Look, I get it. We're probably tired of hearing about all the doom and gloom surrounding climate change, all the consequences of climate change and all the money that's involved in climate change. Like I know Canadians, we as Canadians are sick of hearing about carbon taxes and all the money that we have to pay as out of pocket to help climate change. However, today we're going to switch it up a little bit. We're going to talk about climate solutions, no money
from us, no carbon tax, no taxes at all. We're just going to focus on climate solutions. And today on the program, we have Dr. Annalisa Bracco, who is a professor and associate chair for research at Georgia Tech School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, specializing in ocean and climate dynamics, not only is she specializing in ocean climate dynamics. She also has experience working out in space and she talks about how familiar things
are in space as they are into the ocean. We're going to hear all about that and her projects as she's been collaborating with a number of different engineers and scientists and business people on climate solutions on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey
everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, we're
going to be talking about climate solutions. And before we get to that, if you want to know more about what you can do to help protect the ocean, you find out more information from
us, you can go to our website at speakupforblue.com. All you have to do is go to speakupforblue.com and then if you want information to your inbox to find out more about the episodes that we release, to find out more about the news that's being released on the ocean, and you can find out more about jobs that you can search for to follow a career in marine science and ocean conservation, just sign up for our newsletter. Go to speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter. That's
speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter. Let's get into the episode with Dr. Annalisa Bracco, who is a professor and associate chair for research at Georgia Tech School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, specializing in ocean and climate dynamics. And as I mentioned before, she was like a physicist that looked at space and looked at the how galaxies were formed and how planets were formed and modeling all the stuff around there and how similar space is and modeling space is
compared to the ocean. Very, very interesting. We talk a lot about climate solutions. We talk a lot about how she was told by her own father that you wouldn't do well in physics because you're a woman. And we'll see what happens with that. She became quite interested in looking after things about physics and pursuing all things surrounding physics, and she is here right now to talk about her career, to talk about climate solutions, and why she switched from just modeling
climate change to climate solutions. We're going to talk about that today. Enjoy the interview with Dr. Annalisa Bracco, and I'll talk to you after. Hi, Annalisa. Welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about ocean climate solutions? Absolutely. Love it. I love it. I'm really excited about this episode because a lot of the times when we talk about climate change in the ocean, we really focus on the doom and gloom. We don't talk a lot about solutions. And today,
we're going to be talking about some of those solutions. A lot of it is experimental. A lot of it is in the research phases. But it's really great to be able to look at hope down the way. And I think that's what we need a little bit in today's world. We need a lot of hope. So I'm looking forward to being able to discuss that with you, Annalisa. But before we do, Absolutely. So my name is Annalisa Bracco. I'm a professor at Georgia Tech in climate and oceanography. My
background is in physics. So my degree, my bachelor degree, was in theoretical physics. And I got that in Italy at the University of Turin. And then I did a master thesis or research work looking at the formation of galaxies. And from that, I entered in a PhD to study the role of vortices in the formation of planets. And I do all of that using numerical models. And then after a couple of papers on the planets, and how they form after the star has
exploded, has formed. So we have the sun, we have a proton nebula, we need to figure out how we aggregate stuff to get to the planet. After doing that, I was essentially asked by my advisor to get closer to our planet and work possibly in the ocean or in the atmosphere, because he was kind of switching research. The equations that describe the motion of the gas around the star or of the oceans are the same. You may make very different approximations, but at the end of the game, the
players, the big players are exactly the same. Because when you have a star and you have a nebula around, what happens is that the nebula is rotating around the star. So you have rotation. And then you also have stratification. Because all the gas and the heavy, the gas it's all around, and instead the heavy stuff, so all the dust that forms after the star explosion, coalesce in the center. And so you have a thin layer of a dense object
that is rotating. And that's really what the ocean is, is a relatively thin layer on a big object, which is rotating. And so really, the equations and the forces at play are very similar. So it was a relatively simple switch. I love to sail. I love the ocean. And so for my side, it was very easy to pick the ocean against the atmosphere. I ended up
also working on the atmosphere. I have nothing against the atmosphere. But at the time I said ocean and that stick with me and I definitely do more research related to the ocean that Phenomenal. I love that because a lot of the times when you hear people talk about space, like say government talks about space or you hear like SpaceX or whatever and we're like we want to go to space, we want all these billionaires are wanting to go to space and stuff and explore
space. A lot of times, like, well, let's forget about space. Let's focus on the ocean. It seems very divisive. It seems very like people are pitting one against the other. But why can't we do both? And I love the fact that you have the similarities in terms of the equation and modeling the ocean and out in space and formation of galaxies. And they're actually all similar. So we're here arguing, like, let's spend less money
on space. Let's spend more money on the ocean, which I get. But in reality, maybe some of the models that were used for space can be used for the ocean and vice versa. It's just a matter of finding those similarities. So I love the fact that you've crossed over that. But I have to ask to go back a little bit and talk about your interest in in physics as a young woman, right? What got you into learning
about physics? That's not something you hear every day. And to be honest, and this is a feat to you, is as a woman, you don't see a lot of physicists come out, right? You don't see a lot of women being known as being physicists. So how I was not very much encouraged for a while. That's a very different story. So my dad is Yes. My dad only managed to get through middle school. Wow. He was born just before World War II, so
there was kind of no money. He had to go to work, and he actually managed to get through middle school just because some teacher really pushed him. push his father to let him do it, because the problem was really the family needed him. But then he got into the army, because that was a safe job and the job that pays you every month, when he was very young. And from there, he... Is this And essentially he got in the, what here will be the Corps of Engineering. Okay,
yeah. And so they were building bridges, they were rebuilding the whole infrastructure for Italy and especially train bridges for the rail system. And he started studying on his own. And then in 1969, there was the opportunity for people that didn't have a high school degree to take an exam and get through and if they pass and enroll at Wow. How old was he in Yeah. OK. So fairly late to think about university, but He was already married. My mom really pushed him to do that.
He had this passion for physics. He had read and learned a lot on his own, just reading books and things. And so he entered. So he passed. But then decided to stay where he was and not go to university because that would have delay having a family and things like that. So I was born a couple of years later, in fact. But at the same time, that allowed him to advance in the career in the army as if he had a high school degree. And so he was able to get into the Military Academy for the Corps of
Engineering and teach applied physics. So I grew up with a father that would teach us physics every single opportunity he had. So I do remember, not too fondly, those trips where he, you know, any kind of something that was moving in the car, and we would have to go through the centrifugal acceleration and always get to calculate, you know, what is the minimum What is the ideal distance for a satellite to be in a geostationary position? And
I was six or seven, and my brother was younger. And so, you know, he always came to me to do all those calculations. And of course, I was doing them wrongly. I mean, I was six or seven. So he decided I was really not talented for physics. But it got me to think a lot about that. And it got me then later on, we start talking about general relativity. He was, he had read everything about that too. I mean, the original textbooks
by Einstein. And so I got to be interested in that. And then one day he told me, but you are a woman and women are not logic. And so you cannot understand physics. I got so mad that I ended up saying, well, I'll show you. And that's pretty So it was more of like to prove your dad wrong to say hey, you know what you've been teaching me all these years I picked up a few things and I've got an interest in it. I'm gonna do it. I like that.
I like that. That's really interesting And then so then from there the so that means, you know high school, you know You I know I took very little physics in high school I actually went for classic literature. I was very very talented in literature and writing so I did Greek and Latin for five years and just a tiny bit of physics, but I enjoyed that tiny bit. And then I really went, I mean, I really did physics as an undergraduate
because I wanted to show him that I could do it. And in fact, I finished and before getting into a PhD, I took a year off and I went to do classic literature as a bachelor degree. and decided that I was getting bored because I was missing research. My last year as an undergraduate in Italy, it's essentially equivalent of a master, you have to work on a thesis and I
really enjoyed the research part. So I went back and I tried to enter in a PhD, which is hard in Italy, just percent to advise because it's an exam that you have to pass nationally. So there are very few positions open. Things have changed, but when I did it, it was like that. And I remember calling my dad and saying that I was dropping a job offer that I had received because I wanted to first try to get into a PhD. And he told me, you are good, but not that good. I was like, well,
Do you think he knew what he was doing? Because the first time he said no, and then you're like, no, I'm going to show him. And now he's telling you, no, you're good. You proved his point, but No, when I got in and I actually placed first of the five people that were admitted that year, I called him. He's the first person I called and I said, I'm in. And he told me, well, how many got in, like five, and how did you place first, and how many other
women? None. It was completely by chance. At that point, like the following year, there were three women out of five, so Yeah, yeah, or the mix at that point. I mean, you know, the numbers are so small. You start with 70 people, you have to get down to five. Some years will be female, some years will be male. But he was very impressed by that. He was really impressed by the, you know, you put four guys Yeah. You're like, you're ahead of four guys. You're like, Hey, what? Remember
That's fantastic. So you get into a PhD program and you're still doing, this is not the galaxy Yeah. I started looking on, I started working on, uh, of formation of planets. And then I switched to And again- You switched to oceanography while you're doing
Okay, because you're a supervisor. Again, vortices in the ocean are fundamental for oceanography, so But I'm sure, and you say very easy, I say no way, because just what you're probably working with on the regular, I wouldn't be able to understand because you sound much more intelligent than I am in physics. But going from space to ocean, just from a mind perspective, one, you're exploring the vastness of space where you could probably make a
number of different discoveries. You could probably do a lot of wonderful things. Now, obviously, you can still do discoveries because there's still a vastness to the ocean. But it seems like there's a little bit more limitation. And I say limitation by a squeeze, right? But in comparison, was there a shift being like, why am I going from space to ocean? Did No. I love the space part because I love just the idea. you
are learning how everything formed and all of that. But I must say that because I was already working with models, the possibility of applying it to something where I could have observations or I could at least solve actual problem, it became a little bit less abstract. And we were also at the time where climate change was starting to become a problem. So no, I was very pleased to do
that switch. The fact that I had something to anchor what I was doing and to see the application of what I was doing directly, it was So I finished my PhD in 2000. So I started in 1997. I finished in 2000. So I made Right. So I was, the reason why I asked was more because of the, you mentioned climate was, we were really starting to, we were starting to focus more on climate at that point. And that's true. I remember starting to learn, I went to university, I did my undergrad in
97 to 2001. And that's when I started to really find out more and more about climate. And even though it wasn't necessarily being talked about in the public eye as much up maybe until the earlier 2000s, but It was in the academic sort of circles. It was being discussed quite a bit. We knew that there was going to be problems 10 to 20 years. And surprise, surprise, we have problems 10 to 20 years later and so
forth, even 30 years later. At that point, though, did you see, focusing a little bit on climate, knowing where this is going, did you really understand how, one, good for your career this would be because you're working in climate, but also understand the depths of the destruction that climate change No, not at the time. Also because I was a student and I'm always being kind of optimistic, like I just, it's really curiosity what at the end drives me.
And the other thing that I would say the ocean was bringing was the possibility to really work at the intersection of physics, but also chemistry and biology, which is something that I had in me already from the university, the undergraduate time. So I wanted to be able to do something that was more interdisciplinary. So I didn't see it coming as much. And also, I would say, we started having satellites and having really good information about climate only in the 80s. So we were just 15 years
or less than 20 years in. The trends were not there yet. The record was just too short. But we were coming out of the biggest El Nino in the century, the 1996 event, and also what that meant for population all over, from India to Africa. So there was a lot of, you know, we can understand more, we need to understand more, and we can also be useful to society. That was interesting, and it was also what drove me into the field. Interesting. Okay, cool. Now, after which you finish
up your PhD, what happened next? Where did I did a postdoc. I came to the US for the first time for a long period. I did a postdoc at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. And then I went back to Italy and I worked at
UNESCO for three and a half years. UNESCO has one research center, which is located in Italy, it's called the International Center for Theoretical Physics, and they were growing And then I came back to the United States, and in December Yeah, I had another year at WUTSOL in So I know a lot of it was research-based, but working for an organization like UNESCO, especially in Italy, where I feel like Italy is a bit of a headquarters for a lot of international organizations, UN, FAO
is there as well, UNESCO obviously has an office there, it's a pretty big hub for international type of work and research. What made you decide to pursue one kind of a little bit, get away a little bit of that and not work directly for them, but also move into an academic position? Well, there were a number of work-related, personnel-related, a lot of things that got together. But I was happy to get to a faculty position because I wanted to work more directly with students. And
I truly enjoy advising. So I wanted to have that opportunity and build a group and kind of give also back to the new generations, you know, the passion, the kind of curiosity that I have. And so that for me was important. I love it. And in Trieste, you can do a little bit of that. And you do a lot of that with students from developing countries, but are usually shorter interactions,
like they come for a few months, and they go. So it's a little bit It's not like a three to five year, depending on what they're doing, whether a master's or PhD, or even a postdoc, where you can, you really get into a mentorship role with that student. And I think that really, yeah, I agree. I think that's a really great feature for academia. And now you've
been doing that since, at Georgia Tech, since then. That's Yeah, no, another thing that really brought me to Georgia Tech that I enjoyed very much was the fact that there was a lot of go and a lot of attention for interdisciplinary projects. So there was a lot of support for that. And so I enjoyed that from the beginning because I started working in collaboration with people in biology, School of Physics, and College of Computing, and now brought me here and kept me
here. Georgia Tech is a great school. It's a big school. It's got a lot to go by. It's very popular. Now, how did you feel about coming from Italy, where you have European football, and you come to Georgia Tech, where you have American football, which is pretty big I don't watch American football. I don't understand it. I used to. Okay, I still watch the
Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, I had to push that in there because I feel like that was a big change Now, is there a lot of difference between doing a PhD in Italy and then mentoring PhD students and graduate students Yes and no, in the sense that the Italian PhD comes after an undergraduate, and now it's different, but anyways, it's three plus two years even now. So it's five years and essentially you
already do the equivalent of a master. So when you start your PhD, it's shorter, it's three years, and it's really focused on research. There are almost no classes. While here, it's longer and is essentially what in Europe or what in Italy would be the master plus a PhD. With five years and the first couple of years, there is a substantial amount of coursework that you have to take. So
in that sense, it's just putting together the two things. So it's different, but at the end, it's- Same amount of time, just different way Yeah. It's interesting because I live in Canada and the research thesis for a PhD is very much research-based. You do some courses if you need it, but there are students who don't. They may do one or two courses if they need it, but it's very different there.
So it's interesting to hear the European versus North American and the differences and similarities from there. Now, since you've been at Georgia Tech, it's been almost 20 years, I guess, since you've been there, your work has stayed on oceans and climate. How has that evolved over the last 20 years for you and just sort of how we've been involving as a society as well?
I think we definitely shift from just understanding the climate system and trying to attribute the changes in the climate system to greenhouse gas concentrations increasing to aerosol increasing initially and now decreasing and so on to really trying to find solutions to the problems and to working much more towards adaptation and mitigation strategies versus just we want to understand. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And now you are focusing a lot now on, I guess, less theoretical sort of applications and more, I guess, practical applications, especially when it comes to climate. Why Well, again, I think that if you just identify the problem and you don't work on the solutions, it's a lot. Obviously, it's important to identify the problem and understand the problem. You cannot solve it otherwise. But there is a lot to be said for also trying to figure it out what is the best
way to address it. And I think Georgia Tech in that regard, it's a fantastic place to be because you have so many opportunities of collaborating with people that can bring also the solution side, the engineers, for example. And so it's kind of an automatic thing to do, at least for me because, again, I do like to work collaboratively and I really appreciate to be able to have that engagement and do new things all the time. Of course. You learn if you are working with someone that
Absolutely. Can you talk about maybe one of the first projects that you worked on where it was more solution-focused and where that collaborative effort happen and how that collaborative, like how that networking Sure, I have several at this point. There is one that I find extremely interesting which is about sargassum in the tropical Atlantic. We have had since 2011 blooms of sargassum in a region of the tropical Atlantic around 10 north where we never used
to. Right. And those blooms are growing, are growing over time. They're becoming bigger and bigger, essentially. And they are really impacting the Caribbeans and the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Florida because all this amount of the sargassum at some point gets to the beaches and it needs to be cleaned up or it rottens. It's absorbing a very large amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to grow, but then it's releasing it once it gets to the beaches. And so we have to figure out why it's
Yeah. And just to interrupt a little bit, I just wanted to give the audience a perspective on how much actually comes to the coast. I went to Mexico one year, and along the beach, it would
go up to my knees. in in sargasm like i was really up to my knees in it and it was all along the beach to the point where there are now this was a resort there were garbage truck, or not garbage truck, sorry, dump trucks that were just there constantly, just being filled up with diggers and being filled up with sargassum, and then they would go and dump it somewhere, and then they would come back, and they would do that
all day. So that tranquility that you expected on a beach wasn't very tranquil with trucks working 24 hours a day just trying to get all that sarcasm off. So I just wanted to kind of put that in perspective to people, like how much is coming along the beach? And that wasn't just Mexico. That was a lot of beaches in the Caribbean, as you mentioned, in Yeah. Florida and Caribbean, I think together, they're spending the order of $300 million per year now, just for cleanup purposes,
because you cannot leave it on the beach. Otherwise, you kill the tourists. Yeah. Yeah. huge nuisance on top of being, you know, bad for the environment if Yeah, exactly. Even just the smell of a degrading sargassum is Yeah, so, you know, I'm working with colleagues in the School of Biology, I'm working with colleagues in chemical and biogeochemical engineering, and in mechanical engineering, to try to figure it out why we have this excess of sargassum now. what is promoting those
blooms and are they going to continue in the future. It doesn't look that we ever had them before. Also from historical records, so written records, we don't have records of blooms this large in that area. But they appear in 2011. We kind of know why they appeared, why they are growing. Not yet, not that clear. So I'm working on that. But we're also
working on trying to figure out what to do with all this sargassum. There are several groups both in the US and in Europe that are considering essentially pulling it together when it's possible out at sea and sinking it. And we need to figure it out how much that costs also from an energetic perspective, and what could be the damage, if any, that we do to the ecosystem in the deep ocean if
we dump those large amount of sargassum. And of course, anything that you do in the ocean, if it's within the 200 miles from the coastlines, also need a policy and the legislation and permits, and so it gets complicated. Yeah. The other solution we are thinking is to collect it and then transform it into biofuels. And that's the colleague in chemistry and chemical and biogeochemical engineering and
the colleague in mechanical engineering that are looking into that. And the problem of converting sargassum into biofuel is that the amount of lipid in the sargassum is quite limited. And so you would need to spend a lot of energy to increase that concentration. So we are looking for ways of doing that in a natural, with some kind of natural system that can help us in that. And so a colleague of mine, Jeff Davis, is looking into using black fly larvae, which
is a fly that lives in the tropics. And it's very good at eating up a lot of sargassum or other material. And it's very good at accumulating lipids. And therefore, then you could extract the biofuel from Which is crazy to think about. If you think about this larvae, there's probably about maybe this big to extract all those lipids and how much you have to extract
Exactly. I think a lot of people would cringe at just the fact of But it's a very efficient way of doing it, and it's not very expensive at all, also from an energetic perspective. And those flies have no side effects to I don't think they bite, the black... Because the black flies up here in Exactly. Keep them constrained. Keep them all in one spot.
Keep them all together. There is another that I read recently, an article of someone that in the Caribbean is using the leftovers from a brewery that make rum, essentially, increase, to make a mix of that plus sargassum that can be converted So the byproduct of making rum used to mix with the sargassum to create the biofuel, or Yeah, and another one of just using sargassum that has been shown to be possibly a good idea, this has come from Mexico and is essentially a
one-person business. or one family or a family business, and they are making bricks out of sargassum. So they are drying the sargassum and compressing them and making bricks. And one good thing about that is that those bricks seem to be better. So if you make a house out of those bricks, it will resist or it will be resilient. towards So far you've identified two to three things that Sargassum, like the byproduct of using Sargassum, would actually help sort
of people adapt to climate change. So, you know, we have the bricks, which are stronger than regular concrete cinder blocks that are used, I guess, in Caribbean houses and homes that will make them even more resistant to the higher winds that you would see in hurricanes, like in more intense storms. We also have using a biofuel, which would probably be better than using regular fossil fuels to provide energy for us, which is great. Did
And you can sink it, yeah, because it is absorbing carbon, right? So the idea is to allow it to absorb carbon, but not allow it to release the carbon back into the atmosphere, which would be... Not only does it absorb carbon, but you can even make it better by creating a biofuel and a more resistant brick that could help in building houses in the Caribbean and this thing. So there's a lot of benefits here, not just
one benefit, but there's a lot of solutions for this climate solution. And so where are they at in terms, like obviously the person in Mexico, small business, family owned business, is slowly starting this up. Is that scalable? Do Yeah, I don't know. Honestly, I've not looked into the scalability of the problem, so I cannot answer
That's for economists and business people to worry about. You worry about more We are looking into the scalability of sinking it and the scalability of making biofuel using the Gotcha. Now, let's talk about the sinking of it, because I've heard a lot of different things when we hear about sinking these carbon sources. If you sink carbon sources, they go to the bottom. I guess the idea, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that it becomes basically like hydrocarbons again, eventually going
into the seafloor and then kind of burying them in the seafloor. And they don't get released. They just stay there, just kind of like how we see oil and gas pockets that we get now. They're just in the seafloor. The problem with that, though, is like you mentioned before, we just don't know the potential, if there are, consequences of sinking that much into the deep sea. We just don't know the ramifications of
Correct. The deep sea is full of bacteria and viruses and other little animals, and so the impact of having those big chunks of sargassum, it's not obvious. I would say probably is not huge if you can do it far enough from any kind of coastline. Because you can imagine that when a whale dies and sinks, it's not releasing less. It's not being a smaller perturbation than a whole patch of sargassum. The problem with the sargassum is that it's going to happen
more or less in the same place every year, right? And it's very, very hard to put forward these kind of solutions without having the data to prove that you're not damaging the system. And unfortunately, those data are very expensive to collect, because you essentially have to send, you have to sync and you have to send down cameras and you have to go back, you know, after six months or after a year and try to figure it out what is happening. And so it's
And expensive. Yes, absolutely. To do even those pilot studies where it becomes expensive. It's similar in a way to what people are worried about with deep sea mining. That's more of an extractive exercise and an extractive opportunity, whereas this one is more of an addition, where we're actually adding more stuff. But like you said, it could happen in the same place And unfortunately, we just don't, if it's done to scale all at once, we don't
know the ramifications of that. If it's done in spots and it's done properly where it's allocated in different regions and we can see the breakdown happen, if the breakdown does happen down in the deep, then maybe it'd be a little bit better. I think the problem is just people just don't know, right? When we talk about carbon capture like that, is we just don't know and we see that there could be a lot of bad things that could happen, which is probably giving that resistance enough to try
Yeah. It's also that, I mean, right now, in order to put those solutions forward, we have to be able to verify what the outcome will be, how much they will take, how much carbon they will take down, how much they will cost, because there is
also a cost associated with going and collecting it. And you have to make sure that the CO2 you use by running your vessel that needs to go out and collect is not offsetting all the advantage I mean, you can hope to use solar panels and all of that, but you have to do a calculation and you have to make sure that you can do it that way. And so there are still a lot of questions that, unfortunately, we don't have answer
to. But I can see the sinking, the conversion into biofuel to be absolutely potential good solutions to the problem. And, Yeah, exactly. The toolbox will have to How close, for both of those sort of solutions, how close are we to getting some of those answers? For the syncing, have there been any experiments of syncing Sargassum?
Yes. Okay. And if I'm not mistaken, group from Great Britain has done most of that work, because they managed to link with a company that would like to do it and get credit for it. And so they, they were sinking Sargassum, I think, this past summer. and they will go back and they put cameras and they instrument the regions where they put it down. And I have not heard from them. I
It's the summer, so it's still early in terms of it. Even with one years of data, you're still going to need multiple years of data to really find out the true difference, if there are any, in Yes, but I think that if we can show that clearly there is no major change of any kind, and it's just, you know, being chewed up by bacteria slowly, that would be... Yeah, as long as you show that there's a decomposition. Yeah, yeah. And for the blackfly larvae, my colleague here
is working in the lab and doing some experiments. And my other colleague is advising PhD student that is looking at how that would scale in terms of cost and in terms of how many larvae we need and how big needs to be the implementation Let me ask you this. How many larvae does he have in his experiments? I'm Oh, right now he is in the lab. It's I feel like that's a lab I would not want to go and visit because there's No, he's looking at optimizing the
mixture of sargassum. If you just give them sargassum, they don't grow all that much. So you have to add a little bit of something else that they really like, especially at the beginning. And then once they pick up and they start growing, then they will eat all the sargassum you give them. So they are trying to optimize that. and really looking at having curves and all the data required to then eventually move forward and put actual data into how
Gotcha. So again, still fairly early stages, but the experiment's going on to give us those results and to continue those results going. That's phenomenal. That's really cool. Are there other projects that you've been working on, doesn't have to be recent or could be a little further or even recent, that you Yeah, we are working on several projects related to coral reefs. Okay. We have developed in my group, again, I'm a modeler. So we use
models all the time. And we have developed a machine learning system. So using a little bit of artificial intelligence to figure it out what is the connectivity among reefs. So essentially, if you have a reef or an area in the oceans where you have a very healthy ecosystem, or anyway, a very important ecosystem that you want to observe and preserve, possibly.
You know that because of the oceans, there are currents, it's probably connected to someone else or to something else, because it's probably exchanging genetic material to larvae and fries, which are the baby fish, with another region outside this localized area that you're looking at. And because currents are pretty powerful, those regions can be pretty large. So essentially I can be in Fiji and I may be getting larvae from a place that
is 300 kilometers far away. And so I want to figure it out if that's really the case and how far I can go depending on the kind of fish or the coral species that I'm considering. Depending on that, I will know more or less how long a larva can survive in the water. Right. You
know, be able to then attach and spawn. Yeah. And so we are doing that using artificial intelligence and machine learning and essentially using satellite data of sea surface temperature anomalies because they are linked to currents and building networks where we can see that. And we have done it in the Pacific. We have done it in the Atlantic. and we've done it in the Mediterranean
Sea. So that has been really interesting because in the Mediterranean Sea we don't have much in terms of corals but we have been able to follow the invasions of the species that comes from the Red Sea to the Suez Canal and in the last 10 years or so have been really damaging the Mediterranean ecosystem because they We have essentially imported tons of lionfish, and lionfish, nobody can eat it, and they
destroy everything. So we have been following essentially how the lionfish are spread, most likely through eggs, brought to the Suez Canal. In the Pacific, we have been able to look at why certain area in the Coral Triangle is doing pretty well overall. So it's sometimes it glitches because temperatures are going up and we had very strong El Niños and La Niñas and usually when those events happen, temperature there really change drastically. But nonetheless, they are recovering. and
they continue to be quite biodiverse and relatively healthy. So we have checked, we figured that and usually, so what we found is that the system is incredibly dynamic. And so in the Pacific, there isn't a single place that, or at least there are areas where no matter what happens, some other area will bring new larvae in within a year time. And the usually they don't bleach at the same time. Right. You know, one is maybe very sensitive to La
Niñas, the other is very sensitive to El Niños. But what happened is that when I have an El Niño, the one that bleaches get larvae from a different place, and whenever I have La Niña, the one that was giving the larvae may receive it from another one. So year to year, the variability of the connectivity among reefs is very different. It's very, very dynamic. And that has helped the system in certain areas, not everywhere, to really stand out as it's still doing well despite everything. The
same is not true in the Atlantic. And in fact, in the Atlantic, we are not seeing corals recovering as much as certain areas of the Pacific. Now, is that because the sources are not changing or is it because... That dynamics is not there, the variability is not there. Essentially, the current system goes from Brazil, Belize, north.
And so if you cut and if you kind of bleach and really damage any point or any big chunk in that trajectory, because the trajectory is pretty much always the same, you are going to essentially cut the supply of fresh larvae. healthy larvae to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbeans. And so Florida, Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbeans have been seeing strong It's kind of interesting because we see the output from the Amazon River
in Brazil. I don't think we understand how damaging that could be and how powerful that mouth is in terms of that current and then going up into the Caribbean, into the Gulf of Mexico. Is that correct? Like a lot of No, it's really more that temperatures have And we are really bleaching systems just because of temperature. Just because of temperature. And other stressors, the Florida and the Gulf of Mexico have, you know, one thing to be very clear, it's not
just that is getting warmer. It's also that we are dumping much more stuff in the ocean than we used to. And so the Pacific has the advantage of still being more pristine, just fewer people live on those islands. Some of the islands are completely inhabited, have no people living there. The stressor in the Atlantic are heat, for sure, but
also pollution, big time. And overfishing and having just weaker ecosystems on That's why it's so important to have marine protected areas and quotas and stressors, or not stressors, sorry, regulations to decrease water pollution. all to help these animals adapt to the higher temperatures. So if we take away all the human stressors, or most of those human stressors, then perhaps the corals and other animals have the ability to adapt to the higher sea
Yes, absolutely. So I have a colleague actually, just my office on the side, who has worked on sea cucumbers. And he has found that, for example, in Moorea, where there is a big effort that has been going on for more than 20 years, funded by the National Science Foundation to do a long-term monitoring of the coral reefs there. Some reefs have been doing much better because sea
cucumbers have not been eradicated. Sea cucumbers have become a delicacy in certain Asian countries, and so there have been fish, and really overfish, and sea cucumbers, they discovered, they just published last year, are really the cleaners of the bottom of the ocean. They really remove any kind of virus, bacteria, stuff that you have. And so they help corals to thrive immensely. And so I postdoc here at Georgia Tech, working with my colleague Markay, was
trying to plant corals. You can break coral and make little corals and plant them, essentially, in order to establish a population that has been damaged. And there were a bunch of sea cucumbers where he tried to do it and he removed the sea cucumbers. And for the first time, all his corals, little corals died. And so he made the connection that, you know, usually his efforts have been successful in the past. And so why this time that happened? And he remembered he has removed, he removed the
sea cucumbers. And so they went back and they started studying it and found that they are essential. So that's another stressor that we add just for They're not particularly tasty. There is no reason, you know, it's more Yeah. As many times it is. Yeah. Yeah. It's very, very similar to like shark fin soup in a way. Except sea cucumbers are probably not as iconic as a shark, you know, when we think about it. Exactly. This is, you
know, fantastic. This has all been quite interesting. You're working on a number of projects. Is there anything upcoming that you're starting to work on or you just started to work on that you're looking forward to Yeah, we are working on a large project across different universities to figured out how much alkalinity enhancement we could do in the Gulf of Mexico and through the Mississippi River Basin to
what is called weathering. This consists in adding essentially pulverized rock to agricultural fields or directly in the ocean. to reduce the CO2 by forming carbonates. So the CO2 that is in the air will react with the dust and form carbonates and then those carbonates will eventually sink if they are in the ocean or if it's done over agricultural land will end up in the waterways. at the end if it's the Mississippi River basin in the Mississippi and
therefore in the Gulf of Mexico. So we are doing high-resolution simulations or simulations down to one kilometer essentially of what it may happen in the Gulf of Mexico if this is scaled up. And as part of this project there are also farmers that are trying to see the impact of using fertilizers that contain a little bit of the dust and so really trying to see also at the land level what the impact could be, how fast
they will get in the water system, in the waterways and so on. So this is incredibly interesting because it goes from really land to ocean to the region, linking Absolutely. Showing that watershed effect on the ocean and how important it is to manage not only water and oceans, but also land. I think we see it a lot and you probably see it a lot, especially where you are in Georgia Tech in
terms of the Mississippi plume. We've known for a long time that that plume has a huge effect on the Gulf of Mexico and everything that comes down, all the fertilizers and all that that come down and cause that big bloom in the spring and then the bloom goes down into the bottom as the phytoplankton die and then you get that bacteria that uses up the oxygen to decompose that and you get basically
hypoxic zones along the Gulf of Mexico. However, if you start to turn that around, and start to look at what you can do in terms, like you mentioned, putting in the rock dust onto the fields, getting into the Mississippi
or getting into the waterways, getting into the ocean. You can reverse the shift from alkaline to acidic and really help out not only corals, but a lot of mollusks like oysters and mussels and clams and scallops that can help build their shells and snails and crustaceans like lobsters and shrimp and everything that use calcium, that need calcium in their bodies, right? So I think
that's, this is all fantastic. I mean, this must make your work such like a lot better than just identifying the consequences that climate change, you know, can cause. How has this changed your outlook, like switching from modeling the effects of climate change to looking at solutions?
Personally for you, how has that changed your outlook on sort of what climate change can do Well, it gives me hope that, you know, we are at the point of really thinking about how to solve the problem or at least how to find solutions that make sense and that can help. Again, it's not a done deal in any way and the portfolio of solutions that we will need is really large because the problem is
big. But I also see, you know, the Gulf of Mexico has also a lot of, we do a lot of work with NOAA, so the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, looking at both corals and fisheries and how to best manage them. And there is really a lot of attention in trying to preserve what is left and help with the resiliency of those systems. So it And I think that also looking at communities and fishing communities, fishermen's
communities, they do understand. So it's much easier today to work with those communities and they have seen the changes. They have seen the decrease in fish, for example, in the population, so in the ecosystems, the damage, et cetera, and they want to help. And there is a discourse that it's much better than used to be. And what is great is that the science ivory tower Yeah. Yeah. That silo has come down and you're getting more
into the community. And I think it's a benefit for not only for you as a researcher, but also for your students who get to interact with the community and be able to work on projects very similar to those, or maybe building on the projects that you're already working or even expanding those projects where we're seeing more and more solutions and increasing that hope. Because look, we know one solution is not going to solve this. It's going to take a lot. It's going to take a lot of people.
and to be able to collaborate, which is a huge part of science, as well as conservation, and to be able to find these solutions that, you know, whether it's one or two or three or all of them that work out, then And I think... Tomorrow I have a phone call, a Zoom call with program managers and a student of mine and a colleague of mine in mechanical engineering, because we would like to learn how coral listen, how coral larvae respond to sound. Right.
Because we think that that will really help restoring some of those coral reefs. And it's just unbelievable. Like, you And, you know, we have a problem and there are a bunch of people trying to solve it. And so we can also think of using sound or chemical cues and trying to figure it out how they...
And what I love, it's combining that research of discovering these amazing things and then putting it towards a solution that can help rebuild these very important habitats and hopefully find ways just like we did, just like you did in the Southeast Pacific, like in near Indonesia, where the coral triangle, where there are some corals who
are doing really well. Why are they doing really well? Because then you do the research and you figure that out and maybe that can be duplicated somewhere else, or we can find similar patterns and trends, because that's what science does. And I love what you're doing, Annalisa. I think it's fantastic. And I want to thank you so much for coming on here and sharing your research with us, as well as your collaborators. I think this is something that we need to see and hear more of. So I
really do appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing that. And I would love to extend another invitation on to discuss more of the projects that you've done at a later date, to be able to get updates on the projects that we discussed here. and learn more about some of the other projects that you Thank you, Annalisa, for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean
podcast. It was great to be able to hear about your career, your determination, your motivation to prove people wrong, including your own father, which I think is really great, and to show how well you can do with that motivation and where you're at in your career is unbelievable. The stuff that you've accomplished and the stuff that you're helping to accomplish by looking for solutions on climate change.
I just think it was really cool. talk about how we can use a problem, like a pesky problem like sargassum just accruing on the beaches and accumulating in the amount that it is on the beaches. As I mentioned, like I went to Mexico and there was knee deep in sargassum and people don't like it. Sargassum doesn't really feel good on the feet or on your skin. It's a little rough and people just don't like it. They think it's gross and nobody wants to swim on
a beach like that. So imagine taking that sargassum and doing something good with it. to either sink it or make biofuels out of it. I just think it's absolutely amazing to look at the different things like to use actual black fly larvae to be able to accomplish what you need to make biofuels out of sargassum. these are the types of solutions that we need to find out. We need to do everything we can to get to solutions, and not only just one
solution, we need to find many solutions. Because it's not just going to be one and done. We're not going to find one solution that's going to fix everything. It's not going to be fixed right away. It's going to take a long time to do so, but we need to do everything we can to do that. So I think Annalisa is on the right track. I think she's really showing by leading as usual, and that motivation to say, hey, you know what? You can't do it. She can
do it. And then she will show you and more. So I just thought it was wonderful. I'm going to link to all of Annalisa's links so you can connect with her and you can follow her. And also if you want to get a hold of me and DM me on what you thought about this episode and what you think about Annalisa, I would love to hear your thoughts. Just hit me up on Instagram DM me
at HowToProtectTheOcean. That's at HowToProtectTheOcean. And of course, if you want to follow for more, you can do so by subscribing, following on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple, and in your favorite podcast apps, and you'll be able to learn more about how you can protect the ocean. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of the HowToProtectTheOcean podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin.