Coral Kingdom | What Sam Sees

it's me Sam and I'm here in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary to check out a species with bolder liked formations antler-like branches in all kinds of colors they sound like plants right well actually they're animals corals are endangered species in desperate need of our help so let's dive down to learn more about them and an amazing underwater research lab that works to protect and preserve our oceans and its marine wildlife [Music] the ocean is full of life in an amazing array of shapes in colors and at the bottom of the ocean floor is one of the greatest natural wonders of our world coral coral are one of the tiniest living organisms in the ocean they can live alone but many do something really amazing they attach themselves to rocks at the bottom of the ocean divide into thousands of clones and form beautiful colonies called coral reefs the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia is the largest coral reef in the world but today we're headed to contry to dive with Eileen Soto and her team from FIU we're diving down to check out Aquarius the only undersea lab in the world to learn about the research they are doing to protect and preserve coral reefs here we go Aquarius is massive its chamber weighs about 80 tons and is 43 feet long this vessel is like its own ecosystem the view ports in the base plates on the seabed are all covered with coral formations this underwater lab is a habitat for marine wildlife and scientist I've never seen anything like it let's go up to learn more about the research that happens in Aquarius Eileen that was such a cool dive can you tell me again what you do so basically my job is to connect the missions that we're doing at Aquarius to kids all over the world so we actually have Wi-Fi underwater and we can live with a group anywhere in the world anywhere anytime and basically bring the coral reef of the Florida Keys to the kids wow that's incredible is there research going on right now absolutely so right now Aquarius is owned and operated by Florida International University's NASA utilizes it through what NASA's extreme and I'm admissions operations program or the Nemo program so they're also utilizing it pretty much every year to train for long-duration spaceflights and for life in the International Space Station astronauts learn a technique called saturation diving where they're trained to breathe underwater to reduce the risk of decompression sickness in extreme environments like outer space are there any cool missions coming up so we actually do have missions coming up and all of them are looking at basically the role that predators of play in coral reef ecosystems and looking at the ecology of fear and how predator presence affects behavior and distribution of the prey species okay then we can better understand the population dynamics within the coral reef ecosystem thank you so much for sure it was great hearing about all the missions educational programs and unique ocean science that Aquarius offers corals are such fascinating creatures I can't wait to see more now that we've seen them in the day it's time to check them out at night I've been a scuba diver for seven years and this is my first coral night dive I'm so excited let's meet dr. Miller from NOAA who specializes in corals so she can tell us what we might see down there she and her team of researchers have been diving in this area for the past three nights observing how corals reproduce also known as spawning [Music] so dr. Miller it's so nice to meet you what is your job I work for NOAA as a coral researcher very cool coral function to provide that structure in the ocean to provide habitat for all the different organisms that you see on the coral reef I heard that you've been out here for a couple of nights already it's always a little bit of an adventure because you don't know exactly when the corals are gonna spawn so we always are out here diving actually six nights during August's to make sure that we don't miss it so dr. Miller what kind of corals are Elkhorn and staghorn so the l1 coral that we're gonna see tonight and staffroom coral are two of the species that are listed under the Endangered Species Act what kind of threats are they facing right now particularly for Elkhorn and staghorn coral but all the corals on our reef here they're very sensitive to warm temperatures corals actually have a very narrow tolerance so when the temperature of the ocean gets only a couple degrees higher than it should be corals actually get very sick and die very quickly and fast through a process called coral bleaching so girls kind of look like plants right they do but they're actually animals they are corals are pretty special that's one of the things I think is really cool about corals because they are animals but they act like plants so corals actually just like plants get most of their energy from the sunlight because they have these tiny plant cells living inside them that photosynthesize as plants do and the coral is able to benefit from that so when we're going out on a dive watching for coral spawning what we're gonna be doing is kind of swimming around and just examining all the el cajon corals in the area well I can't wait to get down there and see if we find anything let's keep our fingers crossed I've been waiting for this dive all day so excited let's go it's really dark down here good thing I have this flashlight let me stay close to dr. Miller and the NOAA team there's some alcohol and lots of it that's a marker used to notice locations you would think they were just rocks I can't believe they're animals there's not too much activity tonight wait there's a crab hi little guy there he goes back to bed it's been an amazing and long day of diving time to head back up and call it a day after a few hours of sleep we're meeting up with dr. Miller and her team to see what they found it looks like you have millions of babies there are probably millions and millions I would not want to have to count them for sure but we can estimate from the volume that they're in approximately how many way how cool so what are you guys gonna do with them after they develop so some of the things that we'll be doing our basic experiments to just understand and describe how girl babies behave and what they need to be successful our other goal is really to use what we learned to be able to help more of these coral babies survive and use them for restoration of belief to actually get more corals growing back on their I had such a blast diving with dr. Miller and getting to see her lap she and her team are doing such great work for the future of coral reefs healthy coral reefs equal healthy oceans and a healthy planet also seeing Aquarius with Eileen and the FIU team and learning about all the amazing research being done by diving in the ocean swells are super smart now only are they animals but they have plant like cells that photosynthesize from the Sun to help them grow and they spawn after the full moon in August corals are a lot more complex than we thought so let's be sure to take care of our oceans see you next time on what Sam sees you [Music] [Music]

Channel: National Geographic Kids

Views: 172,518

Rating: 4.6108108 out of 5

Keywords: coral, coral kingdom, oceans, national geographic kids, nat geo kids, kids, kid, for kids, national geographic, nat geo, animals, making stuff, educational, marine, ecosystems, coral are animals!, the Sam Cam, What Sam Sees, PLQlnTldJs0ZQHiJtBZwH91UMHdXPB3elF, PLQlnTldJs0ZR56MScVzlbeucr3brcHb-e, marine ecosystems, coral are animals, Sam Cam

Id: 65E1S2lFK44

Length: 8min 50sec (530 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 28 2018