I Don't Know About That - The Great Barrier Reef

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

In this episode, the team discusses The Great Barrier Reef with marine biologist, teacher at Cambridge University, and author of the Guardian bestseller "Spirals in Time", Dr. Helen Scales. Go to HelenScales.com to learn more and purchase her books, including her upcoming children's book, "The Great Barrier Reef", coming out in June! Follow Dr. Helen on Instagram @DrHelenScales and on Twitter @HelenScales. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/IDKAT for ad free episodes, bonus episodes, and more exclusive perks! Tiers start at just $2! Go to JimJefferies.com to buy tickets to Jim's upcoming tour, The Moist Tour.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey. Early. Late. On time. Which one's the morning? You might find out, and I don't know about that, with Jim Jefferies. It's a trick question. Well, the morning's early.

I know, but you could be on time in the morning. Bless you. You're going to have to be late. I need a tissue, Jack. Gross. Why are you looking at it like that? I can't close my hand. Let's hear from our sponsors.

Kleenex. Gross. I'm sick everywhere. That's the kind of stuff we try to say for the Patreon, Jim. We go to the Patreon. If you haven't signed up yet. It is what it is. If you haven't signed up yet, Jim doesn't sneeze on the Patreon.

No, he never has. Sneeze free? Sneeze free. sneeze on the patreon no he's not he never has yeah he's free he's free yeah yeah if we got one of them we got one of those guards they put up at the sizzler over the bar yeah to protect the microphones no and that's this do you guys know which microphones are which yeah is that always gems i didn't get anything on it i went up to the side bola now oh geez whatever happened to the bola it looked like it was gonna be something i don't know they wrote books on it too and it was really hard for it to live outside of the host that's the problem with it yeah but a bola was like

you had to have somebody sneeze blood on you like to get it not i mean you just it was hard for it to live outside the blood had to get inside your body somehow which is not a bowl is like sky for you and now it's been killed by Zoom. Oh! It was like what? It was like Skype. It was like we thought it was going to be big and then Zoom came along. Oh, yeah. Skype dropped the bowl. Another one could aim for or

something, aim or something like that. Aim trap, but then that all went belly up. That one came out at the same time as Skype and I was like, I heard Skype and I just got my first computer. I was like, I'm going to put Skype on it. And then they were like, no, no, no, you want your aim four. And I was like, I don't know. There's a few things in the internet that I've called out early. I never went Hotmail. No. No, everyone else is going Hotmail. I went straight to Yahoo

and I've been Yahoo ever since. Yeah, but Yahoo's like. Yeah, but it's still around. Yeah. All right. Yahoo is the Hotmail of since. Yeah, but Yahoo's like... Yeah, but it's still around. Yeah, all right. Yahoo is the hotmail of Gmail. Yeah, yeah. Fuck Gmail. Fuck Gmail. Who uses Gmail? Everybody uses Gmail.

Not me. It's Google. What do you know? You don't check your emails, so it doesn't matter. I don't use any of them. You don't even use a computer. Yeah, I try not to. I like to go back to a simpler time.

When's that? Ah, you know, me and my son after playing in the street with his hoop and a stick. Oh, you like hit the thing with a stick? Hit the thing, we play a bit of kick. He's gotten really good at it. We play a bit of kick the can. Do you remember that when Jason Whitehead got really upset?

I wanted to do a thing on the Jim Jefferies show about kick the can and like we go, how old is this bloke? Him and his friends play kick the can. Hey, you got to kick the can. And then I sit in the writer's room and I went, whoever played kick the can? It's not like these fucking old time people didn't have balls. And then Whitehead goes, oh, no, like the can can't go very far.

Like a ball you kick too far and then the can has to sit upright and become a base. And he knew every fucking, he knew every rule of kick the can. That's why you gotta keep him around. He's got arcade games. Also, he's in Canada. You know, kick the can. It hits a bit of snow and it just stops.

How many kick the can months do they have in a year? Prime kick the can season is September through November. I mean, maybe when they don't have a hockey puck, they use a can. You could play in the snow. What's wrong with the can? Doesn't have to go far. Yeah, but not in the real snow. You don't want to kick your foot around in the snow. No, man-made snow. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Playing on asphalt. You send in all your different kick the can materials that you go. What's asphalt? Oh, concrete. You send in all your different kick the can materials that you go. What's asphalt? Asphalt. Oh, concrete. Well, asphalt. No, I really thought asphalt was something I didn't know.

I just say asphalt. Oh. That's how I pronounce it. Really? What do you call it? Asphalt? Asphalt. Asphalt?

Yeah. Asphalt. You got any dates coming up? Not that my wife knows. You do. I know you have. No one digger Luis. He's like cheating.

I very rarely get them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Squeak. Squeak. Oh, God. Sounds like a maiden. You've got to listen to the Patreon. You get a lot of that. Yeah. That's right. We definitely only do that on the Patreon. What are you doing? Why are you gotta listen to the Patreon. You get a lot of that.

That's right. We definitely only do that on the Patreon. What are you doing? Why are you giving that to the people? It's a teaser. If you want to hear more Mexican, I don't know if the cat calls the right words. Gritos. Like Fritos with a G. It's like, hey, welcome.

It should be an item at Taco Bell because they call them gritos and it would be some version of a, you know, gordita mixed with a taco or whatever. And then you have the campaign, gritos, where they're doing, do your grito and get a free grito. That should be a thing. If you pick three items, if you pick the right combo,

you get the grito from the guy behind the counter. Wow. Wearing a taco bell wasn't bad enough. Now you're going to fucking, ah, fuck. Ah, fuck. He did the quesadilla crunch wrap supreme in a normal taco. That's the third one this week. It's like a cold stone when they start singing for you.

They sing it cold stone? If you tip them. That's why I don't tip. I'm like, I tip normally. I'm a good tipper. But any place that sings to you when you tip, I'm like, you're not getting tipped. Yeah, they sing while they do the

Cold Stone bit when they put it all together. What do you mean? The mixing of food. Yeah, and then they start singing. Anytime they start singing, I'm tempted to take money out of the tip jar. It's a punishment. Johnny Rockets does that little tiny thing on your table where it's just got Elvis Presley songs.

No, no, no. And you're like, I'll find the song that they all have to get up. Yeah, no, I don't like that. And then also when they greet you, when you come in, there's like some burrito place. Hey, how you doing? Welcome to Moe's. Yeah, Moe's. I'm already ashamed to be here.

And Moe's is shit as well. Yeah, it's terrible. They never become a sponsor. We're a Paquito Musk family. Okay. So I was saying March 11th and 12th, you're in Las Vegas. Viva Las Vegas. Yes, I will be there.

13th Salt Lake City. Yeah. Wonderful. I look forward to it. Bring all your wives. And then the 25th and the 26th of March are in San Antonio on the 25th. Bring your wife. March 26th, Sugar Land, Texas.

Bring your baby that you didn't want to have. I think that's basically. Pre-abortions at the Jim Jefferies show. The coat hanger tour. Very moist. I think that's Houston. I'm pretty sure. Sugar Land's very close to Houston, yeah.

Okay. And then April 7th through 9th, I'll be at Sidesplitters in Tampa yeah he's been building up this gig for a while, Sidesplitters I'll be building up until April 7th through 9th if you live in Tampa or near Tampa, go there and buy tickets, what else are you going to do?

pick your nose? yeah, live in Tampa I've already been there, I can shit on it all I want they're a very nice crowd actually I like Tampa. I'm just saying, you know. You were at those gigs in Tampa? I did.

If you enjoyed Forest, did you do well? I think you did well, didn't you? Yeah, yeah. That was the gig. Good time. And so go see Forest in Tampa. Also, go get the Patreon. What have you got to lose? Well, five bucks.

You wouldn't be losing it. It'll be paid back to you in full. It's an investment. In laughter and fun. You know what it is? It's a great gift. To yourself. To your friends, to your family.

Yeah, you give someone, you go, here's a password, here's a thing. Enjoy yourself. Oh, can people give them to other people and not tell them, like a Netflix thing? Yeah, probably. Don't do that. No, no, no. You can't share it.

Well, they can share their login. That was somebody else. Shut up. Yeah. What are you doing? Shut up. Listen. You can't.

You can't do it. Patreon's got a thing where they don't let you do it. Face recognition. It's in there. Also, follow us on Instagram. IDCat Podcast. Follow us on there and follow everybody else on the show except for Luis and

do not listen to this podcast Luis is wearing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt What's he called in Mexico? Uh... Mickey Mouse? Mickey Mouse? I'm not too sure. I don't know if there's a specific one

Miguel Mouse? Miguelito? Is there's a specific one is there a Miguel Mouse Miguelito Miguelito is there like a Hanna-Barbera Land like they used to have Hanna-Barbera Land

in Australia one of the theme parks Hanna-Barbera Land yeah you gotta like not everyone can afford the big fucking franchises

your Disney's and all that type of stuff in your dream works yeah there's a Warner Brothers theme park I went there I wonder what Hanna-Barbera Land?

What is that? Is this Yogi Bear? Fred Flintstone? When you got to, that's the ride. You got to take your shoes off and. No, but the characters walk around. Oh no, there are the Fred Flintstone cars. There's a Fred Flintstone world. There's a Hanna-Barbera world.

Anyway, Hanna-Barbera Land. And I think it was a dream world in Australia or whatever. But the Speedy Gonzales, that would have been big. That would have been a big popular thing. about bear land and i think it was a dream world in australia or whatever but the speedy gonzalez that would have been big that would have been a big popular thing i hate to break this up but our guest is here yeah but i want to know you love speedy gonzalez right you reckon he was in your community was like you were like yeah that was our superman that was your superman yeah yeah and then like you could fool the kids by go we're gonna go look at speedy gonzalez there he goes oh you missed him well anyways follow anyways, follow our Instagram.

And then also, you know, go to Jim Jeffries' website for all his tickets and go to my website and just buy stuff. Also, you can't buy this hat. This hat was given to me. Yeah. I've never made a cent off a piece of April 18th merchandise, and every fucking show I play, there's 23 pieces. There's someone sitting on a big pile of April 18th money.

You're welcome. All right, well. All right, please welcome our guest, Dr. Helen Scales. Hello, Dr. Helen Scales. Now it's time to play. Yes, no. Yes, no. Yes, no.

Yes, no. Judging a book by its cover. All right. All right. Do you reckon it's one person's voice and they've done it four times or you brought three friends in? I think it's one person. That's Mike Miller, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So Dr. Helen Scales is here to talk to us about something. You're a doctor. Your name's Scales. Weight loss. Doctor of weight loss. Well, it talks about weight loss and metaphorical, metabolical things and metaphorical. No, that's not what she's here to talk about. Okay, so

are you a doctor of medicine? I'm not. No. No, you're not. Oh, I sense an accent here. He has an accent. Well, you do too. We all do. Bloody Americans. Fucking Americans with your, what's it like to have an accent? That must be so cool.

Okay, so you've got a guitar. You've got some tribally things. You've got a ye olde record player poster. Okay, are you a doctor of philosophy? I think technically, yes. That is what it stands for. I think so, yes. Okay, so you're British. We're talking about science today um we're talking about science today we're talking about science something in the world of science a place that you've been in a place that i've been yeah oh are you a doctor of despair

doctor i guess we all are doctor of loneliness you did a field piece on it at the jim jeffrey show did a field piece on it at the Jim Jefferies show. I did a field piece on it. A science thing. Sorry, like conspiracy theories? Flat Earth? A place. A place? Yeah, there was a cartoon there.

I'm pretty sure that was a cartoon there. I'm just looking it up to make sure that's where I was looking. Is that where the cartoon takes place? I don't know. Amsterdam. Doctor of Amsterdam. What cartoon's in Amsterdam? Doctor of Amsterdam. What does that have to Doctor of Amsterdam. What cartoon's in Amsterdam? Doctor of Amsterdam.

What's that have to do with science? What cartoon was in Amsterdam? Lots of cartoons. You've seen all the cartoons. Okay, wait. But I'm just... I think Ellen DeGeneres is like the... Doctor of Lesbians. That's science.

Doctor of Comfortable Shoes. Doctor of Dancing Only When you're on screen. Doctor Schultz. What Pixar movie was Ellen DeGeneres in? Oh, Finding Nemo. She's in Finding Nemo. And then you've been here. The Great Barrier Reef.

That is it. The Doctor of the Great Barrier Reef. Doctor Reef. Let me introduce her. Dr. Helen scales is a Marine biologist, like you writer and broadcaster. She kept with it.

Yeah. I think she knows more than me. Not a, not a quitter. Okay. She is author of the guardian best. Nice things you could have by now. First,

if you just stayed with it, let me introduce her. She's the author of the guardian bestseller spirals in time. And her latest book is the brilliant abyss and also her children's book the great barrier reef will be out in june in the u.s she teaches at cambridge university and is a science advisor for the marine conservation charity sea changers you can find her on twitter at helen scales on instagram at dr helen scales and her website is helen scales. That's S E a L E S.com. And you can find all the links for her books on there and all the books she's

written before and anything that you would like to see related to Dr. Helen scale. So thanks for being on the show. And she said we can call her Helen after Helen. Yeah. Just because we're in form. I'm already intrigued. Helen, you're, you're, you're a British person. That's talking about Australia. Didn't you come over and take over Australia a long time ago and why do you people think you can still do it? I haven't actually been to Australia for a little while. The Barrier Reef for even longer actually. It's been a little while.

It's not as great as it used to be. I'll tell you something about the Great Barrier Reef though. We went out and did that field piece and they said all the – and, like, I'm pro-global warming – not pro-global warming. I'm a believer of. I was like, where is global warming? I'm a believer of global warming. You believe in science. I'm not a global warming denier or anything like that.

And they took us out and they said, these corals being bleached, it'll never come back to normal. Then the guy who brought me out to the reef came to one of my shows three years later and he's like, yeah, that patch you went to, it's all better now. And I was like, what the fuck? I just went on TV and said it will never repair. So you didn't want it to get better?

I do want it to get better, but I'm like, he told me it would never get better. Now I'm already, there's people sitting there going, I told you so. Yeah, well, we'll find out. That's what we're going to talk about today is the Great Barrier Reef and a little bit about reefs at the beginning. Okay. Again, coral reefs.

All right, Dr. Helen Scales. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask Jim a series of questions right now about the Great Barrier Reef, a little bit about coral reefs at the beginning, and then at the end of him answering these questions or probably not answering some of them, I think you might know some of them. I might know some of them, but I'm not well. I've been to the Great Barrier three times in my life. Okay, you didn't get any points for that.

Yeah, but I didn't pay. I went once with you. I know. And so at the end of him answering these questions, you're going to grade him on his accuracy, 0 through 10. 10's the best. Or his fart had killed a lot of coral. That's not what happened. But you're going to grade him on confidence. I'm going to grade him on etc. I made no categories for today.

Yeah. What a lame person I am. Why would I not do that? Great. Okay. And terrible. How about, how about,

uh, uh, good reef. And okay. So on brief 20, 20 to 30, you're the great barrier reef, 10,

11 through 20 are just a good barrier. Good barrier. Yeah. Zero through 10, the worst barrier. That's a good reef. Like, barrier reef. 0 through 10, the worst barrier reef. It's a good reef, like Charlie Bridger. Good reef. Good one.

Good one. Okay. So first question, what is Coral? She's a girl I dated for a while back in high school. Is the girl named Coral? I know a few girls named Coral. You never met a girl called Coral? Never.

You ever met a boy named Coral? No. That's even weirder. That's Carl I met. What is Carl? No one ever asked that question. What is Carl? Carl is a living organism that sits in reefs that is sort of... Is it an animal? It is. It's... Yeah, I believe in the same way there's jellyfish or something. Or the same way that plants...

No, I don't believe it's an animal. It's a living, it doesn't have a heart or it doesn't breathe or anything like that, but it's a living organism. Okay. Not an animal, so a plant? I'd say plant. Okay. Yeah.

I might be wrong there. What is a reef or a coral reef? It's a collection of coral put together into a reef. It's a collection of coral put into a strip of area. Where do you find them? Off the coast of countries in the ocean, you find them. I don't believe you find them deep into the ocean. I don't think you find coral reefs right where there's no other land.

Okay, so like what specific things need to be there for a coral reef to exist? You would need a certain type of water. It's also a reef is a habitat for a lot of animals as well. That's good. I was going to ask you what roles do coral reefs play in the ocean. They're habitats for a lot of things, like Nemo, who is a clown fish, you know, things like that. There's a lot of animals that live within the coral,

and they use the coral for protection. It's their home and they don't really swim outside of their reef. Okay. What else do coral reefs do? Good for tourism. Tourism. That's great. They would, I believe the coral would have something to do with cleaning the water around it to make it more habitable for the fish that live in it.

Okay. This is an easy one. Like where is the Great Barrier Reef? Off the coast of Australia in the north of Queensland. Okay. Up in the tropics. How large is it? Oh, I believe it's a, this is just a guess,

because I'm trying to remember when we did the film. I'm going to say 500 miles or it could be kilometers, but 500 miles long. Do you know how old it is? It would, billions of years, it would be as old as the planet. When the country is aligned into this type of area, it would be as old as anything. How long does it take for coral to grow?

I would say it would be like an inch every 100 years. Or a centimeter every 100 years. Alright, name 10 animals that live or use the Great Barrier Reef. Is fish just an animal? You want me to name breeds of fish?

No, species. Only 10. You don't have to do Latin names. Tropical fish? Sharks? I meant like, you don't have to do like Latin names, but just, you know, tropical fish, sharks. I meant like, you know, say type of shark,

but octopus. Okay. Wobbegon sharks. Yeah. Ever had sharks? Yeah. Um, uh,

clownfish, uh, whatever, dory, uh, whatever dory is. What is dory? Uh,

dory is, I think you can call it just a Dory, isn't it? Yeah. Maybe now. I don't think so, but you can, we'll put Dory in there. Um,

Oh, loads of different fish. I've seen big, what was that big one? You got that photo with, that was, he was the size of a fucking, I remember what it was.

Yeah. One of those, those, those stupid size of teeth. It was a type of wrasse. Yeah. Type of what? That guy.

Wrasse? We should put that picture of Forrest over the fish. I got to tell you, when Forrest swims, he's like a fucking, he's just so elegant. He was swimming with these fucking fish and he was going, doing back flips. I think to show off, but also because he's part fish. I was having a good time.

I was in the Great Barrier Reef. I was walking around snorkeling i'm not a bad snorkel in the sense that i don't panic but i'm a bad swimmer you know i mean but i stay under the water a long time and all the japanese and chinese people were losing their shit big man and fish big man and fish and they were they were taking photos there's somewhere in some house in china there's a picture of Forrest on the main wall. Merman. Another Merman photo.

What are some threats to the Great Barrier Reef? Forrest doing one too many backflips. Yeah. Mining is a big one. The coal industry is a big one. Sunscreen, I found out, was a thing that certain types of sunscreen can leave a filament in the water that actually affect and bleach the thing. But the main one is the rise in temperature.

Because if the water rises by even half a degree, that's going to really fuck up the ecosystem of the water. And that'll cause bleaching of the coral. Okay. What is coral bleaching? See, the coral is meant to have color to it. When it turns white, that is basically dead coral. And the bleaching, there'll be people who argue that we've had episodes of bleaching and that it's natural and it goes bleached

and then it comes back again and all that type of stuff. And there'll be other people who'll argue that once it's bleached, it's gone forever. But we do know that there are parts of the Great Barrier Reef that have died that are never coming back because it's been too long. Okay. What is eutrophication? Say that again?

Eutrophication. Eutrophication. Eutrophication. Did we do a podcast on that? Yeah. Eutrophication. I have no idea. What is crown of thorns starfish and how does it relate to the Great Barrier Reef? Crown of thorns starfish is, well, the Jesus of the sea.

And when you put the crown of thorns on it, I've always said that about Jesus. I tell you what, if you got a fucking nail through your wrist or your hands or whatever, who gives a fuck if there's a few thorns on your head? Why they wrote so much about the crown of thorns and then they're like, he had a nail in his feet and a nail in his wrist and he was hanging there from his limbs if you give them father for oh they know what not what they've done and then they put a few prickles on his forehead get the fuck out of here it'd be a welcome

distraction so how does how does the crown of thorns starfish relate to the great barrier reef uh it would sit on top of other the the the jesus fishes and hurt them a little bit. Okay. So you said that some parts of the reef for sure are dying. What would happen if the whole Great Barrier Reef died off completely? Well, yeah, I know that that would be a disaster, but I can't tell you exactly why. I know that it's beautiful and people want to see it, and it's really one of the great wonders

of the world and we shouldn't want it to die just for that reason. But I'm sure it would have, you know, of course, probably many, many species of fish would be killed off and we never see them ever again. And I believe that the Great Barrier Reef probably protects that part of Australia from certain pollutants or whatever coming into the shore. Okay. Who is responsible for management and protection of the Great Barrier Reef? Dave Knuckley. Oh, yeah.

Dave Knuckley. All right. No, I would say Australian government, really, when it comes to government. But is there like a department? Yeah, the Department of Reef and Water. How many tourists visit the reef each year? And how much money does this contribute to the

Australian economy? It's huge, the Australian economy. I would believe 3 million people a year visit the reef. Okay, they're bringing them much more than that, not money. 3 million people a year visit the reef. Okay. They're bringing them much more than that, not money. Yeah. And let's say that each one of them spends a couple of thousand dollars. So let's say hundreds of millions.

Hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. Okay. We'll talk about ecotourism maybe. Okay. This is the last question. You know, it's not, I mean. If the reef dies, what's the point of say C right the city of the city of cancer what's the point

of that it's it's like it's like the auto industry leaving detroit right the place goes to shit so there'd be many most important thing no no but there would be many tourism things and many coast even port douglas and all these type of places would really struggle. All right. And there's the last question from our manatee episode, but sort of kind of relates to this. What is a dugong? Fucking dugong.

A dugong is like a dolphin with just like a normal head. Like a human head? Oh, no. that sounds scary. That sounds so bad. Alright, Dr. Helen Scales, how are you doing? Good. Zero through ten, ten being the best. How did Jim do in his knowledge

of reefs and Great Barrier Reefs? I actually think I was pretty good. Yeah, I did solid seven 7 I think 7 pretty good I've been doing very well it's good

there's a lot of good stuff in there I would give him a 5 on confidence that's 12 I'll give you a 2 on your fucking scoring he's never scored back before. I'm never going to live that down.

I'm not even giving you a score now. We're just skipping the scores. You made it not fun, Jim. I asked Jim what coral is. He said a girly dater from high school. Then he got serious and he said living organism that sits in a wreath, not an animal, no heart, doesn't breathe, plant. How do you do on that? Okay. So, so the started badly. Yes, it is an animal. Um, you were right with jellyfish that

you were wandering around jellyfish for a bit. Uh, yeah, they are basically kind of cousins of jellyfish, but they're tiny, small little animals, but they are kind of half plant as well, which is a kind of important thing about coral. They have these tiny algae living inside of them. And we'll come back to that, but that's important. So they're kind of part, they are definitely animals, but they have like, you know, there's symbiosis going on. I went to Vanuatu as a kid and my parents bought, you know, some tourism tchotchkes and came back with, we had on our coffee table a big bit of dried coral. I didn't know it was a dead animal. It is.

I have one behind me, actually. There's one right here. Do you want me to show it? Sure, yeah. Would you like to have a look? That's exactly what we had. But I remember, like, you'd get bored on TV and snap a little bit off. I actually didn't buy this.

Yeah, that was the stuff. Yeah, I was, it was part of a research project that was left over. Uh, it was illegally, illegally traded. Actually. I did a project on now was this whole huge consignment that came into the UK from the Philippines. And I studied it and I might not have given it all back. Well, while you're showing it, you can do, maybe you can show it. Cause so like Jim was saying he had a whole dead animal on his table, but the whole thing isn't in that. like so at the end it's like all

these little tiny bits the little like pimples is a polyp each one is this sort of independent little tiny coral called a polyp and they all join together to make the skeleton which is made out of basically chalks it's calcium carbonate which is what it's built from so there'll be like hundreds of corals making up this one piece that's one of the big things when you do swim on the reef is they're like, don't step on it. Yeah, because they kill it. Squash the animals. Oh yeah, but you should, don't because it's really sharp as well. It'll really hurt you. I mean, it'll really hurt you. Yeah. And then I asked him what a coral reef is. Where do you find them? He said a collection of coral.

That's a good answer. Off the coast of countries in the ocean but i was kind of hitting that like where what conditions they need to be in and like a coral reef obviously is a collection of coral right i mean right right um but in hot countries basically yeah in like tropical warm yeah i should have said hot places but i thought that was implied. Why would it be implied? Oh, everyone knows. I go to Norwegian for the skiing and the coral. Well, I don't know. I go to Norwegian.

I know. I was going to let that go. People might not know that. That's what the podcast is for, for people to learn. If you can fucking download a podcast, you should be able to know that, you dummies. All right. Well, you're very antagonistic today. I don't know i got a cold okay um what roles do coral reefs play in

the ocean jim said habitat for animals they use it for protection good for tourism and cleans the water around it that's good that's good actually i want to go back i forgot to say that there are there are other places where corals grow and we need to know this too they do actually grow in norway but just deeper so you i think you mentioned that corals don't grow deep, but they do. They're different to these ones, the ones that grow on corally, tropical, beautiful Great Barrier Reef type places. But they do. They grow like thousands of metres down in the dark.

Yeah, but you can't scooper dive down to see them, can you? No. They're in the dark. You could go in a submarine with lights on it. And they're really beautiful. Some of them are really some of them are really really like stunning shapes and colours and stuff. So there is like half

of the corals that we know of live in the deep sea and half of them live in the shallow sea. Do you want to apologise to all the people who thought coral was a normal thing? No, only because you don't go on holiday to see it. Okay. It doesn't count as coral. The people of Norway are going to be so upset. We have ski resorts in australia people don't travel from norway to bloody do it i'll tell you that much

um so yes they do go deep and then oh what do they do yeah that was a good answer i think you um kind of nailed most of that um fishing is also uh a thing in many tropical countries there's a lot of important like fisheries based around coral reefs maybe yeah there are people still fish around the great barry reef as well so that's a thing um but generally they yeah they support like livelihoods and stuff like that as well as like the tourism and the species and all of those i want to put turtles turtles as your as one of your answers what kind of turtles big ones like out of finding nemo i've swam with the turtles man yeah okay turtles are cool yeah turtles i once got knocked Turtles as one of your answers? What kind of turtles? Big ones, like out of Finding Nemo.

I've swam with the turtles, man. Yeah, okay. Turtles are cool. Yeah, turtles are cool. I once got knocked over in Maui just like I was with Kate. Thanks, Mom. And then she was like, where do you think the turtles are? And I was walking back from the beach going, there's a whole heap of turtles.

I just swam with them. And then one of them just came and swam in and clipped my feet from underneath me. Boom, I hit the ground like a bag of shit I did. Oh, fuck, this thing barreled onto me. In Hawaii you're talking about, right? In Hawaii, yeah. Yeah, they're everywhere. In the underwater, they're always off.

Yeah, Maui, you can see tons of them. Yeah. That's very cool. I asked them where the Great Barrier Reef is, said north of Queensland or in Queensland, right? In Queensland. In Queensland. So how large is it and how old? Jim said 500

miles or kilometers, doesn't remember, and as old as the planet. It is bigger and not as old as that. It's like 2,300 kilometers from one end to the other. And it's actually probably less

than 10,000 years old. So what happened basically was like Australia used to be stuck to Antarctica. And then 85 million years ago, it broke away and started moving up towards the equator. So it was only at that point it was like warm enough for corals to grow. And then like way later at the end of the last ice age, there was like a big, like all the stuff melted and the sea levels rose. And then the reef started forming on the edge of the uh australia so it's only yeah in the last 10 000 years that a reef has been growing now and for people that don't know kilometers which is some of our listeners that's 1400 over 1400 miles long but still you got the 2300 kilometers you still know

yeah apparently the size the area is uh oh wait no oh, wait, no, we'll come back to that. We'll come back to that. Oh, the area? Yeah, we can just skip around. So if you're talking about the whole area. Yeah, sure. Like 340, this is square kilometers again, 340,000 square kilometers, about half the size of Texas.

So if you know how big Texas is, then that'll give you a sense of how big the reef is. Yeah, well, that's. But people only visit a very small portion of it correct yeah i guess there's like certain islands and bits which are pretty easily accessible um and you know like yeah where the boats go and stuff and those platforms and things that people swim around so yeah i guess they're not all open if you've never been there they build these platforms that are just like where you'll have a nice lunch they'll give you a wetsuit you jump off the platform you have a swim you can even walk under the platform if you're

not much of a swimmer and you can go look around that way and uh it's a little submarine it's not a real submarine it was a glass bottom submarine that just floats yeah yeah it just floats yeah you can submerge you can sit in that submerged boat and go around and take but it was nice i mean that's where we went. And so, you know, you could see that there was some damage to coral because of the tourism there, because people, no matter how many times you say, do not touch it, don't step on it, whatever, people might do it. However, the argument would be made is like, if you're concentrating the people that are going to be visiting it into these areas, I mean, at least this is what I think, Dr. Schultz. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I mean, there's obviously loads of money,

which we'll come to as well about like being raised by all this tourism and yeah. Keep them in one place. Yeah. It's a shame that it's suffering and you don't get to see the best of the reef, but at least, yeah, it's not sort of. It was still great. I mean, I'm, I'm. It's one of the great things to visit in the world. It's wonderful. Oh yeah. it's wonderful great oh yeah it's wonderful now because it really is i mean i was yeah i was really lucky and i get i've been like on boats that have gone to other places and and it's true that the first i kind of like

diving on my own or at least with like just with one other person and so you can just get the whole place to yourself and then you really get to see some really cool things but we even during what was it gold week or something yeah i think what was it, Gold Week or something? Yeah, I think it's like a Chinese holiday. It's a Chinese holiday. Correct me if I get this wrong, but this is the gist of the holiday. Golden Week, I think. Golden Week or something.

The Chinese government goes to the people of China. I think it's one-fifth of their population. Like a lottery maybe? Yeah, there's a lottery. It's maybe one-fifth or one-tenth of their population. It's like getting jury jury but in the in the mail next week no work for you golden week right you get an extra week a holiday out of fucking nowhere right it's just a surprise you might get it and so the the reef that was golden week and then all the chinese tourists are just going all right

fuck it i'm going to the great barrier reef and they all came down in droves yeah yeah there's national golden there's a bunch of them when i'm looking on wikipedia but it is like a holiday and yeah it was but it that it was um you know i've you know i'm from florida i've i've dove on a lot of reefs and that was like part of my whole job but it's just the the density of the great barrier reef is unlike anything i've seen and just the relief and it was just even that small area where i were, I was like, wow, this is.

And the water, the water is lovely and warm and clear. And that was nice. Um, okay. And so is it like, so they call it the great barrier reef. Is it the biggest reef?

I didn't even ask you that, Jim. It's the biggest reef. Yeah. Biggest reef in the world. So I'm sure of that. You're positive. Yep.

About the greatest. Have you ever heard of the greatest barrier reef? No. Yeah. That's the biggest one. Yeah, me either. Australia's very proud of that. So make ship happen. All right.

So we're talking about the Great Barrier Reefs with Dr. Helen Scales. And the next question that I asked Jim was, how long does it take for coral to grow? He said a centimeter every 100 years. So it depends on which coral um some of them do go really slowly like the big ones that look like brains with all those wiggly lines over the surface that are in huge big boulders and those boulders can be really huge i don't know if you saw any that were just like you couldn't have you know wrapped your arms around them if you if you wanted to those will be like hundreds of years

old probably like maybe even a thousand years old and they grow really really slowly possibly as slowly as you said um but then ones like the guy i have this guy which is the branching kind of knobbly ones they tend to grow a bit quicker so they can actually grow um as much as like uh sort of like a 10 centimeters a year maybe so like yeah like so much a year and what types of core i'm sorry the big ones that grow slower or like the you were saying brain like the brain coral yeah and the brain corals grow really slowly so i don't know more like a fingernail a year i'm not sure but it really depends on like the temperature and of the water and the nutrients and all that kind of stuff so it it will really vary. But yeah, the branching corals, like the staghorn corals, which look like staghorns,

ones that look like fingers and stuff, they tend to grow quicker. And that's probably the stuff that was growing back in that place where you said you dived and it was actually growing back a couple of years later. That is probably like these kind of quicker growing species, which is cool, but you kind of need all of the different types to have a good reef. So you need the big brains as well. The thing about the bleached coral as well, it is actually very pretty still because it's all white and bright. Yeah, it's very pretty.

And so people are like, what's the problem? It looks good. Yeah. Well, I was just going to say that first. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, at first it is. So you get that kind of like snowy white. Like I've dived on a reef.

I was in Belize when the reef there, which is the second biggest reef. So Grey Barrier Reef is the biggest barrier reef. If you want to Belize that. It's the second biggest. And it was bleaching while I was researching it. And so slowly, like the whole thing, over a number of weeks, just kind of went white.

And that was really weird when you kind of didn't realize it at first. And you were like, hey, wait a number of weeks just kind of went white and that was really weird when you kind of didn't realize it at first they were like hey wait a minute that shouldn't be white um so yeah they go so they lose the um the algae inside that's why it bleaches and they go white that's what the color comes from and then they die well a lot of it dies and then it kind of basically breaks apart or gets covered in seaweed and kind of turns to brown mush so you come back later and it yeah it doesn't look like rubble right and it's just like a pile of rubble exactly it just breaks apart so maybe we can um well we'll get to that actually uh so uh um name 10 animals that i don't know what this is but tropical fish sharks octopus, dory. I think dory is a type of tang. I don't know.

Yes, or a surgeon fish, yeah. Surgeon fish. And the turtles, stingrays. The fish I took a picture with is a Maori wrasse. That's what it was called. See, now they're the best ones. I did my own PhD on them. Oh, no, bro. These big guys swing up to me.

They are super cool. So, yeah, I studied those guys. Do you remember how it had really cool patterns on its face? Yeah, yeah. It was like, I guess that's where they get the name from. So I studied that and showed

that they are all this, they're like fingerprints for each fish so you could recognize individuals from. This is the thing with this particular fish, like it just hung around this area because it knew it got fed by the tourists. It was like, all right, 4 o'clock. Turn to the other fish.

It was like, the Japanese are coming. Time to put on a show. No, it was because when we were there, on the way out there, they asked you if you wanted the scuba, which you'd never done. So they basically held on the way out there they asked you if you wanted the scuba which you'd never done so like they they basically held on the gym like usually you have your own buoyancy compensator on weight but they just held on the gym all you had to do was be able to breathe underwater which isn't easy to just do so you you did that pick that up pretty quick and they let me they sat us at a table and kind of went over everything they let me dive even though i didn't have my car with

me because i guess they were confident the fact that i had dove as much as i said i had but then yeah that fish was kind of like like just like you said he was like smoking a cigarette over and i said all right because he swam right up and i think they were giving him bits of something like a bits of a sausage or something something because then because the picture i have i'll send it to you as you put on there it's it looks like it's like staged it's like me and the fish, like, hey, we're best friends. It's massive. The fish, they're massive. I don't know how big they get. They're so big.

They are like the biggest bony fish. I would say he's a meter. Sharks grow bigger, but yeah, they're like, they can grow to like two and a half meters. He was big. Also, he would... They're great. They have that presence, right? You really feel like they're looking at you as well, right? He bodied up against me. He was big. He was a really, really big one. He might have been big. Also, he would – And they just – they're great. They have that presence, right? You really feel like they're looking at you as well, right? He bodied up against me.

Like, he was, like, touching me like we were buds. And when he touched me, you could just feel his, like, density. He was like – like, he's like, you don't want to mess with him. When we were doing the Jim Jefferies show, because I did that snorkeling with Forrest the first time, the second time I was like, all right, let's do this again. And I went down to have the swim and everything. And the next time I'd come to the surface and they'd go,

can you like we need some shots of you sort of displaying the coral, you know what I mean, like for the show, just some still shots, right? So I swam back down under and then for the next 10 minutes, I would just, there'd be a guy with a camera and I'd just stand next to the coral like I was a Price is Right girl. Like I couldn't hear anyone. So I didn't know if I was like this and I'd point at it like this and touch my chin.

Very, very bad. So what are threats to the great barrier reef jim said mining coal coal mining uh sunscreen rise in temperature these were good answers jim but yeah did he miss anything or is that uh no that was great i mean i uh sunscreen is yeah that's kind of just a recent a fairly recent thing that we figured uh scientists figured out that the sun seems really bad for corals really really bad huge dilemma i know there's some brands of sunscreen that uh worse than others but you know skin cancer is the number one cancer killer in australia we have no we have no ozone layer of australia it's hot as ball this that's the hottest part

of australia you have to wear sunscreen so what there's no easy fix to that uh yeah there is there is there is uh there are ones that don't have the nasty stuff and like um i can't remember the name of the actual chemical but something particular but basically zinc you know the old white stuff like even these days you can get something that doesn't look white anymore if you use that it's fine so use the like the reef and i think some of them are getting like reef friendly stickers on them that was a fashion thing in australia in the 80s was to put zinc on your nose just to have and then you'd make your nose just white yeah and then they brought it out like fluoro yellow fluoro pink and it really showed your personality wow yeah well now maybe it'll come back around because you can

save the reef with that so you know that's, that's good. They also have clothing. I remember I used to wear like you can get specific clothing that's, you know, for diving, whatever, that's long sleeve and that has built-in sun. It's like sun protection. Yeah, they would give you those rash vests on the thing. I've got a picture of my son that I won't put up because I don't put pictures of my son, but I've got a picture of my son where he looks hysterical. He's like two.

With that mask on. I've seen that picture. Yeah, it's the one where he looks like Brad Pitt in the photo before and then he puts the mask on he looks like he's like a turtle I would assume also like regular boats and stuff and anchoring without effects all right oh yeah I mean any kind of physical like smashing the heck out of a piece of reef is bad. Yeah. Anything that breaks it. That's why with the tourism though,

they have these pre-anchored man-made islands of the, you know, the moorings that just happened there. Yeah. And then the boats can just go and tie a rope up to the thing. So they don't do that anymore. But I assume that was probably a problem back in the day. Well,

no, but if you just have a boat, if you own a boat, you can still anchor on it. Yeah, people can just do it, but the tourism trade doesn't really do that. Sure, yeah. Well, that's the thing about it, too, is the reefs, like in the Caribbean, there are places where you can just walk off the beach,

and you're in a reef, and it's there. It's like you're 20 feet off the beach, there's reef structure. But with the Great Barrier Reef, it was a long drive. Because it's a barrier reef, so it's way you know but it's but it was miles and miles those tourism companies they feed you bloody good as well you get prawns for lunch loads of great buddy queensland prawns man the best the best in the fucking world prawns from queensland yeah they're feeding you food and they're like len another problem is overfishing while you're floating above the reef um you need a hamburger at a start range so coral bleaching we we talked about a little bit but what is happening with coral bleaching

because when we talked about it's an animal but what exactly is happening to kill the coral and yeah if you can talk about right right so you got these tiny little polyps which have these we even smaller bits of algae inside them they're like single cells and basically when the coral gets hot for like even just a tiny bit which is another thing you said right which was like it only needs to be a little bit hotter um but for like a sort of couple of weeks or months then the coral gets dressed and and basically its response is to spit out that algae which seems kind of stupid but we think we're kind of just figuring out why they do it but they're basically pretty stressed out they get rid of the algae they don't immediately

die but they lose the color which is coming from that um but they lose their food because also the whole point is that that algae is like creating it's creating sugar from the sun and the coral is eating that so straight out the coral starts to lose its food um and then it can yeah if it doesn't they can take the algae back on and there is a possibility they might take on algae that's uh better suited to the temperature to the heat so that they could adapt and kind of be able to survive but mostly they don't and then they die um so that's why they get adapt and kind of be able to survive. But mostly they don't and then they die. So that's why they get white and that's what happens. And it's a big deal, especially on the barrier reef.

We've had like five, what we call like mass bleachings, which is when pretty much like over huge areas of the reef bleaching happens. Five times since the late 90s. The last big one was 2020. So the corals are just recovering from that or starting to right now and um and actually right now it's a super important time for the barry reef just like a few weeks ago there was really high temperatures back in january and everyone was like oh no it's gonna bleach this is looking really bad and then it just got a bit kind of cloudy and cooler when

it really was getting a bit kind of critical. So it could be that we managed to miss a big bleaching this year, which would be really good. So really like keep an eye on the weather for the next few weeks. So it could make a big difference. So, okay. So that was probably what that guy was talking about. One of the bleachings and it was coming back.

So the algae was gone, but it's still reacquired and then it can get a food source. But if it stays too long, then it completely dies off, right? It dies, right. And the only way to recover is for a new one to grow. So you have to wait for like a new baby. So what she's saying is when it's bleached, it's not dead, but it's on its way to dying, but it can't recover. So because of COVID, have

we seen an uptick in the quality of the reef because we haven't had tourists? Like, you know how we had like, the best air America ever had was after 9-11 because there was no airplanes flying that day, right? During COVID too when people stopped driving at the beginning of the pandemic. Yeah, during COVID. LA air had never gotten so good.

No tourists coming into Australia without quarantine. Most Australians, I'm sure some Australians were still being tourists and going out there. But I would assume that tourism on the reef probably dropped 80 percent let's say uh did we see an improvement or is tourism not the problem i don't think tourism is not the big problem for the corals dying um so i doubt that would have been a big difference especially as we've also seen that you know we had weird drop in emissions, but like carbon emissions, but that's kind of much pretty much gone back up now. I think we will see, I mean, people are kind of looking at this now.

It's like one of these sort of we will look back and go, Oh yeah, that did change. Like we can sort of have the before after kind of thing going on. And I did see a study which showed, and this is only small, and it's not going to affect the whole reef, but I thought it was kind of cool in one place where they feed sharks sharks i'm not sure if it was the barrier reef but it was a coral reef somewhere and basically when this tourist stopped going the sharks were like never mind and they stopped coming because they figured quite quickly they weren't getting any

food but as soon as the tourists came back all it took was one boat with its engine revved and the sharks were like and they came back straight away. And they were like, we remember all about the food. Can we have our food, please? And this was obviously like weeks later. So you know how they say how fish are stupid and they don't remember anything for more than like seven seconds or whatever. This is clearly not true.

Oh, no. So I think the behavior has changed. Response. I've always said that about the, I had a goldfish many, many years ago when I was like 18 or something like that. And I trained this goldfish. And everyone's like, the goldfish only has one second memory. Load of bullshit.

I would tap on the same bit of glass and then feed it, same bit of glass and feed it. And then if I tapped on that bit of glass, it would swim to the top. Yeah. And if I tapped on the other side, it wouldn't. But if I tapped on that side, it would swim to the top every time. I have a friend and she trains animals. Emma, and she's in Australia,

and she trained a goldfish to, like, dunk a little miniature basketball in a hoop in the water. I was like, get out of here. I didn't even do that. But, yeah, you can train them. I don't know how this bullshit, oh, they've got one second, every hack comic I've ever seen does that whole, oh, look, a castle. Oh, look, a castle.

They'd swim around and fucking, you know what I mean? It's a lot of bullshit. So Jim mentioned coal mining, which happens in Queensland there, right? That's a big. We spoke to a coal mining guy while we were out there in the field piece. He was all right. I was, yeah, I was. He was the one who was like coal mining.

He couldn't say a bad word against coal mining. Nothing wrong with it. There's nothing that coal mining couldn't do. Wasn't he a politician too? was like coal mining. He couldn't say a bad word against coal mining. Nothing wrong with it. There was nothing that coal mining couldn't do. Wasn't he a politician too? He was a politician. There was nothing that coal mining couldn't do. You were giving him scenarios like, can it do this? Can it do that?

Yeah. I once asked him, what can coal mining not do? And he's like, I don't know. Because it's just brilliant. And then I interviewed Pauline Hanson. Remember that? It was a fun show in many ways. I got to interview a lot of interesting people.

So how does coal mining relate to the Great Barrier Reef? Is that part of the, we're talking about climate change or is it pollution? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I think climate change is the big one. I mean, there's obviously also possible issues with making ports and like having them dredging and everything to get the ships in and out with the coal on it. But I think like pretty much like the big deal is the climate change thing, which is what everybody

is... Well, a lot of people are getting quite rightly pointing out is kind of bullshit about this latest plan to... What is it that Scott Morrison has promised, like a billion gajillion pounds or something for the barrier reef to make it better. But then, by the way, we're not going to bother doing anything about climate change. And everyone's like, hmm, kind of not really the point. Yeah. Money can't fix problems. Just saying it's like when you get on a plane and they go, would you like to offset your carbon emissions? problems just saying it's like when you get on a plane and they go would you like to offset your carbon emissions how what are you talking about the plane's still flying you're gonna fucking give brochures out to people to recycle get the fuck out of here well maybe maybe what he's gonna

use the money for you know on those shows when they make the houses better and then they're like that's what he's gonna do he going to put in like some new bathrooms and the coral reefs. He's going to flip the coral reefs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put a nice swimming pool there. He's going to exhibit to do a pimp my coral reef. He's going to put a blender in it. Yeah, a pool table. Subwoofer. So cool.

Eutrophication. Jim had no idea. Oh, yeah. So that's basically too much nutrients in the water, pretty much coming off of land from farms and stuff from fertilizers. And this causes like algae and other bigger seaweeds to grow too much and cover over the coral and basically isn't great for coral.

So coral doesn't like having too much soupy food in the water like that. Is that a problem in the Great Barrier Reef as well? Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a big... in the water like that is that a problem in the great barrier reef that as well for run okay yeah it is yeah yeah it's a big and in fact that is one of the things having just said that was a bullshit load of billion kajillion dollars some of that money is going to go to and has been like clearing up the water quality and that is kind of helping even though we really really need to fix the whole heating global warming thing um if we can fix the water quality figure out you know

farming that doesn't pour fertilizers into the coast and that goes straight into the reef that will help with the whole recovery thing it's not going to completely save the reef from leaching but it will help make it not so bad and help it recover quickly it is part of the picture and so that's animal farming not crop farming or is it both it's both yeah i think like the sugarcane industry is a big part of it um yeah crops and other stuff like that i mean there's ways to fix it like growing um trees along the sort of edges of the ocean and rivers and stuff stops the the nutrients pouring out there's ways we can fix it and there are people working really hard to do that so if you've never been

to the north of queensland it's that when she said sugarcane farming that's the main crop up there which is so it's not just like it's not just like if you have a reef anywhere the sugarcane will get to it there's fucking there's so much sugarcane up there it's unbelievable that it's whether they make rum up there and florida as well and florida just north of miami all the way up to lake Okeechobee, it's all sugar cane. And it's like two families on all sugar cane. And so that all, they have the runoff problem with the Everglades, gets choked out with all the algae blooms and stuff like that.

And then also that all feeds into the coral reef. So it's like all around the world, the sugar. It's not good. The north of Queensland just, to me, looks like, the nearest place in America that you could say looks like the north of Queensland is Hawaii all the plants and the flowers and all those stuff it just looks like Hawaii yeah it's definitely different than I think they actually filmed a lot of young rock up there all the all the scenes where he's meant to be in Hawaii or something I think they filmed it in

Australia it's very easy to I think they film most of the show in Australia so that makes sense young rock young rock uh crown of Thorns Starfish. Jim said, and how does it relate to the Great Barrier Reef? Jim said, the Jesus of the sea sits on top of the Jesus fishes and hurts them. I don't know. I didn't know where he was going with that. I'm starting to think maybe I was being really generous with myself. No, there were some good points.

There were some good points. But not so much on this one. I mean, they are huge. I mean, I would not recommend putting one on your head. They don't sit on the fish, they sit on the coral. They basically kind of emit their stomach out of their mouths and then digest the coral and slurp everything back up again. So they do eat coral.

And they are linked to the eutrophication thing too. So one individual, one of these starfish which is huge, they can make like 65 million eggs a year, most of them die but if there's a lot of nutrients in the water then that makes food for the baby starfish so more of them survive

so you do get these outbreaks I wonder because they're native there usually there's nothing it but that's the, it's the runoff from the fertilizer and all that. Yeah. It's like, yeah. And then I think it's mostly that, like one of the other things is that there are predators that eat the crown of thorns and there's a really cool experiment you can do.

So there's, there are these really huge shells called Triton shells, like the ones you make a trumpet out of, if you are so inclined. You don't make a trumpet out of if you so inclined um you don't make it out of it there's no extra bits that you just blow in the end it's like finding a branch on this other end going i've made a sword okay okay so if you find a trumpet um no if you put one of these live ones into a tank of water then um like an aquarium tank you can take it out and then if you put one of these live ones into a tank of water, then like an aquarium tank, you can take it out. And then if you, okay, so if you pump that water through to the other tank where the crown of starfish is, it goes fucking crazy.

Cause it knows that it's about to get eaten by the snail. Cause the big snail thing basically eats the crown of starfish. So just the smell of them makes them climb out of the tank and be like trying to escape. Which is amazing. So take away all the snails. Just the smell of them makes them climb out of the tank and be like trying to escape, which is amazing. They sound like pests. Do they contribute to our ecosystem normally or are they just a pain in the neck?

The crown of thorns? Yeah. What good do they do? They look cool. They're part of the biodiversity. It's food for the triton, you said, right? So it's food. It's part of the food web.

Yeah, it's food for tritons. Exactly. We need to get other animals to eat more crown of thorns until we get swimming gorillas. Or we have less runoff of nutrients. I know, but you know how you feel about veganism. You know what I mean? Because that's what they reckon about veganism.

That's the one thing that I will actually say, yeah, you're right, because like David Attenborough became a vegan and not because it kills habitats and farmland and stuff, kills environments and all that type of stuff where animals can live. And they reckon with all the meat vein coming out of the cows and the crops and then what's happening to the reefs and all that type of stuff, that's the main argument, it's good for the environment rather than. Yeah, but some of that sugar is vegan.

Do you want rum or not? Vegan sugar. Okay, well, still, I'm just saying. Do you want rum or not? No, I don't drink rum. Well, if you're going to, it's the best place to get it, Vandenberg rum. Okay. I like rum. It angers my blood, dark rum. I don't know why. What do you mean it angers you? Oh, you're not good on it? I've only drank it three times and three of those times i got into arguments with friends just ah you could fuck off like that and that was before i became an angry drunk this is back in the happy days the the liquid actually makes your blood

angry yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a superhero power yeah yeah yeah and bacardi doesn't do it but bundaberg always made me a bit surly whoa but i But I don't know. Maybe that's in my head. Maybe that's a myth. But if dark rum seemed to make me. I have friends that it's like Jack. Anytime they drink Jack Daniels or something like that, they would turn into a monster. But if they got drunk on anything else, they were totally fine.

There's a weird. You can't drink rum in a cold area, though, huh? You never see rum in, what is the country you had? Norway? Norway. Norway. Norway. How's the Norwegian rum? Yeah, no, no. Jamaican rum and Bundab the country he had norwegia norwegia norway yeah norwegia how's the norwegian rum yeah no no jamaican rum and vanderberg rum from australia cuban rum all the caribbean yeah

there's like yeah caribbean caribbean everyone so is the reef dying and if it died off completely what would happen jim said many species of fish will be killed off protects australia from pollutants yeah basically yeah i think we'd all be very sad if it did though i think you nailed that as well and then but what about like just be a big mess yeah and what about like like i don't know you love seafood jim i don't know how that would affect like the seafood industry in australia probably i don't know yeah i would i mean even if you're not catching fish that, like straight off of the reef, a lot of them are like

when their babies will live on the reef and then move out to the ocean and that's when you catch them. So there are these connections that run out. Well, they leave the reef to go to the big ocean, leave their parents in the reef. Mm-hmm. So isn't that the thing that like, I remember there was somebody who told me that the Finding Nemo wasn't very accurate.

Finding Nemo is not very accurate because the clownfish would always try to eat the baby fish and the dad wouldn't be this protective. Plus they were singing. They could speak English. They all went to school together. The English, yeah. The clownfish is a winner though. That's a winner out of all the reef. They can speak English. They all went to school together. The English, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The clownfish is a winner, though.

That's a winner out of all the reef. I tell you, I was having an interview. I had a voice in a movie called Extinct where I played. It's on Netflix where I played a Tasmanian tiger. And I was having an interview. And you know when you're just talking. I get in trouble all the time for this talking and I just sort of said a bullshit fact, I just went like

this and I go, yeah I believe I'm the first Australian accent to be in one of these films I was just talking answering a question, yes I, and then the lady went, what about Finding Nemo oh yes, yes, There was a few other ones

in there. I said one of the first. I can't think of another talking Tasmanian tiger. Ba-boom. But Nemo had an American accent, right? Nemo does, right? And Dory.

And Dory. And then Ratzenberg came in as the school of fish. Where are you trying to get to? But Eric Banner was a shark. Barry Humphreys, the fabulous Barry Humphreys. It's not fashionable to say you like Barry Humphreys, but he's all right by me, Barry Humphreys.

I don't know who Barry Humphreys is. Let me explain to you who Barry Humphreys is. Barry Humphreys is Dame Edna Everidge, who is the first and the best. Dame what? Dame Edna Everidge. You've got to say it slow, so. Dame Edna Everidge. Everidge.

Okay. Dame Edna Everidge is, you know who Dame Edna is, surely, coming from Britain. What is it? Okay, so Dame. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so Dame Edna. Also, there was a season of Ally McBeal where Dame Edna just came on.

So it's basically a drag queen act, but comedian. One of the fastest-witted people in the entire world. Outstanding. In Britain, he had his own Tonight shows and talk shows all through the 80s. There's even a photo of Princess Diana curtsied to him in drag because he was so fabulous. He was not a drag. It was just a stand-up comedy persona.

He wasn't gay or anything like that. He was Australian. He played a lot of other characters. He played Les Patterson was another one. A guy called Sandy Stone. It says her boisterous greeting was, hello, possums. Hello, possums. And she'd throw gladiolas out there go hello everyone what she did but very very very

funny and i actually went with dr drew last time she came to uh america me and dr drew went and saw the thing anyway why is it not fashionable okay so the award um uh if you win the main award in edinburgh it's called the perrier award i think it's called something else now the main award in Edinburgh, it's called the Perrier Award. I think it's called something else now. The main award for the best comedy show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival was called The Barry, named after Barry Humphreys. And Barry Humphreys was also in episodes of Katharine Kim and also Australian legend of comedy. Anyway, Barry, I think he's about 80 fucking five years old,

questioned the trans community. Now, I'm not going to get into that debate, but what I will say is this. He's fucking 85. He did more for cross-dressing than any other human that's ever lived. Let old people be old people. He's 88. Yeah, he's 88. Let old people say old people shit, right?

Try to be understanding of them as you want him to be understanding of you. So I think it's our good friend Hannah Gadsby or something got the award, said she wouldn't accept it because it was named after him. Right, right. He has had the award taken away from him now. I would just like to say I don't want to get into his political views or whatever, but the man is a fucking legend and one of the funniest people I've ever seen in my life.

Okay. I don't know how he got onto him. He plays the main character. He's Bruce. He's Bruce. Fish or friends. Fish or friends. All right there, Bruce. He does that one. He's Bruce in Finding Nemo.

You know a ton about Finding Nemo. I know a lot about Barry Humphries. Do we know how many tourists visit the reef each year? I asked Jim that and how much money that brings in. I know that you are a marine biologist but I didn't know. It clearly has gone down because of COVID. I think it's like

somewhere around like it's millions like now between one and three million people or something and it's billions of dollars yeah because i because i when i realized when i put that question there mike you might not know this because this isn't like really yeah because i um it's a lot yeah it says i don't know i was just looking it up how many visits in 2019 that wasn't a good year and that was still a good year over 28 million tourists and other visitors arrived in Queensland between 2018, 2019. Wow. 28 million? Oh, 28 million. But that's how many people arrived in Queensland. That doesn't mean all of them went to the... But just to put that in context, I believe the

population of Australia is 24 million. I might be a million up or down right there. When I left Australia 20 years ago, it was 20 million, but I believe it's about 24 million people. So more than the entire population of the country visits the reef. Well, here you go. How about this? I'm looking at a chart now and 2018 to 2019, because we'll do it before COVID. It says I guess it's like there's over 1.6 million people a year that are using the reef for that.

Actually using the reef. I don't know. Since we didn't know the answer, I don't know. Maybe somebody will write it into us and tell us. I don't think like if you're American, I don't think you may be. Even if you're British, I don't think you would understand the level of which tourism is important to Australia. It really is our jam. Starting back in the 80s with those Paul

Hogan commercials where he's throwing other shrimp on the barbie and all that type of stuff. It's a big deal, Australian tourism. I just found, this is Wikipedia, it says approximately 5 million people visit the Great Barrier Reef each year which contributes 5.4 billion dollars a year to the Australian economy. That means they're spending a billion dollars each and employing

the math isn't mathing no it isn't, there's 5 million and they 5 billion yeah he was making a joke. It's a million each is it? No it's a joke. It's a million each. Is it? No. It's a thousand. It's a thousand dollars each, right?

Wait, are we spending a thousand bucks each? What kind of billion is it? I don't know. It's considered a billion. You're spending a thousand dollars there. Five billion. Here we go. There's people in their car going, it's $24 a person.

Like, I don't know, but it's. Here we go. You could fast forward this, dude. You can put this whole bit like the end of Benny Hill. This is $100. I'll tell you who Benny Hill is, kids. Whatever.

There's a lot of money going on, but then they say there's approximately 69,000 people that are employed. $5 billion divided by $5 million is $1,000. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think they'd spend more than $1,000 each. How cheap is it? That's not including the flights. Because the flights don't go to the... Yeah,000. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think they'd spend more than 1,000 each. How cheap is that?

That's not including the flights. Yeah, because the flights don't go to the, yeah, they're just reef-related activities. Yeah, but that's not including your hotel. Almost 70,000 people. No, I don't think they do. No, no, no. It's Wikipedia.

That's just getting the boat out there, having your lunch, buying a T-shirt. It's Wikipedia, but that's what it says. But also, we forgot the giant clam. Remember we saw the giant clam when we were scuba diving? Yeah, we saw some big clams and also on this page tourism of the Great Barrier Reef and Wikipedia there's a picture of someone riding

a turtle in the beach and it says turtle riding was a popular tourist activity in the 20s and 30s doesn't look fun for the turtle just some asshole sitting on top of a turtle on the beach yeah that was a popular tourist activity in the 20s and 30s for dickheads okay Yeah, that was a popular tourist activity in the 20s and 30s for dickheads.

Okay. I used to do it when I was a kid. It was no problem. Bloody bit of fun. You'd race your turtles. The kids would have a good time. Dugong. We talked about this in the Manatee episode.

That was a big clue, but you still said dolphin with a human head. I've got a great looking human head. Like when they'd be on a dolphin a dugong it's related to a manatee yeah I know what it looks like a dolphin on the human head it's got like a normal sort of face what do you mean a normal sort of face

it looks like a walrus yeah but it's not like a dolphin's head look that's a dugong right there that's the one I right there. He's got the prehensile lips. That's the one I'm talking about. Shut up. I don't know if all your relatives are good looking. That looks like one of my aunties right there.

Bunch of land dugongs. Okay. I just looked it up. You can do no gong. It's a human head for sure. It actually kind of looks more like a pit bull face. It looks like a manatee. Yeah. Because it's related to

the Florida manatee, the one we talked about. It's in the order Serenia. Manatees have a pretty human-ish sort of head. No. They have eyes and a mouth. Thighs. Eyes. Oh, eyes. Okay. Alright, Dr. Helen Scales. The body is completely different. Here, we're,

we're, we're getting near the end here. This is part of the show called dinner party facts. We ask our, if you said, if you said, I got a mate who looks like a do gone, I could picture that right away.

That's true. That is poor guy. I'm not saying a good looking head. Um, this is part of our show called dinner party facts. We asked our expert to give our listeners or viewers something interesting or obscure about the subject this is the Great Barrier Reef that

they might not know to impress people at a yeah I mean I was gonna give you a Finding Nemo fact maybe I should because we haven't actually covered the specific fact and I have a Dugong fact as well so let's see.

Hit us with both of them. Okay, so Finding Nemo is a fabulous animated documentary as we all know. But there are some facts that weren't quite right. And I think also it would have been a bit more fun possibly if they had got it right. So right from the beginning,

my favorite part that should have been different is that part where Nemo's mother goes missing and uh i don't even remember that it's all very sad so but basically in real life what would have happened is the that nemo's dad would have undergone a spontaneous sex change and become the female of the anemone because that's what happens so the anemones are like these like female run places. Like there's like all these different little fishes. The rest of them are all like her gang. They're all males waiting to mate with her.

They like to be referred to as their gang. There's a lot of pronoun problems in the clownfish community. Her gang. Go white. Sorry. They're her gang. And yeah, and if she disappears, then the biggest male turns into a female

and they all kind of move up one. So it's like a little Russian doll thing. There's like tiny little one and they get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until like the second biggest one is the male who gets to mate with the female. And then if she disappears, then he takes over being female

and then they all move up one. Which is kind of cool. But they all kind of keep each other in check too. If you're in the middle of the row, this is like the hierarchy of the size of all the fishes, the one bigger than you is going to basically make sure that you don't get any bigger by punishing you and not letting

you eat more. So it's quite a gnarly life. And you can wait for 20 years before you get to be the female as a fish. I just think that's kind of cool. That is cool, yeah. Maybe not such a good movie, but yeah, I do have a dugong fact too.

Yeah, dugong, the animal that looks like a man. The one that looks like a man. I mean, the big difference you can tell is like the tail. The tail in a dugong looks like a mermaid tail, like a dolphin tail. And then the manatee is this weird paddle. But that's not my fact. My fact is it's about testicles. So dugongs and manatees and all those guys are related to elephants and a bunch of other things in a group called the arthrophaeas. And they do not have descended testicles. Whereas all the other mammals have testicles that move. And in humans, they move quite substantially outside of the body.

And so the big question was, what came first? The testicles that do move or the ones that don't? Basically, did mammals start off, placental mammals, did they start off with their testicles staying in the same place or did they move? And the dugongs have these like, we've recently found, scientists, not myself, scientists have recently found that there are genes that have basically switched off in the dugong which would move the testicles, which shows that it basically started off that way and they stopped moving. When you say their testicles don't move, do they just like, you can see them, but they're just like stationary or they're up in the body? They're in the body, but they stay where they are when they're like young.

Whereas pretty much all the other mammals, they move to some extent. And they drop. And some more than others. I don't know. Exactly. I don't remember a day it dropped. Yeah, they're keeping them dropped. People always say, have your balls dropped? And I'm like, I don't know. Exactly. I don't remember a day it dropped. Yeah, they're keeping them dropped. People always say, have your balls dropped?

And I'm like, I don't know. I feel like they've always been like this. Nah, they get lower and lower over time. And a deep voice at three years old. Yeah. So dugongs have shown us that was the thing. Like ovaries, they're up inside them where they're not moving.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And they've shown us that that was like the original state of mammals, and then they kind of moved. The moving ones was what happened first. I'd like women to have their ovaries on the outside just for a day, just so they knew what we go through. Yeah, you go through such difficult things.

I wouldn't kick them in the ovaries, but just how awkward they are to put pants on and, you know, where they're hanging and what they're up to. Yeah, okay. Well, dugongs figured that out out and they were like, nope, we're going to keep them inside. I'm sorry I didn't bring that up in the Manatee episode, everybody.

Thank you for telling us. I didn't know that. I didn't know anything about the testicles, to be fair. Well, Dr. Helen Scales, thank you for being with us. Her website is helenscales.com on Twitter at Helen scales,

Instagram at Dr. Helen scales. Her new book is the brilliant abyss and her children's book. The great barrier reef will be out in June in the U S and it's in a bunch of different languages, right? It's all available as well. Did you write all the languages?

It was that hard for you? Did you get someone to do it for you? No, I got someone to do it. I'm now reading the French one though. So that's good. I'm like learning French by reading my own book. Yeah. The French one goes like this. The reef is not that great. I've seen better. Not allowed to smoke on the reef.

Um, all right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being on the podcast, by the reef. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being on the podcast, by the way. I enjoyed that. Learning about the reef is always a good thing. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're ever at a party and some woman walks up to you and goes, my boyfriend has the testicles of a dugong. Go, well, I don't know about that, and walk away. Because that'll happen to you a lot.

Good night, Australia.