Marine Ecology

Episode 2: Diving into Singapore's Marine Ecology with Dr. Siti Maryam Yaakub (International Blue Carbon Institute)

We all know Singapore as a Garden City, but what about seeing Singapore as an island country? We dive into the lesser-known marine elements of Singapore's tropical environments with Dr. Siti Maryam Yaakub, Senior Director of the International Blue Carbon Institute. We talk about her passion for unsung underwater heroes like seagrass, her journey to becoming a marine ecologist, and what makes mangroves and coastal habitats so important in the fight against climate change.

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Episode Highlights

We find out:

• The surprising fact that Singapore has more seagrass species than the entire United States

• How blue carbon ecosystems like mangroves and seagrass are secret superheroes in the fight against climate change

• The fascinating world of seagrass - not to be confused with seaweed or seagrapes!

• Why corals bleach, and how seagrass produces its own natural “sunscreen”

• The crucial link between dugongs and seagrass, and why protecting one means saving the other

• How everyone, from chefs to economists, can contribute to marine conservation using their unique skills

Timestamps

00:00 Preview
00:36 Intro
01:52 What is blue carbon, and what are mangroves?
05:31 Seagrass vs. seaweed vs. seagrapes
07:14 Interesting fieldwork and overseas experiences
10:17 Misconceptions about marine ecologists
11:40 Does Singapore have a lot of native seagrass?
12:41 Dr. Siti’s career path
17:20 International Blue Carbon Institute’s contributions and COP29
20:37 Advice on taking climate action
23:39 Mid-roll ad: Climate Changed exhibition at Science Centre Singapore
24:07 Paiseh question: how bad is the state of our marine environments, really?
25:28 Effects of heat stress on marine life, e.g. coral bleaching
29:55 Word association game
33:07 Outro

Guest Biography

Dr. Siti Maryam Yaakub, Senior Director of the International Blue Carbon Institute at Conservation International, leads the institute's global efforts in translating blue carbon science into tools and methodologies for climate mitigation and adaptation. Based in Singapore, she spearheads initiatives aimed at fostering multidisciplinary expertise and cultivating a resource hub for knowledge exchange. Siti is a marine ecologist and works across tropical marine and coastal habitats. Her work and research interests broadly lie in the areas of ecosystem restoration and nature-based solutions for adaptation and mitigation in marine environments. Within this, she is specifically interested in using seagrass habitats as a model system for understanding ecological thresholds to stress, ecosystem resilience, and the effects of human activities and climate change on the marine environment. 

Transcript

This transcript is lightly edited for readability.

DR. SITI: I ran over to the other side because I knew from the colour of the water, I knew there was going to be seagrass there. The funny thing about going on these vacations as a marine scientist is that you find something you find cool and then you're looking at it in wonderment, and random strangers come up to you and then they're looking at the same thing and they're like–what on earth are they looking at? I'm like, I'm looking at this grass, and they're like, okay, that's nice.

JAMIE: And they’re watching for dolphins or something else. [Laughs]

DR. SITI: [Laughs] Exactly. Everyone's looking out for the megafauna. I'm like, oh my God, look at this amazing sea grass.

[Upbeat electronica intro song plays]

JAMIE: Hello and welcome to Void Deck, a casual science podcast brought to you by Science Centre Singapore. Each episode, we sit down with a local science changemaker and ask all the questions you're too paiseh to ask. My name is Jamie and I'm a science writer at Science Centre Singapore. Today I'm your guest co-host for this episode, standing in for our main series host, Rishii. And today we're joined by Lydia.

LYDIA: Hi everyone. I'm also a science writer at the Centre.

JAMIE: So Lydia and I normally work behind the scenes of this podcast as producers, but today we'll be in front of the mics. Hey Lydia, do you know that corals are actually a type of animal and not a plant?

LYDIA: What? Really? Okay, that's very interesting. I never knew that.

JAMIE: It's wild, isn't it? So in today's episode, we immerse ourselves in Singapore's marine ecology. We've all heard of Singapore as a garden city, but what about Singapore as an island nation?

LYDIA: This episode, we talk to Dr Siti Maryam Yaakub. Dr. Siti is the Senior Director of the International Blue Carbon Institute at Conservation International.

JAMIE: If you enjoy our content, follow us and give a five-star rating to support more episodes of Singapore-based science changemakers.

LYDIA: Welcome to the show.

DR. SITI: Hi guys, great to be here.

JAMIE: We're very happy to have you on the show. So we just wanted to start out with probably a basic question that you're asked a lot, but what is blue carbon?

DR. SITI: So blue carbon is carbon that is captured and stored by all fauna and flora that are ocean-based. That's the simplest answer we have. But there's many definitions of blue carbon. There is the scientific definition, which is the one I just gave you. So any marine animal or plant that captures CO2 and locks it away.

JAMIE: We often hear about how much rainforests can sequester carbon, or all these tree planting initiatives. But how [do] our coastal ecosystems compare with terrestrial ones in terms of carbon that they help sequester?

DR. SITI: That's a great question, Jamie, and something that people I think don't ask enough. Okay, so if you think about, I'm going to call it terrestrial carbon, so, forest carbon. So if you think about forest carbon as carbon being stored by trees, photosynthesizing, making food, trapping carbon, absorbing all of that CO2. Blue carbon ecosystems do more or less the same thing, but they do it in the coast. So for mangroves, do you guys know what mangroves are?

LYDIA: The trees with the very interesting web-like roots, holding onto the roots. 

DR. SITI: That's right. Okay, fantastic. So mangroves are basically trees, right? So they perform a similar function as rainforests, but they do it in the sea, right? So they're trapping carbon and they're storing it in their trunks, their leaves, their stems, their roots.

But for mangroves, they have this added component, which is what's in the sediments. And the cool thing about marine sediments, have you ever been into a mangrove? Either of you?

LYDIA: Closest maybe, is it the Sungei Buloh area there?

JAMIE: I was going to say that. When I was a kid in primary school, we went to Sungei Buloh.

DR. SITI: Awesome. Did you notice that when you walk into the mangroves that there's this smell, almost like rotting eggs, or something not quite right? Yes. So that is the smell coming from a reaction. So when bacteria breaks down organic matter in the forest, it's always exposed to oxygen because it's above water, right?

But in mangroves, the soil they grow in is very waterlogged because the tide goes in and out, it wets and it dries. Because it's so waterlogged, there isn't a lot of oxygen. And because of that, it has this process called anaerobic respiration. So it's the breakdown of organic matter in the absence of oxygen. And that's what causes that funky smell.

But the cool thing about mangroves, coming back to that, is that in addition to whatever they're storing in their trunks and their leaves and their stems and their roots, they're also storing huge amounts of carbon in the sediments.

In terms of something breaking down when it's exposed to air and something breaking down when you keep it immersed in water, it's going to break down a lot slower in the water, right? So as it's breaking down, sediments are coming in, and it's covering it in layers and layers and layers of sediment. And that's how it gets trapped faster than it can be broken down. So because of that, there's huge amounts of carbon that's stored in the roots of blue carbon ecosystems. So not just mangroves, but also seagrass, and also salt marshes. 

We don't really have salt marshes in the tropics, not so much. They're more common in temperate countries. But in Southeast Asia, there's no lack of mangroves and seagrass in our coastlines. Well, the ones that haven't been destroyed, of course.

LYDIA: Sorry, you mentioned seagrass. Is seagrass also like seaweed? 

DR. SITI: No. [Everyone Laughs] If there's one thing we take away from today, it's that seagrass is not seaweed. So seaweed is a kind of algae. And seagrass is an actual flowering plant. Do you remember your primary school lessons when you talked about flowering plants? Yeah.

So a seagrass is a plant. It has a real vascular system. It has a xylem and a phloem. Algae is more like a bag of cells that happens to differentiate and do different functions. But they don't have organs and organisation the way a real plant does.

JAMIE: So is… Seagrapes, is that also algae? 

DR. SITI: That's algae. 

JAMIE: That's algae. Okay.

DR. SITI: So, which is why when you bite into seagrapes, you find that they're kind of squishy. 

JAMIE: Yes.

DR. SITI: Whereas if you ever try to go eat a seagrass, it's kind of fibrous, like a spinach.

LYDIA: Sorry, this is the first time I hear about seagrapes. What is seagrapes?

JAMIE: I think it's in some Japanese cuisine. Because I see before at Daiso. 

LYDIA: [Laughs] Okay, I'll go and find it.

DR. SITI:  It's almost jelly-like. They put it as garnish on foods. When you bite into it, because it's full of water, basically, and it's very salty, it has this nice umami flavour. This is turning into a food podcast.

JAMIE: Well, Singaporeans love food. 

DR. SITI: That's true. 

JAMIE: So food plus science is a very winning combo.

Speaking of food, so you mentioned the smell of rotten eggs that can happen with mangroves–when you go out to these coastal environments, are there particular sensory things that really stay with you?

DR. SITI: The smell of the sea is always unmistakable, right? So that's the best thing, I feel. And I feel like I unconsciously choose all of my holidays to be coastal somehow, even if it's a coastal city, just because the sea breeze does bring this very fresh, salty, briny smell on it when the wind blows. So that's what I really like about being out.

But I guess the different sensory experiences depends on the habitat that you're working in, really. So marine ecologists tend to be lumped in one bucket. But if you look in that bucket, each of us does something slightly different from the rest. If you work in mangrove ecosystems, for example, that rotten egg smell would probably be very familiar to you. Whereas if you work on coral reefs, it might be something else altogether.

If you work in fisheries, it might be the smell of fish, for example. I recall taking a fisheries class when I was in university in Australia, and we had to catch, basically trawl for fish and then get it back on the boat, count it all. And the boat was also rocking at the same time. I remember running over to the side to hurl quite a number of times. Because between the motion and the smell of fish, don't you feel a bit ill now?

LYDIA: I went once and I completely understand. Our crew were holding Vix.

JAMIE: I'm curious, where are some of these places where you've gone for vacation?

DR. SITI: Oh, I don't want to turn this into a “where has Siti gone” kind of thing. But I tend to choose places where I know I'm going to see some cool marine life. For example, even when I was in Portugal, we managed to hit some of the coastlines, go out there, look for salt marshes, look for seagrass. Most recently, I went on holiday with my family to Lombok, which is an island. And therefore there was a lot of seagrass.

So I remember we went snorkelling and one of the stops we had, everyone was taking it was low tide. Everyone was taking photos on this sand cay that had emerged because the tide had gone down. I ran over to the other side because I knew from, just from the boat, the colour of the water, I knew there was going to be seagrass there.

The funny thing about going on these vacations as a marine scientist is that you find something you find cool and then you're looking at it in wonderment and random strangers come up to you and then they're looking at the same thing and they're like, what on earth are they looking at? I'm like, I'm looking at this grass and they're like, okay, that's nice.

JAMIE: And they're like watching for dolphins or something else. [Laughs]

DR. SITI: [Laughs] Exactly. Everyone's looking out for the megafauna. I'm like, oh my God, look at this amazing seagrass.

LYDIA: Actually, what do you think are some misconceptions people might have with the work that you do and on marine conservation, blue carbon? I mean, like you said, some people just come in and they're like, what is this lady looking at? What's the importance of this?

DR. SITI: I think one of the most common misconceptions—I did a meme when I was doing one of these career talks once. You know that meme where it has like, you know, what people think I do, what my mom thinks I do. Under what people think I do, I think I had this photo of someone sunbathing and then under what the public or what relatives think I do, I have something like someone swimming with dolphins.

But not all of marine science is about dolphins and whales, or the big megafauna, or even sharks, or even coral reefs. It's actually looking at ecosystems and how they function and how the species within those ecosystems function as well.

So I like to tell people this: as a marine ecologist, I look at very mundane things and find the wonder in them.

Whereas everyone thinks, you know, I'm just frolicking with dolphins all day, which is the furthest thing from the truth. I have never, ever frolicked with a dolphin in all of my twenty-odd years of being a marine ecologist.

JAMIE: When you mentioned the wonder of seeing these seagrass on your vacation, does Singapore have a lot of native seagrass or not? 

DR. SITI: Yes. Would you believe me if I told you that there are more species of seagrass in Singapore than in all of the United States?

JAMIE: Oh, wow. 

LYDIA: Hm, did not know that.

DR. SITI: So there are 12 species of seagrass, and about 60 species in our region, so in the Indo-Pacific. Singapore has a comparable number of seagrass species compared to our neighbours like Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, which are much bigger and have much more coastlines.

So it's actually quite impressive that we have such a huge diversity here despite our small land size and despite the fact that we have actually been reclaiming land where seagrasses once were. I love Changi Airport as much as the next Singaporean, but that was entirely built over a seagrass meadow.

JAMIE: We were researching for this episode, so we found your Instagram handle, @drseagrass. How did you decide to specialise in seagrass specifically? As you mentioned, there are so many interesting parts of marine ecology that I guess an alternate version Dr. Siti may have specialised in.

DR. SITI: Yeah, that's true. I like to tell people that it was a series of serendipitous events that led me to where I am today.

I studied in Australia in James Cook, in North Queensland, and the Australian university term and the Singaporean university term doesn't quite match up. So when I came back to Singapore, I didn't have any friends to play with, so I was a bit bored.

And so I reached out to an old friend and mentor and said, hey, is there anything I can do? Can I help you with a ecology survey? And he said that he's like, oh, no, but I heard that NParks is interested to get someone to do a bit of a seagrass survey at Labrador Beach to see how many species there are.

And I remember at the time I was like, seagrass, this sounds vaguely familiar. Where in Marine Biology 101 did I learn this? So I went back, I researched it and I was like, okay, yeah, sure, I'll do it. So that was in my first year. 

My second year, I went for a marine botany module and a lot of it was looking at micro algae, which is phytoplankton, super, super small under a microscope. And everyone was really tired of that. So when the lecture turned towards seagrasses, which were much bigger and you're like–oh my God, I can see this with my naked eye, how wonderful–I approached the lecturer and I said, hey, I did a seagrass survey when I was in Singapore and most people will express surprise when you tell them that there's still any kind of marine life in Singapore, because the idea they have of Singapore is that it's so built up, you know, like, you know, there can't possibly be anything still surviving in our waters. But surprisingly, we have great marine biodiversity. And as I mentioned before, like a huge number, like a good diversity of seagrasses as well.

So she expressed surprise and said, oh, how wonderful. I'm doing a genetic study. Can you collect some samples for me? And it kind of led from there. 

I took a little break when, in my final year, I was studying reef fish. And when I came back to Singapore, you know, jobs for marine biologists were not really dime a dozen. They still aren't. 

While looking for something to do, I chanced upon some other people in the nature space, including Ria Tan from Wild Singapore. And she encouraged me to go out with her and, you know, survey the shores of Singapore. So it started out as a bit of fun.

But I think the point here was that I never said no. So, you know, like, you know, each opportunity they were like, can you collect some seagrass for me? I'm like, sure. And then when I came back with the seagrass, oh, would you like to, you know, learn how to extract DNA from the seagrass? I'm like, sure. You know, it was just a series of, yeah, sure, why not? It wasn't even like an emphatic yes. It was just like, yeah, okay, I'll do it. And yeah, I think there's a lesson there somewhere.

Just seize the day, seize the opportunities, if you will, and see where it leads you. If nothing else, you discover new things and you discover what you are or are not passionate about.

LYDIA: So how did that go about to International Blue Carbon Institute? How did you realise that this is something important that you needed to be a part of?

DR. SITI: I think seagrasses always have a bit of a... Like, compared to mangroves, which are emergent, right? So mangroves, you can see, right? You can see them from space. Coral reefs are very pretty and so very colourful and everyone finds them extremely attractive. I mean, I do too. But seagrasses are kind of like the forgotten cousin. 

And I realised that quite early on when I was, when I started doing the seagrass surveys, when I was doing some of these studies, and that opened the door. I attended my first ever seagrass conference as a student helper and it really opened my eye to the fact that there aren't that many people studying this wonderful habitat.

I was “sure, why not-ing” in my way through life. And I ended up doing a PhD in seagrass. And then following that, I went on to work in an environmental consultancy for nine years, actually, because I felt like it was somewhere where I could see actual implementation happening. 

The International Blue Carbon Institute was an opportunity that came up. And it seemed like the next logical step because, to me, when people think about blue carbon or people who are familiar with it, they immediately think of mangroves because that's the ecosystem that is the most, I guess, well established. So there are methods for it.

There are projects that are already, like, you know, crediting projects. And so for me, you know, bringing a bit of seagrass into the blue carbon world was where I saw my, I guess, contribution.

But yeah, at the International Blue Carbon Institute, it was the place to do that. Because at the end of the day, the aim of this is not to generate carbon credits from these blue carbon ecosystems necessarily. It's to find ways to protect, restore and conserve them so that we are contributing towards mitigating climate change.

LYDIA: Do you already see some positive change happening?

DR. SITI: I think yes. So countries are starting to include blue carbon in their nationally determined contributions. And actually, I think we were discussing this when this episode would come out, is when it would be at the end of the next COP, right? So the COP.

So the COP is the Conference of Parties for the UNFCCC. So that's the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC. And every year, countries meet, along with a whole horde of other people, but countries, mostly governments, meet to discuss how they are progressing on their climate targets. And after Paris, countries were asked or they have to make these nationally determined contributions. So that's basically a country's goals towards abating climate change. What is its contribution to mitigation and adaptation and all of these other things?

So the nationally determined contributions, in the last couple of years, we have worked out a framework to include blue carbon ecosystems in a country's NDCs. So a country with vast blue carbon resources, for example, like India or Indonesia, may want to include some of those ecosystems in their nationally determined contributions. That means that they are protected for their carbon mitigation value and that the amount of mitigated carbon goes towards the country's total contributions for decarbonization or reduction of carbon emissions. So, yeah, and we'll see what the outcomes from this COP are going to be.

JAMIE: We're pre-recording in August, but by the time this episode releases, I think the Climate Summit would have just finished. So we'll see what happens this year.

I think when we hear so much about climate change in all the news headlines, there's a sense that there's not much an individual person can do. So if you were to give advice [to] someone who is perhaps keen to do something to help with marine conservation, what are some words of advice?

DR. SITI: I once heard this cool podcast. It's called How to Save a Planet. I don't know if you know.

JAMIE: Yes, I've listened to this.

DR. SITI: It’s very good. And I'm just going to repeat what they said. So look at your skill set and look at your immediate sphere of influence. So what can you do within your skill set that can influence people to take note or take notice of climate change and want to act? So it's a whole bunch of things.

It's not just about saving these ecosystems. We also need to decarbonize. We need to be less wasteful. We need to stop all this consumerism, have less fast fashion or whatever it is, eat sustainably, etc. So I think look at your skills and say to yourself, for you guys, you're communicators, like your whole role in this is to make the science accessible for the layperson.

And that's a very important function. Everyone has this image of scientists in their minds of someone with crazy hair and a lab coat and who speaks gibberish at them, words that they don't understand, all this jargon. And your job as communicators is to distil that down into easy to digest facts so that people are aware and then they get interested and then they want to do something about it. So I think that's probably the best advice. I'm just copying from another podcast, but it is very good advice.

Say you studied economics at school and you're like, OK, what can I do with this if I want to direct this towards saving the planet? Look at things like natural ecosystem valuation. How do you value nature's services? There's not enough research being done in that area.

If you're a chef, how can you contribute? Choose sustainable seafood. Make the active choice to choose from sources that are sustainable or that support even better, that support local communities. If you are an investor, think about it.

It's like, OK, we have green bonds. How do we design these bonds so that they can support livelihoods in coastal areas, but also at the same time protect and restore coastal blue carbon ecosystems?

JAMIE: So what I'm taking away from this is that our podcast is validated. Because we are trying to bring the science to the people. [Everyone Laughs]

DR. SITI: I'm giving you validation. Bring science to the masses. Go forth.

[Mid-roll ad starts]

JAMIE: Are you ready to take action against climate change? Visit the Climate Changed exhibition at Science Centre Singapore and become a climate change agent. Join Shipee and Felicity and uncover how you can start playing your part for an interactive show. Afterwards, don't miss Guilt Trip, a game where you can test your knowledge and learn climate-friendly tips. You can discover more of our environmental exhibitions at our website, science.edu.sg.

[Mid-roll ad ends]

JAMIE: I think this is time for us to move on to some paiseh questions.

DR. SITI  OK. Yeah, bring it on. 

LYDIA: Just now I asked about seagrass. I think that's quite paiseh already. I'm going to ask another sort of paiseh question. We all know that climate change is happening. Maybe some of us, it's not very obvious. We don't really see it on a day-to-day basis like yourself. But how actually has it impacted the marine environments in Singapore? Are we in really bad danger?

DR. SITI: I don't think this is a paiseh question at all. This is actually quite a well thought out question. So you're right. The effects of climate change are actually quite insidious in that you don't always notice it immediately. But I think the most noticeable, I guess, effect of the changing climate is when sea surface temperatures rise. So it's been really, really hot the last couple of months, really.

What that results in is an elevated sea surface temperature. Basically, the ocean warms up and then all the animals living in the oceans get stressed out. So the most obvious thing is when corals bleach. When corals bleach, what they're doing is they're not dying immediately. What they're doing is expelling all this microscopic algae that live in their tissues. So they're called zooxanthellae.

And they expel these zooxanthellae because it's a stress response. But on any normal day, these zooxanthellae that live within the coral tissues actually help the coral photosynthesize. 

So the coral itself, like you mentioned at the start of this podcast, is an animal. And animals cannot make their own food, right? So they have these tiny, tiny little algae, which are plant-like, that can photosynthesize and will make food for the coral. 

So when the coral gets too warm, it gets stressed out, it expels the zooxanthellae. And what you see is a bleached coral. So it looks very white, right? But it's still alive, right? And corals can feed themselves because they have these tentacles and they filter feed. But usually that's not enough to supplement the whole coral. 

So what happens when it loses one of its food sources–which is the zooxanthellae that's photosynthesising and giving it food–it's now on half its diet, right? So as it recovers, if it's still very warm, the corals may not be able to uptake the zooxanthellae quickly enough. And then what happens is they are on this half diet for too long. So they're starving, basically. And then eventually they die. They get outcompeted by algae. 

But if they can regain the zooxanthellae, then they can recover. And that's when you see the colour coming back to the corals. So corals are not colourful because the coral organism itself is colourful. Corals are colourful because of the algae that they take in that live in their tissues. So that's a cool fact.

JAMIE: So today I learned a new word.

JAMIE & LYDIA: Zoo-xan-thellae.

DR. SITI: Zooxanthellae. Yes, a bit of a tongue twister.

But anyway, so that's the obvious one. Sometimes it's on the news. It's not always newsworthy. But among the science circles, we're always looking out for these alerts of bleaching. And then what that does for other marine organisms.

So for seagrasses, especially in the tropics, they have a very high threshold for temperature stress. So actually when the temperature increases, right, they actually get more productive to some level. But once it hits a certain threshold... And that threshold is different depending on where you are and what species… But once they hit a certain threshold, then everything starts to break down as well.

So, you know, for seagrasses, it's a combination of light stress and temperature stress. So what the light stress does is it can break down the chlorophyll that they need to photosynthesise.

So they also cannot make food. When you go out walking on the intertidal, you might see some of the seagrass. And they look like they've been bleached as well. So they kind of look like yellowy or white even.

And that's because they've lost their chlorophyll. The chlorophyll cells have broken down because there's too much light and temperature stress. So those are some of the effects that can happen.

JAMIE: So I guess, like people. I'm just thinking about the coral bleaching and turning white. Like when you get white hairs, you're really stressed. Oh man.

DR. SITI: Actually, it's interesting because seagrasses have been shown to have this stress response when there's too much light. They get a bit burnt. So they become pigmented. So like how we get darker when we get sun tanned or sunburnt.

Seagrasses do a similar thing, but they can produce almost like their own internal sunscreen. It's called anthocyanin. And it's this red pigmentation that helps shield the remaining chloroplasts so that they don't all fizzle out and die.

JAMIE: That sounds like a skincare ingredient that people would be really keen on–

DR. SITI :Yeah. Except it will be red. Probably not very attractive from the beauty standpoint. [Everyone Laughs]

JAMIE: Thank you again so much for coming down to the studio. Before we end each episode, we like to play a little word association game. So we have a couple of prompts. And what we'll do is me or Lydia will say a word and then you can just say the first word or phrase that comes to mind. Lydia, you want to start? 

LYDIA: So my first word is... Or phrase is... Blue planet. 

DR. SITI: Oceans. 

LYDIA: Oceans. Okay.

JAMIE: I mean, we're called Earth, but we're more percentage ocean than Earth, right? Yeah.

DR. SITI: Yeah. It should be called oceans, actually. 

JAMIE: Okay. This is a title. Finding Nemo.

DR. SITI: Clownfish.

LYDIA: Okay. Plastic straw.

DR. SITI: Sea turtles.

JAMIE: That association has been very ingrained also when we did the game with our team.

DR. SITI: I agree. It's imagery, right? So again, like if your skill is photography, find images that help evoke these sorts of reactions in people.

JAMIE: So we need more seagrass photographers.

DR. SITI: Yes. Oh my god. Yes. We need more. I need more footage of seagrass and of salt marshes and of mangroves that makes it look like, you know, beautiful.

And I mean, it is beautiful. It just takes a photographer's eye to capture that, right? It's... How do you say it? If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then the person behind the camera needs to think these ecosystems are beautiful.

JAMIE: Okay. I have to do a little tangent. If you were a seagrass species, what species would you be?

DR. SITI: I think I would be an Enhalus acoroides because it is the longest species of seagrass. And I am quite tall.

JAMIE: Oh, nice. Yeah. You can't see this because we're in the podcast studio, but Dr. Siti is quite tall. Amazing. All right. One last word. Lydia, do you want to say one?

LYDIA: Dugong.

DR. SITI: Seagrass.

JAMIE: Oh, really? Do they live in seagrass or...

DR. SITI: Dugongs feed exclusively on seagrass. So if you don't save the seagrass, all of the dugongs will die. And manatees as well, actually, because they also, I think, exclusively feed on seagrass.

JAMIE: So do you see a lot of dugongs or manatees on your fieldwork?

DR. SITI: I don't. They're vulnerable for a reason. It's not very common. I think I caught a glimpse once when I was on the boardwalk at Chek Jawa and the tide was coming in. It was a semi-high tide and I saw something pop its head up and it looked like a grey head. So I was convinced it wasn't a crocodile and then it went back down again.

LYDIA: I have to confess, I googled “what is dugong” before this session. 

DR. SITI: I think that's fine. That should have been your paiseh question, what is a dugong? 

LYDIA: For other listeners out there, dugongs are somewhat related to manatees. 

DR. SITI: Yes. Because they–

LYDIA: –feed on this grass.

DR. SITI: Because they feed on grass. They chomp through a seagrass meadow like real cows on land do.

LYDIA: It's a pity that we don't see so many of them. Yeah.

JAMIE: Well, thank you so much for coming down and sharing your insights, not just on our local wildlife, but also on what everyday Singaporeans can do to help with marine conservation. If you're interested to learn more about Dr. Siti's work, you can follow her on LinkedIn. 

And if you have a paiseh question that you'd like us to ask a scientist, you can email your questions to transmedia at science.edu.sg and you may hear the answers on a future episode.

Follow Void Deck and be the first to listen to new geeky episodes about science in Singapore.

LYDIA: If you want to learn more about the environment, visit Science Centre Singapore and check out our exhibitions, Earth Alive and Climate Changed, to learn more about what you can do to protect the planet. See you next episode!

Resources

Yaakub, S.M. et al. (2014) ‘Courage under fire: Seagrass Persistence adjacent to a highly urbanised city–state’, Marine Pollution Bulletin, 83(2), pp. 417–424. doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.01.012.

Dr. Siti’s LinkedIn Profile
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sitimy/ 

International Blue Carbon Institute
https://www.conservation.org/about/international-blue-carbon-institute 

Team SeaGrass
http://teamseagrass.blogspot.sg/ 

Wild Singapore
http://www.wildsingapore.com/ 

How to Save a Planet
https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet 

Earth Alive Exhibition at Science Centre Singapore
https://www.science.edu.sg/whats-on/exhibitions/earth-alive

Climate Changed Exhibition at Science Centre Singapore
https://www.science.edu.sg/whats-on/exhibitions/climate-changed

Credits

This episode of Void Deck was hosted by Jamie Uy and Lydia Konig. The episode was written, produced, and sound engineered by Jamie Uy. Sound recording and production assistance was provided by Lydia Konig, Joyce Sia, and Vanessa Ng. The episode video graphics were designed by Jansen Michelle and podcast cover art was illustrated by Vikki Li Qi. The background music "Data Flow" and "Spatial" was created by Fugu Vibes. Special thanks to Dr. Siti for coming on the show.