the most successful one and the most successful one is the one that actually might produce some interesting chemistry. So so we're looking at these Musa photic reefs, and I've actually done sort of a head to head analysis of the species that I find there versus sometimes the same species occurs on the shallower reef. In other cases, it's just pure numbers, I find more sponges down deeper and bigger sponges. And even though there's less fish down there that might be feeding on them. There is a lot more cramped together. So we actually see higher levels of chemical defenses on the deep reefs than we do in the shallow reefs, which is sort of interesting. So. So I found a lot of activity there. I actually got my start doing research in Antarctica. It's a very extreme environment. Extreme environments seem to be sort of a take home, the sponges down there have a rich source of chemistry as well. We've looked back in caves, we found a lot of interesting chemistry back in caves, and I guess in other habitats. So for instance, in freshwater, one of the places they're finding a lot of interesting things are hydrothermal vents, whether that's in Yellowstone Park, they have a lot of hydrothermal vent issues and so they find bacteria Are there that are living at these extremes? And doing very, very well. I know there's some groups that are trying to collect from the deep sea where again, there is sort of an extreme environment. I think I mentioned earlier disco dermal light that's actually comes from a deep sea sponge, like something from several 1000 meters kind of thing. So it was picked up by a submersible. So yeah, I think we're just breaking the surface. I think a lot of the people who have been focused on coral reefs, I mean, rightly so that, you know, there is a lot of biodiversity there. And so check it out. But it's also nice to dive in warm water with a lot of pretty fish. And so that's kind of one of the reasons why people still keep looking there. And that gives me and a few others an opportunity to check in places that are a little less, less visited.

David Evans: 26:07

Nice, nice. My next question, Carl, Reese just started these fascinating confluences of so many different organisms all crammed together, as you were saying, and I always hear that they're so valuable. So in your eyes, are they so valuable? Because they potentially hold so much potential for drug discovery? Or they have so much biodiversity, what in your eyes, makes a coral reef valuable?

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 26:34

So that's a great issue. And I've I've had long discussions with other individuals, including my own family who look at coral reefs, as you know, well, why are we spending money to save them when we've got people that are homeless, you know, drugs from the seat, this is certainly something that people can get their get their heads around, if we find a new drug if we cure cancer, or something that has huge implications for society as a whole. And so I'm quite happy to wave the flag for drug discovery, if it's going to help save coral reefs for future generations. I guess one of the things I should point out, though, is since we are talking about coral reefs, and sort of their importance, is the issue of the sustainability of these drugs from the sea. So for instance, when you're leaving a coral reef, one of the reasons there's so much biodiversity, there's similar biomass to what you have sort of in the kelp forests of California, where there they only have, you know, a fraction of the number of species. So you might have more species on coral reefs, but you have fewer individuals. And so if one particular individual, whether that's a sponge, or a coral or, or new to Brank, or something is providing that drug, then you run into an issue of supply. Okay, you can't just go out and sort of rape and pillage to get enough because there just isn't enough there. In fact, to enter clinical trials, you're required to produce one kilogram of the chemical that's going to be used in the studies and kilogram while, that doesn't seem like a lot, you know, what we're getting out of these sponges might be, you know, micrograms, or PICO grams. So you're talking about from any given individual, you know, scaling that up, you're talking about 1000s, if not 10s, of 1000s of individuals to produce that amount of chemistry. And so, so this has become sort of the big challenge of how do you how do you make up that difference? So one of the reasons why the chemists are taking sort of their, their lead from the chemistry they find in the oceans, and then sort of developing it along in the labs by themselves, because they're, you know, you can do synthetic chemistry and produce more of it. It's awful and costly process, but it can be done. But there are a couple of other options that are available. There's aquaculture, you could potentially if there was something that was incredibly important to have, you could actually grow it and to see farming, you know, they, they farm a lot of terrestrial drugs and such from plants are being farmed, and then taken into a lab and extracted and used and so there is aquaculture for fish that we eat. And so one could arguably do that approach for these ones that are important for drugs, and other is in the molecular biology era, we now have the opportunity to go in and pull out the genes that are responsible for the production and particular chemistry. And that's, I don't want this to come off as like, well, that's something we can just do. I mean, it's not not at the age of Jurassic Park yet. Sort of right knocking on the doors. And there are challenges to pulling genes out putting them into a another animal and telling it to overproduce that particular compound. But they're not insurmountable. And so again, we often archive the genome of any individual that we're working with with the understanding that we can't necessarily do it today. But maybe in the next couple of years, we're going to be at the point where that is It's more of a reality than it was certainly when I started as a grad student in this business, which back then it was all like, You got to get the chemistry out. There's no, there's no option for having the genes produce it for you. So, so yeah, there are opportunities to to be sustainable in this drug discovery effort as well.

David Evans: 30:41

That's a, that's a very interesting bringing Jurassic Park into this, and how that could help with the drugs of the future. Coral reefs, they just seem to just be, yeah, these amazing places, but making a kilogram of a compound that can be in just the most my new forms, it's a lot of work. That's a, that's a, that's not a small problem to to be a part of. And I guess just rounding out the conversation about coral reefs, what are some of the main threats to coral reefs from your viewpoint?

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 31:13

Oh, yeah. So you know, like everything the biggest threat is man, I think there's still this carryover thought of dilution is the solution to pollution. And so we've continued to use the oceans as our dumping grounds. And we now recognize that that has been a bad plan. The oceans as a whole and coral reefs in particular have been tremendously impacted by stuff that we put out on there. More recently, climate change is a truly an existential threat. I mean, we we talk about it in terms of land, we see the pictures of polar bears on their melting ice, or whatever. But in the ocean itself. In coral reefs, there are tremendous problems. One of them they talk about is ocean acidification. As we get more and more co2 pumped into the water, that changes the acid base equilibrium, lowers the pH to the point where it becomes acidic. And many of these organisms are not able to survive under those conditions. Coral is one in particular that has a calcium carbonate skeleton and calcium carbonate. If you've ever put chalk into slightly acid, you'll see that it just sort of dissolves away. And so the reefs themselves, the structure itself, can literally just dissolve away. And that doesn't mean that the everything out there is going to die. But it certainly means there's winners and losers and and reefs are changing. And as they change, often for the worse, the organisms that we want to be around whether it's the ones I'm interested for, for drugs from the sea, whether it's the, you know, the fish that require that structure that ultimately become food for various people, they're just not able to make it under these these changing conditions. And so, so we certainly don't want that. Another aspect of climate change that's been really horrible of late is thermal changes the rising temperature, which leads to a state known as coral bleaching, basically, you're you're heating up the water, and the corals that rely on a delicate balance with their photo symbionts get thrown out of balance or out of whack, and all of a sudden, the corals don't have that source of energy anymore. And that means they're not able to produce anything extra that's needed, like the chemistry that we've been talking about, but they also can't produce enough energy to survive themselves. So that becomes a problem. And sort of the third area that people are more aware of when we talk about climate change is the increasing severe storms, so massive hurricanes, and that sort of thing that go through and beat up reefs. And you know, it takes decades for these things to recover. And so there again, if something that was a large, massive three dimensional structure that supporting that biodiversity and stuff just gets sort of beat down to, to rubble, that isn't a reef that isn't certainly not the reefs that we're used to. And so these, these are huge problems that we have to overcome as a society, not just for the oceans, but for humanity as a whole. But hopefully, in doing that, we will help our oceans which arguably give us give us the life on this planet.

David Evans: 34:25

Yeah, the increase in storms is brutal. But what really took me it was the corals not having enough extra energy to produce the chemistry that they need. I hadn't considered that yet. That's, that's really troubling, especially if you wanted to potentially, as you're saying, Do aquaculture and be able to produce these, you'd have to watch out for storms and sea temperature rise. And that's interesting. My last question is, how can someone listening to this podcast from a landlocked area in North America help preserve coral reefs?

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 34:59

Yeah, so that brings up a great point, and that is how can we do something to be better stewards for the oceans? It often feels like as an individual, we don't have a lot of power and certainly if you're landlocked like I am today, you might not even get to the oceans and be in a position where you could for instance, you know what? walk along a beach and help with beach cleanups or those sorts of things. What else can you do? Well, I would argue that one of the few powers we still have is the power of the polls, we elect officials to do what we think are important things for, whether it's our region or society as a whole. And so call those people to press just say, Look, this is what I want. The oceans are keeping this world afloat. As it becomes harder for life to live in the oceans, it's going to become harder for those of us who are on land to live. And so I really want you to go out there and support oceans, whether it's increasing funding priorities to ocean research, and ocean health, those are things that you can push your elected officials to do, I think it's really important these sorts of outreach opportunities, talking to people who may not know as much about these things. Let them know why they should care about the oceans, again, you know, the potential for drugs, a source of food, a mechanism to prevent coastal erosion of the land that we're used to, and arguably the control of climate that has implications not just for the coral reefs in the ocean itself. But as we've seen, these massive storms are, whether they're flooding coastal communities or leading to increase tornadoes in the middle of the country. So yeah, the point is, is that things that we do to the ocean have implications and the only way we're going to do that is to hold our elected officials accountable. And do that when it comes time to elections. You know, if there are people who are not listening to you, as you say, save the oceans then elect somebody who will do that give support to outreach as facilities, whether they're local aquaria, or museum and get that word out to the people. And that I think is going to help as much as possible.

David Evans: 37:12

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Slattery for taking the time to speak with us about this. Absolutely fascinating topic. I'm sorry for all the technical issues that we had to go through. But thank you so much for spending the time to enrich our listeners ears with this knowledge, and so excited to see what comes next from the coral reefs

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 37:32

was great talking to you and your listeners. Thanks, everyone.

David Evans: 37:40

Thank you so much to Dr. Mark Slattery for speaking with me, and the podcast about this incredible topic. It's so incredible when we find new ways to value things. And that's what I really am so thankful for with Mark Slattery, because you showed us a way that we can value coral reefs, and much more tangible way that people can connect with, rather than just as a place to go or a place to appreciate that, you know, it's out there. So thank you for that. I really appreciate you taking the time, and sticking with me who with our technical issues that we had during the recording of this, but it was it was well worth it. And I really, really think it's absolutely fascinating. If you want to learn more about coral reef restoration, and recovery, and just preservation and conservation in general, there's so many different organizations out there that are doing a tremendous work in this field. So I'll list a number of them in the show notes. So be sure to check that out. But definitely look around where you are locally, and see if there are things that you can do locally, that would help the larger good as well. So be sure to check out your local conservation groups. And if there's an area that you're going to travel to spend a vacation on, see if there's something that you can do while you're there as well to help out those local conservation groups. A little bit goes a long way. I'm the host and producer David Evans. And I just like to thank the rest of the team, specifically Paul apollomon, Lee Burton, and the rest of the aquatic biosphere board. Thanks for all of your help. And to learn more about the aquatic biosphere project and what we're doing right here in Alberta telling the story of water, you can check us out at aquatic biosphere.ca. And we also have launched our new media company, a b n aquatic biosphere network, which you can find that the public place dot online and search for the aquatic biosphere network channel, where we will actually be posting all of the video episodes that we're going to be creating this year. So tune in, they will be out for the next little while, but very excited to start sharing video content as well as our interviews. Next week on the podcast we're examining how trans boundary water for you share a river with another country, how that can be used for conflict purposes, but also how it can be used to create peace in different regions of the world. We're examining Arctic sovereignty, security and diplomacy. We're looking at how water as our borders or trans Boundary Waters affect our national interest and security. globally. Tune in you won't want to miss it. If you have any questions or comments about the show, we'd love to hear them. Email us at conservation at aquatic biosphere.org. Please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Leave us a review really helps us out thanks and it's been a splash