Mangroves

Follow researchers Candy Feller and Dennis Whigham as they scramble, climb, crawl, and creep through the tangled roots of a mangrove forest. Along the way, learn what’s threatening these unique ecosystems where the ocean meets the land. Studying these flooded forests is a challenge, but pursuing science in this strange landscape has its own rewards.

Transcript:


Ari: I’m Ari Daniel Shapiro. And this is One Species at a Time, the story of Earth’s biodiversity, one organism at a time.

Ari: There’s a place in the tropics where the ocean meets the land, inside a thicket of mangrove trees that grow along the shores. Leaves sprout all around. And it looks like a jungle gym: there are roots everywhere. Special prop roots grow out of the trunks and branches and tuck into the soil below. And all these roots curve and twist as if they’re following the path of a tennis ball that never stopped bouncing.

I’ll let Candy Feller and Dennis Whigham continue our tour. They’re ecologists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

Feller: It’s very difficult walking through a mangrove forest. There’s usually water under you feet. Every step is challenge. There’s roots everywhere. In some forests, there’s a canope above your head that’s also challenging every movement.

Whigham: You’re never clearly vertical. You’re having to scramble, climb, crawl, creep: everything that is humanly possible to get from one place to another.

Ari: Now, there are a few types of mangroves, and we’re gonna focus on one in particular: the red mangroves. And you’re probably thinking they’re red. Well, they’re not, at least not on the outside. Their leaves are green and their trunks are brown or gray.

Feller: What is red is if you carve into the bark, you’ll find a very rich, red, tanniniferous layer. It also stains the water, so the waters in and around red mangrove forests are, they’re not red, they’re more tea-colored.

Ari: And that water sloshes in and between all the mangrove roots, which do more than just create an obstacle course.

Feller: Corals, anemones, all kinds of invertebrates require a hard substrate in order to settle. So that’s what the mangrove roots provide and so these roots get overgrown with beautiful macro-invertebrates that are, that are giant. You get huge fire sponges: brilliant orange sponges hanging on these roots. And then you get closer and look at those roots: they’re covered in brittle stars and little fish in there, just a layering upon layering of marine organisms all dependent on those suspended prop roots of the red mangrove.


Whigham: The roots are important for other reasons. They start to trap sediments, and they help form land. So they protect the coast and they build the coast.

Feller: But when the mangroves are cut down, that sediment gain is quickly lost. Cause it’s the roots that actually provide the trap that holds those sediments there.

Ari: Mangroves are threatened by shrimp farmers, developers, and people using them to make charcoal. Feller and Whigham’s science is helping us understand why it’s important for the mangroves to be saved. But that research isn’t without risk. I found that out when the duo started showing me some of their scars.

Feller: Oh, it’s on my calf, I just stabbed myself on a dry branch as I was climbing through the mangrove. It didn’t bleed long. And I’ve fallen out of a tree several times, yeah, and I have been punctured and impaled and cut and scraped and…

Whigham: Most of mine are, they’re usually on my shins. Yeah, sometimes when you misstep in there, the lower part of your leg will hit a root and they’re very hard.

Feller: I have to share… Oh, I have a really good one. All these prop roots in mangroves, they collect sediment but they also collect garbage.

Ari: Feller unzipped her suede boot and took off her sock.

Feller: There’s my scar. I had just taken my mangrove boots off and I stepped down. And there just happened to be a nice, intact light bulb that when I stepped on it, it broke.

Ari: So even researching plants has its hazards.

Whigham: So plants, you may think sit and do nothing, but that’s not true.

Feller: It’s not true!

Ari: I mean, do you ever just, kind of sit on these roots or branches, and just kind of soak in the scene around you?

Whigham: Oh, yeah.

Feller: All the time.


Whigham: That’s why we work in those environments. It’s, you know, it’s incredible. There are many, many moments that are worth every minute of pain or discomfort that you have. They’re certainly balanced out far and away by the great times.

Ari: Go to our website, eol.org/podcast, to see pictures of the red mangroves and the creatures that live on and in them. You can also hear about a run-in that Whigham had once with sandflies. And let us know: would you rather study a red mangrove or a species from one of the other podcasts, say, great white sharks? Write us or tell us why by visiting eol.org/podcast.

The One Species at a Time podcast series is supported by the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.



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