The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics was the nation's first public boarding school to offer a focused curriculum in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The school continues to lead the way in public education today. Every year the school welcomes more than 650 students from every corner of the state, all 13 congressional districts and nearly every county, tuition free. These juniors and seniors embrace a highly charged academic climate away from home. Students discover their own way to learn through smaller, collaborative classes and research and mentorship programs through Duke University, UNC Chapel Hill, NC Central and NC State. Since 1980 the school has been continually committed to transforming today's students into tomorrow's leaders. Every student that graduates from NCSSM must complete 60 hours of community service during the summer and 3 hours of service per week on campus during the school year. Lately, NCSSM has been raising awareness about hunger in North Carolina by holding the largest food drive in the United States. Last year alone our food drive provided meals for over half a million North Carolinians. By extending the reach of our food drive to the entire North Carolina community, our students hope to inspire the spirit of community service. Each year NCSSM provides hundreds of students largely from low wealth communities with high level science and math programming, classroom collaborations and virtual field trips to museums, colleges, hospitals and other organizations here in North Carolina or around the world. NCSSM is leading North Carolina and the nation by proving that high school is more than just cliques, clothes and classrooms. It's providing the kind of 21st century education that is a fuel for our economy by teaching students to accept the greater challenge.


Please rain Please please we need the rain in Texas Welcome back to the channel y'all got a little home vlogger Rusky for you here today But we are gonna be hitting the water if you have been watching the recent videos. You know that I have been full maintenance mode fix-up mode on the crispy collector and we have got it Not pristine, but she's ready to hit the lake The only thing I'm waiting on is an oil filter to change the oil on that thing complete that and then we're gonna hit the lake But I thought while I was on this maintenance kick I would go ahead and change the oil in my in my pro XS which by the way is So much easier than changing the oil in your car truck. It's incredible See this little port right here That is an oil draining valve And all you got to do is hook up a little hose heck You could just put a pan right under that if you want to unscrew it and all the oil will dump out of your engine so definitely something you want to make sure is Snug when you're out fishing. It's just no mess and it's user friendly So we'll go hit the lake make sure the oil levels are good afterwards and we'll be good to go So it's also family dinner night and we got some catfish thawing out literally the one catfish One of the catfish that we caught the other day on jug lines Me and Stephanie that one catfish is gonna feed all of us So I took out the belly meat and surprisingly female full of eggs. I'm talking yoke Huge egg sack I kept it.  I'm gonna run it top speed for a little bit and really all I want to do out here fishing wise Just go throw a top water post rain a little nutrients coming to the top and shad skis Get some of that fresh new Stuff coming into the water Throw a top water see what happens boys. She's cooking with Chris.  We're just gonna check the oil which is Really easy to do on these mercs. There's actually a separate compartment right here Look at that. It's like a little hidden door So we'll just pull the old dipstick out and we're full We're right to that last little bead right there So we're good Well, it looks great Levels look good. We are good to go Nice little drizzly rain chickens are loving it right now Some of them are gonna take it a little chicken snooze midday chicken snooze Chicken check is they're getting big These are my cockerels Lot of cockerels running around so I was really hoping to get at least three hens And we're only getting two let's play a little game Spot the cockerel see if you guys know what a what a future rooster looks like There's three of them right there There's another one right there And there's my little shy one in the corner now that is for sure a hen The reason I know that is because she doesn't have any red on her On her comb she basically has no comb, but it's kind of yellowish still bright red combs That one's got a peak home, but it's bright red thick legs And they're already starting to fight So that's how I know that these are going to be roosters That right there is going to be one of my hens See she's got hardly any comb, but it's still pink And she's got this little peachy color that's coming out From the old red that she was sired with so I think I'm going to call her peaches Some say you never know until they grow, but I'm just telling y'all going on my gut instincts I think we got five cocks My catfish queen bringing in the big cats We got a smorgasbord of blue catfish here And a sampling of a little bit of it all So this is actually a giant row sack out of the blue catfish humongous This is the belly meat So catfish a big catfish like that has a lot of good meat on its belly that you could just take a little extra time to get off And then obviously we have the big fillets And I'm going to be doing my very special Blackened catfish that osg loves and we also brought some homegrown tomatoes. Where are them tomatoes at? I would let's show the folks at home the fruits of our labor, you know gardening is a lot like Just a child Well, I wouldn't well There's some similarities you put a lot of passion into it nurturing care and then What do you get out of it?  So these oh you already cut them. I already cut them. These are store bought if you can see the color change These are store bought these are all No way. Yeah, ours look very very juicy. I feel like I need to take a taste right now We have not yet tried one of our own homegrown tomatoes. Why don't you try one of these?  Okay, I feel like this is the fruit of your labor because you're the one that's uh I've put in a lot of tomato work Very sweet. Can you tell the difference between the store bots? I mean they definitely look different. They look different Well, they're definitely redder juicier. These are just they're pale. These were big. These are all very small They're about this big Way more juicier This is this is kind of crazy because we're having a fully organic dinner Pretty darn close fully our own harvestings, right? Let me try one.  That's probably About a four hundred dollar tomato the gardening supplies. We had we had to make it look like Joanna games was out there.  I've showed this a little bit In other videos, but it kind of varies each time. So we're going to focus on the blackening and that's going to be on the filets The eggs and the belly. We're going to fry LFD is going to help us out with that So a little mixture of spices. We're going to go with some smoked paprika I'm going to put this in a shallow pan A little more smoked paprika Zdeco dust Family says this is pretty good. So we'll try it. What's in this mom? I don't know. I don't know. It's Cajun It's Cajun sweetheart All right, and then we have literally Cajun OSG just labeled out That's the blackening rub. Yes. So this is blackening rub. I don't know who makes it. I I wish I could help you guys out more. Maybe OSG knows more details. I think it's a kroger brand. It's a kroger Okay, what's wrong with kroger? She's a tom thumb gal She looks down on us kroger shoppers. Although, I wish we had an HEB. We'd live there All right. So now we have this mixture. We'll just kind of roll around a little bit Kroger's gonna have to spread out my fingers. It's trying to be cleanly about it Have you washed your hands? Nah Not in a minute. Not been changing oils and cleaning can't finish. Don't wash your hands It's right there. Let's do something Men don't wash their hands. All right And I vacuum sealed these. I usually do that Even if I'm going to use them pretty quick, it's just easy for osg go in the fridge grab it out I usually label it, you know, sometimes there's just like body parts in there from animals Shouldn't know what they are. So I'm like, hey grab the thing that says this and usually I'll label it something like for frying or for baking or extremely helpful or very chewy or something like that So we want a little bit of dampness on the meat so that the spices will stick, but you don't want it to be dripping So just enough if you if you have time where you can kind of lay them out A little bit beforehand. That's nice, too But you do want a little bit of moisture so it'll stick.  Where's my mom?  You got to have a lot of spice So that you can get all these Nice and covered You know some people don't like really spicy stuff Um And this smells really strong, but it seems like when you cook it up some of that hotness is cooked out of it Uh, I'm sure there's ways you can like really step up the heat, but For the you know family outing family dinner We don't want to get too crazy with it Here we go. We got our cast iron skillet medium high heat And we're going to throw these on here That's the sound of the asians right there I'm just going to kind of roll around this butter a little bit get the edges Ice and brown And then when this is when one side is Kind of getting crispy i'll flip it once and then we're going to take it to the oven already preheated 375 For about eight to 10 minutes Maybe 12 given that this fish is is really thick So it's actually so big to barely have enough room to cook it in and one cast iron. So We're actually We're going to do too needs a roll needs a little butter roll kind of nice Whacking on there when it kept its curls does that mean it's done? Not necessarily Not necessarily because I baked it the other day and it was curled. I thought it'll like start curling almost immediately Just from the heat But it doesn't doesn't mean it's done when a fish is done Especially a white fish like this you should you should start to see Some of the muscles start to separate And you'll get that really white clean Inside look at that fish. You know like when the juices are trying to come out That's usually how I tell is when it starts to separate Now the other catfish that you brought in on the juggling the other day um I don't know what I don't know what happened with that fish. I was not there for you cooking it But I just baked it and it was that was not it Whatever I did this this is terrible like see how this This pan All right, we'll go ahead and throw these in the oven now Water sizzling We'll set a timer. I'm going to say it's going to be 12 minutes. We have a little bit of Difference between the two fish one was kind of cooking faster than the others on blackling I don't feel great about it I'll be honest. I don't feel great. We move the fish a couple of times when you move the fish The seasoning starts to separate and it sort of rips fish.  It sort of started out as a Like a more cream corn yellow color and now it's like this beautiful orange Looks like we'd be using it for salmon bait or something salmon eggs This thing might get a little crazy Might pop pretty hard Not crazy at all. Ooh, it's growing Start popping The dog is like what are y'all getting ready to feed me? I had never seen one of those before Minute and 20 seconds left for our 12 minute countdown on the catfish I have a feeling it might might just take a A smidge longer Do you ever have a big fried catfish row growing up in south georgia? I have But they were like About half that size at maximum little microbes. I've never cooked them this big. I mean these things these things are huge Time is going off. Hey, yeah Okay, I feel like we came back a little bit on the color is good The pan just we booboo we booboo shifted too much Um, I don't know if you guys can see though and then in this pan here Instead of looking like really dry and getting crusty to where the the seasoning will just Rip right off scooping it out. It's it's actually pretty moist and That seasoning won't sort of like rea here and here And that butter really seems to Kind of soak into everything and it helps a lot the pot nuclear fish lava Oh popped again Yeah, so those are those aren't like little tiny eggs. Those are Big boys. I knew they're gonna pop. I should have put the lid on Whoo, you think it's done when it's popping like that Probably pretty close Wow That looks like a creature that lives on the bottom of the ocean and some coral maybe Let's break one open She said it looks like a a donut I don't know. I thought it was like a bratwurst Oh Still hot and it's still hot that reminds me of budan That's what it looks like. Yeah, it looks like budan All right guys here here is The thing you're probably most interested in The row The catfish row It's dry. It looks dry It's got an odd smell it tastes like a soggy rice crispy treat In the texture but it's like hard. No, I take the back.  I would I would eat all of this. I would take my time Probably take me three hours to eat it, but We have the bellies And we have the filets that are amazing. So we're going to go enjoy those now catfish delectable And we're going to try to go get more I wanted to actually today And I made up a bunch more jugs and we're ready to deploy these bad boys, but I started changing the oil in the motor And I thought I had the right oil filter And then I went to go put it in and I was like, oh no, I've got the wrong size So the so the oil's just been drained out of the motor And I want to see how this thing performs and put the catfish lines out And put more of those delicious things in a cast iron and skillet and eat them I can seriously eat that a couple times a week for the rest of my life. It's so awesome I'm leaving in the morning to go fish with Mike and Lojo in another state that I've never fished in Should be interesting experience, but when I get back We're going to pop the oil filter in this thing Put some lube in it and go run it and run these jugs as well. So you guys stay tuned for that Thanks for chilling with me on today's vlog. I will see you guys back in the great outdoors on the next one


I think that during the prior session, somebody mentioned the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals, and I've been implicated in that as part of the Committee for Development Policies. I see some other members of the committee, and the whole idea is that the MDGs, they at least in my view, they generated an unexpectedly positive results, perhaps because of China but also because of the changes in policies of the donors and the public expenditure in developing countries. Now, the SDGs I found are framed in an exhortational way, so that nobody should be like behind them, and of course it's true. At the same time, I teach macroeconomics, and then I see that our financial crisis, that the inequality is worsening, and so the question is will they made it? Because I was not sure that they could made it for the MDGs. MDGs they made because China made a huge progress, but Africa was not on schedule on everything. So, we tried to see what is the consistency between the SDG goals, particularly SDG number one, which is eradication of poverty by the year 2030. In doing that, we built not the model, but basically we enlarged the bourguignon, the composition, by adding something else in a way, so as to bring in also population, and the ratio of food prices to consumer price index. Then we simulate the variables, which are growth plus improvement in population policies, which means the per capita is smaller and inequality. Then we look at food prices, simulating whether they should be stable in relation to inflation or not. Now, what do we simulate? Well, we simulate the best possible improvement which we have observed during the last 30 years. For instance, for inequality, the largest improvement we saw was in Brazil between 1998 and 2012, which was about 15 percent from the initial period. For growth, we take the IMF growth projection to 2022, then we extend it to 2030 because nobody knows what will be growth in these countries in 2030. For population, we do the same. We say, well, we take the medium variant of the United Nations population projection, and they say, which is the country which improved, reduced the fastest population growth? Well, during the last 30 years, China. Then we assign to every single country of the 78 countries which are poverty bigger than zero in 2015 or 13, and then we see if with these improvements, actually they can eradicate poverty. The answer is, well, many African countries and some Latin American countries actually do not meet, do not hit the target. So out of 78 countries, depending on the values you simulate, between 2030, they are not there. They are not there in particular because the growth projections by the IMF are extremely anemic, and they come up with, for instance, for Latin America 2 percent, for Africa 3 percent, and population growth is 20 percent. So basically, my view is that the eradication of poverty raises a growth issue, and in many developing countries, particularly in Africa, I mean, I think that the way the debate is going on is ignoring to a large extent growth, and it takes into account inequality, population, and so on and so forth, but it ignores growth. Now, to do that, we go back to the evolution of the measurement of poverty. So poverty at countries shown, I think that Martin, I saw him here somewhere, you will remember that back in the 90s, there was a paper by Lee Squire and so which was saying, well, inequality is constant over time. So poverty basically, which is delta Z over Z minus one, depends on YC, delta YC over C1. So growth. So in order to eradicate poverty, you must grow. Then there is the bulging out of the composition, and so we see that the poverty depends on the level of the poverty line which we will keep constant, depends on growth and distribution. Now, if you split the population growth per capita and population growth per capita, then you have three elements, and then this is done normally at current prices, and normally if you look at countries where the food price rises faster than the consumer price index, and then you take into consideration the poor consume more food than the others, the poverty line is biased. So we introduce a ratio just as a scholar, which is the, so we found it empirically, and there we show it, that Gini rises by another two points if the food price index rises by 25% more than the consumer price index. Now, this is the bulging on the growth effect and the distribution effect. So basically in explicit term, we get that the poverty, the change in the poverty of countries depends negatively on alpha on the growth rate, and then end the growth rate of the, positive on the growth rate of the population, and then of course if Gini rises, poverty will rise, but Gini falls, and then we have the scholar that, so omega which is in Gini terms, which is normally two points if the FBI rises by more than 25% and that. Where do I get the coefficients? I don't estimate anything. I go to Kacwani and Son, which I think is a very nice paper. We assume that his own elasticity is, which are this one, so they're tabulated on theoretical distributions, the alpha and the beta, so for different level of Ginis, and for different ratios of Z, which is the party line divided by GDP. So if you are in a country with 0.33, means that there's quite a bit, can be redistributed. If you have a Z, Y, C, which is equal to one, it means the party line is equal to GDP per cover, so there is not much to be redistributed. Then we do that for the poverty elasticity of growth, and then we do that for the poverty elasticity of inequality, and then the red ones, elasticity, are those that are the biggest. So you will see that in countries where Z over Y, C is low, the elasticity is much bigger, so there is plenty to be redistributed. Then in the countries where the Z over Y, C is very low, is very high, not close to one, then actually there is no escape then growing. Now, what are the data? Well, for GDP, we said we used the IMFW World Economic Outlook 2017, which go to 2022, then we extend that to the same growth rate to the 2030. Now, what do they show? Well, it shows a rapid expansion of Asia. Asia is assigned an 8 percent growth rate, Latin America 3.3, and Maina. So basically, the assumption that we made, which reflect what IMF says, is 2 percent growth for Latin America, 3.3 for Africa, Black Africa, and Maina, and Maina includes Pakistan and Afghanistan, 2.1 percent for the CIS country, and then sustained growth for the Asian countries. Now, party line, 190 per day in 2011 PPPs, and the World Bank data that probably been cooked up by Martin in the incidence of poverty or countries in 2013. I don't know if there are updates, but this is what we use. Then the genie data. The genie data, as a producer of genie data myself, I would have liked to use the world income in a quality database of WIDER, but WIDER has a lower coverage than the global consumption in income project, which produces data which are quite different, but they are standardized in a way. The standardization ensures covering a bigger number of country, but brings in some biases which we have tested. Population data, medium variant of the population prospect, and the full price index divided by CPI, we took it from a study we did for 18 African countries, which is, no, okay, when you come back. Now, on inequality, which data did we simulate? Well, there is the Latin American miracle. Well, this is the trend in the genie coefficient up to 2015. So you see that from 2002 to 2015, there is a huge drop. And not all the countries, they follow the same speed, but Brazil, particularly the southern corner, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, they have a major decline. So we looked at country by country, we say which one is the best, and it looked like it was Brazil, 1998 to 2012. Now things are changing probably a little bit, but this was like a 15% decline from high level. And then we applied this rate of decline to all the 78 countries. Now, growth rate of the population. Now, this is the southern, basically is a point which normally is ignored in the debate. And I think that my view is that it should be brought in into the development debate for poverty eradication. So you see that South Africa, basically, there is no declining growth rate to the population between the 80s and 2015. Mainly there is a decline, and the others are all on the way down. And so we use this growth rate. And now this is total fertility. So Southeast Asia red line, China the yellow line, and then total fertility also in Europe and Latin America and Northern Africa, same. Now, this is Africa, fertility in Africa. Now, I've been to Niger in 2007 to study the one of the latest famine. And Niger despite the fact that there's a famine every two or three years, basically is rising fertility over time. And that is something which is difficult to understand and all micro economically you can explain it, but there is a sort of a huge contrast between collective well-being and individual decisions. Africa is falling, but it's falling slowly. And Nigeria, which is a large country, is falling very shortly. Now, Africa, however, presents some good examples of declining inequality. The main one is Rwanda, the red line. So basically this fertility rate goes from eight to four in 15 years. And Ethiopia as well, as it shows a very large decline in fertility. So what did we simulate TFR? No, we simulated population growth. Which one did we take? Well, we took the medium variant projections from the United Nations Population Division and we applied to that minus 13% to the year 2030. Why? Because this is what happened in China, which was one of the countries which recorded the fastest population growth. Now, for the ratio, this is what we had estimated. So you have on the horizontal axis X, which is the ratio of food price index to consumer price index. And the changes in genie. So there are two first differences. So you see that if the food price index rises by 20%, 25%, which is the maximum we have seen, genie goes up by one and a half point almost. Then we say, okay, two points. So if you have a penalty, if food price index rises faster than consumer price index. Now, we simulated this in the following way. We took the elasticity which correspond to the initial values of the variables in the countries. And we take them initially as constant. Then we simulate growth and inequality. And if we include improvements both in inequality and growth, then we'll energize the elasticities, then they become more favorable basically. So genie drop 20%, population slower than 13%. Food price index assume no change in, first no change or change by 2030. Now, these are the results. What do they show? Well, show that you have 78 countries in total. And the first column is the distribution. 41 are in Africa, in sub-Saharan Africa, 15 in Latin America, six in Asia, and so on and so forth. So first scenario, only IMF. Will we eradicate poverty by 2030 with the growth rate that the IMF has estimated? And we see that the impact, the marginal effect is minus 14. So only 14 countries that will grow out of poverty with no other changes. Then we say, well, we do growth plus 13% slower population growth. And we see that the marginal effect is close to zero, it's minus one, only one country.  It took us a while. Now, if you go to Angola, for instance, the increase in population projected to the year 2030 by the United Nations population division is plus 60% in relation to 2015. So if you take away 13% of a very large increase, the fact is very small. Which means that you have to keep population policies in place for longer or a bigger decline than those recorded in China. Then we say, okay, at Genie, and the fact of the genius, so Genie takes away 13 countries out of poverty. Then we endogenize, so we, since we improve GDP per capita and reduce the Genie, then we endogenize that. So we reduce the, we change the elasticity, the alpha and the beta, we see that another 13. So despite all that, there are still 37 out 78 countries which they're not hitting the target. Then say, oh God, 37 out of 78. So this SDGs are exhortational, but basically they're not consistent with what goes on in the real economy. And then, so what we said, well, okay, perhaps there is a growth problem. So let us increase the growth rate by 1.1%, in relation to what the IMF has simulated. And you see that there is an effect, nine countries that exit poverty with an additional growth of 1%. But still, you're still remaining there, you know? And so by and large, I mean, with all the simulation, and, sorry, and then the last one, the last column, we assume that this happens with no changes in food prices in relation to the consumer price index. So if we do that, basically you see that you still get stuck with 14 countries out of 78, which will not make it. But this under very optimistic hypothesis about inequality, population, growth, et cetera, et cetera. And this brings me to the composition. You see the brown are the Latinos at the beginning, and then the blue one are the Africans. So in the end, the scenario six, you see that I think there is one Latino from Latin America, which is Haiti. And then they are mostly from Africa, sub-Saharan Africa. So what does this tell me? Well, it tells me that there is a growth issue. I mean, at least for the countries that are, even in scenario number six, with all these positive hypotheses, it will be impossible to exit poverty unless you grow faster. Now the question is, which growth? And I think that while everybody is in agreement about reducing poverty, there is no agreement about the pattern of growth. So some examples. For instance, we in another work we did, I mean, we see that trade liberalization in Malawi has basically increased inequality. And so my main conclusion is that SDGs are inconsistent with, for many countries with the achievement of the eradication of poverty by the year 2030. And that brings us back to the old tried problem of what type of growth. And I think that with the current pattern of growth, which has reduced growth rate in Africa and Latin America tremendously, according to the IMF, we will not make it. We have comments on which policies are needed, but I think I should stop here, otherwise the chair will beat me up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet on the Think Tech Live Streaming Network series. I'm your host, Dr. Grace O'Neill. Joining me today is Dr. Sophie Wrisky, veterinarian at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center. Today we're going to talk about monk seals. So let's get into it. What kind of work does a Pacific Marine Mammal Center do? So the Marine Mammal Center operates the largest marine mammal rehabilitation hospital in the world and we're primarily located in California, we do have a facility here on the big island of Hawaii as well. And we have over 40 years of experience now in caring for a variety of marine mammal species. And the organization was started by a small group of dedicated and passionate volunteers that wanted to make an impact on marine mammal health and to help animals in need. And we've grown significantly since then. Our Hawaii hospital was opened in 2014 and it was purpose-built to care for Hawaiian monk seals specifically. Can you show us some pictures, Mike, of the facility and maybe Dr. Wrisky can let us know what each picture is of? Yeah, so this is a picture of our animal care facility. This is where we can house monk seals that are presented to us for a variety of different reasons, but primarily they come to us needing care for different diseases or injuries and they can stay in this area. So this is one of our pools and they have a lot of haul-out space and some area to rest, but also a pool that they can swim in and get some exercise. And it's all completely covered, affectionately known as the burrito. We're located very close to the airport. So if you're looking down and see something that looks vaguely like a burrito, that's us. Again, this is just another shot of inside that animal care facility where we bring Hawaiian monk seals from across the Hawaiian archipelago. So we are the only facility that's permitted by NOAA for long-term care of Hawaiian monk seals specifically. So we will get animals from all of the Hawaiian islands and come to us for care. Just one of our lovely patients. You can see they're very interioring and they wiggle their way right into your heart very quickly. This is a photo of an animal coming or getting a physical exam. So every animal that's brought to us, we do a full work up. So in general, when an animal is identified as needing care, we have an idea of what might be going on with that animal. There's a reason that we're gonna rescue that animal and bring them in to evaluate them. But once they do get here, we do a full comprehensive physical, very much like an annual physical exam that a person would get. Just to check them over, make sure there are other underlying conditions in addition to the primary reason that they've come to us for care. And you can see this is a couple of our dedicated volunteers working with one of our Hawaiian Monk Steel patients. As a nonprofit organization, we rely heavily on a dedicated core of volunteers that come in and they do both animal care as well as response. And this is a group of our volunteers going in and just gently moving one of our animals from one pen to another so that we can clean that space. We work very hard to just interact in a minimal way so you can see these crowding boards help us to both keep our volunteers safe, but also to kind of interrupt that human form and create a little bit of distance between us and those animals. They are wild animals, so we are very careful in the way that we interact with them. So I'm sorry, can I ask a question? Yeah, of course. I was wondering with the volunteers, I know you guys are having a volunteer drive, but I think this will air afterward, but can people still, after the volunteer drive, decide they want to volunteer? Yes, we have recruitment periods throughout the year. So just because this volunteer drive is ending soon, there will be others throughout the year. We encourage you to check the website, the marine mammalcenter.org. Check us out there and just see if there's a volunteer drive going on. We love recruiting and welcoming new members to the Marine Mammal Center, Ohana. And we are always looking for folks to help us in this really important mission. How about in other islands?  Absolutely, that's a great question. And our organization, the Marine Mammal Center, is just preparing to start coordinating response on Maui Island. So we are expanding over there and we are looking for volunteers there. So please do, again, check out our website, marinemammalscenter.org, to see if you can come and help us either on the big island or on Maui. And then we do work with other partner organizations throughout the main Hawaiian islands that are doing similar work. So each island has an organization that you can volunteer with. And we encourage you to check them out too. They're all wonderful partners helping in this same mission to help conserve Hawaiian monk seals. And what kind of training do the volunteers have to go through? And what kind of things do the volunteers actually help with? Yeah, so we have two primary core groups of volunteers. One is focused on animal care. And those are the ones that are here working in our hospital.  So primarily helping us feed those monk seals, making sure they're getting their medications, conducting observations to make sure that we're not seeing any strange behaviors or things like that. And providing them with enrichment items to kind of stimulate their natural thinking and natural feeding processes. And then we also have a group of volunteers that conducts response. And a lot of what that is is public outreach. So we're asking these volunteers to go out. And whenever we get a report of a Hawaiian monk seal that's hauled out, those volunteers go and they establish a seal awareness zone around that seal. So they put up signs and they hang out with that seal and just educate members of the public, both from Hawaii or visiting tourists to be able to just share a little bit of information about monk seals and also to help protect and make sure that those monk seals are getting the rest that they need and making sure that folks don't get too, too close. So if somebody does get close to a monk seal, what can happen to them? So monk seal. What can happen to the monk seal, I should say. It's both, it's both. So monk seals are wild animals and any wild animal, if it feels threatened can certainly present a risk to a human that gets too close. So they can bite, they do carry some nasty bacteria in their mouth that could potentially cause an infection. So certainly it's important for us to keep our distance from a human safety perspective, but it's also very important for us to keep our distance for those monk seals because when they're hauled out, that's an important rest time for them. So they have to spend a significant amount of energy foraging and getting the nutrition that they need on a daily basis. When they're hauled out, that's their rest time. And the more we disturb them, the more we're gonna interrupt that rest and that can lower their fitness and their overall wellbeing. And it's especially important for mothers and pups. So if you have a mother and pup, she's gonna be hauled out taking care of that pup and more disturbance can disrupt that bond, disrupt important nursing periods, which is really critical. And that's a critical time period for that pup to really be able to grow and get ready for life on its own in the wild. So especially with mother and pups, but all monk seals, we certainly want folks to keep their distance so that they can get their much needed rest. So when you say hauled out, is that something they do every day or what exactly does that mean hauled out? Yeah, hauled out means just laying on the beach, sunbathing is the closest thing that we would equate it to. So monk seals will spend hours at a time hauled out not necessarily every day, but often every day they have a period of rest where they're just relaxing on the beach, sleeping in the sand, sometimes sleeping on lava rocks and it looks horribly uncomfortable to us, but they seem perfectly uncomfortable, or perfectly comfortable just hanging out in that space. They do blend in very well, the lava rock as well. So if you're out there, just be aware that those monk seals can be out there and you can come up on one very quickly all of a sudden. So just make sure to take a step back if you encounter one. So sorry, I guess I interrupted the picture showing. So let's go back to the, here's Mike and we'll show the other pictures. Oh yeah, so this is a photo of a transport. So again, I mentioned we get Hawaiian monk seals coming to us from all of the Hawaiian islands and we partner very closely with no fisheries, but also the US Coast Guard. They have been the ones that have carried the heavy lifts in terms of being able to transport animals between islands. So often we'll get, we'll partner with them to fly the monk seals from whichever island they've stranded on to us here in Kona, DSU 130. So we're very grateful for that partnership as it allows us to really expand our care for these animals. Again, another photo of transport. So you can see monk seals are quite heavy, so we need a fair number of people to give them a fair number of trucks. As adults, they can be 300, 400 pounds, 600 pounds. We do have one adult female here on the big island that we estimate is about 800 pounds. Oh my gosh. She's unusually large, but they can get very, very big. So we need some assistance getting them in and out of our vehicles and then in and out of planes. All right, so this is an example of bat seal awareness zone. So when we have a monk seal, hold out like this. So resting on the beach, relaxing near the shore, we'll place these signs at an appropriate distance to kind of notify members of the public that there's a monk seal resting in this space and to please keep your distance and allow them to have that safe space. And here's a wonderful action shot of our youth and school programs manager, Wendy. And she is a wonderful part of our team. We do have education programs that reach middle school students to try to share more about the Hawaiian monk seal cause. And again, I encourage you to get back to our website. We have some wonderful resources there that are available to teachers, some virtual and online resources that people can use to help share those stories. So I encourage you to get in touch. And here's a photo of a young monk seal pup hiding in the rocks so you can see how they blend in. So why don't we play that vocalization right now? And if you could tell us about vocalizations and if they do that at a young age, do they communicate with all the different other seals in the water? Is it mostly in monk families? It's been here that the barking sound and we often hear that with our younger animals, especially. But any monk seal can make that barking sound as a warning to get, don't get too, too close. They also make a really interesting whooping sounds that I don't think we actually have recorded similar sorts of stories. And in general, monk seals tend to be relatively solitary so you don't necessarily hear them talking back and forth. They're not like a California sea lion where you see a lot of interaction, a lot of barking. Monk seals tend to be a little bit more solitary, but when you have younger animals, especially the juveniles interacting, even with adults, you'll hear those vocalizations a lot more. So these monk seals, they're solitary from their whole life after they're weaned, essentially? For the most part. And you'll see them in similar areas and you will see occasionally individuals interacting, but they don't have close social groups where they hang out or haul out together for extended periods of time. They will interact, but it's more of a solitary lifestyle. And I guess for our viewers and just for a reminder for myself, how can you tell the difference between a seal and a sea lion? Yeah, that's a great question. So seals tend to have a lower profile on the beach, whereas a sea lion has these big, strong front flippers and a pelvis that can actually rotate up underneath them. So the sea lions, you can actually see kind of walking on land, they'll get up on those front flippers and they have that taller profile and a long neck and they walk around. Whereas a monk seal or any of the other true seals, they do something called galumping, which is as awkward as it sounds. So they're inchworming along the beach. So it's a different kind of movement, different kind of motion, much lower profile. And one of the easiest things to look for is if you look at a seal space versus a sea lion space, sea lions have ear flaps. So you'll see actually an extended ear flap that comes out from the sides of their head, whereas true seals don't have those. So it's all a smooth profile. That's one of the key things that you can look for when trying to identify a sea lion versus a seal. Do we have sea lions in Hawaii or do we only have seals? We do not. We only have the Hawaiian monk seal. It's the only in Kamek, Pinnipet or seal or sea lion species here, but occasionally you will get a wayward sea lion that can potentially make its way over here. So there was one a few years ago that made its way over, but very, very unusual. They don't live here naturally. And I'm wondering with the monk seals being endangered, what were the main factors driving that and the decrease in populations if you could talk about that? Yeah, so they were hunted down to the brink of the population. So very much a human pressure that dropped that population down. And then that created a genetic bottleneck and they created the small population that had a harder time recovering from the impacts of hunting. And now they face a number of different threats as they're not being hunted of course, they're endangered, so they are protected species. But here in the main Hawaiian islands, they still face a significant number of threats that are related to human activities. So in interactions with fishing gear, as well as a disease called toxoplasmosis that spread from domestic cats. So again, something that we brought over. And of course, climate change is another impact that we're having on the planet that is causing trouble or causing difficulties in that population being able to recover. So how does climate change cause difficulties in seals being able to recover? Is it their food that they're not able to get? It could potentially be the food. The impact that we're seeing, at least the most right now within the Hawaiian archipelago is in the northwestern Hawaiian islands. So some of those more isolated areas where some of those islands are really just sand spits, but they're important rookery spaces. So the spaces where mothers will go to have their pups. And as sea levels rise and as we get more and more frequent storms, you get more erosion of those areas. So there's less safe space for those animals to have their pups. So we both don't have space for those pups to be born, but it also makes them more vulnerable to predators like sharks because they're closer to the water's edge and will venture in a little bit more or could get washed off by a wave and get picked off by a shark. So. Jeez, how about the, I always wondered what the toxo because I don't think that seals are in close proximity to cats, but maybe the cats are pooping on the beach. Is that how the seals get the toxo? Yeah, so that's a great question. We don't know exactly what the route of transmission is, but because there are so many feral cats, there is a significant amount of cat feces around. And whenever there's winter storms or rains coming through that can get washed down into the coastal environment. We do see that with sea otters in California that's the suspected route of that parasite making it into their ocean home. And then it doesn't take very many of that particular parasite to cause an infection within an animal. So that we think that's where they're encountering it is really likely to be coming from a rainwater runoff. Oh, geez. And how about the, does it affect the brain? Is that the main thing, the toxo?  They actually have a very systemic reaction to it. So it gets into different organ systems, multiple organ systems and causes really significant inflammation. And they have a very poor prognosis. Unfortunately, if they don't have the capacity or the immunity to be able to deal with that particular parasite and then often leads to death of that animal if they've encountered it. So if you were able to catch a monk seal that had toxo in time that it looked distressed or whatever, someone alerted, it's brought into the center. Would you be able to give the animal treatment for toxo? Like would give humans treatment for toxo? We can treat for toxo. The majority of the cases that have come stranded with toxo have unfortunately died within the first few days of their stranding. So really no significant treatment was able to be administered. We have had two patients that have come in in the last two years that were with us for about six weeks of treatment. But again, unfortunately, we weren't able to knock back that inflammation enough to be able to save those two individuals. It is something that we are exploring and trying to develop new ways of treating, trying to talk within our community to get new ideas of how we could potentially combat some of that inflammation and have a better outcome for those animals.  Because there's so many in Oahu and on the other islands, that's part of the problem. So I don't, I mean, I think there's a program like that, but I do wanna talk about the fishing gear and how people can prevent that. There's also other plastic, I'm sure, that the seals are being maybe eating and everything. So I did want you to talk a little bit about that because I think that's something that humans really can do to try to prevent these seals from being caught in their fishing gear. It seems so logical just to not throw your fishing gear in the water. So I don't know if you can talk about that. What kind of things can happen to seals with the fishing gear? I know they get entangled, they can eat it, right? Yeah, absolutely. There's, just like you said, there's different ways that those animals can interact with that fishing gear and have it cause harm or be life threatening. So one of those is entanglement. And certainly proper disposal of fishing gear is really, really important. And not just fishing gear, any kind of ocean trash they can get, we see entanglements with things like packing straps, things like that. So even just making sure that you cut that packing strap so that it doesn't have an encircling loop and disposing of it properly. Those are all important steps that we can take to make sure that that doesn't cause any detriment to a marine animal or any animal. And then fishing gear, like people, monk seals will sometimes take advantage of an easy meal. So if they see a fish on a line, they may come towards your line. If you see a monk seal, approaching a fishing line, certainly try to reel it in if you can. If you do have an animal that takes your fish and potentially ingests your hook, we strongly encourage folks to report that to the NOAA Stranding hotline. It's not to penalize anyone in any way, it's to know that there's a monk seal out there with possibly an ingested hook so that our teams can be ready to respond because there are things that we can do to mitigate those sorts of interactions. And other things include using barbless hooks because if they do ingest it, that'll cause less drama to any of those animals. So there's lots of little steps that we can take to help protect those animals. And certainly if you see a monk seal in the area, if you can choose a different fishing spot, all those little steps. And I'm also wondering about what's been going on in Molokai. I don't know if there's any more light as to how these monk seals were killed there or what happened. I don't know if you could shed some light on that. I don't have much to share. So those are active ongoing investigations. So it's not something that our organization is really primarily responsible for. So we certainly do support the network as much as we can, but I don't have a whole lot of information to share there. And then I'm wondering just out of curiosity, how you got into taking care of these marine animals. It seems like a fascinating job, but did you decide, did you know when you became a vet, this is what you wanted to do or what happened? Yeah, I was pretty fortunate. I didn't necessarily know that monk seals were the animal that I wanted to work on and only that animal. But I did always want to be involved in ocean conservation. I had a father who was a marine biologist, so I caught the bug early. And then just throughout life, loved working with animals and wanted to become a veterinarian. And there's fortunately a way to kind of marry those two things. So here I am. The animals, when they're born, I just wanted to go through sort of their whole life cycle. They kind of breastfeed for about six months, is that true? And then they're weaned and they're solitary. And how long do they usually live for here in the home? It's a little bit shorter of a nursing period, actually. It's about six to eight weeks. Yeah, so they don't get as much maternal care. But same thing, their mothers have a very high percentage of fat within that milk. So they gain weight very quickly and then they're left to their own devices after that six to eight week period. And they typically spend about a month on the beach kind of figuring out how to forge on their own, get better at swimming, and then they're off. And then they can live to be about 25 to 30 years old. Wow, does that usually happen here? That's a good question, I'm not sure. I'm not sure what percentage of the population lives to that age. How do you know how old the monk seal is? Is there any way for you to know when the monk seal comes in, how old it is? You can just have an estimation or? Yeah, we actually know a fair amount about the monk seal population here. And that's largely because of the Hawaiian monk seal research program, which is a part of NOAA Fisheries. They have been monitoring this population for several decades and have been able to tag nearly every individual, not everyone. You can't always catch everyone when they're pups, but they've been able to tag a lot of the pups as they've been born over the years. So we have a lot of information about individual animals here. And especially within the main Hawaiian islands because there are folks here and we do have these organizations like the Marine Mammal Center that respond to calls of monk seals.  So we have a pretty good amount of information about monk seals compared to a lot of other seal populations. And how long do the, I'm just wondering with the monk seals, how many are there in the Hawaiian islands right now? Yeah, so there's roughly 1400 monk seals alive today. And the majority of those monk seals actually live in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. So about 1100 animals are in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands and then within the main Hawaiian islands, we have about 300 to 400 monk seals that live here. Wow, this has been a great episode. I mean, I feel like I'd love to have you on again. So much information, but yeah, we're out of time and we'll have to wrap it up now. But I wanted to just say, you know, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm Dr. Grace O'Neill. This is Healthy Planet on the Think Tech Live Streaming Network series. We've been talking with Dr. Sophie Worisky at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center. Thank you for all being here. Thank you, Mike, for engineering our session and the rest of the crew at Think Tech for hosting our show. And thanks to you, our listeners for listening. I'll see you on April 28th for more of Healthy Planet on Think Tech, the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet. Our next show will be about dogs going vegan, featuring a member of the VDog team. If you have ideas for the show, please contact me at Healthy Planet, thinktech at gmail.com. Check out my website at graceandhawaii.com for more information on my projects, including future show guests. I'm Dr. Grace O'Neill. Aloha, everyone. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo. Thank you.