Al Jazeera Podcasts.

Today, can we afford a world without coral reefs?

There's a billion people in the world that are relying on coral reefs. And so that's a problem.

Scientists say 90% of coral may be extinct in 25 years. Conservation efforts are fighting

to prove them wrong. I'm Manuel Rapalo, and this is The Take.

I have six people in my family right now with active cancer, and there are many cancer drugs that are derived specifically from coral reefs.

And so there are quite a few reasons why anyone should care and should be part of the solution.

Awesome facts about our coral reefs.

Number one, coral is being used to try to cure cancer and a lot of other diseases.

Coral is actually being used in research by scientists and all sorts of clinical trials and studies

for creating medications all the way from cancer to Alzheimer's and plenty of other things.

Hi, I'm Heather Stark. I'm the executive director of the Coral Reef Alliance, and I am based

in Wilmington, North Carolina. Welcome to the take. Let's start simple. What is coral? Is it a plant? Is it an animal? Is it a rock? Is it somehow all three of these things at once?

Mani, that's a great question because it's one that we get a lot. And I will start by saying most of all, it's an animal. So it's an animal. There are little coral

polyps, but they do have a symbiotic relationship with algae, photosynthetic algae, that

provide them nutrients. And they also secrete, especially the hard corals, secrete calcium

carbonate. And so they actually do sort of build themselves

into rocks. So really, there's a component of all three, but they're an animal. Yeah, it's definitely

a trick question. But I think that understanding more about coral is part of what helps to

explain why coral is so vulnerable and why it's so complex to try to save it.

How much of coral reefs has the planet lost already? I've seen headlines that suggest that in

the last 75 years, more than 50% of coral has already disappeared. But how much of the world's coral

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