S2:E28

MAKING SEA WALLS COME ALIVE

WHERE TO LISTEN:

in this episode

One of my favorite novels of all-time is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.  The idea of breathing life into something that previously housed none is both exhilarating and fantastical.  Now in the case of Dr. Frankenstein, it did not work out all too well. However in the case of sea walls, it seems it very much will!

Sea walls are everywhere across the world.  And they have been for a long time.  They are growing more larger and more numerous and ambitious due to our warming oceans, rising sea levels, and increases in flooding and storm intensity. Over 40% of humans on earth live within 100km of a coast.

Traditional sea walls do a great job of protecting human habitats from waves, floods, and storms.  But they do a terrible job of doing the same for our marine habitats.  They disrupt ocean drift and cause coastal erosion, and that then disrupts critical coastal marine habitats that house many of the fish we eat, oxygenate our oceans, improve water quality, and sequester carbon.

An amazing team has come up a solution. A way to breathe life quite literally into sea walls so they can protect both humans and marine life at the same time.  Want to know how? That’s today on Animalia!