But what have we got in our deep oceans?

Yeah, so a topic that's closer to New Zealand or a study site that's closer to New Zealand.

I'll start with a study that came in earlier this year that found that there's a lot of CO2 disappearing in the southwest of the South Island area.

So this is called inverse modeling, where they look at, with terrestrial sensors, where the CO2 disappears.

And they found that there's a lot of CO2 being swallowed by the southwest of the South Island.

So that's where the fjords are and that beautiful area of our country.

And then they thought that the forests probably are reliable for some of this.

Teamwork makes the dream work.

But yeah, what does science have for us on this 50th?

Science.

So we thought we'd start with a bit of an ocean theme today, but we'd start with sea cucumbers.

Now, I feel like you either know a lot about sea cucumbers, because once you start reading about them, you cannot stop, or you know nothing.

So if you're in the nothing bunch, I've got three fun facts about sea cucumbers to kick us off.

So the first one is they breathe through their bums, or technically it's called the cloaca, but...

Let's use bums because it's more fun to say.

It's one of those facts that I am surprised that I don't know, because that is awesome.

yeah and the next one is really cool like it's it's got to do with can plants see can they think can they you know are they intelligent

So when we were talking about this plant topic, I vaguely remembered at the back of my brain somewhere hearing about a study about a plant that mimics other plants' leaves.

So there's this climbing vine.

I think it originates from Brazil.

It's called buquila.

In about 2014 it was first observed to mimic other vines around it.

So it climbed other trees and they saw that the leaves looked more like the tree it was climbing than if it wasn't climbing that tree.

Yeah, they're not

So, of course, he found a scapegoat, which was this poor ex-Olympian who seemed to have kayaked in the pool, and he said he vandalized the pool, you know, to the point that his faithful attorney... uh actually pulled out and said well now we can't blame this guy he didn't do anything and trump just said they actually fired her and said no no no he you know this this is vandalism the uh the polls renovated properly and people just messed it up and i'm right so that's that's it's hilarious to read up on but let's look into the science a little bit why do things turn grain so quickly and what happened there

So I think this story will be familiar to a lot of people that have tried to maintain a nice, pristine pond in their backyard.

My parents certainly tried this when I was growing up, and it was a constant battle, because you do tend to get these algae, which can be bacteria, like cyanobacteria, or it can be eukaryotic.

They tend to come in and they turn things green.

This happens out in our ponds, but it also happens in our lakes and our rivers.

And it's a process called eutrophication, which essentially means there's too many nutrients in that water, which then means that those cyanobacteria or those algae which create energy from the sun but also need nutrients to be able to grow especially phosphorus usually if you have a low level of phosphorus you get some of these organisms you have a nice balanced ecosystem what happens especially due to human impact we get more phosphorus coming into our waterways suddenly these cyanobacteria are not being controlled in their growth they just overtake that system and you get these green lakes or green reflecting pools which are no longer reflecting

Never.

Never.