July 12, 2022 • 44 mins
Mangroves are incredible survivors and adapters. They're also amazing at lessening the impact of tropical storms and climate change. And heck, they're cool looking. So jump into the brackish waters and have a listen.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there. So let's get
to it. While we're talking about mangroves. Everybody, mangroves gather
around while we talk about mangrove. My new favorite tree.
(00:26):
It's a great tree. It's a good favorite tree to have.
It is, and this is one of those. I think
this is the second and probably final that was inspired
by my recent trip to Mexico because we were surrounded
by mangroves, literally surrounded by mangroves, and we couldn't get
enough of them. Man Like riding the bikes around and
(00:47):
looking in these mangrove forests and considering what it must
be like to try and navigate through them. Nearly impossible,
I would say, uh, because yeah, I mean you seen
them in person, I'm sure like just how dense these
things are. Uh, And you know we're gonna be talking
about different kinds, but really sort of the money mangroves
(01:09):
are the ones that we're going to focus on, and
they are just I was knocked out just by how
they looked. And I could tell that they were a
remarkable wonder of nature and evolution. And then after this stuff,
Dave Rouse helped us put this together. After learning everything
that they're capable of, it's just like, what what kind
of tree is this? It's amazing. It's an amazing tree.
(01:31):
Like I said, it's maybe one of the best trees
to have is your favorite tree, because there are very
few trees that are this amazing, Chuck Man, And we're
talking mangroves, and we should say mangroves aren't necessarily like
a species or even a family of tree. One of
the other things that makes them such a cool tree
to have as a favorite is that there's something like
(01:52):
eighty or ninety species of them, and they're not genetically
related in every case. Instead, biologist classify them by their
ability to survive and even thrive in salty water that
uh in soil that has little to no oxygen, which
are two things that most trees can't do. And that's
(02:13):
just the tip of the iceberg. And what makes um
mangroves so amazing. Yeah, but like I said, we're talking
mainly about those amazing trees that sit up above the
water with this network of you know, look like fingers
just sort of propping up the tree, which are the roots. Um.
They are a woodland tree, also could be called a shrub.
(02:34):
And they grow in a pretty narrow area between um.
While they're subtropical along the coastlines first of all, but
they grow between literally between um, the terrestrial and the
marine environment in salty brackish water. Yeah. Um. And there's
I want to say a lot of them. It's really
(02:56):
not though. I think they make up like one percent
of the forests of the old mangrove forests are. But
it's still eighty five thousand square miles, which is a
pretty decent amount of area for you know, one kind
of tree. It's about the size of the state of Arkansas. UM.
And the largest mangrove forest in the world is at
the mouth of the Ganges UM, near the Bay of Bengal.
(03:17):
It's called the Student Arbans And that's where the Bengal
tiger lives, which is pretty cool, agreed. Uh. They exist
in a hundred and eighteen countries and here in the
United States in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. And I thought, oh,
surely the Georgia Coast so close to Florida surely they've
(03:38):
got some mangroves. Don't even try. Not quite there that
I did see some people that are like, oh, so mangroves, um,
but it's not true. It looks like the closest mangroves
are about forty miles from the Georgia border, near the
Georgia coast line. Um. So I was really sad that
we don't have our our mangroves. But they do have
them in Florida and Louisiana and Texas and in Mexico.
(04:01):
That's right. And again you said that they grow subtropically,
and Chuck, I want to share that. It was just
today that I finally stopped and was like, this subtropical
thing is driving me crazy. Like it's it's above the
tropics on either side. It's either above or below, depending
on where your perspective, but it's not below. It's not
(04:23):
below the equator. And then I realized, if you're on
the equator from the perspective of the equator, it's below
the equator on either side, so it's sub tropical. You've
never stood on the equator. I never have, and I
think I should be. I've never been to Ecuador. Well
we should go sometime we should do a podcast live
live from the equator. Yeah, and see if we melt.
(04:47):
I know I will. I'm melting this week. Um. As
far as man the money mangroves that I was talking about,
we're talking about red, black and white, and for my money,
I love those red mangro Those are the ones that
grow along the water's edge. They have those proper roots
that and if you've never seen a mangrove mangrove, please
(05:08):
just look up red mangrove. Uh. And they're called proper
roots because they prop that tree up off the ground.
They are fully well, not fully exposed because they also
go into the water, into the soil, but they're largely
exposed and they are just tangled, gnarly beautiful roots that again,
I can't imagine trying to navigate through a mangrove forests.
(05:30):
You probably had to go around. Yeah, it can be
really really thick um both above water and below water
because of those roots. So those roots, um, if you
see them, that means that it's low tide, high tide,
they're usually covered up with water. But it's like you said,
they propped the tree up. And so for that reason,
because at low tide, you can see the bottom of
(05:50):
the tree and it's above ground. Um. They're sometimes called
walking trees, but they're pretty neat. And the red mangrove
is I think anyone who knows about mangroves seen a
mangrove probably is what they're thinking of as a red
mangrove because there's just those those roots are just so
characteristic and unusual, you know. Yeah, the black mangroves are
(06:11):
still really cool looking because they have these um protrusions
coming up out of the water called new metaphors and
just you know, put a pin in this. They but
they allow the plant to basically breathe. And we'll talk
about that later. But if you look at a picture
of these, it looks sort of like almost like little
just spiky roots sticking up out of the ground all
(06:32):
around the tree. Yeah, almost like still agmites. Um. And
I got that right too. By the way, Um, white
mangroves are. It's weird. I don't understand fully why they're
considered mangroves, aside from the fact that they must still
thrive in brackish or salty water and poor um, poor
(06:52):
oxygen soil. It but I guess so but they grow
inland and they have normal shallow roots systems like any
other terrestrial tree, but they're still considered mangroves. Yeah, and
I don't think i've mentioned the black mangroves to grow
a little bit further inland than the reds. Yeah. So
if you are, you know, looking at a cross section
(07:13):
of the ocean hitting the land and going inland, you
would see at the ocean or at the bay or wherever,
um red mangroves on the shoreline actually growing into the
ocean depending on where the tide is behind them. You
would have the black mangroves on slightly higher ground, and
then behind those on the highest ground you would have
(07:35):
the white mangroves. And that's what it would look like
you put it all together, well, you have is a
mangrove forest, also known as a mangal, a mangal, which
is uh one of the more amazing We're talking about
a lot of amazing things about mangroves and mangals, but
it's the only species of tree that can grow in
salt water. Um, and big time they grow and it's
(07:58):
not like they love the salt. We'll see in a minute.
They have some great ways of getting rid of it. Um,
but they figured all that stuff out. But they can
grow in salinity levels of seventy five parts per thousand,
which is about twice as salty as ocean water. Yeah,
that's pretty impressive because I mean, where are they growing
that that's twice as salty as ocean water? You know,
(08:20):
I think that's just kind of showing off at that point. Well,
I didn't know if like that inland water like just
accumulates salt or something. Yeah, I would Yeah, I think
you might be right. Yeah, yeah, I think you fit
upon it. Okay, So they're not showoffs. They're just doing
what they've got to do there. I mean that they're
making they're making lemonade out of the lemons that that
(08:41):
they were handed by natural selection for where they grow.
So what about the salt? How do they get rid
of it? So you would think like they just they
can drink salt water and use it like you know
terrestrial trees use water. Not true. There's actually two techniques
where they can either um keep salt from entering their roots,
(09:01):
or they can take the salt in and then get
rid of it in certain ways. And so that means
that there's two types, secrets and non secrets. And black
mangroves are secrets, I believe, right, that's right. Those are
the ones with a little nubby they look like sticks
almost sticking out of the water. Uh. They filter it
out and they secrete it on the leaves. So that
(09:21):
means if you see a black mangrove and you see
some you know, kind of chalky white stuff on the
leaf that is salt like goat, I don't know if
I should say go lick it because I don't know
if that's dangerous salt, but it's it's salty. Just trust me.
It tastes like salt. And d D T gosh um.
Red mangroves they're they're non secrets. So they actually just
(09:44):
don't allow salt to be taken up by their roots.
Now that's easier said than done, because their roots are
planted in the water, right, so there's water. They're taking
up water from the ocean, from salt water. And what
they do is they have cell wall that actually act
um through reverse osmosis. It lets water through, but it
(10:05):
doesn't let solids through, which is quite a trick. I mean,
that's something that humans have only recently figured out how
to do The mangroves have been doing it for who
knows how many, hundreds of thousands or millions of years, um.
But they do it in part because they have this hydrophobic,
lipophilic material called suberin that really serves them. Well, that's right.
It allows them to get rid of more than of
(10:27):
the salts in the water, which also means, which I
don't really think about until just now, that they can
They can literally tolerate I guess about ten salt content. Yeah,
I saw, but yeah, that's still a lot of salt
for a plant. Totally. Yeah. So they have at least
adapted in some ways to to tolerate salt more than
other plants. But for the most part, they're just really
(10:50):
good at um at keeping salt from being taken up
by their roots. I just find that fascinating. Uh And
I love how Dave puts these uh he he. His
sections are labeled either mangrove magic tricks or what was
the other one, mangrove superpowers. Yeah, pretty fun. They're both
apt they are. So this is magic trick number two?
(11:14):
Is we mentioned? You know, I mentioned earlier that they
actually breathe through these roots. Um. I think typically you
might like to think about plants as uh, you know,
just eating up that CEO two, which they definitely do.
But plants need oxygen and they need to get oxygen
from the roots and and you know with a regular
(11:35):
tree and a regular forest, they're getting that like through
the soil and these little gaps between the soil. Uh
in mangrove or mangals, I guess you would say they
can't do that because the title sediments come in and
it's all water log and compacted, so they don't have
those air gaps that you have in a normal forest.
(11:56):
So they kind of came up with a brilliant little
trick to get around that, right. Yeah, So the new
metaphors that black mangroves have those stalagmites um that are
coming up in in spikes around them. Those act as snorkels,
so they stick up out of the water and they're
covered in these little cells called lenis als, and that's
(12:17):
where oxygen exchange happens. So they actually absorb oxygen through
these snorkels. They get taken into the snorkel underground, into
the other roots of the tree um and used for
um aerobic respiration, which is converting food into energy. It's
just pretty nuts. And new metaphor actually is Greek for
(12:37):
air carrier, so it makes sense pretty on the nose. Yeah,
some of those new metaphors can reach up to ten
ft tall. Did you see that? Yeah? I didn't. Um,
I looked at a lot of pictures. I didn't see any.
That's all with my eyeballs. But I've looked because I
wanted to see that. Yeah, I didn't see it either.
It could be made up. So then you've got this,
I don't think so. Um. Then you've got the red
(13:00):
mangroves that we talked about for my money, like the
money mangrove, and those proper roots serve the same purpose
as the newmataphors. They you know, like I said, they
sit up on those long um sort of curvy stilts
and they stay above water like a lot of stays
above water even at high tide at times. And they
(13:22):
are also covered with those linisils and they do the
same thing. They allow for that oxygen exchange to take place. Yeah.
So that explains also why there's so many roots and
so many newmataphors that that spread around these trees. It's
like if you dug up a tree of roughly the
same size. It would probably have a similar sized roots structure,
(13:43):
maybe a little less, but you don't see it. It's
all underground. This is above ground, so it like looks
like a lot of roots, and it is a lot
of roots, but it's not necessarily more than a terrestrial
tree would have. We just don't see them. Yeah, it's
like a tree that has dropped trial. It's exactly right.
It's porky pig in it. Should we uh, should we
(14:03):
take a break at mangrove magic trick number two? Yeah?
Number three? Yeah, we'll come back with number three right
after this. So, Chuck, which mangrove is your favorite kind? Well,
(14:36):
I think I've been clear. I know you're teasing me
because me and my red mangrove tirades. Uh. To me,
this is the best part of the episode and the
most amazing thing that maybe besides and we'll get to
carbon sequestration because it's amazing too. But to me, this
just knocked my socks off. That mangroves kind of give
(14:59):
birth two baby mangroves. I think the only reason you
want to qualify it with kind of is because our
mind rails against accepting that that's what's going on, but
that is what's going on for all intents and purposes.
That some mangroves are viviparous, meaning that it means um
live bearing to where they have seeds on their on
(15:22):
their plants that they develop. They're about acorn sized. But
then rather than the seed falling off and dispersing and
then eventually growing into a seedling, something much more mind
blowing happens with mangroves. That's right. The seedling is actually
produced on the tree itself, and they uh, they sort
(15:44):
of that's sort of keep qualifying it. They self plant themselves.
Eventually this thing is going to fall off. You've got
to look up the video on the internet. There are
many out there where it shows these you know, acorn
like things. They grow down to these sort of long
arrow like, you know, green arrows that are pointing down
and eventually they just go and they snap off and
(16:07):
they go straight down and they either stick into the
ground at low tide or I saw them in two
ft of ocean water just going straight through and sticking
into the sand and they plant themselves. They do, they
plant themselves in that sandy bottom and then they sprout
roots really fast. I saw that they can start growing
roots within hours um, which means that also if they
(16:29):
don't fall straight down, if they fall and they land
on their side, they can actually stand themselves up by
growing roots on the ground facing side and then grow
roots on the other side as well, which is pretty amazing.
What's even more amazing is that if they fall, they
happen to fall it like high tide, and it's pretty deep,
and they never touched the bottom in any way. They'll
(16:50):
float along, they'll go out to sea and as they're
out to see they're a little tree growing like growing leaves,
getting water um from the ocean and doing photosynthesis in
the sunlight. And they can float around for up to
a year before they make land and stand themselves up
and grow roots wherever they land. It's just unbelievable because
(17:13):
this was an evolutionary adaptation. Uh, because my first thought was, well,
why don't why doesn't the acorn like seed just fall
into the water and float around. But it must have
just not been able to survive and got water logged
and died and and adapted to grow on the tree
itself and get that little seedling started. Yeah, because thing
(17:34):
about this chuck. A seedling is a small viable tree
all it has everything it needs to grow, So it's
an individual organism. And when the um, the the mangrove
is growing the seedling on its tree, on itself, that's
just station. Because when it drops off, it's like of
giraffe dropping a baby out like three or four ft
(17:55):
above above the ground. It's the same thing. It's just station.
It's a lot. I've birth of a plant. It's nuts, man,
I love it in the baby draft sticks its nose
into the ground and it's it grows from there for
months and months, plant some roots out of its head
and they go. Uh. Let's talk about the mangals a
little bit. We've talked about um the fact that these
(18:17):
forests are very dense, but it is a dense ecosystem
that is dense and more ways than one. It's not
just all these gnarly roots that you see everywhere. There
are all kinds of fish habitats and wildlife habitats that
exist in these mangals. Yeah. One of the reason why
these like um root systems and why the above water
(18:38):
um parts of the trees are all just so thick,
like you're saying it's so hard to get through is
because of the way that they drop seedlings right off
of their tree right around them. So these mangals develop
into these really thick deposits of trees and shrubs above
water and below water because they grow so closely together,
(18:59):
and as they grow, a migrate one way or another,
or they just spread out one way or another, sometimes
towards the ocean, sometimes behind them, sometimes to either side
of the shore. But that's how they grow, and that's
why they're so dense too, uh, and that provides a
lot of protection for these habitats. Uh. They're all manner
of fish. If you're in Florida, you're gonna see gray
snapper in there, or you probably won't see them um snook,
(19:22):
tarpin um. This is pretty remarkable that goliath grouper, which
is actually endangered, spends their first six years in that
mangal before it goes to open water. Yeah, and it's
not just like a few kinds of fish like things
like octopi, sharks, shrimp, mollusks, just tons of different kinds
(19:42):
of fish, like this is their nursery ground because these roots,
these tangle of roots provide a place for juveniles to
like hide out of reach of predators and get bigger
and bigger, because it's also a very nourishing place for
them to eat too. So they're they're really really important
as nurseries for all kinds of sea life. Yeah. And
(20:03):
if you're talking about eating seafood, the commercial fishing industry,
and this just sort of shows you how important these
mangals are. Uh, one square mile loss of mangroves forest
would lose about two hundred and seventy five thousand pounds
of fish every year. Uh. And then that's not even
to speak of all the indigenous communities that um, that
(20:27):
are you know, rely on these fish to provide their sustenance. Right.
And so that's just the below water part of the mangal.
The above water part of the mangal basically does the
same thing. But for terrestrial and arboreal animals like monkeys, insects, reptiles, birds,
they make their home and their nurseries in those um
(20:48):
the mangals, to the branches, the leaves, the trunks, um,
those are really just as important for above ground animals
as they are for below water animals. Yeah. And you
mentioned that Bengal tiger. Uh. This was also in this
some Darbin's right. Yes, and this is the largest single
(21:08):
population of Bengal tigers on planet Earth, and it's only
about a hundred of them, but they live in these uh,
in these mangals. Yes. And also attention Kristen bell Uh,
if you are ambivalent about mangrove forests, prepared to care
because in Panama, the pigmy three toad sloth, critically endangered
(21:29):
by the way, only makes its home in mangrove forests. Sound.
That's right, So you gotta care now. I still watched
that video of her in that sloth about once every
two years. Yes, it's just one of the great human
reactions to something. Yeah, and I remember how hardened we
were when we realized that she didn't touch it, even
though you clearly wanted to more than she's ever wanted
(21:50):
to do anything or life. But she doesn't. She didn't
do it, you know, for her, it's pretty great. I
think we can move on to some superpowers, right, Yeah,
man of superpower number one, which is coastline protection, which
is pretty important if you live along the coast. Yeah,
this is a big one, um one great benefit of
all those above ground gnarly mess of roots that are
(22:15):
everywhere is and it just makes perfect common sense when
you look at them. Is they make great wave breaks? Um,
any kind of wave, even like a tsunamic. Is that
a word? It is? Now? I think it's a great word, right.
Tsunami's wave is going to be cut down big time
when it hits this stuff. It's just gonna you know,
(22:36):
just cut through and disperse it in in a really
profound way. Yeah, because there's so many different like roots
and individual things to bump into on the way to
the shore that it's going to reduce its energy um,
which means that it reduces one of the pernicious effects
that waves have on shore, which is erosion. And not
only does it reduce erosion because the waves don't have
(22:58):
enough energy to take stuff back out to see it
actually has them deposit the sediments that they're bringing to
the shore in the mangrove swamps. And if you compare,
if you combine that, I should say, with the really
um low oxygen um uh environments that make up the
mucky bottom in a mangrove mangal um, you, if I
(23:20):
guess you can kind of flash back to our coal
The mystery of coal episode where we talked a lot
about how swamps work like that. So the mangrove swamps
are very much like that as well. But then in
addition to that, they have um ocean sediments being brought
all this organic stuff being brought from the oceans layering
with the mucky sediment that um from the mangroves falling
into the muck um, which means that they're like holding
(23:42):
onto a lot of stuff and building up soil as
a matter of fact, so much so that they outpaces
sea level rises in some areas. Yeah. I mean that
this kind of falls under one of their other superpowers
is the fact that they are literally sequestering carbon. But
I think that they they add about and we'll get
(24:03):
to that in more detail in a minute. But um,
in Australia, some mangrove or some mangals in Australian belize
at about ten millimeters or more of coastal soil each year. Yeah,
I mean, that doesn't sound like that much, but sea
level rise is coming in at about three point two
meters a year or so in parts of Australian belize.
(24:26):
It is actually outpacing climate change. Yeah, that's pretty cool
and that's really really important because the sea levels rise.
If the soil level is rising, we don't have to
worry quite as much about sea level rise there. But
that's only in some spots, as we'll see. Yeah, and uh,
as far as the waves go uh and we're talking
about tsunamis um well with just regular waves, for every
(24:46):
hundred meters of a mangrove for us that a wave
will hit, uh, its height can decrease by as much
as sixty six uh. And if you're looking at um
storm surges, which is you know, one of the big dangers.
It's not just the wave, is that that water surge.
If you listen to our tsunami episode, uh, there was
a study that found that store surge depths UM were
(25:10):
reduced about a little over a foot and a half
for every little more than a half a mile uh
fifty centimeters over every kilometer. And that doesn't sound like
a ton, But if you've got a mangrove forests that's
you know, several miles deep, then we're talking you know,
six or seven feet of uh less storm surge happening,
(25:32):
and that can make a really big difference in flooding.
Oh yeah, because the storm surge is what gets you.
I mean, it can flood miles and miles inland. It
carries all sorts of debris with it has so much
energy it can just rip buildings down. It's a real
problem from hurricanes. It's that flooding from the storm surge.
But because those mangroves are there to absorb a bunch
(25:52):
of that energy, it just doesn't have the opportunity to
come nearly as far inland. So mangrove forests, especially thick
one save human lives and you would guess animal lives too. Yeah,
And we've seen the sort of the this bear out
in very sad ways when mangrove forests have disappeared. Um.
I think it was in the Indo Pacific region in
(26:15):
the nineteen fifties they used to have about five miles
like deep of mangrove forest. By the nineteen nineties they
were depleted because of shrimp farming. We'll talk about that
later as well, but basically, you know, human cause depletion. Uh.
And in ninety one there was a cyclone that hit
the coast of Bangladesh where there were no longer any
(26:35):
mangrove for us to cut down on that impact and
there was no buffer and there was a big twenty
ft storm surge and almost a hundred and forty thousand
people died, right I saw, I saw that. Um, they
had a lot of those people died because they weren't
they didn't use storm shelters in addition to the mangrove
buffer being gone, and that they had built the storm's shelters, Chuck.
(27:00):
After a nineteen seventies cyclone that killed five hundred thousand
people in Bangladesh, can you believe that? Can you imagine
a storm killing half a million people in your country
or your little area. That's insane, it is, that's devastating. Uh,
it's biblical, you know. Yeah. Uh. They did some studies
(27:22):
to with um the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in
two thousand four, and they found that the mangroves there
were about a hundred meters deep and they at least
helped reduce those waves between five and thirty So that's
that's a big deal. You know, six feet of storm
surge up to thirty percent of wave height and the
(27:43):
initial um Russian from the ocean is you're saving a
lot of lives in that case. Yeah, And I mean,
you saw how bad the Indian Ocean tsunami was too.
It just makes you wonder, like how much worse it
could have been without mangroves. Um. So I say we
take our say can break and we come back and
talk about carbon sequestration. That's right, a k A. Superpower
(28:05):
number two. All right, we had promise of superpower number
(28:30):
two and we tease a little bit early earlier I
did about carbon sequestration. Uh so we need to talk
a little bit about what people are calling a blue
carbon ecosystem, blue sort of referencing the ocean. Yeah, it's
it's basically the same thing like you know, trees inland
(28:50):
capturing carbon and storing them in their their bits and parts.
This is this is just um coastal vegetation doing the
same thing. Um. And the thing is is, like trees,
they're really efficient capturing carbon and storing it. But because
of our friends fungi and rot um, when the tree dies,
(29:13):
that carbon gets released back into the ecosystem and even
possibly back into the atmosphere if say, like a wildfire
happens atmosphere hot wheels. That is right, But you know
how we mentioned before that UM, with that soil that
the water is basically the ocean wait is just sitting
on top of it is not it's just building up
(29:36):
to that salty peat and that carbon is not being
released like it does in a terrestrial forest, and it's
not breaking down. So it is a champion at storing carbon.
Not only good at it, but really good at it. Yeah,
it's like the Judah Friedlander of forests as far as
carbon sequestration goes. I love Juda Freelander. We actually met
(30:00):
him once, but I don't get the joke. Oh. He
always wore I had the said world okay, and he
was always boasting about stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, I
love that guy. When we met him at an event
with Jesse Thorn and Hodgeman many years ago, and this
is kind of during his run on uh thirty Rock
and that this is when also I was also wearing
my last Chance garage at all the time, which I
(30:22):
haven't put on in a couple of years, I hate
to say so, probably a few years um. But he
remember when I met him, he went and in that
face of his he kind of peered up at my
hat and that patch and he went, all right, okay, cool.
That was a great Freedland. I was like, hey, I
got the stamp of approval from the hat guy. Yeah,
(30:43):
definitely the hand guy first. It was cool so but yeah,
so mangroves are are the champion of carbon sequestration, so
much so that they are four times more efficient than
terrestrial um vegetation at storing carbon, which makes him like
a bona fide car and sinc. Mangrove forests are um
and again it's because there's just no decay, there's no fungus,
(31:05):
there's no rot. All the stuff that all the vegetation
that dies and falls down into the mock just gets
stuck there and covered over and doesn't get a chance
to break down. So as long as you don't dig
up or destroy a mangrove forest and cut up the
peat to use it as as cheap fuel, you've got
a really good carbon sink on your hands. Yeah. To
(31:26):
the tune of UM, worldwide, mangals account for about six
point four billion tons of carbon that's being held in check.
That means when you do do something like you hinted at,
it can have devastating effects for the world. Surprise, surprise, Uh,
If you cut down a mangrove forests, that carbon is
(31:46):
gonna be released, that sequestra carbon is slowly gonna creep
back into the atmosphere. From two thousand UM, roughly a
hundred and twenty two million tons of carbon extra carbon
were released into the atmosphere because of the destruction of
mangrove forests and uh, between eighty and two thousand, thirty
(32:09):
of the mangals of the world have been stripped away
and it is outpacing like the tropical rainforest construction. That's
mind boggling because if you just hear the figures on
how how frequently and how much rainforest is cut down,
the idea that mangrove forest is outpacing it is pretty nuts.
But apparently um Me and Mar is the current hot
(32:33):
spot for mangrove deforestation. Between two thousand and sixteen, Me
and Mark cut down six of its mangals just gone.
Part of the problem is is like you can restore
mangrove forest. Fortunately, we'll talk about some people who do that,
but it can take a while. And sometimes when you
restore some mangroves, you put the seedlings in and UH,
(32:57):
typhoon or a cyclone or a hurricane comes along and
just washes them all away. So if your timing is wrong, uh,
it might take a very long time for you to
restore a mangrove forest. So it's it's not something you
want to cut down willy nilly, basically, no. Um. Shrimp
farming is something we mentioned earlier in passing. But they
are the biggest culprit responsible for thirty of mangrove for
(33:19):
us loss. And you know people love shrimp all around
the world, and in Thailand in the eighties and nineties, UM,
and in other places as well, but especially Thailand. Uh,
they've cut down a lot of mangrove for us to
make these uh shrimp farms along the coastline. UH. And
then you've also got the sea level rise that's uh
causing destruction. We mentioned parts of Australian belize that those
(33:43):
um soiled deposits are outpacing it. But that's only in
a couple of those places it is. It is not
doing that in other areas. No. Um, so that means
that sea level rises outpacing soiled deposition there. UM. I
want to say one more thing about shrimp farming too.
I looked a little bit into it, cannot decide maybe
it deserves its own episode Who Knows. One of the
(34:05):
other problems with shrimp farming, in addition to um a
shrimp farm sharing the same kind of land or a
mangrove forest that landed occupies being desirable for a shrimp
farm so you cut down mangro forest to build a
shrimp farm, is that when you harvest shrimp, you basically
have to refresh the water. So shrimp farmers typically just
basically opened a dam and let all the water out,
(34:29):
and the water is filled with tons of nutrients that
overwhelmed the carrying capacity of the ecosystems the mangrove forests
around the shrimp farm, and you get what's called an
algae bloom, which sucks up all the oxygen, kills off
all the fish, and has just this devastating effect on
the ecosystem surrounding it. So shrimp farming is really hard
(34:52):
on the areas where it takes place, not just from
the shrimp farms themselves, but from what comes out of
the shrimp farms as well. And there's just so many
basic good best practices that could be followed that just
aren't followed that there's almost like a general like duh
coming out of the shrimp farming industry. As far as
I can tell, that really needs to be fixed. It's
(35:14):
almost as if they just wanted to continue to make
as much money as they can before they're regulated in
some way. But I mean, what are you gonna do
if you try to regulate them at all? You've got
a nanny state on your hands. And who wants that? Yeah,
and it's shrimp farming is just one tiny fraction of
the great amounts of harm that are happening to the
(35:34):
ocean because of lots of things, but commercial fishing and
is certainly one of them. I will say, though, it's
really hard to turn down shrimp on pizza. You're heading
or something. No, no, that's that was from years back.
I used to love shrimp on pizza. All right, talk
to me more about this. What what what? What are
we talking us? Throw some shrimp on a regular cheese
(35:56):
or is it like a barbecue pineapple thing? No? No, no, no,
a regular pizza. But you don't want to use just
any shrimp. You certainly don't want to use jumbo shrimp.
You want to use the little tiny salad shrimp because
they cook just enough with the pizza. Bigger shrimp might
still be partially raw. It's gonna be too big to
eat some of this. Yeah, you just throw some of
the Well, now I think they usually come already cooked,
(36:18):
now that I think about it. But you just throw
a couple of handfuls on your pizza, put it in
the oven, and they thank me later. Basically, Oh, man,
I love shrimp. I don't know about shrimp and pizza. Well,
now I feel bad about eating shrimp knowing how bad
shrimp farming is. It's uh, yeah, it's another wake up call,
isn't it. Well, yes, and I've been awoken because I'm
(36:39):
now farming my own shrimp here at home in a
very sustainable manner so that I can have it on
my pizza. Bathtub shrimp, that's right, it's delicious. We don't
take baths anyway. Yeah, you mean's like, why do you
have an out of order so on on our bathroom door? Right,
I'm still trying to figure out how to break the
news to you mean, we don't really have a working
bathtub anymore. Uh So there are also invasive species that
(37:03):
can uh totally wreck the health of a man. Gall
uh And the seventies in China, they were trying to
do the right thing. I think there were conservationists that
um transplanted some marsh grasses that were from the United
States there to try and slow erosion, but it crowded
out mangroves. And then in Texas they weren't trying to
do the right thing. Um. They the vision game officials there.
(37:28):
Um they said, Hey, people like hunting this uh exotic
Asian antelope. It's called a nil guy I guess and
I l g a I. So let's put them in
Texas so people can hunt them. Um. And it turns
out they love to eat mangroves. Yeah, so they're they're
being deforested by the game that was imported to Texas
to hunt, which means I'm sure there's huge bounties on
(37:50):
these things now too. Yeah. Isn't that funny how that
all works out. So there are people who are like,
we really need to work on this, We need to
get mangroves back. Um. And there are places where this
is the good news. Mangrove deforestation globally speaking, on average
has actually stopped progressing and is now starting to decline.
(38:11):
The deforestation is so people are are you know, kind
of getting hip to the idea that we really need
these things. They provide countless services for us humans, So
even the most selfish human can get behind mangrove restoration, right, Yeah,
I mean I think there's about of the worldwide mangals
are protected now, but you need that number at like
(38:34):
while at a hundred. But I would feel much better
if it was like in the eighties or nineties, you know. Yeah,
And not only that, like like areas that have been
developed closely need to replant the mangroves that they cut
down to to um to build because they need them
really bad. You need mangrove buffers, as we've found. Whatever
you can get is helpful, that's right. But there's another
(38:57):
kind of clever financial instrument, as they call called blue bonds.
It is a subset of green bonds. Green bonds came
around a while ago, and these are basically, if you
have money and you want to invest responsibly um in
a way that not only doesn't impact the environment, but
can help the environment, you invest in a green bond,
(39:19):
or if you're really into the ocean. The subset of
blue bonds, which were first introduced in right, and so
it's like you want to offset your emissions. You buy
a blue bond and all of a sudden, you've just
paid somebody to go plant some mango or not mango,
maybe mango too, but mangrove forests, right, yeah, mango forest.
(39:41):
That sounds delicious. It would be I'd be like planet
in my backyard to plan it with my bond. So
look into blue bonds and green bonds. It's UM. I
saw something depressing the other day when they were I
don't know what they were talking about on the news,
but they basically said, like, if you have an i
RA A like, you were supporting all kinds of companies
that you would probably never support in real life. Yeah, definitely.
(40:03):
Mutual Yeah, mutual funds to just everything is all lumped in.
So they were trying to encourage people that if they're
able to to be a little more selective and and
what they choose to invest in, Well, there's a lot
of sustainable mutual funds to UM that where they're you know,
very carefully selected. Unfortunately, that means the management fees going
(40:24):
to be higher. But if you care, it doesn't really matter,
you know that was it really uh? A higher management fee? Yeah?
Any time it requires any additional thought or effort. The
management fee just automatically goes up. Had to click on
three extra things, right, I had to find out what
these blue bonds were. That's my impression of a mutual
fund manager. Yeah, financial advisor. If that's your financial advisor's
(40:47):
an the wrong person. I meet him at Burger King
every couple of weeks in the back. Yeah, where else
would you meet? Um? You got anything else? Nothing else?
Up with Mangroves with Mangroves. Uh. And since we both
set up with Mangroves everybody, that means it's time for
a listener mail. Uh. This is a thank you from
(41:09):
a Satanist. We had a great podcast that we must
have put this on a select recently. I guess, yeah,
like two weeks ago. Okay, Hey, guys discovered your podcast.
Have been hooked ever since. Your informative banter Field episodes
remained a welcome constant in my life throughout college, adult years.
In our parenthood, was helping me stay sane during sleepless
(41:30):
nights with my newborns. When I saw the episode on Satanism,
I guess I hadn't listened to it previously. Um. I
was simultaneously excited and nervous I would. I hope you'd
give it the usual Josh and Chuck treatment, and I
was not disappointed. Over the years, I've been given a
lot of grief being a Satanist. People often assume that
I'm a very devout Christian based on the way I look,
and often go from praising me to threatening my family
(41:53):
upon learning that I followed the tenants set forth by
the Satanic Temple by shedding some light on the true
nature of Satanism, Um, I feel that you have given
many people a looking to the practice in a non
threatening way, and hopefully this will help people choose kindness
over fear based hatred when interacting with Satanist in the future.
And thank you for being bold enough to put this
episode out in the world. I'm sure it wasn't that easy,
(42:15):
but this long time listener appreciates it. Your friendly Satanist. Donna,
thanks a lot, Donna, Donna Satanist. Um. Yeah, that was
that was a good one. Because I went back and
listened to it to QA before it was a se
life sounds like this was a really good episode, But
there was one thing at the beginning, Chuck, that now
I wish we had back um, because a couple of
(42:37):
people wrote in and it was that we we se
O eight at the beginning, saying like, if you're you know, Christian,
you probably don't want to listen to this, And people
wrote in and said, no, like you you should not
have said that, because there's plenty of people out there
who should hear this and you know, change their views
on people who hold these views. So, um, if you
go back and listen to that, just plug your ears
for that first part and then listen to it through again.
(43:00):
That was forty year old Chuck talking, right, not not
fifty one year old Chuck. That's right, It's that's a
weird number to say it is, Chuck. Fifty one is
a weird number, and it's going to be a weird
time in your life, I'm sure of it. Er. That's
that's what I think. I'll always say it is. You'll
(43:21):
always be younger than me, no matter how much I
want you to speed up the aging process, You'll always
be younger. You would have to travel to Mars and
suspended animation and I just have to stay here on
Earth for for me to catch up. All right, I'm
gonna look into that. Thanks a lot, Donna. We appreciate
that big time, and if you want to be like
Donna and send us some kudos, we'll take them. You
(43:42):
can send it in an email to Stuff podcast. The
iHeart radio dot com Stuff You Should Know is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there. So let's get
to it. While we're talking about mangroves. Everybody, mangroves gather
around while we talk about mangrove. My new favorite tree.
(00:26):
It's a great tree. It's a good favorite tree to have.
It is, and this is one of those. I think
this is the second and probably final that was inspired
by my recent trip to Mexico because we were surrounded
by mangroves, literally surrounded by mangroves, and we couldn't get
enough of them. Man Like riding the bikes around and
(00:47):
looking in these mangrove forests and considering what it must
be like to try and navigate through them. Nearly impossible,
I would say, uh, because yeah, I mean you seen
them in person, I'm sure like just how dense these
things are. Uh, And you know we're gonna be talking
about different kinds, but really sort of the money mangroves
(01:09):
are the ones that we're going to focus on, and
they are just I was knocked out just by how
they looked. And I could tell that they were a
remarkable wonder of nature and evolution. And then after this stuff,
Dave Rouse helped us put this together. After learning everything
that they're capable of, it's just like, what what kind
of tree is this? It's amazing. It's an amazing tree.
(01:31):
Like I said, it's maybe one of the best trees
to have is your favorite tree, because there are very
few trees that are this amazing, Chuck Man, And we're
talking mangroves, and we should say mangroves aren't necessarily like
a species or even a family of tree. One of
the other things that makes them such a cool tree
to have as a favorite is that there's something like
(01:52):
eighty or ninety species of them, and they're not genetically
related in every case. Instead, biologist classify them by their
ability to survive and even thrive in salty water that
uh in soil that has little to no oxygen, which
are two things that most trees can't do. And that's
(02:13):
just the tip of the iceberg. And what makes um
mangroves so amazing. Yeah, but like I said, we're talking
mainly about those amazing trees that sit up above the
water with this network of you know, look like fingers
just sort of propping up the tree, which are the roots. Um.
They are a woodland tree, also could be called a shrub.
(02:34):
And they grow in a pretty narrow area between um.
While they're subtropical along the coastlines first of all, but
they grow between literally between um, the terrestrial and the
marine environment in salty brackish water. Yeah. Um. And there's
I want to say a lot of them. It's really
(02:56):
not though. I think they make up like one percent
of the forests of the old mangrove forests are. But
it's still eighty five thousand square miles, which is a
pretty decent amount of area for you know, one kind
of tree. It's about the size of the state of Arkansas. UM.
And the largest mangrove forest in the world is at
the mouth of the Ganges UM, near the Bay of Bengal.
(03:17):
It's called the Student Arbans And that's where the Bengal
tiger lives, which is pretty cool, agreed. Uh. They exist
in a hundred and eighteen countries and here in the
United States in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. And I thought, oh,
surely the Georgia Coast so close to Florida surely they've
(03:38):
got some mangroves. Don't even try. Not quite there that
I did see some people that are like, oh, so mangroves, um,
but it's not true. It looks like the closest mangroves
are about forty miles from the Georgia border, near the
Georgia coast line. Um. So I was really sad that
we don't have our our mangroves. But they do have
them in Florida and Louisiana and Texas and in Mexico.
(04:01):
That's right. And again you said that they grow subtropically,
and Chuck, I want to share that. It was just
today that I finally stopped and was like, this subtropical
thing is driving me crazy. Like it's it's above the
tropics on either side. It's either above or below, depending
on where your perspective, but it's not below. It's not
(04:23):
below the equator. And then I realized, if you're on
the equator from the perspective of the equator, it's below
the equator on either side, so it's sub tropical. You've
never stood on the equator. I never have, and I
think I should be. I've never been to Ecuador. Well
we should go sometime we should do a podcast live
live from the equator. Yeah, and see if we melt.
(04:47):
I know I will. I'm melting this week. Um. As
far as man the money mangroves that I was talking about,
we're talking about red, black and white, and for my money,
I love those red mangro Those are the ones that
grow along the water's edge. They have those proper roots
that and if you've never seen a mangrove mangrove, please
(05:08):
just look up red mangrove. Uh. And they're called proper
roots because they prop that tree up off the ground.
They are fully well, not fully exposed because they also
go into the water, into the soil, but they're largely
exposed and they are just tangled, gnarly beautiful roots that again,
I can't imagine trying to navigate through a mangrove forests.
(05:30):
You probably had to go around. Yeah, it can be
really really thick um both above water and below water
because of those roots. So those roots, um, if you
see them, that means that it's low tide, high tide,
they're usually covered up with water. But it's like you said,
they propped the tree up. And so for that reason,
because at low tide, you can see the bottom of
(05:50):
the tree and it's above ground. Um. They're sometimes called
walking trees, but they're pretty neat. And the red mangrove
is I think anyone who knows about mangroves seen a
mangrove probably is what they're thinking of as a red
mangrove because there's just those those roots are just so
characteristic and unusual, you know. Yeah, the black mangroves are
(06:11):
still really cool looking because they have these um protrusions
coming up out of the water called new metaphors and
just you know, put a pin in this. They but
they allow the plant to basically breathe. And we'll talk
about that later. But if you look at a picture
of these, it looks sort of like almost like little
just spiky roots sticking up out of the ground all
(06:32):
around the tree. Yeah, almost like still agmites. Um. And
I got that right too. By the way, Um, white
mangroves are. It's weird. I don't understand fully why they're
considered mangroves, aside from the fact that they must still
thrive in brackish or salty water and poor um, poor
(06:52):
oxygen soil. It but I guess so but they grow
inland and they have normal shallow roots systems like any
other terrestrial tree, but they're still considered mangroves. Yeah, and
I don't think i've mentioned the black mangroves to grow
a little bit further inland than the reds. Yeah. So
if you are, you know, looking at a cross section
(07:13):
of the ocean hitting the land and going inland, you
would see at the ocean or at the bay or wherever,
um red mangroves on the shoreline actually growing into the
ocean depending on where the tide is behind them. You
would have the black mangroves on slightly higher ground, and
then behind those on the highest ground you would have
(07:35):
the white mangroves. And that's what it would look like
you put it all together, well, you have is a
mangrove forest, also known as a mangal, a mangal, which
is uh one of the more amazing We're talking about
a lot of amazing things about mangroves and mangals, but
it's the only species of tree that can grow in
salt water. Um, and big time they grow and it's
(07:58):
not like they love the salt. We'll see in a minute.
They have some great ways of getting rid of it. Um,
but they figured all that stuff out. But they can
grow in salinity levels of seventy five parts per thousand,
which is about twice as salty as ocean water. Yeah,
that's pretty impressive because I mean, where are they growing
that that's twice as salty as ocean water? You know,
(08:20):
I think that's just kind of showing off at that point. Well,
I didn't know if like that inland water like just
accumulates salt or something. Yeah, I would Yeah, I think
you might be right. Yeah, yeah, I think you fit
upon it. Okay, So they're not showoffs. They're just doing
what they've got to do there. I mean that they're
making they're making lemonade out of the lemons that that
(08:41):
they were handed by natural selection for where they grow.
So what about the salt? How do they get rid
of it? So you would think like they just they
can drink salt water and use it like you know
terrestrial trees use water. Not true. There's actually two techniques
where they can either um keep salt from entering their roots,
(09:01):
or they can take the salt in and then get
rid of it in certain ways. And so that means
that there's two types, secrets and non secrets. And black
mangroves are secrets, I believe, right, that's right. Those are
the ones with a little nubby they look like sticks
almost sticking out of the water. Uh. They filter it
out and they secrete it on the leaves. So that
(09:21):
means if you see a black mangrove and you see
some you know, kind of chalky white stuff on the
leaf that is salt like goat, I don't know if
I should say go lick it because I don't know
if that's dangerous salt, but it's it's salty. Just trust me.
It tastes like salt. And d D T gosh um.
Red mangroves they're they're non secrets. So they actually just
(09:44):
don't allow salt to be taken up by their roots.
Now that's easier said than done, because their roots are
planted in the water, right, so there's water. They're taking
up water from the ocean, from salt water. And what
they do is they have cell wall that actually act
um through reverse osmosis. It lets water through, but it
(10:05):
doesn't let solids through, which is quite a trick. I mean,
that's something that humans have only recently figured out how
to do The mangroves have been doing it for who
knows how many, hundreds of thousands or millions of years, um.
But they do it in part because they have this hydrophobic,
lipophilic material called suberin that really serves them. Well, that's right.
It allows them to get rid of more than of
(10:27):
the salts in the water, which also means, which I
don't really think about until just now, that they can
They can literally tolerate I guess about ten salt content. Yeah,
I saw, but yeah, that's still a lot of salt
for a plant. Totally. Yeah. So they have at least
adapted in some ways to to tolerate salt more than
other plants. But for the most part, they're just really
(10:50):
good at um at keeping salt from being taken up
by their roots. I just find that fascinating. Uh And
I love how Dave puts these uh he he. His
sections are labeled either mangrove magic tricks or what was
the other one, mangrove superpowers. Yeah, pretty fun. They're both
apt they are. So this is magic trick number two?
(11:14):
Is we mentioned? You know, I mentioned earlier that they
actually breathe through these roots. Um. I think typically you
might like to think about plants as uh, you know,
just eating up that CEO two, which they definitely do.
But plants need oxygen and they need to get oxygen
from the roots and and you know with a regular
(11:35):
tree and a regular forest, they're getting that like through
the soil and these little gaps between the soil. Uh
in mangrove or mangals, I guess you would say they
can't do that because the title sediments come in and
it's all water log and compacted, so they don't have
those air gaps that you have in a normal forest.
(11:56):
So they kind of came up with a brilliant little
trick to get around that, right. Yeah, So the new
metaphors that black mangroves have those stalagmites um that are
coming up in in spikes around them. Those act as snorkels,
so they stick up out of the water and they're
covered in these little cells called lenis als, and that's
(12:17):
where oxygen exchange happens. So they actually absorb oxygen through
these snorkels. They get taken into the snorkel underground, into
the other roots of the tree um and used for
um aerobic respiration, which is converting food into energy. It's
just pretty nuts. And new metaphor actually is Greek for
(12:37):
air carrier, so it makes sense pretty on the nose. Yeah,
some of those new metaphors can reach up to ten
ft tall. Did you see that? Yeah? I didn't. Um,
I looked at a lot of pictures. I didn't see any.
That's all with my eyeballs. But I've looked because I
wanted to see that. Yeah, I didn't see it either.
It could be made up. So then you've got this,
I don't think so. Um. Then you've got the red
(13:00):
mangroves that we talked about for my money, like the
money mangrove, and those proper roots serve the same purpose
as the newmataphors. They you know, like I said, they
sit up on those long um sort of curvy stilts
and they stay above water like a lot of stays
above water even at high tide at times. And they
(13:22):
are also covered with those linisils and they do the
same thing. They allow for that oxygen exchange to take place. Yeah.
So that explains also why there's so many roots and
so many newmataphors that that spread around these trees. It's
like if you dug up a tree of roughly the
same size. It would probably have a similar sized roots structure,
(13:43):
maybe a little less, but you don't see it. It's
all underground. This is above ground, so it like looks
like a lot of roots, and it is a lot
of roots, but it's not necessarily more than a terrestrial
tree would have. We just don't see them. Yeah, it's
like a tree that has dropped trial. It's exactly right.
It's porky pig in it. Should we uh, should we
(14:03):
take a break at mangrove magic trick number two? Yeah?
Number three? Yeah, we'll come back with number three right
after this. So, Chuck, which mangrove is your favorite kind? Well,
(14:36):
I think I've been clear. I know you're teasing me
because me and my red mangrove tirades. Uh. To me,
this is the best part of the episode and the
most amazing thing that maybe besides and we'll get to
carbon sequestration because it's amazing too. But to me, this
just knocked my socks off. That mangroves kind of give
(14:59):
birth two baby mangroves. I think the only reason you
want to qualify it with kind of is because our
mind rails against accepting that that's what's going on, but
that is what's going on for all intents and purposes.
That some mangroves are viviparous, meaning that it means um
live bearing to where they have seeds on their on
(15:22):
their plants that they develop. They're about acorn sized. But
then rather than the seed falling off and dispersing and
then eventually growing into a seedling, something much more mind
blowing happens with mangroves. That's right. The seedling is actually
produced on the tree itself, and they uh, they sort
(15:44):
of that's sort of keep qualifying it. They self plant themselves.
Eventually this thing is going to fall off. You've got
to look up the video on the internet. There are
many out there where it shows these you know, acorn
like things. They grow down to these sort of long
arrow like, you know, green arrows that are pointing down
and eventually they just go and they snap off and
(16:07):
they go straight down and they either stick into the
ground at low tide or I saw them in two
ft of ocean water just going straight through and sticking
into the sand and they plant themselves. They do, they
plant themselves in that sandy bottom and then they sprout
roots really fast. I saw that they can start growing
roots within hours um, which means that also if they
(16:29):
don't fall straight down, if they fall and they land
on their side, they can actually stand themselves up by
growing roots on the ground facing side and then grow
roots on the other side as well, which is pretty amazing.
What's even more amazing is that if they fall, they
happen to fall it like high tide, and it's pretty deep,
and they never touched the bottom in any way. They'll
(16:50):
float along, they'll go out to sea and as they're
out to see they're a little tree growing like growing leaves,
getting water um from the ocean and doing photosynthesis in
the sunlight. And they can float around for up to
a year before they make land and stand themselves up
and grow roots wherever they land. It's just unbelievable because
(17:13):
this was an evolutionary adaptation. Uh, because my first thought was, well,
why don't why doesn't the acorn like seed just fall
into the water and float around. But it must have
just not been able to survive and got water logged
and died and and adapted to grow on the tree
itself and get that little seedling started. Yeah, because thing
(17:34):
about this chuck. A seedling is a small viable tree
all it has everything it needs to grow, So it's
an individual organism. And when the um, the the mangrove
is growing the seedling on its tree, on itself, that's
just station. Because when it drops off, it's like of
giraffe dropping a baby out like three or four ft
(17:55):
above above the ground. It's the same thing. It's just station.
It's a lot. I've birth of a plant. It's nuts, man,
I love it in the baby draft sticks its nose
into the ground and it's it grows from there for
months and months, plant some roots out of its head
and they go. Uh. Let's talk about the mangals a
little bit. We've talked about um the fact that these
(18:17):
forests are very dense, but it is a dense ecosystem
that is dense and more ways than one. It's not
just all these gnarly roots that you see everywhere. There
are all kinds of fish habitats and wildlife habitats that
exist in these mangals. Yeah. One of the reason why
these like um root systems and why the above water
(18:38):
um parts of the trees are all just so thick,
like you're saying it's so hard to get through is
because of the way that they drop seedlings right off
of their tree right around them. So these mangals develop
into these really thick deposits of trees and shrubs above
water and below water because they grow so closely together,
(18:59):
and as they grow, a migrate one way or another,
or they just spread out one way or another, sometimes
towards the ocean, sometimes behind them, sometimes to either side
of the shore. But that's how they grow, and that's
why they're so dense too, uh, and that provides a
lot of protection for these habitats. Uh. They're all manner
of fish. If you're in Florida, you're gonna see gray
snapper in there, or you probably won't see them um snook,
(19:22):
tarpin um. This is pretty remarkable that goliath grouper, which
is actually endangered, spends their first six years in that
mangal before it goes to open water. Yeah, and it's
not just like a few kinds of fish like things
like octopi, sharks, shrimp, mollusks, just tons of different kinds
(19:42):
of fish, like this is their nursery ground because these roots,
these tangle of roots provide a place for juveniles to
like hide out of reach of predators and get bigger
and bigger, because it's also a very nourishing place for
them to eat too. So they're they're really really important
as nurseries for all kinds of sea life. Yeah. And
(20:03):
if you're talking about eating seafood, the commercial fishing industry,
and this just sort of shows you how important these
mangals are. Uh, one square mile loss of mangroves forest
would lose about two hundred and seventy five thousand pounds
of fish every year. Uh. And then that's not even
to speak of all the indigenous communities that um, that
(20:27):
are you know, rely on these fish to provide their sustenance. Right.
And so that's just the below water part of the mangal.
The above water part of the mangal basically does the
same thing. But for terrestrial and arboreal animals like monkeys, insects, reptiles, birds,
they make their home and their nurseries in those um
(20:48):
the mangals, to the branches, the leaves, the trunks, um,
those are really just as important for above ground animals
as they are for below water animals. Yeah. And you
mentioned that Bengal tiger. Uh. This was also in this
some Darbin's right. Yes, and this is the largest single
(21:08):
population of Bengal tigers on planet Earth, and it's only
about a hundred of them, but they live in these uh,
in these mangals. Yes. And also attention Kristen bell Uh,
if you are ambivalent about mangrove forests, prepared to care
because in Panama, the pigmy three toad sloth, critically endangered
(21:29):
by the way, only makes its home in mangrove forests. Sound.
That's right, So you gotta care now. I still watched
that video of her in that sloth about once every
two years. Yes, it's just one of the great human
reactions to something. Yeah, and I remember how hardened we
were when we realized that she didn't touch it, even
though you clearly wanted to more than she's ever wanted
(21:50):
to do anything or life. But she doesn't. She didn't
do it, you know, for her, it's pretty great. I
think we can move on to some superpowers, right, Yeah,
man of superpower number one, which is coastline protection, which
is pretty important if you live along the coast. Yeah,
this is a big one, um one great benefit of
all those above ground gnarly mess of roots that are
(22:15):
everywhere is and it just makes perfect common sense when
you look at them. Is they make great wave breaks? Um,
any kind of wave, even like a tsunamic. Is that
a word? It is? Now? I think it's a great word, right.
Tsunami's wave is going to be cut down big time
when it hits this stuff. It's just gonna you know,
(22:36):
just cut through and disperse it in in a really
profound way. Yeah, because there's so many different like roots
and individual things to bump into on the way to
the shore that it's going to reduce its energy um,
which means that it reduces one of the pernicious effects
that waves have on shore, which is erosion. And not
only does it reduce erosion because the waves don't have
(22:58):
enough energy to take stuff back out to see it
actually has them deposit the sediments that they're bringing to
the shore in the mangrove swamps. And if you compare,
if you combine that, I should say, with the really
um low oxygen um uh environments that make up the
mucky bottom in a mangrove mangal um, you, if I
(23:20):
guess you can kind of flash back to our coal
The mystery of coal episode where we talked a lot
about how swamps work like that. So the mangrove swamps
are very much like that as well. But then in
addition to that, they have um ocean sediments being brought
all this organic stuff being brought from the oceans layering
with the mucky sediment that um from the mangroves falling
into the muck um, which means that they're like holding
(23:42):
onto a lot of stuff and building up soil as
a matter of fact, so much so that they outpaces
sea level rises in some areas. Yeah. I mean that
this kind of falls under one of their other superpowers
is the fact that they are literally sequestering carbon. But
I think that they they add about and we'll get
(24:03):
to that in more detail in a minute. But um,
in Australia, some mangrove or some mangals in Australian belize
at about ten millimeters or more of coastal soil each year. Yeah,
I mean, that doesn't sound like that much, but sea
level rise is coming in at about three point two
meters a year or so in parts of Australian belize.
(24:26):
It is actually outpacing climate change. Yeah, that's pretty cool
and that's really really important because the sea levels rise.
If the soil level is rising, we don't have to
worry quite as much about sea level rise there. But
that's only in some spots, as we'll see. Yeah, and uh,
as far as the waves go uh and we're talking
about tsunamis um well with just regular waves, for every
(24:46):
hundred meters of a mangrove for us that a wave
will hit, uh, its height can decrease by as much
as sixty six uh. And if you're looking at um
storm surges, which is you know, one of the big dangers.
It's not just the wave, is that that water surge.
If you listen to our tsunami episode, uh, there was
a study that found that store surge depths UM were
(25:10):
reduced about a little over a foot and a half
for every little more than a half a mile uh
fifty centimeters over every kilometer. And that doesn't sound like
a ton, But if you've got a mangrove forests that's
you know, several miles deep, then we're talking you know,
six or seven feet of uh less storm surge happening,
(25:32):
and that can make a really big difference in flooding.
Oh yeah, because the storm surge is what gets you.
I mean, it can flood miles and miles inland. It
carries all sorts of debris with it has so much
energy it can just rip buildings down. It's a real
problem from hurricanes. It's that flooding from the storm surge.
But because those mangroves are there to absorb a bunch
(25:52):
of that energy, it just doesn't have the opportunity to
come nearly as far inland. So mangrove forests, especially thick
one save human lives and you would guess animal lives too. Yeah,
And we've seen the sort of the this bear out
in very sad ways when mangrove forests have disappeared. Um.
I think it was in the Indo Pacific region in
(26:15):
the nineteen fifties they used to have about five miles
like deep of mangrove forest. By the nineteen nineties they
were depleted because of shrimp farming. We'll talk about that
later as well, but basically, you know, human cause depletion. Uh.
And in ninety one there was a cyclone that hit
the coast of Bangladesh where there were no longer any
(26:35):
mangrove for us to cut down on that impact and
there was no buffer and there was a big twenty
ft storm surge and almost a hundred and forty thousand
people died, right I saw, I saw that. Um, they
had a lot of those people died because they weren't
they didn't use storm shelters in addition to the mangrove
buffer being gone, and that they had built the storm's shelters, Chuck.
(27:00):
After a nineteen seventies cyclone that killed five hundred thousand
people in Bangladesh, can you believe that? Can you imagine
a storm killing half a million people in your country
or your little area. That's insane, it is, that's devastating. Uh,
it's biblical, you know. Yeah. Uh. They did some studies
(27:22):
to with um the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in
two thousand four, and they found that the mangroves there
were about a hundred meters deep and they at least
helped reduce those waves between five and thirty So that's
that's a big deal. You know, six feet of storm
surge up to thirty percent of wave height and the
(27:43):
initial um Russian from the ocean is you're saving a
lot of lives in that case. Yeah, And I mean,
you saw how bad the Indian Ocean tsunami was too.
It just makes you wonder, like how much worse it
could have been without mangroves. Um. So I say we
take our say can break and we come back and
talk about carbon sequestration. That's right, a k A. Superpower
(28:05):
number two. All right, we had promise of superpower number
(28:30):
two and we tease a little bit early earlier I
did about carbon sequestration. Uh so we need to talk
a little bit about what people are calling a blue
carbon ecosystem, blue sort of referencing the ocean. Yeah, it's
it's basically the same thing like you know, trees inland
(28:50):
capturing carbon and storing them in their their bits and parts.
This is this is just um coastal vegetation doing the
same thing. Um. And the thing is is, like trees,
they're really efficient capturing carbon and storing it. But because
of our friends fungi and rot um, when the tree dies,
(29:13):
that carbon gets released back into the ecosystem and even
possibly back into the atmosphere if say, like a wildfire
happens atmosphere hot wheels. That is right, But you know
how we mentioned before that UM, with that soil that
the water is basically the ocean wait is just sitting
on top of it is not it's just building up
(29:36):
to that salty peat and that carbon is not being
released like it does in a terrestrial forest, and it's
not breaking down. So it is a champion at storing carbon.
Not only good at it, but really good at it. Yeah,
it's like the Judah Friedlander of forests as far as
carbon sequestration goes. I love Juda Freelander. We actually met
(30:00):
him once, but I don't get the joke. Oh. He
always wore I had the said world okay, and he
was always boasting about stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, I
love that guy. When we met him at an event
with Jesse Thorn and Hodgeman many years ago, and this
is kind of during his run on uh thirty Rock
and that this is when also I was also wearing
my last Chance garage at all the time, which I
(30:22):
haven't put on in a couple of years, I hate
to say so, probably a few years um. But he
remember when I met him, he went and in that
face of his he kind of peered up at my
hat and that patch and he went, all right, okay, cool.
That was a great Freedland. I was like, hey, I
got the stamp of approval from the hat guy. Yeah,
(30:43):
definitely the hand guy first. It was cool so but yeah,
so mangroves are are the champion of carbon sequestration, so
much so that they are four times more efficient than
terrestrial um vegetation at storing carbon, which makes him like
a bona fide car and sinc. Mangrove forests are um
and again it's because there's just no decay, there's no fungus,
(31:05):
there's no rot. All the stuff that all the vegetation
that dies and falls down into the mock just gets
stuck there and covered over and doesn't get a chance
to break down. So as long as you don't dig
up or destroy a mangrove forest and cut up the
peat to use it as as cheap fuel, you've got
a really good carbon sink on your hands. Yeah. To
(31:26):
the tune of UM, worldwide, mangals account for about six
point four billion tons of carbon that's being held in check.
That means when you do do something like you hinted at,
it can have devastating effects for the world. Surprise, surprise, Uh,
If you cut down a mangrove forests, that carbon is
(31:46):
gonna be released, that sequestra carbon is slowly gonna creep
back into the atmosphere. From two thousand UM, roughly a
hundred and twenty two million tons of carbon extra carbon
were released into the atmosphere because of the destruction of
mangrove forests and uh, between eighty and two thousand, thirty
(32:09):
of the mangals of the world have been stripped away
and it is outpacing like the tropical rainforest construction. That's
mind boggling because if you just hear the figures on
how how frequently and how much rainforest is cut down,
the idea that mangrove forest is outpacing it is pretty nuts.
But apparently um Me and Mar is the current hot
(32:33):
spot for mangrove deforestation. Between two thousand and sixteen, Me
and Mark cut down six of its mangals just gone.
Part of the problem is is like you can restore
mangrove forest. Fortunately, we'll talk about some people who do that,
but it can take a while. And sometimes when you
restore some mangroves, you put the seedlings in and UH,
(32:57):
typhoon or a cyclone or a hurricane comes along and
just washes them all away. So if your timing is wrong, uh,
it might take a very long time for you to
restore a mangrove forest. So it's it's not something you
want to cut down willy nilly, basically, no. Um. Shrimp
farming is something we mentioned earlier in passing. But they
are the biggest culprit responsible for thirty of mangrove for
(33:19):
us loss. And you know people love shrimp all around
the world, and in Thailand in the eighties and nineties, UM,
and in other places as well, but especially Thailand. Uh,
they've cut down a lot of mangrove for us to
make these uh shrimp farms along the coastline. UH. And
then you've also got the sea level rise that's uh
causing destruction. We mentioned parts of Australian belize that those
(33:43):
um soiled deposits are outpacing it. But that's only in
a couple of those places it is. It is not
doing that in other areas. No. Um, so that means
that sea level rises outpacing soiled deposition there. UM. I
want to say one more thing about shrimp farming too.
I looked a little bit into it, cannot decide maybe
it deserves its own episode Who Knows. One of the
(34:05):
other problems with shrimp farming, in addition to um a
shrimp farm sharing the same kind of land or a
mangrove forest that landed occupies being desirable for a shrimp
farm so you cut down mangro forest to build a
shrimp farm, is that when you harvest shrimp, you basically
have to refresh the water. So shrimp farmers typically just
basically opened a dam and let all the water out,
(34:29):
and the water is filled with tons of nutrients that
overwhelmed the carrying capacity of the ecosystems the mangrove forests
around the shrimp farm, and you get what's called an
algae bloom, which sucks up all the oxygen, kills off
all the fish, and has just this devastating effect on
the ecosystem surrounding it. So shrimp farming is really hard
(34:52):
on the areas where it takes place, not just from
the shrimp farms themselves, but from what comes out of
the shrimp farms as well. And there's just so many
basic good best practices that could be followed that just
aren't followed that there's almost like a general like duh
coming out of the shrimp farming industry. As far as
I can tell, that really needs to be fixed. It's
(35:14):
almost as if they just wanted to continue to make
as much money as they can before they're regulated in
some way. But I mean, what are you gonna do
if you try to regulate them at all? You've got
a nanny state on your hands. And who wants that? Yeah,
and it's shrimp farming is just one tiny fraction of
the great amounts of harm that are happening to the
(35:34):
ocean because of lots of things, but commercial fishing and
is certainly one of them. I will say, though, it's
really hard to turn down shrimp on pizza. You're heading
or something. No, no, that's that was from years back.
I used to love shrimp on pizza. All right, talk
to me more about this. What what what? What are
we talking us? Throw some shrimp on a regular cheese
(35:56):
or is it like a barbecue pineapple thing? No? No, no, no,
a regular pizza. But you don't want to use just
any shrimp. You certainly don't want to use jumbo shrimp.
You want to use the little tiny salad shrimp because
they cook just enough with the pizza. Bigger shrimp might
still be partially raw. It's gonna be too big to
eat some of this. Yeah, you just throw some of
the Well, now I think they usually come already cooked,
(36:18):
now that I think about it. But you just throw
a couple of handfuls on your pizza, put it in
the oven, and they thank me later. Basically, Oh, man,
I love shrimp. I don't know about shrimp and pizza. Well,
now I feel bad about eating shrimp knowing how bad
shrimp farming is. It's uh, yeah, it's another wake up call,
isn't it. Well, yes, and I've been awoken because I'm
(36:39):
now farming my own shrimp here at home in a
very sustainable manner so that I can have it on
my pizza. Bathtub shrimp, that's right, it's delicious. We don't
take baths anyway. Yeah, you mean's like, why do you
have an out of order so on on our bathroom door? Right,
I'm still trying to figure out how to break the
news to you mean, we don't really have a working
bathtub anymore. Uh So there are also invasive species that
(37:03):
can uh totally wreck the health of a man. Gall
uh And the seventies in China, they were trying to
do the right thing. I think there were conservationists that
um transplanted some marsh grasses that were from the United
States there to try and slow erosion, but it crowded
out mangroves. And then in Texas they weren't trying to
do the right thing. Um. They the vision game officials there.
(37:28):
Um they said, Hey, people like hunting this uh exotic
Asian antelope. It's called a nil guy I guess and
I l g a I. So let's put them in
Texas so people can hunt them. Um. And it turns
out they love to eat mangroves. Yeah, so they're they're
being deforested by the game that was imported to Texas
to hunt, which means I'm sure there's huge bounties on
(37:50):
these things now too. Yeah. Isn't that funny how that
all works out. So there are people who are like,
we really need to work on this, We need to
get mangroves back. Um. And there are places where this
is the good news. Mangrove deforestation globally speaking, on average
has actually stopped progressing and is now starting to decline.
(38:11):
The deforestation is so people are are you know, kind
of getting hip to the idea that we really need
these things. They provide countless services for us humans, So
even the most selfish human can get behind mangrove restoration, right, Yeah,
I mean I think there's about of the worldwide mangals
are protected now, but you need that number at like
(38:34):
while at a hundred. But I would feel much better
if it was like in the eighties or nineties, you know. Yeah,
And not only that, like like areas that have been
developed closely need to replant the mangroves that they cut
down to to um to build because they need them
really bad. You need mangrove buffers, as we've found. Whatever
you can get is helpful, that's right. But there's another
(38:57):
kind of clever financial instrument, as they call called blue bonds.
It is a subset of green bonds. Green bonds came
around a while ago, and these are basically, if you
have money and you want to invest responsibly um in
a way that not only doesn't impact the environment, but
can help the environment, you invest in a green bond,
(39:19):
or if you're really into the ocean. The subset of
blue bonds, which were first introduced in right, and so
it's like you want to offset your emissions. You buy
a blue bond and all of a sudden, you've just
paid somebody to go plant some mango or not mango,
maybe mango too, but mangrove forests, right, yeah, mango forest.
(39:41):
That sounds delicious. It would be I'd be like planet
in my backyard to plan it with my bond. So
look into blue bonds and green bonds. It's UM. I
saw something depressing the other day when they were I
don't know what they were talking about on the news,
but they basically said, like, if you have an i
RA A like, you were supporting all kinds of companies
that you would probably never support in real life. Yeah, definitely.
(40:03):
Mutual Yeah, mutual funds to just everything is all lumped in.
So they were trying to encourage people that if they're
able to to be a little more selective and and
what they choose to invest in, Well, there's a lot
of sustainable mutual funds to UM that where they're you know,
very carefully selected. Unfortunately, that means the management fees going
(40:24):
to be higher. But if you care, it doesn't really matter,
you know that was it really uh? A higher management fee? Yeah?
Any time it requires any additional thought or effort. The
management fee just automatically goes up. Had to click on
three extra things, right, I had to find out what
these blue bonds were. That's my impression of a mutual
fund manager. Yeah, financial advisor. If that's your financial advisor's
(40:47):
an the wrong person. I meet him at Burger King
every couple of weeks in the back. Yeah, where else
would you meet? Um? You got anything else? Nothing else?
Up with Mangroves with Mangroves. Uh. And since we both
set up with Mangroves everybody, that means it's time for
a listener mail. Uh. This is a thank you from
(41:09):
a Satanist. We had a great podcast that we must
have put this on a select recently. I guess, yeah,
like two weeks ago. Okay, Hey, guys discovered your podcast.
Have been hooked ever since. Your informative banter Field episodes
remained a welcome constant in my life throughout college, adult years.
In our parenthood, was helping me stay sane during sleepless
(41:30):
nights with my newborns. When I saw the episode on Satanism,
I guess I hadn't listened to it previously. Um. I
was simultaneously excited and nervous I would. I hope you'd
give it the usual Josh and Chuck treatment, and I
was not disappointed. Over the years, I've been given a
lot of grief being a Satanist. People often assume that
I'm a very devout Christian based on the way I look,
and often go from praising me to threatening my family
(41:53):
upon learning that I followed the tenants set forth by
the Satanic Temple by shedding some light on the true
nature of Satanism, Um, I feel that you have given
many people a looking to the practice in a non
threatening way, and hopefully this will help people choose kindness
over fear based hatred when interacting with Satanist in the future.
And thank you for being bold enough to put this
episode out in the world. I'm sure it wasn't that easy,
(42:15):
but this long time listener appreciates it. Your friendly Satanist. Donna,
thanks a lot, Donna, Donna Satanist. Um. Yeah, that was
that was a good one. Because I went back and
listened to it to QA before it was a se
life sounds like this was a really good episode, But
there was one thing at the beginning, Chuck, that now
I wish we had back um, because a couple of
(42:37):
people wrote in and it was that we we se
O eight at the beginning, saying like, if you're you know, Christian,
you probably don't want to listen to this, And people
wrote in and said, no, like you you should not
have said that, because there's plenty of people out there
who should hear this and you know, change their views
on people who hold these views. So, um, if you
go back and listen to that, just plug your ears
for that first part and then listen to it through again.
(43:00):
That was forty year old Chuck talking, right, not not
fifty one year old Chuck. That's right, It's that's a
weird number to say it is, Chuck. Fifty one is
a weird number, and it's going to be a weird
time in your life, I'm sure of it. Er. That's
that's what I think. I'll always say it is. You'll
(43:21):
always be younger than me, no matter how much I
want you to speed up the aging process, You'll always
be younger. You would have to travel to Mars and
suspended animation and I just have to stay here on
Earth for for me to catch up. All right, I'm
gonna look into that. Thanks a lot, Donna. We appreciate
that big time, and if you want to be like
Donna and send us some kudos, we'll take them. You
(43:42):
can send it in an email to Stuff podcast. The
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