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Science Quickly

Seaweed Bodyguards Coral against Bullying Sea Stars

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.41.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2015

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Crown-of-thorns sea stars are an "underwater swarm of locusts" that devour coral—unless the coral is protected by a layer of seaweed. Christopher Intagliata reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, Deadpool here. We're very excited to be joining you, but we should set the table correctly.

0:05.4

We're mostly going to make enemies with Disney and make a lot of jokes at Hughes' expense.

0:09.4

Come again.

0:10.4

So sit back, relax, while we travel to a place where grown men and women walk around in tights and act like it's not a giant cultural cry for help.

0:19.0

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0:22.8

Cinema. Shut God.

0:23.8

Oh my God.

0:24.8

Marvel Studios Deadpool in Wolverine in Cinemas Thursday July 25th.

0:29.6

This is Scientific American's 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intalyata. Got a minute?

0:37.0

Warmer, more acidic oceans are already damaging corals in the South Pacific.

0:42.0

But the corals also have more visible foes, such as

0:45.0

Crown of Thorne's sea stars. It's an underwater swarm of locus with a stomach

0:50.0

that can be turned wrong side out and digest you as it walks across.

0:53.3

Mark Hay, a marine ecologist at Georgia Tech.

0:56.0

You just look in front of them and there's good corals and you look behind them and there's these

0:59.6

white skeletons.

1:00.8

Hay says the corals in Fiji's marine protected areas are particularly vulnerable to attack.

1:06.4

So he and his colleague Cody Clements took a closer look at the underwater ecosystem there.

1:11.6

And they discovered something weird.

1:13.0

Neighbouring seaweeds usually compete for resources with corals,

1:17.0

to the point where they all whip corals with their fronds and poison them with toxins.

1:21.0

But the researchers found that in this case the seaweeds were actually

...

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