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Transcript

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0:01Who are the characters behind science? This is science behind the glass, illuminating the human side. In this podcast, we unveil the human side of laboratories and science. Scientists share personal experiences and we discuss their meanings from different perspectives and fields of research. Welcome to Science Behind the Glass, the podcast that dives into the ocean’s mysteries and surfaces with the stories of the people who study it, protect it, and change it. Today, we are joined by someone who doesn’t fit into just one category.

0:39Katrina Kaposi is a marine biologist, a creative communicator, a researcher who studies venomous coral reef creatures. and someone who believes that science isn’t complete until it reaches the human heart. She has spent time aboard research vessels studying the reef from sea to land. But she also built projects that bring science to life through community, storytelling and reflection.

1:07Whether she’s talking about stinging cells or shifting minds, Katrina is asking one big question. How do we get people to not just understand the ocean but feel something for it? This conversation will take us from the micro world of coral venom to the big picture of climate change, wonder, burnout, and what it means to be a young scientist building her own way forward. Katrina, thank you very much for accepting this invitation.

1:37It’s a pleasure having you here in Science Behind the Glass. To start the conversation, can you tell us a little bit more about your inspiration and the connection with the sea? Where do you get that inspiration? Why do you become a marine scientist? Well, firstly, thank you so much for having me. Well, I’ve left the ocean since as long as I can remember. It’s a little cliche, but really it stemmed from watching The Little Mermaid when I was a little girl. I watched that movie and I was obsessed. Though of course when I was that young, so maybe three or four years old, I didn’t know what a marine scientist was, but all I knew was that I had to do something around the ocean when I grew up. So I was very fortunate growing up that I never really had to try to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up. I always just knew. It was just something like deep inside. But in saying that, it wasn’t always an easy path for me. I wasn’t very good at science at school. In fact, I failed year 10 science, so high school. Um, so that really crushed my self -esteem. Um, so after leaving school, I went on to work in a nightclub, uh, and I worked as a pool lifeguard and a swim instructor.

2:58And it took me many years before I got the courage to really just be like, you know what, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna try. And so I applied to go to university as a mature age student. I got accepted. I still don’t know why. But I must have said something that convinced them to, you know, take a chance. And then the rest is history. So I’ve been so incredibly fortunate to have a very diverse career so far. I’ve worked in so many different positions. I’ve worked as a dive instructor, science communicator, a coral collector. I worked for Fisheries Queensland as a technician. And I’ve also been able to work as a research assistant on so many incredible projects, including coral spawning, habitat mapping, fish ecology, more recently, some deep sea exploration.

3:50And of course, then I have all my own research, which has been looking at the impacts of microplastics, and more recently, coral bleaching. So yeah, I’ve always just… Love the ocean, always been drawn to it. And if there’s a will, there’s a way. And yeah, here I am today. That’s amazing. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I don’t know what I said, but something convinced them. Yeah, that’s really interesting. These corals are very interesting animals and they belong from a group called the cnidarians. Can you tell us a little bit about why these animals have venom and why the venom from cnidarians is important to their survival?

4:47Yeah, absolutely. How I like to explain it to people is… Let’s start at the beginning. So corals, jellyfish and sea anemones are all related. So they’re all in the phylum Nidaria. So collectively we call corals, jellyfish and sea anemones Nidarians. So a defining feature of this phylum and something that is unique to all of these species are their microscopic venom -filled weapons, which we call nematocysts. So they have their nematocysts scattered throughout the skin all over their bodies. So they are venom -filled. So we all know, or most of us should know, that jellyfish are venomous.

5:30And of course, the most famous example of this is the big Australian box jellyfish. But what a lot of people don’t realise is that all corals and all sea anemones are also venomous. So our jellyfish have all of those nematocysts, so those stinging cells, throughout their tentacles. So do our corals and our sea anemones. Now their nematocysts and their venom are so, so, so important to all of our cnidarians because they really rely on these so that they’re able to catch food and defend themselves. And if you’re a coral on the reef, they use them to fight each other for space. because there’s a really brutal real estate market out there on our coral reefs. So they’re constantly fighting for space. So this venom and the nematosis is part of the venom ecology and it’s really critical to their survival.

6:23Can you tell us why bleaching is a problem for the coral reefs? Yeah, absolutely. So coral bleaching is a pretty big topic. So I’ll just start at the beginning and give like a brief overview for what coral bleaching is in case people don’t necessarily understand. So corals and sea anemones and even some jellyfish have a symbiotic relationship with a tiny little algae that lives inside their tissue. And we call that algae zooxanthellae.

6:56Now, this little zooxanthellae is very, very important. So it’s basically like a miniature tree. So like our trees do on land, our little zooxanthellae will capture the sunlight and use that solar energy, do photosynthesis, do their little photosynthesis magic, and then convert that energy into sugars and essentially energy that they then will give to the coral. And then that energy makes up most of the coral’s food, which they use for their survival. So our little zooxanthellae is really important. And we can think of our corals as, I like to think of them as a Goldilocks. So we all know that little children’s story of Goldilocks. Everything has to be just right. The porridge has to be just warm enough.

7:45The bed has to be perfectly comfy. So our corals are exactly the same. They’re adapted to have a very specific environment requirement, so where they’re nice and happy. So any deviations above or below that, our corals can become stressed. So the most famous example of this is ocean warming. If the ocean gets too warm, our corals will actually get stressed. And then as a symptom of that, they will then begin to kick out their algae.

8:16that lives inside them, so they’re kicking out their little zooxanthellae. So the zooxanthellae, which normally will give them all that energy, if they don’t have it, they’re not getting all of that food that they normally need for most of their survival. So when our corals kick out the algae, they slowly go white, which is what we call coral bleaching. So our bleached corals aren’t dead, they’re still alive. But they’re very, very hungry. And if the conditions don’t go back to normal within a set amount of time, they will slowly continue to starve and they can ultimately die. So. We know that coral bleaching and the energy loss associated with that can have really bad impacts on our corals. So there’s lots of research showing that it can impact on the coral’s growth, it can impact on their ability to reproduce, and ultimately it can really impact on their survival. But what is often overlooked, and no one’s really considered it, is what impacts does this coral bleaching have on their venomicology?

9:25so on their nematocyst and on their venom. And I touched on earlier that this is a really important aspect of these animals and their ability to interact with other organisms within their environment. So while they do get most of their energy from that little algae, our little corals and our sea anemones still need to be able to catch bits of food to survive and they also need to be able to defend themselves from any animals that might want to eat them. And as I mentioned, they need to make sure that they’re able to fight for survival.

9:57So what a lot of my research is looking at is how coral bleaching and that energy loss impacts on this important aspect of their ecology. So what does it mean on their ability to make and grow these nematocysts and what does it mean on their venom? Wow, that is pretty interesting and we would like to know so far how your results can help explain you know, the decline on coral reefs and how this links with the venom in the corals and the bleaching process and all the problematics that corals are facing right now.

10:42Yeah, absolutely. So my research has been actually really, really exciting. I’ve been able to show that coral bleaching does have an impact on their nematosis in their venom, which was really cool. In saying that though, if my research found no results, that is still an awesome result. So you don’t always need to find a difference in science. So I was lucky my project could have gone either way, and we really had no idea. But in this case, all our preliminary data so far has found that there are differences. So we found that some of the nematocysts actually get bigger.

11:19And we’ve also seen doing some mass spectrometry analysis that the venom composition actually changes. So when our corals bleat, we can see that their nematocysts change and their venom. So this is very early research, so we still need to do a lot more investigating to find out what this means in a broader context. But potentially, this research is showing that coral bleaching is a lot more complex than simply our corals get sick and potentially die. It potentially shows that our corals maybe don’t just roll over and accept their fate and just accept that it’s stressful and… That’s it. It kind of presents evidence that maybe our corals are like, they rise to the occasion and they adapt to the challenge.

12:12So they’re changing their nematosis and their venom to better increase their chances of survival while they’re in this vulnerable bleached state. So we still need to work out what is going on, but it could be that the… corals are changing their nematocyst in their venom so that they’re able to try to catch more food while they’re hungry because they don’t have this algae. Or likewise, maybe they’re changing their venom and their nematocyst so that they can better defend themselves when maybe they’re more vulnerable while they’re bleached. And so we’re not really sure yet what this could mean for the wider ecosystems on the reefs, but it has the potential to impact on all the other symbiotic relationships that happen on the reef. So all the little crabs that live inside the corals, it could impact on the food web. It can impact on the types of corals that may be able to live near each other and close to. close together. So there’s a lot more research that needs to be done but it’s really exciting and we’ve been able to see that in little as five weeks which is how long our experiment was that these changes can happen. So they can happen on a really quick time scale which is really surprising whereas evolution and adapting we normally think is you know generations. You know, so many years, decades, hundreds of years, thousands of years. So this research is really exciting. Well, that’s amazing. And I have a

13:45question. Do you, do you notice if actually the, well, do you know that the function of these venoms, specifically the ones that are changing or there’s still don’t know what is the function of these ones because there’s a huge amount of venoms there. So you see this thing yet. Yeah, absolutely. That is a fantastic question. Unfortunately, we don’t actually know very much about coral and sea anemone venom. So when we think of animals like snakes and spiders, even our box jellyfish, which is really famous, there has been lots of money invested into researching these animals and their venoms and identifying particular toxins and what each of those toxins do. Unfortunately, seen enemies and corals have been overlooked.

14:35So we don’t really know. So at this stage I’ve got the mass spectrometry and I have rough mass sizes. So we have a rough idea of size of each molecule. make assumptions on what type of molecules, proteins or peptides these might be, but we can’t say for sure what they are. We certainly haven’t had a chance to do any bioactivity testing or anything like that yet. So this is really just the baseline to show that these animals do change in response to bleaching. With showing the changes, now we need to find out exactly what they are, what it means, what is happening. Yeah, just to give a little bit of more description or recap regarding the mass spectrometry. So what they do is they can get all the profiling or all the venoms are in the venom profile or the sample and then they have different weights and masses, right? And then from there you can start a long process of identification. in its structure and is more complex. And these sea anemones, they are solitary ones. They are like the ones that live with nemos, right? Some certainly are. The sea anemones that I did my research on are very small. So there may be only a centimetre in diameter on average, so very small. So these ones don’t

16:07have that symbiotic relationship with clowns. clownfish but definitely a lot of the larger species do have the clownfish also got that zooxanthellae inside them so potentially when those big large ones with the clownfish bleach that could impact on the clownfish as well because maybe their venom might start reacting to the clownfish or Yeah, we don’t know, but there’s definitely implications for the results I found in my species to extend to other sea anemone and coral species as well.

16:45Well, it’s been impressive and there’s a lot to research there and understand between the systems and the interactions between animals. And also this inspires you to start your own businesses, right? Can you tell us more about your business and how you are a scientific communicator and you want to take this one a little bit further.

17:11So how did this start? Yeah, so I’m the proud flounder, pun intended, of a small marine education provider called Reef Literacy. So it came about because throughout all my… diverse roles that I’ve mentioned before, whether it’s coral collecting, working for fisheries, etc. A common thread between all of them is I’ve always been led back to sharing my knowledge. with others and mentoring younger students about my experiences, inspiring them that they can do it too. I’m a good example.

17:51I failed science and I’m about to finish my PhD. So if there’s a will, there’s a way. You can do anything if you just go for it. So I really wanted to try to get that out there and reach as many young people as I could. So that led me, I guess, to create reef literacy. So I aim to go into schools around Cairns and through hands -on learning, get the kids really excited and learn about the reef and learn to love it.

18:26Because now more than ever, ever, it’s so important to get people excited. There’s so many threats on the reef. And if people don’t… get to experience something, they’re not going to love it. If they don’t love it, then they’re not going to care about trying to protect it. So we really need to get that engagement that love the ocean and the environment more generally to them while they’re in a young age. And in Cairns, unfortunately, the irony of living on the doorstep of the Great Barrow Reef, which of course is one of the world heritage listed sites is that it’s often inaccessible to so many people. So even myself, I struggle to get out to the reef because it’s just so expensive.

19:16And so, you know, young families, it could cost hundreds of dollars to get out there just for the day or to one of the islands to go snorkeling. So through my business, I really want to try to bring a small part of the Reef to them. So whether or not it’s in daycare, so little toddlers in daycare, or if it’s the elderly in aged care homes, or anyone in between, so primary school, high school, I want to reach as many people from as many walks of life as possible. Let them feel, experience the Reef firsthand, so with all my…

19:55with my stars. I’ve got a collection of marine invertebrates, they are really the stars of the business. And then with a series of experiments for the older kids, just get them excited about why the ocean is so important, why it’s so cool. And then ultimately one day a real dream of mine with the business is I want to take my stars are out to remote outback communities and reach these kids that have never seen the ocean or the beach before so that they can hold a real life starfish or a sea urchin or a hermit crab.

20:35So yeah, Reef Literacy is really about just sharing my passion and just teaching, yeah, I guess a bit about marine science in a way that’s fun and memorable. Yeah, that is great. And taking that as a baseline, how do you think storytelling may help this purpose? And how does storytelling make contrast with just the typical published scientific data without emotion or connection to the general public? Yeah, excellent question.

21:16So a real challenge that I have seen myself with science is that, well, scientists I should say, is we’re not very good at disseminating our research to the general public. So we’re… We spend many years, some of us 10 years of learning at university how to write in a very particular way. It’s very structured, almost like a formula. It’s very dry. As you mentioned, there’s no emotion and we use lots of big words and it’s very hard for just, you know, the general public without all of this scientific training behind them to understand what we’re talking about. And even I myself, if I read a paper slightly out of my scope, I struggle to follow what’s going along half the time. So it’s really difficult to understand all of this scientific research. So it is so important, I think, that we make We really try to make it accessible to the public. So we make ourselves accessible, we get out there, we meet them, we talk with them, we have avenues for them to ask us questions. And we’re just able to explain our research in layman’s terms, you know, get rid of all of the big scary science words and just explain it. And why is it important?

22:44Why have we done this? What does it mean? And I think through that then, they see how excited we are and how passionate we are. And then they walk away going, oh, that is really cool. You know, we should care about that. Yeah, I think it’s just so important that we do break down all of those barriers and make science accessible.

23:12to people as we can and one thing one of my mentors taught me years ago one of the early things was he said if you don’t publish it may as well have never happened but as well as that if you’re not getting out there and communicating your findings what’s the point of having it published if no one knows and there’s no point keeping it in this tiny little collection of just scientists get it out to the public. It’s, you know, public knowledge, greater good of the whole community.

23:48So really get out there and share it. Otherwise, what is the point of doing it in the first place? Yeah, I completely agree. That’s because we create this podcast out of our bubbles and learning from scratch and learning different skills, but the idea is connecting and bridging the gap. of communication between science and the public and also the languages in this case so that they understand what we are doing and why it’s important.

24:26Yeah, especially while there’s so much like distrust I feel at the moment about scientists and what’s our agenda and just getting out there with the public then they are they’re seeing like firsthand that we are real people. We’re not, you know, we don’t have a big agenda that we’re trying to do. We are deeply passionate and yeah, it just makes us, makes it and the science more relatable. Yes, I agree. And you recently went on a trip on a big vessel, a research vessel.

25:02CSIRO is a scientific institution from Australia. So tell us about this adventure. What do you learn and what they are doing there? Yes, everything. What do you do there? Yeah, absolutely. So I was incredibly unfortunate to be invited to jump on board the CSIRO’s recent voyage into the Coral Sea on Australia’s leading research vessel, the RV Investigator. So we went about a thousand kilometers off the coast of Cairns, far into the Coral Sea, so way off coast, out to the east of Australia. And we were doing lots of deep sea exploration. So we’re exploring all of these deep sea habitats in the Marine Park that had never been explored before. So it was this massive multidisciplinary survey. So we were doing lots of multi -beam sonar mapping. We were doing video transects. We had ocean chemists on board. We were doing eDNA sampling. And we were collecting and sampling all the marine life that lives down on the bottom of the deep sea, so in the abyssal plains. And some of the sites that we sampled were up to 4,000 meters deep. So if you think of all of those documentaries with those weird deep sea creatures, you got the Dumbo octopus,

26:32the blob fish, the angler fish. These were all the animals that we were seeing firsthand, which was so, you know, as a little girl growing up watching all of these documentaries to be on the boat and actually seeing these animals and how they’re, how they survey. survey them and learn about these habitats. Like every day was a pinch me moment on the boat. It was absolutely incredible. It was a once in a lifetime experience.

27:01It was very tough though. So I was on board about 30 days. I didn’t see land almost that entire time. So we were way off coast. So I got very homesick. often quite seasick and we were working 12 hour days so it was it was a lot of hard work but it was an opportunity I will never forget. That’s amazing and besides like at the deep sea biodiversity is almost unknown as far as we know it’s like a one less than one percent worldwide this is another world that we don’t know absolutely anything. about it and all these animals and those plants and those nuclear organisms that live there, down there. We don’t know absolutely anything. There’s also corals, right? Absolutely, yes. We found so many deep sea corals. Of course, these type of corals that live down in the deep sea, they wouldn’t have that little algae, that zooxanthellae living inside them. There’s no light that gets that deep. But there’s still all of these deep sea corals and deep sea sea anemones, all sorts of types of starfish and crabs. So much diversity down there. It was absolutely crazy. And it was really exciting. We think we’ve discovered some new species on the trip. It’ll be many years until we know for sure, because all the taxonomists have to verify their work.

28:30But we all got excited on board thinking we do have at least a couple of new species. And we know already that we had some new species that were new to Australia. So we knew they were in other parts of the world, but we hadn’t known that they were in Australian waters. So that was really exciting as well. And so all the research we did not only is just really good at learning, you know, what animals we have here and what we need to protect, but it also just adds to the knowledge of all of these deep sea environments and why are they important. All the ocean chemistry helps us learn like how all the ocean currents and, you know, connected and changing and all of that sort of stuff. Yeah, and mapping, we discovered a new seamount while we’re out there.

29:18So a whole new mountain, bigger than Mount Everest. So that was so exciting on board. If you jump on Sky News and Google the CSI Rose Seamount, you’ll find news articles about that. But yeah, there’s just so much we don’t know. As you said, we know more about, you know, deep space than we know about the deep sea, like on our own planet.

29:43So it was very exciting. Yeah, that is so cool that you mentioned that because I’m also a marine biologist. And I remember when people outside the field ask you how is to be a marine biologist, most people think it’s just like swimming with dolphins and that kind of thing. So what would you describe how is the field work? besides onboard that you already explained to us. Yeah. So what I think a lot of people don’t realize, they may know, but they might not really have processed and understood, and I certainly didn’t until I got onboard this trip, was that the vessel really does operate 24 -7. So that’s not just…

30:35there’s the you know the skipper making sure that the boat doesn’t sink or hit an iceberg it’s we’re working 24 7 so the team was split into two teams we had an am and a pm team i unfortunately uh was on the am team so that meant my shift was from 2 am to 2 pm and that was every day for the entire um trip I was very fortunate because arguably I had the best teammates, so I was on the best shift, but we definitely had the short straw with the worst shift. So what that meant was I was waking up at 1 a.m. every day. I was eating my first breakfast at 1.30 a.m. That was usually dessert left over from the night before. Then we’d normally have second breakfast.

31:30at around 4.30 a.m. Then we would have main breakfast at 7 a.m. And then we would normally have a morning tea around 10.30. Then we’d have lunch at 12. And then 3 o ‘clock in the afternoon, we’re expected to try to wind down and go to bed, which was incredibly hard. Even after the full month that I was on board, my body clock still just didn’t want to play along. It was the sun is up, just awake. Like your body is just awake. So it was very, very hard. We did have cabins so our bedrooms were little cabins.

32:03We had no windows so as soon as you turned the light off it was completely black. So sunlight trying to sleep wasn’t an issue it was just the body clock so that made it a really tough. So throughout the trip I didn’t see a single sunset which was really sad but I did see the most spectacular sunrises. Most days I got to see the sunrise and it was just yeah they were just so beautiful words can’t even describe. So of course while we’re out there though we are working incredibly hard it is a multi -million dollar voyage there’s lots of research partners funding this trip so Parks Australia we had Ocean Census we had Bush Blitz so we had a lot of partners that were contributing to the trip. So we did have a very important mission and objectives to do while we were out there. So we worked hard but we played harder.

33:04So mental health and work -life balance is very important on a voyage like this because you miss your family, you’re tired. So it is really important that collectively together you all try to manage your mental health, try have a work -life balance and try have downtime, so when you’re not in the lab, when you’re not on the computer, you do get time to relax. So what was really cool and surprising about the ship, so the RV Investigator, was that there were two big media rooms that we were allowed to use, so lounges, massive TVs, we had Netflix, we had table tennis tables, we had darts, Xbox, PlayStation, we had like a…

33:49car racing simulator, like seat and a wheel thing, I don’t know what they called. We had hard drives, we were like, you pick a movie, it’s on there. And we played Wordle, our team, we did Wordle every day, we did our 11am Wordle. So yeah, it was really important to just maintain, you know, that. You work hard, but we still made it fun and relatable. We had that downtime. We were really well -fed while we were out there. So we had a couple of chefs on board. So they cooked us our three standard meals a day. But then there was also unlimited snacks that we could just help ourselves to at any time. So definitely no shortage of food. We had a dessert group.

34:43ice cream, like, unlimited ice cream, ice blocks. We had a fancy coffee machine. The coffee machine was doing up to 200 coffees a day across both shifts. At one point, we were worried that the coffee machine broke, so I was very anxious on board for a while there. I don’t drink coffee, so I was OK. But I had a lot of stressed colleagues.

35:08But the engineer was able to get it working, so it was OK. um that sounds really fun yeah yeah and we had a snack fairy so um i don’t know after a couple of days just fatigue kicks in and the general mood of the boat gets down and then the little snack fairy will come out with kit kats or magnum ice creams or cocoa pops one morning they’re just like this fun extra that wasn’t there before where has this been hiding um so we always love the snack fairy and the lolly jar Um, yeah, other than all that, one of the really surprising things for me was that even though you’re on a boat, it’s amazing how many steps you can do a day. So on average, I was doing six kilometres of walking a day and I was on a boat. It’s crazy. Yeah. So, so I thought that was really cool. Well, that’s amazing. Sounds like a really cool, very hard work. Yeah, I can’t emphasize enough how incredible it was. And I learnt so much working with so many amazing experts and taxonomists and hydrochemists and, you know, seafloor mappers and yeah, that’s a little girl’s dream. Yes, it makes me feel like, oh, jealous.

36:37And what is something that you have learned or that you could share with the public? What is the impact of your research? Yeah, so I think my PhD, so which is looking at the impacts of coral bleaching. on the coral venom ecology, so the nematosis in their venom, I think it’s really prompting us to think differently about how we think about coral bleaching. So for the longest time, we just keep looking at how it impacts on growth, reproduction, survival, and understanding coral bleaching as a whole, but just… the venom ecology has just been completely overlooked and is such an important aspect of how these animals survive and interact within their environment. So firstly, I hope that the findings from my research really just prompt people to consider that, hang on, this is a really valid thing that we need to look at in a lot further detail. because it really will impact on that wider ecosystem. So if we go back to thinking about our large sea anemone with our clownfish in it, if the venom changes in that sea anemone, how will that impact on the clownfish?

37:52Is it still safe for the clownfish to live in that sea anemone? We need to look at these things. We need to consider it. I hope that the research also… just adds to the body of information that shows how important it is that we do really need to try to limit the impacts of climate change best we can. And that’s not even just for the ocean or for the reef or for the corals. For the planet as a whole, there’s so much evidence showing that, you know, there’s just so many negative. impacts that we’re starting to see and experience. So I hope that the research just reinforces and gives another example of why we really do need to try to slow this down best we can. And for policymakers highlight, we really do need to try to protect the reef. We need to understand What is happening with bleaching?

38:51How are our corals being impacted? How will they be impacted? What does this mean for the whole ecosystem? We need to give our coral reefs more protections from various other threats. So we need to increase all the amazing work we’re doing. We need to increase marine park zoning and all of our monitoring. all of our crown of thorns starfish mitigation, so removing all of these like marine pests and reduce pollution. So I just hope it helps get the message out there on why our corals are so important, why they’re so fragile, and yeah just really inspire people that we do need to protect it and the planet.

39:33Yeah, that’s true. And something that I would add is that the coral reefs, there’s not an isolated ecosystem, but it works together. The sea is completely connected. The ocean is completely connected. And if there is an impact in one side, it’s going to reflect in the other ones. And it’s not like a, oh yeah, the Granbury Reef is in Australia. Well, no, it’s part of the world. So that’s something that has to change how we protect those ecosystems. It’s not like, oh yeah, in one area it’s protected. Yeah, but it’s going to have the impact everywhere because there’s no borders there. Absolutely. Yeah, everything is so… Interconnected, as you said, and a great example of that was when we were out on the investigator doing all of that deep sea exploration, we found that seamount that went from like 2000 meters up to 30 meters in the surface. And so we had the coral growing up the surface and all of these ecosystems changed as we went right down to the deep sea. So they are all interconnected and we need to know what is there. how they work so then we know and understand how to protect it. Yeah, that’s right. And going back to the communication part, you were telling us that you have incorporated these interactive platforms

41:04for the people to know the starfish and different marine organisms. But what else would you like to be? done differently in marine science communication? What else do you think it would be important to do differently? That is an excellent question. Well, if I had my way in a perfect world, marine science would be mandatory in schools, from kindergarten right through to high school. Everyone’s got to learn about the ocean. The ocean is just so important. We rely on our ocean for all of our oxygen. Thank you very much. It has been a pleasure having you here. Thank you for sharing all your passion or your experiences or your knowledge and accepting this invitation. This episode was inspired by the ecosystems that sustain life, the mystery, magic and biodiversity of our oceans and the profound need to understand and reconnect with them. Catrina Capoz’s dedication reminds us of how deeply our well -being is tied to the ocean’s health, and how essential it is to protect what we love. Remember that Science Behind the Glass now lives on a new platform that connects the podcast to all major streaming services via RSS. Just click the link in the description to find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, YouTube, and wherever you listen to your podcast. Science Behind the Glass is an independent podcast created

42:36and hosted by me, Linda Hernandez -Duran, and Daniel Esguerra, with the invaluable support of our technical director Rafael Giordano and original music by our dear friend and colleague Bernardo Aguila. Follow us on Instagram, ex -Facebook, LinkedIn and TikTok and visit our website for more stories, updates and resources. Don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends and communities. Let’s amplify these essential narratives together. And if this episode inspired you, consider supporting us with a contribution via PayPal. Just click the support task button on our website. Your support helps us grow and ensures we continue illuminating the human side of science. Until next time!