Kristen Marhaver: How we're growing baby corals to rebuild reefs
Kristen Marhaver: 我们是如何培育珊瑚虫来重建珊瑚礁的
TED Senior Fellow Kristen Marhaver is a marine biologist studying the ecology, behavior and reproduction of reef corals. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
difficult job you ever did?
for a family or a community?
trying to protect lives and property?
that wasn't guaranteed to succeed,
human health or save a life?
create something, make a work of art?
打造一个艺术作品?
who do these jobs
正做着上述工作的人们,
关爱和切实的支持。
and our deepest support.
in our communities
by the plants, the animals
我所研究的:热带珊瑚礁。
the tropical coral reefs.
and food security
of people around the world.
protect our shorelines
that they house filter the water
on coral reefs are increasingly important
and new cancer drugs.
beautiful things on planet Earth.
of the tourism industry
其他自然资源的国家来说。
or little other natural resources.
all of these ecosystem services,
和生态系统的服务,
of the world's coral reefs
of dollars per year.
being done for us
所有这些艰辛的工作,
不遗余力地破坏了它们。
we possibly could to destroy that.
with our boats, our fins, our bulldozers,
已经践踏了珊瑚礁,
of the entire sea,
and make each other worse.
这里几年前被一个热带风暴侵袭过。
a tropical storm went by a few years ago.
热带风暴潮刚刚经过这里。
a tropical storm had passed.
早已死于过度捕鱼和污染,
from overfishing, from pollution,
the dead corals
to kill the corals that were left.
during my PhD --
研究过的珊瑚,
took off half of its tissue,
然后珊瑚就死了。
and that coral died.
this compounding of factors
as the "slippery slope to slime."
"滑向烂泥深渊的斜坡。"
because many of our reefs now
因为很多礁石都是由
and algae and slime.
to launch into my plea
in a news headline
of a conservation brochure,
一直在散播
have been sounding the alarms
of coral reefs for decades.
无论他们受教育程度如何,
no matter how educated,
或不知道它们从哪里来。
or where they come from.
about the world's coral reefs
世界上的珊瑚礁呢?
又怎么会被人们所了解呢?
they can barely understand?
what a coral is or where it comes from,
从何而来,
亦或不知道它们有多美丽,
or beautiful it is,
保护它们呢?
to care about saving them?
and where does it come from?
in a number of different ways,
all of the individuals of a single species
所有这些同一类的珊瑚虫个体
they've made that year
of the ocean and break apart.
at the surface of the ocean,
其他珊瑚虫的卵子和精子。
from other corals.
需要大量的珊瑚虫——
lots of corals on a coral reef --
才能在海面上找到精子。
meet their match at the surface.
what any other animal egg does:
它们就像其他动物的卵一样:
under the microscope every year
magical moments of the year.
最神奇的时刻之一。
它们变成了游动的幼虫——
they turn into a swimming larva --
the size of a poppy seed,
肥的像个罂粟种子,
所有的感觉系统了。
systems that we have.
材质,化学物质和酸碱值。
textures, chemicals, pH.
可以听到声音。
they can hear sound.
for a place to attach
where you would live the rest of your life
去度过你们的余生,
they find most suitable,
underneath themselves,
of building the world's coral reefs.
去建造全世界的珊瑚礁。
again and again and again,
underneath itself
limestone structure
这些辛勤工作的珊瑚虫。
of these hardworking animals.
of corals on the planet, maybe 1,000.
也可能1000种。
and millions of other species,
亿万其他生物的栖息地,
这个生态系统的稳定性,
stabilizes the systems,
our new medicines.
on the island of Curaçao,
that look like this.
世界上大多数地方,
and much of our world
退化的本质原因,
in increasing detail
with increasing certainty the causes.
interested in looking backward.
are interested in looking forward
原因去保持乐观。
to be optimistic.
written off long ago,
到达这里,并挣扎生存下来。
arrive and survive anyway.
that baby corals may have the ability
成年珊瑚虫可能适应不了的地方。
that the adults couldn't.
to this human planet.
with my colleagues in Curaçao,
我和同事们
what a baby coral needs
帮助它们渡过这些难关。
through that process.
of the work we've done
我们工作中的三个例子,
and we made coral choice surveys --
进行了珊瑚选择鉴定研究,
想知道哪些环境是它们最喜欢的。
where they preferred to settle.
没有任何生物手段干预的情况下,
even without the biology involved,
the colors of a healthy reef.
代表着健康礁石。
and grooves and holes,
from being trampled
提出我们需要重构这些因素——
we need to restore those factors --
有裂缝的,坚硬的表面——
those hard surfaces --
把合适的材料放在水下。
underwater, like a sea wall or a pier.
and colors and textures
珊瑚虫的生存。
back toward those corals.
and microbial signals
我就开始培养珊瑚礁表面
I began culturing bacteria
聚集吸附的细菌种类。
convince corals to settle and attach.
bacterial strains in our freezer
and attachment process.
are testing those bacteria
建造珊瑚的栖息地,
more coral settlers in the lab,
will survive better
we also try to uncover the mysteries
我们也在努力解开不为我们
and always has been:
一直都是:
this ridiculous shape,
are fat and look fuzzy
绝对是一种慰藉。
as a threatened species
过去30年的研究中,
in over 30 years of research surveys,
幼年柱形珊瑚虫。
a baby pillar coral.
if they could still reproduce,
它是否还可以继续繁衍,
following these at night
figure out when they spawn in Curaçao.
from our colleagues in Florida,
得到了一些好的建议,
看到了一只柱状珊瑚,
它们在Curaçao产卵的时间,
when they spawn in Curaçao
with some eggs in her tissue,
on the right, releasing sperm.
back to the lab, we got it to fertilize
带回实验室进行培育,
在我们实验室里里游来游去。
swimming in our lab.
of our scientific aunts and uncles,
we've had in Curaçao
可以完成余下的步骤,
to go through the rest of the process
年幼的柱状珊瑚虫。
that anyone ever saw.
如果你们认为熊猫宝宝很可爱,
if you think baby pandas are cute,
the secrets to this process,
and how we might help them.
去处理珊瑚虫的胚胎,
to handle their embryos,
让它们能够在低温下生长,
to preserve them at low temperatures,
their genetic diversity
它们的基因多样性,
the number of hands in the lab
we can drink in any given hour.
of concern as a society.
we have defense technology,
防御技术,
for conservation is behind.
difficult job you ever did.
it was being a parent.
也更加艰辛,
far more amazing and far more difficult
超过十年了。
become parents for over 10 years now.
在灵魂深处也惊叹不已。
to the core of my soul.
想成为父母有多么困难。
it is for them to become parents.
again two weeks ago,
and brought them back to the lab.
马上就会炸裂开,
they will explode
会被细菌感染,爆裂开来,
the life of this one embryo
methods that went wrong
我们的处理过程有问题,
always suffering from low fertility.
或者保护珊瑚礁之前,
before we can use baby corals
maybe save coral reefs.
hundreds of billions of dollars.
and plants and microbes and fungi.
动植物和细菌组成的。
and food and medicine.
an entire generation of corals.
despite our best efforts,
尽管我们一直在不遗余力地破坏着,
for the work they did
能在未来长成珊瑚礁的机会,
to raise the coral reefs of the future,
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Kristen Marhaver - Coral reef biologistTED Senior Fellow Kristen Marhaver is a marine biologist studying the ecology, behavior and reproduction of reef corals.
Why you should listen
Dr. Kristen Marhaver's work combines classic scientific methods with new technologies to help threatened coral species survive their early life stages. She was the first person to rear juveniles of the endangered Caribbean Pillar Coral. Now she's now developing bacterial tools to improve coral survival at all life stages.
Marhaver's research has been covered by NPR, BBC, The Atlantic and Popular Science, among hundreds of outlets. She's earned five fellowships and grants from the US National Science Foundation and multiple awards for science communication. Marhaver is a TED Senior Fellow, a WINGS Fellow, and a World Economic Forum Young Scientist.
Outside the lab, Marhaver advocates for stronger ocean conservation and smarter science communication. Her talks and articles have been featured by Google, Wired UK, Mission Blue and by ocean and scuba festivals around the world.
A scuba diver from the age of 15, Marhaver is a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology and the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her lab is based at the CARMABI Research Station on the island of Curaçao.
Kristen Marhaver | Speaker | TED.com