Selects: Mangroves: Nature's Best Tree?

11:18Josh Clark:That's right. Those are the ones with the little nubby, they look like sticks almost, sticking out of the water. They filter it out and they secrete it on the leaves. So that means if you see a black mangrove and you see some kind of chalky white stuff on the leaf, that is salt. Like go – I don't know if I should say go lick it because I don't know if that's dangerous at all. But it's salty. Just trust me.

11:42Chuck Bryant:It tastes like salt and DDT.

11:44Josh Clark:Gosh.

11:46Chuck Bryant:Red mangroves, they're non-secretors. So they actually just don't allow salt to be taken up by their roots. Now, that's easier said than done because their roots are planted in the water, right? So, there's water. They're taking up water from the ocean, from salt water. And what they do is they have cell walls that actually act through reverse osmosis. It lets water through, but it doesn't let solids through, which is quite a trick. I mean, that's something that humans have only recently figured out how to do. Mangroves have been doing it for who knows how many hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

12:23Chuck Bryant:But they do it in part because they have this hydrophobic lipophilic material called subarin that really serves them well.

12:31Josh Clark:That's right. It allows them to get rid of more than 90 % of the salts in the water, which also means, which I didn't really think about until just now, that they can literally tolerate, I guess, about 10 % salt content.

12:43Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I saw 90 % to 95%. But, yeah, that's still a lot of salt for a plant.

12:48Josh Clark:Totally.

12:49Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So they have at least adapted in some ways to tolerate salt more than other plants. But for the most part, they're just really good at keeping salt from being taken up by their roots. I just find that fascinating.

13:03Josh Clark:And I love how Dave puts these. His sections are labeled either mangrove magic tricks or what was the other one? Mangrove superpowers.

13:14Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Which is pretty fun. They're both apt.

13:16Josh Clark:They are. So this is magic trick number two is we mentioned, you know, I mentioned earlier that they actually breathe through these roots. I think typically you might like to think about plants as, you know, just eating up that CO2, which they definitely do. But plants need oxygen and they need to get oxygen from the roots. and, you know, with a regular tree and a regular forest, they're getting that like through the soil and these little gaps between the soil. In mangrove or mangalls, I guess you would say, they can't do that because the tidal sediments come in and it's all waterlogged and compacted.

13:59Josh Clark:So they don't have those air gaps that you have in a normal forest. So they kind of came up with a brilliant little trick to get around that, right?

14:06Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So the pneumatophores that black mangroves have, those stalagmites that are coming up in spikes around them, those act as snorkels. So they stick up out of the water and they're covered in these little cells called lenosols. And that's where oxygen exchange happens. So they actually absorb oxygen through these snorkels. They get taken into the snorkel underground into the other roots of the tree and used for aerobic respiration, which is converting food into energy, which is pretty nuts.

14:42Josh Clark:And pneumatophore actually is Greek for air carrier.

14:45Chuck Bryant:Makes sense.

14:46Josh Clark:Pretty on the nose.

14:47Chuck Bryant:Yeah, some of those pneumatophores can reach up to 10 feet tall. Did you see that?

14:51Josh Clark:Yeah, I looked at a lot of pictures. I didn't see any. That's all with my eyeballs, but I looked because I wanted to see that.

14:59Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I didn't see it either. Could be made up.

15:02Josh Clark:So then you've got this. I don't think so. Then you've got these red mangroves that we talked about for my money, like the money mangrove. And those prop roots serve the same purpose as the pneumatophores. They, you know, like I said, they sit up on those long sort of curvy stilts. And they stay above water. Like a lot of it stays above water, even at high tide at times. And they are also covered with those linusols and they do the same thing. They allow for that oxygen exchange to take place.

15:33Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So that explains also why there's so many roots and so many nematophores that spread around these trees. It's like if you dug up a tree of roughly the same size, it would probably have a similar sized root structure, maybe a little less. But you don't see it. It's all underground. This is above ground, so it looks like a lot of roots. And it is a lot of roots, but it's not necessarily more than a terrestrial tree would have. We just don't see them.

16:02Josh Clark:Yeah, it's like a tree that is dropped trow. It is.

16:06Chuck Bryant:That's exactly right. It's porky pig in it.

16:08Josh Clark:Should we take a break at mangrove magic trick number two?

16:14Chuck Bryant:Yeah, we'll come back with number three right after this.

16:25Josh Clark:Hey, everybody. Support for the show today comes from Public. So it kind of feels like there's two types of investing platforms. You've got the old school brokerages that look like they were designed in like 1995. And then you have those other platforms, you know, the ones that feel less like investing and more like a casino.

16:42Chuck Bryant:Public is neither. It's the investing platform for people who actually take this stuff seriously. You know, people who are serious about building their wealth. Because on Public, you can build a portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto, without all the bugs or the confetti.

16:57Josh Clark:Retirement accounts? Yep. High-yield cash? Of course. They even have direct indexing. Honestly, this is what an investing platform should look like. Modern design, simple to use, and customer support that actually cares.

17:08Chuck Bryant:Go to public.com slash S-Y-S-K and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash S-Y-S-K.

17:17Josh Clark:Ad paid for by Public Holdings. Brokerage services by Public Investing. Member FINRA. SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors. SEC Registered Advisor. Crypto services by ZeroHash. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures. Hey, everyone. We want to talk to you a little bit about Wayfair, because no matter what your aesthetic, whether it's mid-century modern, farmhouse, contemporary, eclectic, it doesn't matter because Wayfair is going to have something for you.

17:47Chuck Bryant:Yeah, Wayfair, they've got just what you need. And it's convenient, too, because they have a ton of different stuff to choose from, a huge selection of home decor items, and it's easy to find exactly what's right for you with their amazing search engine.

17:59Josh Clark:That's right. Whether you're starting a home project, you need, like, furniture upgrades or accent pieces or functional decor, or if you're just doing a spring refresh and you need some outdoor furniture or patio decor or maybe lighter bedding, Wayfair has got it all.

18:12Chuck Bryant:Yep, and thousands of five-star reviews help you shop with confidence. So find furniture, decor, and essentials that fit your unique style and budget. Head to Wayfair.com right now and shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair. Every style, every home.

18:35Josh Clark:You know what phone calls are always super important to me are the phone calls that I have with my mom. She's the only parent I have left, and I always look forward to those calls. Here's something you might not know. No, 2026 will mark the 150th anniversary of the first ever phone call. That took place on March 10th, 1876. And from the call that sparked it all to the first long distance phone lines, the first line across America, the first line across the Atlantic, the first round the world call, the first commercial cell service, and the first 911 system, AT &T has been connecting people for 150 years in so many different ways.

19:09Chuck Bryant:So congrats on 150 years of connecting people, AT &T. Connecting changes everything. AT &T.

19:32Chuck Bryant:So Chuck, which mangrove is your favorite kind?

19:37Josh Clark:Well, I think I've been clear. I know you're teasing me. because me and my red mangrove tirades. To me, this is the best part of the episode and the most amazing thing that, besides, and we'll get to carbon sequestration because that's amazing too, but to me, this just knocked my socks off, that mangroves kind of give birth to baby mangroves.

20:03Chuck Bryant:I think the only reason you want to qualify it with kind of is because our mind rails against accepting that that's what's going on. But that is what's going on for all intents and purposes, that some mangroves are viviparous, meaning that it means live bearing, to where they have seeds on their plants that they develop. They're about acorn-sized. But then rather than the seed falling off and dispersing and then eventually growing into a seedling, something much more mind-blowing happens with mangroves.

20:36Josh Clark:That's right. the seedling is actually produced on the tree itself. And they sort of, not sort of, I keep qualifying it, they self-plant themselves. Eventually this thing is going to fall off. You've got to look up the video on the internet. There are many out there where it shows these acorn-like things. They grow down to these sort of long arrow, like green arrows that are pointing down. And eventually they just go boop. And they snap off and they go straight down and they either stick into the ground at low tide or I saw them in two feet of ocean water just going straight through and sticking into the sand.

21:18Josh Clark:And they plant themselves.

21:20Chuck Bryant:They do. They plant themselves in that sandy bottom and then they sprout roots really fast. I saw that they can start growing roots within hours, which means that also if they don't fall straight down, if they fall and they land on their side, they can actually stand themselves up by growing roots on the ground-facing side and then grow roots on the other side as well, which is pretty amazing. What's even more amazing is that if they fall, they happen to fall at like high tide and it's pretty deep and they never touch the bottom in any way, they'll float along. They'll go out to sea, and as they're out to sea, they're a little tree growing, like growing leaves, getting water from the ocean and doing photosynthesis in the sunlight.

22:04Chuck Bryant:And they can float around for up to a year before they make land and stand themselves up and grow roots wherever they land.

22:12Josh Clark:It's just unbelievable because this was an evolutionary adaptation. because my first thought was, well, why doesn't the acorn-like seed just fall into the water and float around? But it must have just not been able to survive and got waterlogged and died and adapted to grow on the tree itself and get that little seedling started.

22:34Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because think about this, Chuck. A seedling is a small, viable tree. It has everything it needs to grow. So it's an individual organism. And when the mangrove is growing the seedling on its tree, on itself, that's gestation. Because when it drops off, it's like a giraffe dropping a baby out, like three or four feet above the ground. It's the same thing. It's gestation. It's a live birth of a plant. It's nuts, man. I love it.

23:05Josh Clark:And the baby giraffe sticks its nose into the ground and grows from there for months and months.

23:11Chuck Bryant:plants some roots out of its head and there you go.

23:14Josh Clark:Let's talk about the mangalls a little bit. We've talked about the fact that these forests are very dense, but it is a dense ecosystem that is dense in more ways than one. It's not just all these gnarly roots that you see everywhere. There are all kinds of fish habitats and wildlife habitats that exist in these mangalls.

23:34Chuck Bryant:Yeah, one of the reasons why these root systems and why the above water parts of the trees are all just so thick, like you were saying, it's so hard to get through, is because of the way that they drop seedlings right off of their tree right around them. So these mangles develop into these really thick deposits of trees and shrubs above water and below water because they grow so closely together. and as they grow, they migrate one way or another or they just spread out one way or another, sometimes toward the ocean, sometimes behind them, sometimes to either side of the shore. But that's how they grow and that's why they're so dense too.

24:13Josh Clark:And that provides a lot of protection for these habitats. They're all manner of fish. If you're in Florida, you're going to see gray snapper in there or you probably won't see him. Snook, tarpon, this is pretty remarkable. The goliath grouper, which is actually endangered, spends their first six years in that mangal before it goes to open water.

24:34Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and it's not just like a few kinds of fish, like things like octopi, sharks, shrimp, mollusks, just tons of different kinds of fish. Like this is their nursery ground because these roots, these tangle of roots provide a place for juveniles to like hide out of reach of predators and get bigger and bigger because it's also a very nourishing place for them to eat too. So they're really, really important as nurseries for all kinds of sea life.

25:04Josh Clark:Yeah, and if you're talking about eating seafood, the commercial fishing industry, and this just sort of shows you how important these mangles are. A one-square-mile loss of mangrove forest would lose about 275 ,000 pounds of fish every year. And then that's not even to speak of all the indigenous communities that rely on these fish to provide their sustenance.

25:33Chuck Bryant:Right. And so that's just the below water part of the Mangal. The above water part of the Mangal basically does the same thing. But for terrestrial and arboreal animals like monkeys, insects, reptiles, birds, they make their home and their nurseries in the Mangals too. The branches, the leaves, the trunks, those are really just as important for above-ground animals as they are for below-water animals.

25:59Josh Clark:Yeah, and you mentioned that Bengal tiger. This was also in the Sum Darbans, right? Yes. And this is the largest single population of Bengal tigers on planet Earth, and it's only about 100 of them. But they live in these Mangals.

26:17Chuck Bryant:Yes, and also, attention, Kristen Bell. If you are ambivalent about mangrove forests, prepare to care, because in Panama, the pygmy three-toed sloth, critically endangered, by the way, only makes its home in mangrove forests down there. That's right. So you got to care now.

26:38Josh Clark:I still watch that video of her and that sloth about once every two years. Yeah, it's a good one. It's just one of the great human reactions to something.

26:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and I remember how heartened we were when we realized that she didn't touch it, even though she clearly wanted to more than she's ever wanted to do anything in her life, but she didn't do it, you know. So good for her. That's pretty great.

26:57Josh Clark:I think we can move on to some superpowers, right?

27:00Chuck Bryant:Yeah, mangrove superpower number one, which is coastline protection, which is pretty important if you live along the coast.

27:07Josh Clark:Yeah, this is a big one. One great benefit of all those above ground, gnarly mess of roots that are everywhere is, and it just makes perfect common sense when you look at them, is they make great wave breaks. Any kind of wave, even like a tsunami. Is that a word?

27:28Chuck Bryant:It is now. I think it's a great word.

27:31Josh Clark:Right. Tsunami's wave is going to be cut down big time when it hits this stuff. It's just going to, you know, just cut through and disperse it in a really profound way.

27:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because there's so many different like roots and individual things to bump into on the way to the shore that it's going to reduce its energy, which means that it reduces one of the pernicious effects that waves have on shore, which is erosion. And not only does it reduce erosion because the waves don't have enough energy to take stuff back out to sea, it actually has them deposit the sediments that they're bringing to the shore in the mangrove swamps. And if you combine that, I should say, with the really low oxygen environments that make up the mucky bottom in a mangrove, Mangal, I guess you can kind of flashback to our coal the mystery of coal episode where we talked a lot about how swamps work like that so mangrove swamps are very much like that as well but then in addition to that they have ocean sediments being brought all this organic stuff being brought from the oceans layering with the mucky sediment from the mangroves falling into the muck which means that they're like holding on to a lot of stuff and building up soil as a matter of fact so much so that it outpaces sea level rises in some areas.

28:53Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, this kind of falls under one of their other superpowers is the fact that they are literally sequestering carbon. But I think that they add about, and we'll get to that in more detail in a minute, but in Australia, some mangrove or some mangalls in Australia and Belize add about 10 millimeters or more of coastal soil each year.

29:16Chuck Bryant:A hundredth of a meter.

29:18Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, that doesn't sound like that much, but a sea level rise is coming in at about 3.2 meters a year. So in parts of Australia and Belize, it is actually outpacing climate change.

29:29Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's pretty cool. And that's really, really important because the sea levels rise. If the soil level is rising, we don't have to worry quite as much about sea level rise there. But that's only in some spots, as we'll see.

29:40Josh Clark:Yeah, and as far as the waves go, and we're talking about tsunamis, with just regular waves for every 100 meters of a mangrove forest that a wave will hit, its height can decrease by as much as 66%. Wow. And if you're looking at storm surges, which is one of the big dangers, it's not just the wave, it's that water surge, if you listen to our tsunami episode. There was a study that found that surge depths were reduced about a little over a foot and a half for every little more than a half a mile, 50 centimeters over every kilometer. And that doesn't sound like a ton, but if you've got a mangrove forest that's, you know, several miles deep, then we're talking, you know, six or seven feet of less storm surge happening.

30:34Josh Clark:And that can make a really big difference in flooding.

30:36Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah, because the storm surge is what gets you. I mean, it can flood miles and miles inland. It carries all sorts of debris with it. It has so much energy. It can just rip buildings down. It's a real problem from hurricanes. It's that flooding from the storm surge. But because those mangroves are there to absorb a bunch of that energy, it just doesn't have the opportunity to come nearly as far inland. So mangrove forests, especially thick ones, save human lives and you would guess animal lives too.

31:06Josh Clark:Yeah, and we've seen sort of this bear out in very sad ways when mangrove forests have disappeared. I think it was in the Indo-Pacific region in the 1950s. They used to have about five miles deep of mangrove forest. By the 1990s, they were depleted because of shrimp farming. We'll talk about that later as well. But basically, human-caused depletion. And in 91, there was a cyclone that hit the coast of Bangladesh where there were no longer any mangrove forest to cut down on that impact. and there was no buffer and there was a big 20-foot storm surge and almost 140 ,000 people died. Right.

31:49Chuck Bryant:I saw that a lot of those people died because they didn't use storm shelters in addition to the mangrove buffer being gone and that they had built the storm shelters, Chuck, after a 1970s cyclone that killed 500 ,000 people in Bangladesh. Wow. Can you believe that? Can you imagine a storm killing half a million people in your country or your little area? That's insane.

32:17Josh Clark:It is. That's devastating.

32:19Chuck Bryant:Like it's biblical, you know?

32:22Josh Clark:Yeah. They did some studies too with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004. And they found that the mangroves there were about 100 meters deep. And they at least helped reduce those waves between 5 % and 30%. So that's a big deal. You know, six feet of storm surge, up to 30 % of wave height in the initial rush in from the ocean is, you're saving a lot of lives in that case.

32:50Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And I mean, you saw how bad the Indian Ocean tsunami was, too. It just makes you wonder, like, how much worse it could have been without mangroves. So I say we take our second break and we come back and talk about carbon sequestration.

33:05Josh Clark:That's right, a.k.a. superpower number two.

33:09Chuck Bryant:The stuff you should know.

33:16Josh Clark:Support for the show comes from Public. If you look at your investing app, what do you see? An interface stuck in 1997? Or something that looks modern but feels more like a casino than a place to build wealth? Public is different. It's the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build your portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, options, bonds, crypto, it's all there. But what really makes Public different is the technology behind it. Imagine starting your day with an AI summarized market briefing, getting clear summaries of earnings calls the moment they end, or turning any idea into an investable index just by typing a prompt.

33:57Josh Clark:This is what investing looks like when the tools finally catch up. Go to Public.com and earn a 1 % uncapped match when you transfer your portfolio. Public. Investing for those who take it seriously. Ad paid for by Public Holdings. Brokerage services by Public Investing. Member FINRA SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors. SEC Registered Advisor. Crypto services by ZeroHash. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures.

34:22Chuck Bryant:We're always talking about how things work, and one thing that keeps your car running smoothly is regular oil changes. But life's busy, and the oil light always comes on at the worst time. Well, that's why there's Take 5 Oil Change. It doesn't just save time. It gives you control of your day back. You pull in, stay in your car, check something off your to-do list. No waiting room, no pressure. You're in and you're out in about 10 minutes. Oil changes include tire pressure checks and fluid top-offs. And the friendly staff explain everything and welcome you with a free water.

34:51Josh Clark:Take 5 fitting into your busy schedule is something you should know. Find your nearest shop at Take5.com. Let me tell you something we all already know. Taxes can be daunting. Oh yeah, it's like you sit down competently and five minutes later, you're questioning every life decision you ever made.

35:09Chuck Bryant:But here's something you might not know. Taxes don't have to be this way. Not when you use Intuit TurboTax. With TurboTax Expert Full Service, you don't have to figure everything out yourself. A real live tax expert does your taxes for you. And they don't just vanish into the ether. You get real-time updates throughout the process. So you know what's happening and when.

35:28Josh Clark:Yeah, all you do is upload your documents in the TurboTax app and then live your life. You can check in any time on a coffee break between errands or, yes, even during a bathroom break. And meanwhile, a dedicated TurboTax expert is checking deductions and credits to help you get the best possible outcome.

35:44Chuck Bryant:And if a question comes up, you get unlimited expert help, even nights and weekends during tax season, at no extra cost. So, yeah, taxes don't have to be a time suck. Let a TurboTax expert handle it for you. Visit TurboTax.com to get started. Real-time updates are available on the iOS mobile app.

36:17Josh Clark:All right. We had promise of superpower number two, and we teased a little bit earlier, I did, about carbon sequestration. So we need to talk a little bit about what people are calling a blue carbon ecosystem blue sort of referencing the ocean.

36:37Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's basically the same thing, like, you know, trees inland capturing carbon and storing them in their bits and parts. This is just coastal vegetation doing the same thing. And the thing is, is like trees, they're really efficient at capturing carbon and storing it. But because of our friends fungi and rot, But when the tree dies, that carbon gets released back into the ecosystem and even possibly back into the atmosphere if, say, like a wildfire happens.

37:11Josh Clark:Atmosphere?

37:12Chuck Bryant:Hot wheels.

37:15Josh Clark:That is right. But you know how we mentioned before that with that soil that the water is basically – that ocean water is just sitting on top of. It is not – it's just building up to that salty peat. and that carbon is not being released like it does in a terrestrial forest. Yeah. And it's not breaking down. So it is a champion at storing carbon. Not only good at it, but really good at it.

37:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah. It's like the Judah Friedlander of forests as far as carbon sequestration goes.

37:48Josh Clark:I love Judah Friedlander. We actually met him once, but I don't get the joke.

37:52Chuck Bryant:Oh, he always wore a hat that said world champion.

37:54Josh Clark:Oh, okay.

37:55Chuck Bryant:And he was always boasting about stuff like that.

37:58Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah. I love that guy. When we met him at an event with Jesse Thorne and Hodgman many years ago, and this was kind of during his run on... 30 Rock. 30 Rock. And this is when I was also wearing my Last Chance Garage hat all the time, which I haven't put on in a couple of years. I hate to say so. Probably a few years. But I remember when I met him, he went, and in that face of his, as he kind of peered up at my hat and that patch, and he went, all right, okay, cool.

38:28Chuck Bryant:That was a great shoot of Friedland.

38:29Josh Clark:I was like, hey, I got the stamp of approval from the hat guy.

38:33Chuck Bryant:Yeah, definitely the hat guy for sure. It was cool. So, but yeah, so mangroves are the champion of carbon sequestration, so much so that they are four times more efficient than terrestrial vegetation at storing carbon, which makes them like a bona fide carbon sink, mangrove forests are. And again, it's because there's just no decay. There's no fungus. There's no rot. All the stuff, all the vegetation that dies and falls down into the muck just gets stuck there and covered over and doesn't get a chance to break down. So as long as you don't dig up or destroy a mangrove forest and cut up the peat to use it as cheap fuel, you've got a really good carbon sink on your hands.

39:16Josh Clark:Yeah, to the tune of worldwide mangol's account for about 6.4 billion tons of carbon that's being held in check. That means when you do do something, like you hinted at, it can have devastating effects for the world. Surprise, surprise. If you cut down a mangrove forest, that carbon is going to be released. That sequestered carbon is slowly going to creep back into the atmosphere. From 2000 to 2015, roughly 122 million tons of carbon, extra carbon, were released into the atmosphere because of the destruction of mangrove forests. And between 80 and 2000, 30 percent of the mangols of the world have been stripped away.

40:02Josh Clark:And it is outpacing like the tropical rainforest destruction.

40:07Chuck Bryant:That's mind-boggling because if you just hear the figures on how frequently and how much rainforest is cut down, the idea that mangrove forest is outpacing it is pretty nuts. But apparently Myanmar is the current hotspot for mangrove deforestation. Between 1996 and 2016, Myanmar cut down 60 % of its mangols. Just gone. And part of the problem is, like, you can restore mangrove forests, fortunately. We'll talk about some people who do that. But it can take a while. And sometimes when you restore some mangroves, you put the seedlings in, and a typhoon or a cyclone or a hurricane comes along and just washes them all away.

40:51Chuck Bryant:So if your timing's wrong, it might take a very long time for you to restore a mangrove forest. So it's not something you want to cut down willy-nilly, basically.

41:00Josh Clark:No, shrimp farming is something we mentioned earlier in passing, but they are the biggest culprit responsible for 35 % of mangrove forest loss. And, you know, people love shrimp all around the world and in Thailand in the 80s and 90s and other places as well, but especially Thailand. They cut down a lot of mangrove forests to make these shrimp farms along the coastline. And then you've also got the sea level rise that's causing destruction. We mentioned parts of Australia and Belize that those soil deposits are outpacing it. But that's only in a couple of those places. It is not doing that in other areas.

41:41Chuck Bryant:No. So that means that sea level rise is outpacing soil deposition there. I want to say one more thing about shrimp farming, too. I looked a little bit into it. I cannot decide. Maybe it deserves its own episode. Who knows? One of the other problems with shrimp farming, in addition to a shrimp farm sharing the same kind of land or a mangrove forest that land it occupies being desirable for a shrimp farm, so you cut down mangrove forest to build a shrimp farm, is that when you harvest shrimp, you basically have to refresh the water. So shrimp farmers typically just basically open a dam and let all the water out.

42:19Chuck Bryant:And that water is filled with tons of nutrients that overwhelm the carrying capacity of the ecosystems, the mangrove forests around the shrimp farm. And you get what's called an algae bloom, which sucks up all the oxygen, kills off all the fish, and has just this devastating effect on the ecosystems surrounding it. So shrimp farming is really hard on the areas where it takes place, not just from the shrimp farms themselves, but from what comes out of the shrimp farms as well. And there's just so many basic good best practices that could be followed that just aren't followed that there's almost like a general like duh coming out of the shrimp farming industry as far as I can tell that really needs to be fixed.

43:04Josh Clark:It's almost as if they just want to continue to make as much money as they can before they're regulated in some way.

43:10Chuck Bryant:But, I mean, what are you going to do if you tried to regulate them at all? You've got a nanny state on your hands, and who wants that? Yeah, and shrimp farming is just one tiny fraction of the great amounts of harm that are happening to the ocean because of lots of things.

43:27Josh Clark:But commercial fishing is certainly one of them.

43:29Chuck Bryant:I will say, though, it's really hard to turn down shrimp on pizza. What? Have you ever had it? Have you ever had it or something? No, no. That was from years back. I used to love shrimp on pizza.

43:41Josh Clark:All right. Talk to me more about this. What are we talking? You just throw some shrimp on a regular cheese or is it like a barbecue pineapple thing or what?

43:49Chuck Bryant:No, no, no, no. No, a regular pizza. But you don't want to use just any shrimp. You certainly don't want to use jumbo shrimp. You want to use the little tiny salad shrimp because they cook just enough with the pizza. A bigger shrimp might still be partially raw. It's going to be too big to eat. Oh, you put it on the raw? Yeah, you just throw some of those. Well, now, I think they usually come already cooked now that I think about it. But you just throw a couple handfuls on your pizza, put it in the oven, and thank me later, basically.

44:16Josh Clark:Oh, man, I love shrimp. I don't know about shrimp and pizza.

44:18Chuck Bryant:Well, now I feel bad about eating shrimp knowing how bad shrimp farming is.

44:22Josh Clark:I know. It's, yeah, it's another wake-up call, isn't it?

44:26Chuck Bryant:Well, yes, and I've been awoken because I'm now farming my own shrimp here at home in a very sustainable manner so that I can have it on my pizza.

44:35Josh Clark:Ah, bathtub shrimp. That's right. This is delicious. We don't take baths anyway. Yeah. Yumi's like, why do you have an out-of-order sign on our bathroom door? Right.

44:44Chuck Bryant:I'm still trying to figure out how to break the news to Yumi. We don't really have a working bathtub anymore.

44:51Josh Clark:So there are also invasive species that can totally wreck the health of a man, Gaul. In the 70s in China, they were trying to do the right thing. I think there were conservationists that transplanted some marsh grasses that were from the United States there to try and slow erosion. But it crowded out mangroves. And then in Texas, they weren't trying to do the right thing. The fish and game officials there, they said, hey, people like hunting this exotic Asian antelope. It's called a nilgai, I guess, N-I-L-G-A-I. So let's put them in Texas so people can hunt them. And it turns out they love to eat mangroves.

45:33Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So they're being deforested by the game that was imported to Texas to hunt. Which means I'm sure there's huge bounties on these things now too. Yeah.

45:43Josh Clark:Isn't that funny how that all works out?

45:45Chuck Bryant:So there are people who are like, we really need to work on this. We need to get mangroves back. And there are places where, this is the good news, mangrove deforestation globally speaking on average has actually stopped progressing and is now starting to decline.

46:01Josh Clark:Yeah.

46:01Chuck Bryant:The deforestation is. So people are, you know, kind of getting hip to the idea that we really need these things. They provide countless services for us humans. So even the most selfish human can get behind mangrove restoration, right?

46:15Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, I think there's about 42 % of the worldwide mangols are protected now. Yeah. You need that number at like 90 to 100. But I would feel much better if it was like in the 80s or 90s, you know.

46:28Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and not only that, like areas that have been developed coastly need to replant the mangroves that they cut down to build because they need them really bad. You need mangrove buffers, as we found. Whatever you can get is helpful.

46:45Josh Clark:That's right. But there's another kind of clever financial instrument, as they call it, called blue bonds. It is a subset of green bonds. Green bonds came around a while ago, and these are basically if you have money and you want to invest responsibly in a way that not only doesn't impact the environment but can help the environment, you invest in a green bond or if you're really into the ocean, the subset of blue bonds, which were first introduced in 2018. Right.

47:17Chuck Bryant:And so if you want to offset your emissions, you buy a blue bond and all of a sudden you've just paid somebody to go plant some mango. Or not mango. Maybe mango too, but mangrove forests.

47:29Josh Clark:Right. Yeah. A mango forest. That sounds delicious.

47:32Chuck Bryant:It would be. I'd be like planting it in my backyard. That's where I want you to plant it with my blue bond.

47:38Josh Clark:So look into blue bonds and green bonds. I saw something depressing the other day when they were, I don't know what they were talking about on the news, but they basically said, like, if you have an IRA, like, you are supporting all kinds of companies that you would probably never support in real life.

47:53Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah, definitely. Mutual funds.

47:55Josh Clark:Yeah, mutual funds. Just everything's all lumped in. So they were trying to encourage people, if they're able to, to be a little more selective in what they choose to invest in.

48:04Chuck Bryant:Well, there's a lot of sustainable mutual funds, too. That's right. where they're very carefully selected. Unfortunately, that means the management fee is going to be higher, but if you care, it doesn't really matter.

48:17Josh Clark:Oh, is it really a higher management fee?

48:19Chuck Bryant:Yeah, any time it requires any additional thought or effort, the management fee just automatically goes up.

48:26Josh Clark:I had to click on three extra things.

48:28Chuck Bryant:Right. I had to find out what these blue bonds were. That's my impression of a mutual fund manager.

48:35Josh Clark:Yeah, financial advisor. If that's your financial advisor, you're going to the wrong person.

48:38Chuck Bryant:I meet him at Burger King every couple of weeks. In the back.

48:44Josh Clark:Yeah. Where else would you meet?

48:46Chuck Bryant:You got anything else? You got nothing else. Up with mangroves. Up with mangroves. And since we both said up with mangroves, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail.

48:58Josh Clark:This is a thank you from a Satanist. We had a great podcast. We must have put this on a select recently, I guess.

49:05Chuck Bryant:Yeah, like two weeks ago.

49:06Josh Clark:Okay. Hey guys, discovered your podcast in 2011, have been hooked ever since. Your informative banter-filled episodes remained a welcome constant in my life throughout college, adult years, and now parenthood. It was helping me stay sane during sleepless nights with my newborns. When I saw the episode on Satanism, I guess I hadn't listened to it previously, I was simultaneously excited and nervous. I would hope you'd give it the usual Josh and Chuck treatment, and I was not disappointed. Over the years, I've been given a lot of grief being a Satanist. People often assume that I'm a very devout Christian based on the way I look and often go from praising me to threatening my family upon learning that I follow the tenets set forth by the Satanic temple.

49:48Josh Clark:By shedding some light on the true nature of Satanism, I feel that you have given many people a look into the practice in a non-threatening way. And hopefully this will help people choose kindness over fear-based hatred when interacting with Satanists in the future. and thank you for being bold enough to put this episode out in the world. I'm sure it wasn't that easy, but this longtime listener appreciates it. Your friendly Satanist, Donna. Thanks a lot, Donna. Donna the Satanist.

50:14Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that was a good one because I went back and listened to it, to QA it before it was a select. I was like, this was a really good episode. Yeah. But there was one thing at the beginning, Chuck, that now I wish we had back because a couple of people wrote in, And it was that we COA'd at the beginning saying, like, if you're a Christian, you probably don't want to listen to this. And people wrote in and said, no, like, you should not have said that because there's plenty of people out there who should hear this and, you know, change their views on people who hold these views. So if you go back and listen to that, just plug your ears for that first part and then listen to it through again.

50:50Josh Clark:Yeah, that was 40-year-old Chuck talking. Right. Not 51-year-old Chuck. That's right. That's right. Oh, that's a weird number to say.

50:58Chuck Bryant:It is, Chuck. 51 is a weird number, and it's going to be a weird time in your life, I'm sure of it.

51:07Josh Clark:Jerk.

51:09Chuck Bryant:That's it, huh?

51:10Josh Clark:That's the one thing I'll always hate is you'll always be younger than me. No matter how much I want you to speed up the aging process, you'll always be younger.

51:17Chuck Bryant:You would have to travel to Mars in suspended animation, and I would just have to stay here on Earth for me to catch up.

51:25Josh Clark:All right. I'm going to look into that.

51:27Chuck Bryant:Thanks a lot, Donna. We appreciate that big time. And if you want to be like Donna and send us some kudos, we'll take them. You can send it in an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

51:40Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

51:56Josh Clark:This episode is brought to you by Audi. We all know that feeling, a change of plans, a new opportunity. Instead of overthinking, what if you just said yes? With the all-new Audi Q3, the answer is easy. It's made for the yes life, with the power and room to handle whatever pops up. Yes to adventure, yes to right now. Because saying yes without hesitation, that's real luxury. The all-new Audi Q3, made for the yes life. Learn more at AudiUSA.com. You buy insurance for peace of mind, but the policies you trust often cause the biggest financial shocks. Every year, millions of claims are denied because people's policies quietly excluded what happened.

52:31Josh Clark:Insurers know every detail. Policyholders rarely do. So for just 27 cents a day, My Policy Advocate reads your policies and explains in plain language where you're vulnerable. They don't sell insurance. They give you the same understanding insurers have had for decades. Before you trust your policy to protect you, let My Policy Advocate tell you what it really says. Go to MyPolicyAdvocate.com. You seek out knowledge about the world, but what about your own body? At QuestHealth.com, uncover valuable health insights from Hormones Deliver Function by purchasing a lab test online. The Quest Elite Health Profile even looks at 85-plus health markers to give you a convenient, comprehensive snapshot of your well-being.

53:11Josh Clark:The process is simple. Buy your test at QuestHealth.com, visit a Quest location for sample collection, and get your results online fast. And for a limited time, save on select tests with code STUFF10 at checkout. Terms apply. This is an iHeart Podcast.

53:28Chuck Bryant:Guaranteed human.