Can the Ocean Really Remove Carbon at Scale?

In this episode of Climate Confident, I sit down with Annalisa Bracco, a physical oceanographer and climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, to explore how our oceans are changing—and why it matters.

The ocean is a critical carbon sink, absorbing vast amounts of CO₂, but it’s also warming at an alarming rate, driving more extreme weather events and disrupting marine ecosystems. Annalisa explains how rising sea temperatures are fuelling stronger hurricanes, shifting rainfall patterns, and devastating biodiversity—particularly in coral reefs, where we’ve already lost up to 75% in the Atlantic alone.

We also discuss the role of marine protected areas, the surprising impact of sea cucumbers on coral survival, and how AI and machine learning are helping scientists map oceanic ecosystems. Annalisa shares insights on potential solutions, including ocean-based carbon sequestration, enhanced weathering, and the challenge of safely storing CO₂ at depth.

Key takeaways from this episode:
✅ Warming oceans are intensifying weather patterns and reducing freshwater availability.
✅ Coral bleaching threatens food security for over a billion people.
✅ AI is revolutionising how we track biodiversity and predict climate impacts.
✅ Marine conservation efforts can rapidly restore ecosystems and improve fisheries.

The health of our oceans is deeply intertwined with the future of our planet. Listen now to understand what’s at stake—and what we can do about it.

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If you have carbon that gets below a thousand meters of depth in the ocean, you're probably going to have that carbon staying down there or anyway away from the surface for about a thousand years, which is pretty good time line, right? We can probably find better solution and better technology in a thousand years from now. And we don't have to worry about it. Right Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to episode 208 of the Climate Confident podcast, the go to show for best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. I'm your host, Tom Raftery, and if you haven't already, be sure to follow this podcast in your podcast app of choice. So you never miss an episode. Before we dive in a huge, thank you to our incredible supporters. Your backing keeps this podcast going and I truly appreciate each and every one of you. If you'd like to join our community, you can support the show for as little as three euros or dollars a month. That's less than the cost of a coffee. Just click the support link in the show notes or visit tinyurl. com slash climatepod. In today's show, I'm thrilled to be talking to Annalisa Bracco, and in coming weeks, I'll be chatting to Dr. Gemma Green, co founder and exec chair of PowerLedger, where we'll be talking energy autonomy, Puja Balachander, founder of Upgreen, and we'll be talking about commercial property, Jenny Morgan, we'll be talking about her new book about cancel culture. And Chris Daugherty, CEO of Joulen, we'll be talking about energy grids, but back to today's show. And as I said, I'm talking to Annalisa. Annalisa, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself? Sure, and thank you for having me. My name is Annalisa Bracco. I'm a physical oceanographer, climate scientist, and I'm a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I work in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and I work with models and with data when I have them to figure out what is going on in our oceans and how we can hope to make them better. Okay, great. And can you talk to me a little bit about your journey to there? You know, what got you into this space and how you ended up where you are? Yes kind of by chance, I would say. My background is in physics. I have a bachelor degree in physics that I got in Italy. I'm Italian originally. And I really studied theoretical physics. So general relativity, particle physics, things like that. Towards the end the system in Italy required you to do a thesis, so a research project. I ended up doing it on the formation of planets. And in looking at the formation of planets, I looked into the presence of vortices and the role that vortices, so turbulent motions that is organised in those structures could do. And it turns out that vortices are also in the atmosphere and in the ocean. I had started my PhD by, by then and my advisor was not so much into planetary science anymore. And so he asked, would you consider applying it, what you have learned and fluid dynamics capabilities to ocean or atmosphere? I love to sail. So I was definitely an ocean person. And so I said, Sure, ocean. Right. That's pretty much how I turn away from planetary science and went into oceanography. And from from that, going into climate more broadly has been really easy. Okay. And what has, do you think surprised you most on your journey from planetary sciences to now oceanography? Certainly, the availability of data was a first big change. I think when we went from planetary into geophysical flows or atmosphere or ocean. It was really at the time where we were starting to have a lot of satellite data coming through. And so that was extremely exciting because you work on, on planets and you don't have as much, at least at the time, we did don't have as much. And so you build those wonderful theories, but sometimes it's difficult to prove them. And in fact, our idea that the vortices played a role in the formation of planets was seen and proved only like 20 years later by someone else because we were not working in that field anymore. But they actually observed one of those vortices contributing to the formation of a planet. While, on the, on our planet, we were already collecting satellite data. And so that was, was really fascinating. And of course, it was also fascinating that there was an immediate problem that relevant for society, which was that we were kind of changing what that atmosphere and that ocean look like. Because we are emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gases. And so we were changing the chemistry of our planet. And the other thing that was fascinating for me as I love to work on interdisciplinary settings and so work with colleagues that do other things. And that was very, very easy on our planet. Because if you're thinking about the ocean, you have to think about who lives in the ocean. If you think about the atmosphere, you do the same. And so it was much easier to go into projects that involve other dimensions than just physics. Okay, nice. And what have you found in your studies of the ocean to-date? That it's warming. That's for sure. That it's constantly changing. And that has been happening forever. We may be changing it a little bit faster than it used to be, at least on certain fields, but definitely that it's a very, very dynamic environment. That we are really doing quite a bit of damage in terms of biodiversity. And so we have to work to improve that, and we're doing it. But we definitely have to consider that carefully because a billion people live out of protein or get anyway, most of their protein supply from the ocean. And so we need that biodiversity and need to preserve it also for economic reasons, also for survival reasons for us. I've learned that the ocean can be a beautiful medium and can also be a very dangerous one. So you have to always pay attention to what is going on. Very, very hard to measure. It's still, you know, it's common to say that we have more observation of Mars now than we have of our ocean. And in a lot of ways that's true because we can see the surface of the ocean very well from the satellite measurements but deep ocean. It's it's hard to measure. And we do have instruments that get us to 1000 or 2000 metres pretty regularly. But we don't have a lot below that. So there is still a lot of to discover really very interesting. And today is also becoming more and more important for the problem of rare minerals, for the interest that there is in extracting resources from the ocean, the interest that there is potentially in storing CO2 and, and carbon that we subtract from the atmosphere somehow in the depth of the ocean, because it's a safer place where you can put it. So a lot of interest also from a technological perspective. Okay, okay. And you said it's getting warmer. I mean, that sounds kind of like a good thing, right? No, not really. I go swimming in the ocean and it's freezing cold if it's a couple of degrees warmer. Isn't that a good thing? I'm being facetious obviously. I was actually seeing yesterday you know, originally I'm from Italy. I was still reading the Italian news and seeing people swimming in the South because it's still so warm that you can just go to the beach right now. It's great for that. It's not so great when you have, I mean, an ocean that warms up means that the ocean is storing more energy. And obviously the ocean is warming from the surface down below. So where you have a lot of energy stored near the surface, you also have a lot of potential for extreme events in terms of weather. And so you are increasing the possibility of having hurricanes. You are increasing the possibility to have in the Mediterranean Sea are called now medicanes. So big storm that have a very strong destructive power. Stronger hurricanes are becoming the norm. We are seeing them just the intensity of the hurricanes is, it's slowly changing. The other thing without even getting to that level of, damage is that we are by changing what the ocean is storing in terms of heat near the surface, we are really changing the precipitation pattern. So where it rains and how much it rains. And that is problematic because the system, the climate system is evolving towards more rain where it's already wet and less rain where it's already dry and obviously tends to be dry over land and tends to be very wet over the ocean. But that means that we have a less supply of fresh water over land in certain areas, which is obviously not good. And also that whenever there is a storm, there is going to be a stronger storm, even if we don't get to the level of hurricanes. I can give you an example. Last year, I was organizing a workshop at Spelman University here in Atlanta. And on the last day, we had eight inches, eight inches of rain coming down in two hours. That's about 20 centimeters. So we had to stop everything because it started raining into the cafeteria, which was the room very close to where we were having the conference. The Benz, Mercedes Benz Stadium, which is the biggest stadiums we have here in Atlanta got flooded. Clark University nearby got completely flooded. I mean, eight inches is what we get in a month, in a, in a good, you know, month of August when it rains a lot. And we got it in two hours and this, this year, August was completely dry. We didn't get anything. So that kind of changes where you get everything concentrated together. It's also because the ocean is becoming so much warmer. And so we are changing the way the patterns of, of rainfall change. The humidity, the concentration. It's just different water vapor. So, Yeah, I remember, I John Holdren, who was President Obama's chief scientific advisor, saying that climate change, to use the phrase I used earlier, sounds benign, and it should more accurately be called global climatic disruption. But course, that doesn't kind of roll off the tongue as easily as climate change. Yes, You mentioned, that the weather impacts of a warming ocean. What about the impacts on biodiversity? Near the surface those are huge. This is especially true for tropical ecosystems. So, essentially, the ecosystem that live around coral reefs. We have lost about 75% of the biodiversity in those systems already. The causes are multiples. It's not just global warming or the fact that the ocean is getting warmer more often. It's also excess fishing and it's pollution. However, those systems are really extremely important for survival of population that live out of fishery and that are usually small islands where there are not a lot of other resources, but also because they do provide a protein supply for a billion people, and that's a very large number. It's one tenth of our population, essentially of a world population. Coral reefs are especially sensitive to temperatures because corals are populated by a tiny algae. It becomes really unhappy if the temperature is above 29, 28 degrees celsius. And so whenever you have those episodes of really strong warming, this little algae, which is called Zoanthella, just leave the coral and the coral lose the color because the color of the corals come from the algae and is what we say bleached. So we have what is. generally known as coral bleaching. Now, if this warmth lasts only a few days, the algae can come back and repopulate the coral. But if it lasts over a week or especially over two weeks, it's pretty much a done deal for the coral. So that's how we are losing also so much of coral coverage and coral biodiversity right now. This is especially true in the Atlantic. In the Atlantic, we have lost 75 to 80% of all coral reefs. The coverage is simply gone. This past summer, I was in the US virgin Islands, and the temperature at 8 meters below the surface was 29.6 degrees in May. And what should it be Definitely no more than 27 and a half. right? So it's two degrees warmer already. And this was really the beginning of the warm season. It was, it was pretty depressing. I went snorkeling and there was, I counted over two hours, the number of, of corals that were still alive. I could count them on my hands. And, and the thing is that it's, it's a region that is covered by dead corals now. So you actually see all the ones that are gone. And, and that's definitely a temperature signal, yeah, that is dominating. Obviously, pollution doesn't help. And so it, and overfishing has not helped because there are a lot of fish that really help the corals staying clean and being more resilient. And obviously if you get rid of them, It's easier for algae to take over and, and just cover the, the, the corals and, kill them also that way. But the heating signal has really been the top problem in those systems. and so what? I mean, I'm asking that, it's sure, corals look gorgeous, obviously, when the algae are there, but what's the implication of losing the corals? What services do they provide for us that they no longer will when they're gone? Corals are foundational. What it means is that they are kind of at the base of the ecosystem that lives in the ocean at tropical latitudes. So if you get rid of the coral, you get rid of all the fish that lives around the corals, which are usually tiny, and then you get rid, for example, Parrot fish. You get rid of all the bigger fish that live out of the small fish. And so you really destroy the whole ecosystem. So again, it you're really getting rid off the whole system that that gives food and provides food for a billion people. And most importantly, you are really reducing the biodiversity in those areas, because if you don't have the corals and it just get swap away by algaes, which are not the one that live on the corals, of course that cover everything. You are destroying the whole, the whole structure, the whole base of your ecosystem. And so you're really taking down everything above that. Corals are also extremely old and very, very resilient, which means that if you're looking back and you're thinking at the big extinctions corals are the one that managed to survive relatively well and were apparently only wiped out almost completely, only twice. Out of the six major extinctions. So, you know, it doesn't sound really promising if we are getting rid of them. There is hope in my mind. I think there are areas where corals are not doing so badly. Only last month we discover National Geographic an expedition through National Geographic discovered in the Solomon Islands, the biggest single coral ever recorded at the site and is alive and doing greatly. It's around Solomon Islands and is the size of two basketball courts. So, you know, there are still areas where things are looking relatively good. Why is that coral doing particularly well when others are failing so badly? So this one definitely has been left alone, right? We didn't even know it existed and probably is in a region that has not been affected as much by the warming. Okay. There are others for example, the Coral Triangle, which is the biggest hotspot of biodiversity that we have on the planet when it comes to ocean biodiversity. It and is located in the Pacific around the equator and towards the Indian Ocean. So in the Western Pacific. In the coral triangle, there are hotspot. So regions, areas, coral, single reefs that are doing still extremely well. Despite the fact that we have the El Nino Southern Oscillation that brings very warm water in certain years, and there is a lot of variability and some of those corals have been able to recover all the time. So we kind of have clear indication that they bleach and clear indication that in one or two years, they are able to have corals back living pretty happily. And that is very good news. We believe my group research actually believe so has shown that most likely the fact that they get new larvae, so they get replenished off of coral larvae from many different directions because the currents and the physics of the ocean is so active. There is so dynamic. So that may be helping them recover so quickly. because you can imagine bleaching a whole coral reef, and then getting a lot of new larvae the following year or six months later. And those larvae are finding already the structure that they need to grow. And so they attach there and they just regrow on top of what was left and bring new life to it. So that's very positive. It's not true for everywhere in the Coral Triangle. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is not doing that well. But definitely pristine corals tend to do much better than reefs where there is a lot of other issues that are causing the corals to die. So Florida, for example, is not doing very well, but there is also a lot of problem with pollution that is coming from having coastlines that are strongly populated. The other reason corals are so important and reefs are so important that they are really great at protecting from big storms. And so they also have a very important role to play in mitigation strategies against you know, weather that is becoming more dangerous over time and storms. Okay. And what about things like sea cucumbers? Can you explain That's, yes, and other solutions are helping some corals survive? That, is a discovery of a colleague of mine that, that just lives essentially, his office is just across mine on that side, Markay and his group has been studying corals in an island in the Pacific, which is called Morea, where the National Science Foundation has long term monitoring research station for now about 20 years. And they were doing some experiment trying to transplant a new coral. So what you can do with corals, the, the cool thing about corals is that if you take a branch of corals and you make small pieces and you plant those small pieces, usually you can essentially those small pieces will survive and so you can start from one single small piece and you can cover a whole area with little ones that are going to grow and so you repopulate the whole area. And so one of his students and researchers in Marquet's group was doing that work of really planting corals in an area that had sea cucumbers. And he decided to remove them because the, he hasn't seen them that much. And interesting enough the corals he replanted didn't do very well, they kind of died. And so that immediately. prompted the question, what are those sea cucumber doing? And sea cucumber in the Pacific were extremely common and have been collected for eating. So, the population of sea cucumber, it's extremely small today and was incredibly large, even just 40 years ago, you had sea cucumbers everywhere on the bottom. And now it's very rare to see them. In fact, this researcher did not see them before he went planting in that specific region. It turns out that sea cucumber really clean the bottom where the corals want to attach and they eat every possible bacteria or virus that they found around and so they are fantastic cleaners. And if you remove them the corals, which are, you know, those little pieces that you're trying to plant that can be more easily attacked by bacteria and viruses and, and die. And if you can instead keep the sea cucumber and eventually allow them to grow in areas where they're being eradicated you are really helping the coral to become much more resilient. And so you have a much higher potential of recovery after they get bleached or after they get ruined by other reasons. And they can survive and grow much, much better. So there are, there are those symbiotic behaviors through various species. And, and, That's really why Marine Protected Areas are so incredibly helpful. Right. Small areas where you cannot touch anything and you just let the system go back to what it wants to be, with all the possible species that want to live there, helps immensely. You get in, in a couple of years, you get an increase in fish population of about 400%. and that's to the advantage of everybody, because if you get the fish population back, the fishermen can go out and fish, they just cannot fish within the marine protected area, but can fish around. And fish are very smart animals and they tend to use the marine protected area for nursery especially if you put them in the right place. And so then you still get to fish and you get to fish more. Nice. And just from a practical perspective, how does one go around planting corals? Does it require getting into a wetsuit or a dry suit and going to the bottom of the ocean and literally pushing them into the floor, or something? Yeah, Yeah. they, they usually put little structures and you can also 3D print the structures where they want, you want them to attach because they like to attach to some kind of hard substrate. And, and so you, you kind of make it 3D printed structure and you put it in and then you attach the coral to it and they can go out of that. One place where you can see that done really at industrial scale is in the Red Sea, for example. Okay. Why, why there? Waters have become really, really warm, so corals have been degrading really quickly, and there are a lot of money to be put into restoration, given the region. So there are interest and, the willingness of trying to restore them. So they are really doing it at a large scale. Okay. And your group, you've been applying AI and machine learning, which is obviously a hot topic these days to, to map ocean regions. How is AI reshaping our understanding of ocean ecosystems? And what kind of breakthroughs are you most excited about there? We are using machine learning to really identify the areas where currents, so really ocean currents, are likely to mix larvae and fries, which are the little fish effectively. And, and that is essentially mapping what are the ecoregions where you expect to have more or less the same kind of ecosystem. And then also building networks that can tell us if I do have this kind of ecosystem here and that ecosystem is releasing larvae at some point, where my larvae can go. And is my little ecosystem here, which maybe is less affected by climate change or is not getting too warm or whatever, can give larvae to another place that it's less lucky. And therefore also depending on this distribution of regions where I should put my marine protected area. Because I really want to protect an area that gives out larvae the most and that is very effective at helping other areas instead of trying to protect an area that is just a big receiver, for example. So we are doing that because we can use high resolution what we call reanalysis. So essentially models that embed all the information from satellite data and in situ data that we have. And that show us what the temperature distribution and the current distribution was for the last 40 years. And we can essentially build those ecoregions and really study how those ecoregions may change according to different climate patterns or different periods and so on. And try to really see where we need to put protection in place. But there are a lot of other applications of artificial intelligence. The great thing about the ocean is that we have data. We are starting to really have a lot of data. That's true also for the atmosphere, by the way, not just for the ocean or for land for that matter. But there's often sparse data. So people have collected a lot of data in different ways, in different places. And what artificial intelligence is really good at is to allow an analysis of all those data together, and is very good at extracting patterns, telling you what may be going on that you would have a very hard time seeing without that ability of computational capabilities that that allows. So it's really helpful in you know, developing this kind of eco regionalisation for the ocean has been attempt also with different methods in the Mediterranean Sea, for example, I have a colleague that has done something like that. We are also starting to have a lot of genetic data. Oh, right. So we collect small pieces or fish and, and really look at the genetics and that allow us to say if two different corals, for example, have been related or not, and if they have been related or whether it may be that they've been related over a timescale of hundreds of years. And so then we have to figure it out, how that is possible. But putting all those data together and using machine learning can give us a map of what the genetic exchanges are. And if we can map those genetic exchanges, we can understand also a little bit of the evolution of the system and how those system is connected Okay. And just curious, could genetic information that you collect, could it also allow you, for example, to say whether certain species are in an area or not? Because it's obviously quite hard to observe any species that are below particular depths. So maybe you could use the genetic information there to say, ah, there are these species here. Yes, we are definitely not that far yet in mapping the bottom. The latest research or hot topic, in fact, I had a conversation about that just yesterday, is to use what is called eDNA to map or to get essentially to the answer that to your question. And that is essentially the DNA that ecosystem leaves and especially corals leaves in the water. So you can just collect the water. And it's really the same idea of, of when, you know, I have two kids. And for my first one, they figured out the gender in the usual traditional way with with ultrasound, but with the second one, they were able to just get a little bit of my blood very early on. And from that, they would see the leftover DNA from my kid that goes into my blood and is a extremely small amount and determine the gender from that. And that's really the same idea now as being applied to the ocean. So wherever you have any kind of system, which is located in a specific area and corals are sessile so you, you have them in a very specific place. There is a little bit of DNA that gets into the water from the system and you can measure it. And so you can actually see how far that spread and you can try to quantify. If you see the DNA and you don't know that there is a coral there, you can start thinking of how far it may be and you can try to locate it. And that becomes very, very interesting for very deep ecosystems that, as you said, are expensive and you have to know it and you, you kind of stumble on them sometimes, but you, we don't have a map for those. But again, we are really just at the beginning, and so we still have to figure it out exactly how to get from the information and how fast that information degrades over space and over time, because it does. Obviously, if you're too far away, you're not going to measure anything. The concentration is just too low for detection and temperature plays a role. So depending on the temperature of your water is going to degrade faster or slower. And so those are all information that we still need to put together. In that regard, machine learning is extremely helpful because you can imagine of having much fewer information that you would have need traditionally to be able to kind of make those maps. But we still need a little bit of research on that. It's very exciting, though. Yeah, Very, excited. exciting. And what about, I mean, you mentioned using oceans as a, a carbon sink. So, is that something you're looking into as well? Yes, we are. It's a very hot topic is another very hot topic. If you look at projections of how emissions are going and all the things we need to do to, to try to stop the or limit warming. Not only we should try to use alternative form of energy compared to fossil fuel we should also try to remove some of the carbon dioxide that we have in the atmosphere. And there are different ways of doing it. Some I believe more promising than others, but obviously when you're thinking about concentration of carbon the ocean. It's a huge reservoir of that. And so there are ideas on how to do that using the ocean as well. First of all, the ocean is also a fantastic storing place for carbon. If you have carbon that gets below a thousand meters of depth in the ocean, you're probably going to have that carbon staying down there or anyway away from the surface for about a thousand years, which is pretty good time line, right? If you want to store, if we can say for a thousand years, we're not going to get that carbon back. We can probably find better solution and better technology in a thousand years from now. And we don't have to worry about it. Right. So that's, that's the first thing. And the other thing is that if you're thinking about natural ways of reduce carbon, you are thinking about forest and green stuff. And in reality, 70% of the surface of our planet is ocean and 50% of the oxygen that we breathe come from the ocean. And so it comes from photosynthesis that occur in the ocean through plankton. So among the various ideas is to grow algae of various kind that are going to then be sunk at depth. And so they will do all the conversion, release the oxygen, capture the CO2, grow using those carbon molecule. And then you sink everything at the bottom and you are essentially taking away carbon from the atmosphere and putting it in the ocean depth. Another way that is being considered is what it's known as alkalinity enhancement or weathering, usually we use weathering, the expression weathering over land and alkalinity enhancement on the ocean. And this is a little bit more sophisticated. There is another natural way of removing carbon, which is to form carbonates from basalt or olivine rocks. And this is a process that happens very naturally on top of big mountains. So you, you have essentially a weathering of the mountain in the sense that the winds, the weather will destroy a little bit of the mountain rock and pulverise it, and when that happens, there is then a chance of having a chemical reaction between that dust that is generated and the carbon dioxide which is in the atmosphere and you end up with carbonates. You can think of enhancing that and accelerating that and doing it over land or over the ocean. So you take a piece of rock, basalt rock for example, the Rockies in the US would be great for that. You pulverise it. And then you distribute it somewhere. You can put it over fields where you are growing crops, for example. And you know, you can add it, you can add that powder to the fertilizer that you're using, and then you fertilize your field. Over the next couple of weeks you will get a reaction with the CO2 that is in the atmosphere. and form carbonate. Those carbonate will sink whenever you water your crops, will go in the water system, get into the river. You are changing the alkalinity of that, because they're alkaline, obviously are carbonates. So you're changing that in your river. The river will get into the ocean and will, you will change the acidity by making it more alkaline of your whole system, which is great because the ocean is also becoming a little bit too acidic because of the CO2 that we're adding. And so, everything is to gain. You can think of doing the same thing at the ocean surface. So just spray this kind of dust at the ocean surface and let the atmosphere that is on top do the reaction and then this carbonate that forms is going to be a little bit heavier than the surrounding water will just sink and you are sequestering carbon that way. I am a little bit less optimistic about directly doing it on the ocean. Because every time you have to deal with the ocean, it's expensive to get the material there. And so you also have to consider how much carbon you're going to use just to be able to get, you know, a research vessel or a vessel of some kind that is going to spray this dust all the time. And then you still need a couple of weeks of this material to stay near the ocean surface. And again, the ocean is turbulent and you do a vertical motions as well. And so you're going to lose some of that. So we, we are still trying to figure it out exactly what is the return on the investment if you do it over the ocean. But I, you know, overland is being tried and there's been successful. And at the end, you get it into the ocean anyway. Okay. Okay. And to your mind, what is the most exciting technology which, you know, will help us improve our ocean's health? In terms of ocean health, specifically, it's very important to have citizen science kind of efforts and marine protected areas in place. The ocean is extremely, it's shown to be extremely good at recovering if you let him do his own things. And so protecting it is incredibly important. So really just putting protection measurements in place is extremely important, especially from the biodiversity side of things. I can give you an example. The Sea of Cortez is a fantastic place, which has amount of biodiversity because it goes all the way to big mammals, which is insane. And fishermen there have realised already in the late nineties that they had lost 70, 80% of what they were able to fish. And the establishment of marine protected area there with the help of the fishermen that have also developed a school so that they teach the new generation to go out and fish. But then it, it becomes I'm missing the word here. When tourists to go out and fish and then release the catch. Oh, yeah. Catch and release. Yes. So and they are doing it to really protect the environment, and they have figured out that they can make the same amount of money doing that versus just fishing exclusively, and that they can still fish, but they have to do it in certain seasons and only up to certain amounts, and they have recovered the population by 70, 80% of what they had lost in, in, in less than 20 years. And the biodiversity is back and the tourism is great and they're doing better than before. And they really did it from small communities that realised that they were losing what they always had for generations. So in, this regard, I think that the ocean really needs this kind of efforts. On a larger scale, if I'm looking at all the possible technologies, and I think we need more investigations and I think it's not going to be a solution just 1. I mean, there's going to be a portfolio of solutions. Some are going to work bigger scale and some are going to work smaller scale. Direct air capture is very promising because there's a potential to scale up. It's just a matter of cost at this point, but we do have the technology in place. Weathering so alkalinity announcement over agricultural setting seems very simple. Another 1 that should be able to scale up pretty quickly. There, I think it's more of a issue of really having a good understanding of what the side effects are in the water system. So reverse and then once it gets all in the ocean you know, green energy, clean energy, all of that is needed and that's the 1st things that we should probably focus on. But yeah, and I mean, you can also think of taking out CO2 and carbon really directly from the ocean that the weather becomes very, very expensive just because of a density. So, flushing the water into the systems that will do the extraction it's energetically very expensive. So I'm, I'm less convinced we can reduce the. price of that to, to the point of becoming sustainable. Okay, and a left field question for you. If you could have any fictional character or any real person alive or dead to be a spokesperson for the health of the oceans, who would it be and why? I don't know if I would like to just have one person. I think I work on a documentary as a scientific advisor, not too long. And the spoke person was Giovanni Saldini, who is a sailor that went around the world interviewing people. Both scientists and regular citizen that are working trying to rebuild the ocean health and went around every, I mean, everywhere from, you know, interviewing people in Hong Kong to interviewing scientists in Hawaii to interviewing fishermen in the Sea of Cortez. All of them had incredible story to contribute and so I think it would be unfair to to just give one name because there are so many people that are actually doing fantastic work everywhere, really everywhere. I would just like to have more opportunities for those people to really show what they're doing and how much little things may matter, you know, contributions really sum up to make a difference. And the other thing I would like really important for me is I would like a little bit more education about the condition of the ocean and why it matters and what we can do, because that's often relatively simple measurements that we could all all take. And there is not a lot of education. We learn about environmental issues relatively late in school, in school settings, and you know, everybody knows about turtles but there is so much more that, that we could teach and that really you could learn from a very early age just because it's so interesting. I teach a course where I ask my students to make Art, something that is artistic can be a school book, a children book, it can be a poem about the deep ocean. We really don't know too much. And, and undergraduate students come up with, I mean, I have here, because I'm collecting them and we're, we're probably, you know, this is a poem that a student wrote with, with, uh, uh, yeah, look at this. Lovely. It's lovely. And I may, I may be, we may be finally be going to a exhibition to a museum where we can show those to families. I mean, just give them to school kids and things like that. It will be extremely important. So I don't want to just mention one person because it should be a collective effort. Great. Great. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Annalisa. Is there any question I haven't asked that you wish I had or aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of? I would only say just just a general statement. We have an unbelievable planet, and just being curious about how it works is fundamental. And we were able to work with teachers few years ago, and I discovered that there were two teachers, more or less my age, who have never seen the ocean and we were able to send them for the first time on a cruise, on a research cruise for a week. Now, I think that that kind of experience, if you're teaching about the ocean, go out and see how amazing it is. And just really for everybody, be curious about what is going on and you will automatically try to protect it just because it's so beautiful. Great. Fantastic. Annalisa, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? My website it's definitely a great place sites. gatech. edu Annalisa Bracco, but you can just Google me and it will show up. Or LinkedIn is another place where you can find me where I post whichever news we have, especially on the science side. Great. I'll put those links in the show notes. Fantastic. Annalisa, it's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. Thank you for having me. This was great. Very happy to be here. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.