🦈 How Dangerous Is Ocean Science? Water Science | Dr. Tracy Fanara! | Ailani's Little World

In this episode of Ailani’s Little World, we go on an ocean science adventure with environmental engineer Dr. Tracy Fanara as we explore a big question:

How dangerous is ocean science in real life?

From mysterious ocean events to working around powerful wildlife, Dr. Tracy shares what it is really like to study water, oceans, and the natural world.

Did you know that water scientists sometimes work in wild environments to collect samples and study ecosystems? They might travel to beaches, rivers, and wetlands to test water quality, track environmental changes, and help protect wildlife and people.

Their discoveries help communities understand ocean health, protect marine life, and keep our beaches and waterways safe.

👩‍🔬 Could YOU become an ocean scientist one day?
 🌊 Would you be brave enough to study the ocean up close?

👉 LIKE this video if you love ocean and wildlife science
 👉 COMMENT which animal you think is scarier, a shark or an alligator
 👉 SUBSCRIBE to Ailani’s Little World for more real scientist stories and fun STEM adventures

#OceanScience #RedTide #WaterScience #MarineBiology #EnvironmentalScience #ScienceForKids #STEMEducation #FutureScientist #WildlifeScience #Sharks #Alligators #OceanLearning #AilanisLittleWorld

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Can you explain red tide in a way kids can't understand and what it was like when you first started studying it? Is it dangerous?

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Can it kill you? So, there are phytoplankton all over the world, the base of our ecosystem. In fact, the great oxidation event was because of algae. Algae started growing and producing oxygen, and eventually it became the world that we live in today and can survive on. But there are thousands of species, and a few of them can be harmful, meaning that they can harm aquatic life when they grow in crazy numbers. But some of them are actually toxic. And so Florida red tide or Prania brevis is the actual name of it, is one of those species. Now, there are things called red tide all over the world, the algae blooms. Anytime something looks red, people call it red tide. But the red tide that I studied is specific to the Gulf of Mexico. It has made its way up the Florida peninsula to the Atlantic about nine or ten times in history, but it always starts in the Gulf of Mexico. And so this little species, it's tiny, it's microscopic. And it probably plays a role in the ecosystem that we don't fully understand yet, which is another one of those mysteries that is kind of motivating, right? But it developed a defense mechanism of releasing a toxin. And when there's just a few in the water, which they're always around, releasing a toxin, it's not a big deal. But when they grow like crazy, it becomes a very big deal because it releases a lot of toxin and causes a lot of fish kills. But what makes this toxin so unique is that it can aerosolize, meaning that it can attach onto sea salt particles in the air and move on shore. So when people breathe, they can breathe that toxin in and it can make them cough or sneeze. But if you have asthma or EOPD or other respiratory illnesses, this can be really serious. We had a really, really intense bloom in 2018. It was 120 miles long and like 12 miles across. Wow. It caused mass wildlife fatalities. Florida lost $2.7 billion in tourism because no one wanted to come. And people were getting really sick. It wasn't just the coughing and sneezing. There were a bunch of other health problems from that kind of intense red tide bloom. To answer your one question, we can't really tie it to any deaths directly, but it can make you sick. Especially if you eat it, like if shellfish are contaminated and you eat those shellfish, it can make you sick. Same thing with the manatees. It makes manatees sick and causes them to die because they eat seagrass that little epiphytes attach onto, and those epiphytes accumulate that toxin. So that's how the manatees are impacted. So when I started working on red tide, I was kind of thinking that it was just like every other algae. And I was gonna go and fix the problem and then go back to water quality like stormwater, our impacts. But I learned really quickly that our ocean is really complicated, and there are so many questions that we don't have answers to. And this was a microscopic organism in a huge body of water, and it acts different in a lab than it does in the natural environment, meaning that we can get some red diet and test it in the lab, experiment on what makes it grow or what makes it die and things like that. It acts totally different in the natural environment. So all of our answers in the lab don't really translate to predictions, if that makes sense. So I started to realize when people started calling a mom with a kid with asthma very concerned about these blooms, that's what started to get me into it when people were really being impacted and when animals were being impacted. So I redeveloped a website and developed an app for trained volunteers to report and for citizens to report conditions of red tide. Those aerosols would move with wind direction. So if the wind was going offshore or away from people, then they could go to the beach and not cough. But if that changed, then they would start coughing. So we needed a lot of reports so that people can make healthy decisions when going to the beach. So we have that as well. And then I worked with NASA and NOAA on a cell phone microscope. So before that, scientists would take samples and go and count the cells to get the concentration of Florida Red Tide and it would take days. But with our cell phone microscope, a volunteer can go and take a sample of water, put it underneath the microscope, and upload a video of their sample into an app that can calculate the concentration of red tide in minutes. And then that information goes to a respiratory irritation model, so we have real-time information on where it is healthy to visit a beach.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

That's really cool.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

You work with sharks and alligators in the wild. What is a day like one of those science adventures? And which is most dangerous? A shark or an alligator?

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Okay, so that is a really good question, and I have made a lot of people mad with my answer. So I will tell you which one's more dangerous, in my opinion. So unfortunately, I don't work with sharks and alligators every day. I wish I did, but I've had the opportunity to go and save alligators on many occasions with my friends that trap alligators. Because in Florida, if an alligator is on your property, it's considered a nuisance and people will kill them. So what we do is we save the alligators and bring them to conservation areas. And that's Gator Boys Alligator Rescue, is the group that I was doing now. And alligators are strong. They are really, really strong. And if you want to see some footage, I can send you some videos of trapping alligators and bringing them to Safe Harbor, and they all have different personalities. That's the craziest thing, is that you'll meet an alligator and he'll be super cool and chill, and then you'll meet another one that's crazy. Like they all have different personalities. And I think that that's what I love most about the alligators, is that they're like dogs that have personalities. They're not dogs because they're not domesticated animals. Don't get that twisted. But they do have different personalities, which I thought was really cool. And I mean that kind of goes all the way down to Red Tide because we saw that Red Tide acted differently, and it's only a single-celled organism. Biology is crazy. There's mysteries all over biology. But with sharks, so I started swimming with sharks when I was doing shows about water quality and about shark bites, trying to figure out why shark bites happened. We were doing a number of different experiments and swimming with sharks. And I know you hear about sharks biting people a lot more often than you hear about alligators, but that's because sharks are a lot more places than alligators are. And I also caught sharks in order to take their blood for sampling or to tag them. I've done that a bunch of times too. And I tell you what, first of all, it's best to keep it in the water if you're gonna tag a shark so they're not shocked by the temperature differences. But still, even when it's half in the water, it is nothing compared to a gator in my experience. Now, sharks also have different personalities, and I had one bull shark that did make my heart jump because he looked quick, he was agile, he was flopping around like crazy, he was changing direction. That one was an exception, but in general, the gators are just so strong and they have their tails and their mouth, so you gotta watch out for bulls.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Big mouth.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Yeah, big mouth. And it's interesting because with a gator, you want to get their mouth up, and with a shark, you want to push them down and guide them away.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

I saw those videos where they take the tiger shark come up and they push it down, and I'm like, nope.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Yep, right.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

I'm not that coordinated to pull that off. I'd be like, push down into like.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Yeah, I mean these interactions are with the gators probably necessary, but but a lot of those shark interactions that you see are probably not necessary. The benefit of that kind of stuff is getting people to realize that they shouldn't be afraid of sharks, and we need to protect sharks because they're a keystone species, really important for the ecosystem. Um, like for example, did you guys hear about the shark bites this week in Australia? Yes. Did you? So there were sharks 48 hours of shark bites in Australia. And there's always a reason for these anomalous events, and that's the show that I did on Nat Geo that was all about trying to correlate what happened. So in this case, apparently the waters were so warm that sharks were sticking around a lot longer. On top of that, they just had a ton of rainfall, which made the water really turbid. And I do this experiment where I have this laser pointer, all of these lasers, and I put it through clear water, and you see all the lasers dress fine on the other side. And then when that water is turbid, something big, like all those lasers, kind of all coalesced into one laser, and it looked really small. When the water is really cloudy, a shark can bite you to misidentification.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Thinks it's like a fish or something.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Right. So fish are really smart, they swim in bait balls to look like they're bigger. But even then, when the water's cloudy, it doesn't look as big as it would, you know.