Deep Dive: Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute

A study from McGill University, estimates the average Canadian consumes about 329L of water a day, the equivalent of more than 600 standard water bottles (500 ml). Think of your daily routine. In the morning you get up, you have a shower. Flush the toilet. Fill the water for your coffee or tea. Run the dishwasher. At lunchtime, you might boil some pasta. Later you might do some laundry. Before bedtime, you may might run a warm bath or put the kettle on for some hot tea. Sleep and repeat. 

As the population keeps growing, water consumption increases, and it becomes more difficult to access the blue gold in a sustainable way. In the long run, this can create water stress, a phenomenon that occurs when the water demand is higher than its availability. How can we prevent this problem and what solutions are available to us? In cities like Cape Town, South Africa, residents have been encouraged to follow a series of water-saving initiatives, from flushing the toilet when necessary to shower no longer than two minutes. 

But this doesn’t completely solve the issue from repeating itself. Are there any other solutions available? In the past, desalination has been considered a possible option to solve the water crisis. If you think about it, 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by water, and the oceans hold more than 95 % of all Earth water. Turning seawater into drinking water could help populations who face water stress and water scarcity to solve this problem. However, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. 

In today’s episode, Heather Cooley, Director of Research at the Pacific Institute, explains how desalination works, the impacts this can cause to the marine environment, and how unsustainable this practice can be.

For more information about seawater desalination, water stress and the work that the Pacific Institute does Click Here.

For more information on the Aquatic Biosphere Project and how we are telling the story of water Click Here.

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Transcript

David Evans: 0:25

Welcome to today's deep dive episode. I'm so excited to introduce Dr. Heather Cooley from the Pacific Institute to talk about water stress. How many of our large global cities are running out of fresh water? Even if they live beside an ocean? What are some of the solutions? So we talk about seawater desalination, and whether it is the silver bullet that will actually help them out of that problem. I'm so excited to share this conversation with you. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn a little bit about seawater desalination. Whether or not it's the answer. water we doing? And how can we do better? your one stop shop for everything water related from discussing water to use and the organisms that depend on it. For all the global issues 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? How can we do better? Hi, there, and welcome to this week's deep dive. Today we're talking with Heather Cooley from the Pacific Institute. Heather is a deep thinker about water and all the important issues around water. So Heather, I'll just hand it over to you. Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you work on in the space?

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 2:37

Yeah, so my name is Heather Cooley, and I'm a research director at the Pacific Institute, I can be maybe a little bit about the organization to we're an independent nonprofit that focuses on sort of research and policy related to water, our mission is to create an advanced solutions to the world's most pressing water challenges. So we take a science based approach and we draw upon many different diff distance disciplines and then collaborate with a really a variety of stakeholders to sort of develop and then implement the solutions up, you know, from my perspective, my background is sort of initially started out more in the squarely in the science and the research doing sort of lab and field work related to issues around carbon cycling, but then, you know, really shifted probably about 15 years ago or so, and really started to want to get into into the policy arena and in terms of, of making change on issues on issues related to resources. And so I was fortunate enough to get a position at the Pacific Institute. And that's really sort of the foundation of what we do, it's sort of bringing science to bear on these very real policy issues. And then and then trying to trying to solve them,

David Evans: 3:58

there's a number of issues that are all very important that all tie back to this one essential resource. So thank you for the work that you're doing and the work of the Pacific Institute, because it's important to have these groups that that are bringing these issues to light and trying to find solutions to them. I've heard a lot about multi year droughts and areas of the world being described as water stressed. So, can you start off by kind of giving us an idea of what that term means water stressed and this is something we should all be concerned about. How big of an issue is this in the world?

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 4:32

Yeah. So, water stress is is really occurs when the demand for water exceeds the available supply or or when poor quality water is such that it's not fit for use. It can be temporary in nature such as during a drought, you maybe have a 235 year extended drought or it can be chronic, it can be in areas where where water resources are limited and again demands are just exceeding supply. So it you know, it threatens human health. We obviously need water for our basic basic drinking water for water and sanitation. It threatens socio economic development, water really underlies and it is a basic input for everything we produce, including and then the energy to produce those things. As well, in water stress threatens ecosystem vitality, right water is, is obviously needed it in our in our rivers and streams. But but there are habitats that depend on it as well. And, and even water stress threatens political stability, I think this is something people are increasingly recognizing it does and can play a role in conflict. And so, you know, if we want to work towards a world of peace and political stability, water is at the center of that as well. Currently, you know, about one in four people are living in countries experiencing high water stress. And that number is growing due to a combination of factors. So, you know, as you recall, I talked about stress as as demand exceeding supply that the factors driving increased stress are on both sides there. You know, on the demand side, it's about population growth or changes in consumption patterns. Those are increasing global water demand, you know, more and more people are eating meat based diets are consuming more things. And again, water is required to produce all of those things. And, you know, there are issues on the supply side as well, we're seeing more and more pollution, pollution has been accumulating, and so that's affecting the availability of water. And in climate change is, is increasingly having an effect on water availability and demand. With warmer temperatures, you see increases in demand, agricultural water use, for example, goes up irrigation requirements go up. But climate change is also making water supplies more variable, and more uncertain. We're already seeing areas where droughts are becoming more severe are becoming longer lasting. And, and then you are also seeing, again, changes in snow melt dynamics. So a lot of various elements of of water and water availability are being affected by climate change, as well. And all of that is driving an increase in people experiencing high water stress. Yeah, so

David Evans: 7:32

this, it's not, we're not talking about specifically areas that are what you kind of would think of as, as a desert type environment. This can be anywhere where you're just using more water than is being put back into the system. So you're overall losing water overall. And I assume those drier type environments are the ones that are showing the most kind of outward signs of stress at this point. But it can be any anywhere in the world. Really.

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 7:59

Right. That's a really yeah, that's a really important point. You know, people think, well, what, you know, drought, something you hear about in the southwestern United States, or water stress or something in southwestern United States, or in Africa, or some of these, some some parts of Africa, anywhere that are drier, and that's true. These areas do suffer from water stress. But increasingly, we're seeing areas, you know, not really accustom to drought, or we're seeing areas, again, where it's not just about, you know, short term drought, it's around long term scarcity. It's an inadequacy of supply. So you can see it in any type of climate. And we do see it in any type of climate. And again, with climate change, and with continued population growth, with increasing, you know, consumption patterns, we're seeing more and more areas that are experiencing water stress.

David Evans: 8:56

Mm hmm. Right. So it's not an issue that's desert specific. It can happen anywhere to any country, just depending on how you're using your resources. Many of the listeners who are tuning into this episode probably have heard the term seawater desalination, but don't really know too much more about it. Basically, seawater desalination is one of the technologies that we're using to address water stress in different areas of the world. So can you explain the process of desalinating seawater and yeah, how do we how do we take seawater and turn it into freshwater?

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 9:33

Yes, so seawater desalination is the process of removing salts and other minerals from water taken from our oceans. It typically occurs through either thermal or membrane processes. So with thermal desalination or thermal processes, what you're really doing is using heat to distill fresh water from seawater. So that heat this sort of process really mimics the natural water cycle. by producing water based vapor that's been condensed into freshwater. You could sort of think of the Sun doing this all the time, right? It's heating up water in our oceans that create the vapor that then falls over the land as freshwater so so thermal processes sort of mimic That and and and for the heat source for that they could use a variety of the earliest desalination was using sort of solar stills, right, they were using the sun's energy itself, but But increasingly, they're using other energy sources, typically, fossil fuels. So, you know, most of the early plants use these thermal processes. But nearly all new plants are using sort of membranes, and specifically, they're using reverse osmosis membranes. And with reverse osmosis, seawater is pressurized, and then it's forced through a semi permeable membrane. So you know, the water molecules are small enough to pass through the membrane, whereas the salts are too large and are left behind. So so so from that inflow that you're having of that ocean water, you then have two streams, you have sort of a freshwater stream, and then you have a very sort of hyper sailing brine. And for every two gallons of seawater, you have about a gallon of fresh water, and then a gallon of the of the hyper sailing brine that you then need to dispose of.

David Evans: 11:33

Okay. So it's basically you're straining past or something at the end of making pass and the water goes through, but then the pass or assault is, is is kept on the other side of that membrane,

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 11:45

right? It's like, it's sort of like a physical process, right? The holes are so tiny, that basically the watermarking fits through and everything else gets stuck. Or most everything else gets stuck in.

David Evans: 11:56

Yeah. Okay. So all of that salt just squished back into the original first half of water, but it's still the same amount of salt just in less water. Right.

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 12:06

So it's twice as concentrated with salt, basically, the brine.

David Evans: 12:10

I mean, I don't live by the ocean, but I've swam in it before. And that's already really salty. I can't imagine what twice the amount of salt would be like. So it sounds like this is a great option for an area that is water stressed or prone to droughts. So for example, California, it it's definitely a tool to be used. But is this the silver bullet that we should turn to to alleviate water stress? Or are there other alternatives to look at?

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 12:38

Yeah, that's a that's a really common question. And in fact, you know, when I when I say I work in water to people I meet on the street there first, often this isn't all the time, but they're often their first question is, well, what about desalination? Clearly, that's the solution. And you know, I can sort of see, you know, oceans cover about 70% of the Earth's surface, we're the blue planet, right? And much of that water, about 97% of that water is found in the oceans. So there's a lot of interest. You know, as I mentioned, that's, that's the that's the one question I often get. But there are major drawbacks that really limit widespread use, you know, first it's expensive. Second, it's it's energy intensive. And third, it can have some some major impacts on the marine environment. You know, seawater is habitat and the withdrawal of that water kills a eggs and larvae and other sort of marine organisms, right? Those intake screens and then in that desalination process, right, so as that water is pressurized, that those things are are killed and then that's the salt itself is toxic at high concentration. So we talked about this, this brine that's discharged, you know, it's typically discharged right back into the oceans you know, even for organisms that that like salt that live in the ocean, for example, they do have a tolerance for the right situations. And so yeah, those ceiling grinds can can be can be quite problematic. So, you know, while there's a lot of enthusiasm about seawater desalination, sort of, you know, many who kind of work on on these issues and end even who have pursued desalination really see it as a supply of last resort. You know, many areas still have less expensive options that have fewer social and environmental impacts. Things like water, water conservation and efficiency. You know, we lose a lot of water in our water distribution systems, for example, through leaks, fixing those leaks, putting in high efficient showerheads and toilets and, and and replacing you know, water intensive lawns with low water use landscapes can go a long way and and are much less expensive than then desalination. There's the you know, water recycling and reuse, for example is another option. You know, many of our systems are built we use water once and then we throw it away. That's crazy. Yeah, it's so you know, there's an option. And we're seeing more and more of this, of taking that water, treating it and reusing it, whether you're using it for sort of non drinking water needs things like irrigation or for industrial processes, but but we're also seeing increasingly, people are using it to recharge groundwater to put back into surface water, to be reused for drinking water. And so so what wastewater reuse and stormwater capture is another option that you're seeing, you know, where we have these urban areas, right, we have pavement, we have a lot of water that comes down, we're sort of trying to move that water out for for flood management issues, typically. But again, some communities are starting to look at capturing that, using it, whether they have cisterns or rain barrels, or in some cases using it to recharge groundwater. So so you know, desalination is an option. And, and it's one that communities rely on. But But as I noted, it's very expensive. It's energy intensive. So you know, as we're concerned about climate change, and around reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it can can be challenging with desalination. And, and and the marine impacts are real and things we need to consider,

David Evans: 16:42

it seems to me, it kind of comes down to the classic human trope, we all want to just engineer our way out of it, we want to create something new, we don't want to use what we already have just yeah, with plastics or water or the recycling in general, just, let's just make it fresh again. And that solves our way out of this problem.

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 17:02

Yeah, I mean, it definitely has this, that's that sense of, you know, we live in this, you know, abundance, right? Water is abundant, it's cheap, it's clean, you know, we can take as much as we want. But But you know, that that was that those days are gone, you know, that era of abundance is has come to an end, and we need to be more thoughtful and more sustainable. And, you know, again, I think increasingly, we recognize the the multiple values, that water has the role that it plays, not only for people, but also for ecosystems, the fact that our actions really can have a major impact on people, other people on ecosystems on future generations. So you know, this idea of trying to use the resources that we have more effectively trying to reduce the waste, really, which which all three of those options that I mentioned, you know, efficiency, reuse, and stormwater capture are trying to do are really important, important, they have co benefits, beyond just boosting water supplies that we should be doing first, before going to the more energy intensive, expensive, environmentally damaging options.

David Evans: 18:18

Now, I'm curious, is there any work that is done with this hyper salein brain to make it safer for the environment before going back in? Or is it is it just producing such high volumes that you wouldn't be able to turn it into another product or so I know that, like sea salts are a very, like they're their big commodity, but it's just too energy intensive again, to take it to that next level of production. And that's just it just kind of off the table.

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 18:49

Yeah, there is there is work underway to make brine disposal safer for the environment. And like there is work to make it less energy intensive and less expensive. But But let's talk a little bit more about the environmental piece of it. You know, typically with plants, the easiest way for them to dispose a brine is through an open ocean outfall. And in many plants, most plants use this strategy and and you know, essentially, they take the brine it not only frankly, has salts in it, it has some of the chemicals that are used in the in the treatment process itself. Oh, it has, you know, I talked about some of the marine organisms that are killed, it has those in it as well. So all of that sort of goes back into the ocean and and it's very heavy, it's dense. And so what happens is it's released and it tends to sink. And and it then spreads out on the bottom so so it's not in mixing along the bottom of the sea floor is very slow, right. So it tends to accumulate and form these plumes. And that's, that's the problem. Now Now there are ways though to minimize some of those impacts. First is around siding. So avoiding areas you know where the mixing is slow. So if you have these enclosed bays for example, there are only the currents can be such that it really does accumulate to very heavy concentrations in certain areas. So avoiding those types of various societies. things really important. We're seeing some of the more advanced plants use diffusers, so those are typically located along the outfall. And there, they promote mixing of the water so they can help to dilute that brine more quickly. You know, there's there's a cost associated with that. But there's a cost associated with not doing that, you know, not doing Yeah, exactly all costs. There's also been some interest in turning the waste into a resource and we're moving towards zero discharge plants. There are things in that brine that that are of commercial value, potentially, there's their sodium hydroxide or hydrochloric acid, you know, those are so those things can be recovered and then actually used in the desalination process itself. There are there are metals, like lithium or uranium that that are in that. So there's interest in that there's there's the salts, as you sort of mentioned, for road salts, for example, they're obviously parts of the parts of the world where road salts are not in my part of the world, but certainly, here in Canada. So, you know, the big obstacle, there is really the cost, I mean, recovering all of that is far more expensive, obviously, than just discharging it into the ocean. But, you know, there is an environmental cost that we often don't account for the discharging into the ocean. So how do you how do you sort of integrate that into the decision making? So you know, I think there's work being done on it there. There are some I would say some constraints, it does often require more land area, right to do that. And you're talking about coastal land, which typically pretty high value in most places, not everywhere, but so you know, cost is the barrier. There There is work, there's research being done, there's been a lot of analysis to try to see what's cost effective. Thus far, nothing's really sort of driving it yet. But but but but there are opportunities out there.

David Evans: 22:31

Do you have an idea of the scale? So from from one pipe of output that goes out into the ocean? Yeah, as you said, it depends on kind of the area if it goes into a bay or straight out into the middle of the ocean, but how far does that typically reach that flu?

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 22:46

Yeah, it really, it really depends on sort of local condition. So it depends on how much mixing is happening, you know, if it's an area where there's wave action nearby, then it can, it can diffuse pretty quickly. But if it it's an area that's not it's more enclosed, protected Bay, then it can accumulate. So there's so much variability. And there's frankly, a lot we don't know, about the marine impacts a we don't we don't know much about our oceans. It's shocking how little we know. But be you know, there are plants that have been in operations for decades seawater desalination plants, but but they haven't really been monitored the impacts. Now some of the newer plants that are being built, for example, some new plants in Australia, you know, they had monitoring plans in place, they were looking at conditions before the plant, and they had some baseline data, to try to understand what was happening. But but the plants that have been around for decades didn't have that many of them were also thermal plants and their impacts can be a bit different than than then the reverse osmosis. So there's still a lot of, there's still a lot that's not known about what the impacts are, and then to how the ecosystem might respond. There's a lot of unknowns around that too.

David Evans: 24:03

Interesting. You've mentioned that this is not a new technology, this has been around for a long time and is being used around the world. Could you give us a bit of an idea of where this is currently being used? And the scale? Like how many people would get their drinking water from desalination? Or what are the countries that are most prevalent in using this?

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 24:26

Yeah, so typically, you're seeing seawater desalination in very water scarce areas, you see quite a bit in the Middle East and in North Africa, that's that's where most of the seawater desalination capacity is. You also see it in some, some island nations, right? So these are small islands that don't really have a lot of freshwater resources. They don't have mountains, for example. Yeah, they're not snow, you know, they don't have ways of sort of catching that. So so it is an important source of water in those communities. But globally, it's still a very, very, very small amount, compared to and this isn't surprising compared to waterworks rafting from rivers and streams and aquifers and, you know, it'll, it won't be at that scale. So, you know, it I would say usage is in creasing due to a variety of factors. But, you know, typically, what you're going to see is kind of more use of it in the areas that are already using it. Some areas, perhaps that are not yet kind of using it will. But it's not gonna, you're not going to see sort of seawater desalination everywhere. And part of that is geography, right? You know, the like, it's expensive to desalinate water. And so it's probably, you know, more appropriate for coastal communities, right, we're not going to desalinate that water and then move it long distances, that's going to be even more on economical. You know, agriculture, typically, it's too expensive for agriculture, there may be some niche here or there. So you know, it's, it's, it's generally pretty limited at this point. And it's very water scarce areas, mostly for municipal or industrial uses. And again, those island nations that don't have many other options,

David Evans: 26:28

right? That makes a lot of sense. Because Yeah, if you if you don't have the freshwater to begin with, on an island nation, then you could be the most lush kind of place in the world. But yeah, you wouldn't be able to potentially support your own population, right? If you could look into a crystal ball and see how much of the world relied on desalination in 20 years, where do you think we would be in the world in terms of desalination?

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 26:54

Well, you know, over the next 20 years, I think we'll see growth in global desalination capacity. But but it won't be in widespread use, I think it'll continue to be too expensive, and too energy intensive, to be sort of use everywhere. You know, as I mentioned, it's too expensive for many applications, agriculture, and agriculture accounts for about 70 or 80%, of global water use. So so that there alone suggests that it's going to be more limited. It's not practical for inland regions, so that, you know, that's an even narrower sort of slice, you know, we'll see, we'll see growth in those areas that rely on it some expansion into new areas, certainly, you know, for the for the factors we talked about for the fact that, you know, in some areas, demand is rising, and the supplies are more variable and uncertain. And frankly, one of the benefits of desalination of seawater desalination is that you can sort of turn it on, right. So it's in the rate of hydrologic conditions. And so that that's a benefit. That's a benefit worth paying some something more for, you know, that reliability benefit, but again, that has to be weighed against the costs. And then again, I use cost broadly to include environmental costs, and then weigh it against alternatives. And typically, when you start to do that, it doesn't really pencil out yet. Now, that can change, right? We know technology is moving forward. There's interest in things like forward osmosis, in nanotechnology, other sorts of technological breakthroughs that could really move the cost down or reduce the energy intensity, or some of the measures we talked about that helped them minimize those environmental impacts. But I don't think those are yet going to be at scale in 20 years, you know, and again, we have those other options, I think, between now and then to move forward.

David Evans: 28:55

Yep. So it's growing, but it doesn't have the growth potential to take over the world aid. It's limited in what it could potentially be used for. Yeah,

Unknown: 29:05

that's right.

David Evans: 29:05

I'm so curious other how you would get to a role such as where you've gotten to in your career with the Pacific Institute. So I'm sure many listeners are so fascinated about desalination and working in in water. What was kind of your path to get to where you've gotten to today?

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 29:23

Yes, so gosh, it's so it's not a straight path, I would say there's curves and detours. But, you know, I think I, you know, I started out as I as I mentioned, sort of at the top of, you know, an interest in science. That was you know, I loved love sort of math and science, I love studying the natural world and sort of have a better understanding why things worked the way they did. And, and that was great. I, you know, as I mentioned, I was sort of working a bit more on issues around carbon cycling and climate change. And and at the time, so this was sort of the late 90s to date myself there. But at the time, you know, it was it. There wasn't a lot of progress happening on the policy piece, and I really was was frustrated with describing problems, how bad it was going to be If we didn't do anything that I wanted to get at that piece around, what can we do, and just from a personal perspective, it's much easier to work on solutions, right, it's just much easier to get up in the morning, frankly, and to end to work as sort of hard as I want to work. If it's a bit more on the positive side, plus, I, you know, I saw that there were a lot of options, there were a lot of solutions out there. So So, you know, that sort of was was a driver for me. And again, you know, some of this by chance, that that I was able to get, you know, I read some one, there's some wonderful books about water free, frankly. And that was a big sort of hook for me of just realizing how the science and the policy and values sort of all work together. Some of these just amazing stories about water development, particularly again, for me in the western US. But then realizing that this isn't just a western US story, this is some of the issues around water development or global issues, you know, global, you know, failure to sort of acknowledge the role of ecosystems, for example, in, in the need of water for that the failure to provide water benefits equitably, to all. You know, I started seeing that that was, that was a broader issue. And so but but again, we're where we have solutions and an opportunity to do things much better. So So that's sort of what what drove me. And again, I was just fortunate enough to find an organization where I could sort of combine, you know, those interests, my love for sort of numbers and science, but then ability to apply it in a way that speaks to problems, but but more importantly, to solving those problems.

David Evans: 32:12

Yeah, just working towards those problems. And yeah, it sounds like you're in the in the perfect place to do that at the Pacific Institute.

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 32:20

Yeah, and, you know, in the ability, I think, to there's just a lot of great, there's a lot of wonderful groups out there working to solve these problems, right. And whether it's from a government perspective, an NGO perspective, or increasingly, you know, companies are, you know, trying to do better around sustainability, and water sustainability as well. So, you know, there are a lot of opportunities, whether or not you see yourself in sort of that nonprofit space, but, you know, in government, in the private sector, as well to be working collaboratively to be solving some of these problems.

David Evans: 32:58

Exactly, exactly. Well, thank you so much, Heather, for taking the time to speak with us today. Could you let our listeners know where they can find out more about the issues of desalination and the work that you and the Pacific Institute do?

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 33:13

Yeah, that so if you're interested in learning more about desalination, and about our work, I would, I would encourage you to look at our website. That's www.packings.org, that's Pac i n s t dot o RG. You could also do do an internet search for Pacific Institute, we're based in Oakland, California, you'll be able to see everything and all of the work we do is available for free on our website, we do a lot of reports, particularly on consolidation, we track a lot of the projects, it's all available at no cost. So I would encourage folks to take a look at that. And then we do have an E newsletter. So a lot of our work will come out again, that's free to sign up for you can find you can do that on our website as well. And you'll hear about all the all the work that we're doing on some of these issues.

David Evans: 34:05

Perfect. Well go and sign up for that newsletter guys and, and take a look at their website. They have some incredible information. I learned so much by just scouring that thank you again, Heather, for speaking with us keep up the great work at the Pacific Institute.

Dr. Heather Cooley, The Pacific Institute: 34:21

Thank you. Thank you for that for the podcast and for the opportunity to talk with your listeners. I appreciate it.

David Evans: 34:32

Thanks for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please hit the subscribe button so you don't miss any of our future episodes coming out sometime soon. We will be releasing a deep dive episode, our whole interview with Heather Cooley from the Pacific Institute this Wednesday, you'll be sure to want to check that out because Heather talks so much more about water stress, seawater desalination technology and how to get into a position. I like her. I had such a great time chatting with her and I think you'll really enjoy it. And that's our show for today. Thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe so you don't miss any of our future episodes coming out. Leave us a rating and review. It means so much to us to hear back from all of our listeners. I'm the host and producer, David Evans. And I just like to thank the rest of the team from the aquatic biosphere project, specifically to Paula Polman, Sophie C rvera and Anna Bettini. Thanks f r all of your help to learn mo e about the aquatic biosphe e project and what we're doi g here in Alberta telling t e story of water. Check us out t www.aquaticbiosphere.ca. And i you have any questions or com ents about the show, we'd lo e to hear them. Email s at conservation@aquat cbiosphere.org. Please don' forget to like, subscribe an leave us a review. It reall helps us out get excited fo next Monday when we release ou next episode, all about Asia carp and their invasion acros the United States and wha they're doing to try to get int Canadian waters. be talking t the people who are trying t stop them, and the people wh are documenting what's going on So you hear from author Andre Reeves, who wrote the book o Asian carp. You'll hear fro Kevin irons, the fisher biologist chief out of the stat of Illinois. And you'll eve hear from Chuck Shea, a engineer from the US Army Corps who's in charge of th underwater electric fence that' keeping them out of the Grea Lakes. Tune in you won't want t miss it. Thanks for listening t the water we doing podcast an until next time, it's been splas