Original subtitles

CHARLIE: Hey guys, Charlie here.

CHARLIE: You know my sister Kirby.

KIRBY: Hey, guys!

CHARLIE: Today we are hanging out...

...underwater in Hawaii,

checking out some coral reefs.

KIRBY: Coral might feel like rocks and look like plants,

but they're actually animals!

CHARLIE: It's time for Weird But True!

(theme music plays)

CHARLIE: So we just like dump the food right? Like one big dump?

KIRBY: I'm pretty sure it's more like a pinch and a toss,

like sprinkles on a cupcake, you know?

CHARLIE: Yeah. Hey guys!

You're not gonna believe what showed up today.

KIRBY: What the heck is this?

CASEY: Guys! I am so glad you're here.

I have a super busy day today.

I have clarinet lessons, and tutoring sessions and I'm in a bit of a jam.

CASEY: Patrick just left for summer camp today and put me in charge of this,

his coral reef aquarium, because, you know, I work at the aquarium.

CHARLIE: Wait, don't you volunteer at the aquarium?

KIRBY: In the gift shop?

CASEY: I've just got a million things going on today and I was thinking that it

would be the perfect project for you guys.

CHARLIE: I mean, we were gonna spend the day.

CASEY: Perfect! You know, I gotta run.

I really gotta go, so um thank you! Bye!

CHARLIE: Two fish tanks!

KIRBY: Pat loves these fish.

CHARLIE: And I guess that's where he grows his aquatic plants?

KIRBY: It all looks kind of complicated.

CHARLIE: Yeah, I'm not even really sure what coral is.

KIRBY: Me neither, but we gotta figure out how to keep this all alive.

CHARLIE: I guess that means today, we're unraveling the world of...

BOTH: Coral reefs!

CHARLIE: I mean, how hard can this really be?

KIRBY: You just like throw the food in.

CHARLIE: Yeah. The fish swim around, and the coral just looks pretty.

KIRBY: Pat left a note, let's check it out.

PATRICK: Casey, important!

Splish, Splash, Flip, Flop, and Colonel Archibald Billingsworth

are all friendly. But!

Feed Rainbow and Dr. Sparkles separately!

They are the damselfish, just like at the aquarium.

With love, Patrick.

KIRBY: What's a damselfish?

CHARLIE: I have absolutely no idea.

KIRBY: Me neither.

CHARLIE: To the books!

CHARLIE: So this says you can identify fish based on the different

shapes of their bodies.

KIRBY: Like the fins or the tail.

CHARLIE: Exactly.

KIRBY: Oh my gosh, this is just like that show!

CHARLIE: The one where they help people identify antiques from their attics?

KIRBY: Yeah! CHARLIE: I love that show!

Let's see what kind of fish we got in our tank.

CHARLIE: So what can you tell me about these pieces that you've brought in today?

KIRBY: Well it's a series of three paintings all of fish

from my grandson Patrick's fish tank.

CHARLIE: Well, I was very excited when you brought these to my table.

The best way to approach pieces like this, when you're trying to identify the fish,

is by looking at different shapes.

CHARLIE: So if we start at the front here you have a wonderful example

of a terminal mouth.

It's paired with a long continuous dorsal fin, and a tail that is

very slightly forked.

CHARLIE: Now, I talked with my colleagues and we believe that this is a great

example of the damselfish.

Let's take a look at the next one.

CHARLIE: This is an iconic design.

You have a very long snout, it's paired with a spiked dorsal fin

and a tail that is much more truncated.

CHARLIE: I'm fairly confident in saying that this is a longnose butterflyfish.

KIRBY: Ooo! How special.

CHARLIE: But the next one is the one that got us very excited.

Here we have some whiskers.

These are called barbels.

CHARLIE: They're paired with two separate dorsal fins,

and a tail that is much more forked than the others.

CHARLIE: We don't see a lot of these coming in.

This is a fine example of a goatfish.

And, I'm pleased to tell you that at auction this collection of three paintings

would get around, a bagillion dollars.

KIRBY: A bagillion dollars! For these fish?

Oh I must tell Patrick! Oh I'm so excited!

CHARLIE: I guess the orange one and the rainbowy one are goatfish and then the yellow

one and the tiger stripey one, probably the butterflyfish.

So that means these two blue guys are the damselfish.

KIRBY: So, we just have to feed them on opposite sides of the tank.

Come here guys, separate.

Come this way.

I'll give you some food.

Amazing.

KIRBY: And sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle.

Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle.

Boom! We're crushing this fish thing.

We just feed them, they have a good time and the coral just kind of like chills.

CHARLIE: And shoot giant tentacles that strangle the other coral?

KIRBY: What? CHARLIE: What the heck?

Look at this thing Kirb!

KIRBY: We need more books!

CHARLIE: So there's nothing about coral in the plant book.

KIRBY: Yeah, nothing in geology either.

CHARLIE: Hmm, it's right here.

KIRBY: What? CHARLIE: Yeah, check it out. Apparently coral is an animal.

CHARLIE (off-screen): What we think of as coral is a structure made up of

thousands of tiny animals.

Some can be no bigger than a pinhead.

They're animals related to jellyfish.

KIRBY: They're animals, related to jellyfish?

What are you talking about, let me see that.

KIRBY (off-screen): One individual coral polyp is made of an exoskeleton,

a big giant stomach, and tentacles.

KIRBY (off-screen): All of the individual coral polyps can

be linked together by a coenosarc.

Cool science word! Coenosarc.

It's like a pipeline system that lets them share nutrients.

KIRBY: That's so weird.

CHARLIE: What else does it say?

CHARLIE (off-screen): Microscopic algae live within coral polyps,

providing them with food, and giving them their color.

KIRBY: Let me read the next part.

KIRBY (off-screen): Coral also use their tentacles to sting plankton

and bring them to their mouths.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Some have extra-long tentacles, called sweeper tentacles,

they use to sting neighboring corals that might be getting too close.

CHARLIE: So, those are sweeper tentacles in the tank!

That coral is attacking other corals!

KIRBY: Not today coral.

CHARLIE: Hmm, come on, guy, you got it.

There we go.

Hmm. Ah.

KIRBY: Now it can't reach the other ones.

Problem solved.

CHARLIE: What do you think? We should take a break?

How about we record an episode of "Crafternoons"?

KIRBY: You know I'm down. CHARLIE: Let's do it.

CHARLIE: And that completes our list of the 100 differences

between goldenrod and dandelion.

KIRBY: Next up.

Moving on to the pros and cons of cerulean.

CASEY: What happened?

CHARLIE: What's going on?

CASEY: It's green!

KIRBY: What's all this junk on the walls?

CHARLIE: Uhh. This doesn't look good.

CASEY: What was Patrick thinking leaving us in charge of these things?

I'm running late for a meeting at the soup kitchen, and I don't have time to fix

any of this right now.

KIRBY: Maybe say you're too busy?

CASEY: No, no. It's not too much, it's never too much I can do this right?

CHARLIE: Case! Relax. We got this.

Alright, here's the game plan.

You stay down here and watch the fish.

Video chat into your soup kitchen meeting.

KIRBY: We'll figure this out.

CASEY: Okay, but hurry, please.

CHARLIE: Uh where are we gonna go?

KIRBY: I know this guy, Dr. Alan Friedlander.

He's a National Geographic scientist.

And him and his team are cleaning up and saving coral reefs,

just like Pat's, but in the ocean.

CHARLIE: Oh my gosh! That's perfect!

They can definitely help us out.

We'll see you guys there.

KIRBY: Ok. CHARLIE: Let's, let's find a plane.

CHARLIE (off-screen): And just like that, we're headed to the middle of the Pacific Ocean

to dive the coral reefs around Honolulu, Hawaii.

Honolulu is famous for hula dancing and surfing.

KIRBY (off-screen): Weird but true, some fish can change from male to female.

CHARLIE: Hey guys, we just made it here outside Honolulu in Hawaii.

KIRBY: And we're here at the Anuenue Fish Research Center.

CHARLIE: To meet Brian from the Department of Aquatic Resources.

They take care of the entire coastline here in Hawaii.

And also Alan from the Pristine Seas Project.

He's traveled the entire world saving the oceans.

KIRBY: So if anyone can help us it's these guys.

Let's go.

ALAN: Weird but true, parrotfish eat coral and a single parrotfish creates

about 500 pounds of sand a year that it poops out.

CHARLIE: Here's the situation, back home we're helping our sister watch our friend's tank

and it's really not going well.

Algae is building up on the sides of the walls and we have no idea how to fix it.

CHARLIE: Do you guys think you can help us out?

ALAN: Your problem you just described is a problem that's going on in the whole world.

The oceans in general are not doing well.

The project with National Geographic Pristine Seas that we have is we're trying to

seek out the last wild places in the ocean, places that really haven't been impacted

by people yet.

ALAN: And this gives us an idea of what natural systems look like.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Alan's sharing lessons they've learned from healthy

reefs to help Brian fix a big algae problem.

Algae are aquatic organisms that range in size from microscopic to large seaweeds.

BRIAN: Kind of like your fish tank, invasive seaweed is really bad for our reefs.

CHARLIE: Why is it such a bad thing?

BRIAN: Since it's not naturally from here, it doesn't have

its natural predators.

BRIAN: And so it just soon became out of control.

ALAN: The problem with invasive species are that the naturally occurring

things in the ecosystem don't recognize them, so they just kind of explode

and take advantage of the situation.

CHARLIE: So this algae is an invasive species?

ALAN: It certainly is.

CHARLIE: We know all about invasive species.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Invasive species are perfectly fine in their native habitats,

where they have predators and competition to keep them in check.

But when they're moved to new locations, they might have no

predators and competition.

So, they take over which can be very harmful to that new ecosystem.

CHARLIE (off-screen): And that's what happened in Kane'ohe Bay,

with non-native algae.

CHARLIE: What a beautiful bay.

Ooh! The sun!

We should farm here.

KIRBY: What should we farm?

CHARLIE: This stuff, algae from the Philippines, they put it in everything.

KIRBY: We'll make millions. CHARLIE: What could go wrong?

CHARLIE: This just in, the algae market is down, it escaped its underwater pens,

and is slowly taking over the coral reefs in Kane'ohe Bay!

CHARLIE (off-screen): We're heading out to the reef to see what the

invasive seaweed has done to the coral.

ALAN: This is Kane'ohe Bay.

And this reef's pretty degraded.

There's a lot of algae that's invaded and kind of smothered the coral,

the corals die, and it's just an unhealthy, out-of-balance ecosystem.

CHARLIE: Ready to hop in? ALAN: Let's do it, guys.

♪ ♪

CHARLIE: This is the invasive stuff.

CHARLIE: That's choking out...

...this reef.

CHARLIE: Under all this coral it's just...

...layers and layers of this algae...

...just weaving itself through.

KIRBY: All this algae is suffocating the coral.

KIRBY: There aren't too many fish over here either.

KIRBY: Fish are losing houses.

KIRBY: This stuff is bad news.

ALAN: How'd it go, guys? CHARLIE: It was a good dive.

It was rough to see all that algae down there though.

ALAN: Yeah. KIRBY: For sure. ALAN: Pesky stuff huh?

CHARLIE: Yeah. KIRBY: Yeah.

ALAN: It just gets to all the cracks and crevices. KIRBY: Yeah.

CHARLIE: And that's the hard thing.

It really cements itself down there.

ALAN: Yeah.

And it ruins the habitat for all the rest of the critters that are trying to live in

there, cause it just takes over everything.

KIRBY: That's crazy.

CHARLIE (off-screen): As bad as the coral looks here, on another part of the reef,

they've come up with a really cool solution that they're anxious to show us.

BRIAN: To try to get rid of this stuff.

We went in with an underwater vacuum system and hand removed the algae and

then to keep it from growing back afterwards we put sea urchins out on the reef.

KIRBY (off-screen): It turns out that sea urchins love to eat lots of seaweed.

They say it's just like goats eating grass.

And the really good news is that these sea urchins are native to these

Hawaiian coral reefs.

CHARLIE: So is this like a cleaned reef after you guys have been able to get

in and do your work?

BRIAN: Yeah, urchins have been at work here for about two years now.

It'll stay nice and healthy as long as those urchins are out there eating it

and keeping the seaweed at bay.

CHARLIE: Nice, I'm ready to go. KIRBY: I'm ready to go.

ALAN: Alright, let's do it guys.

CHARLIE: You guys ready to dive in? Let's go underwater.

KIRBY: So this is a healthy reef.

KIRBY: It's filled with glistening coral.

KIRBY: There's barely any algae anywhere.

KIRBY: There's pinks and purples and yellows.

CHARLIE: I haven't seen any algae...

...in this whole area.

KIRBY: These urchins are nailing their job.

KIRBY: Maybe Pat could use a few urchins back home.

KIRBY: This is pretty amazing!

BRIAN: In total we've put over 300,000 of these little guys out onto the reef so far.

KIRBY: They were all raised here.

BRIAN: That were all raised here in this facility.

KIRBY: That's awesome. CHARLIE: What is a sea urchin?

BRIAN: They're really cool little creatures covered in spikes,

and that protects them and keeps things from eating them, but then they also have little

tube feet, and that's how the urchins actually crawl around.

CHARLIE: See ya, bud. KIRBY: Bye.

KIRBY: Whoa.

CHARLIE: Whoa. That's a giant. KIRBY: That's crazy.

BRIAN: These are about a year and a half old, and so now you can really see those

tube feet that we were talking about with the little ones.

KIRBY: Are these his teeth or his mouth or something?

What's going on?

BRIAN: Yeah, so that's his mouth moving up and down.

CHARLIE: Ugh.

KIRBY: That's so weird it's like 5 little beaks coming forward.

BRIAN: It's like something from a horror movie, doesn't it?

KIRBY: Kind of. That's crazy.

Sounds like these urchins are kind of like reestablishing the balance

of their ecosystem.

ALAN: You know, everything has to be in balance, right?

If one thing's missing from the ecosystem it all goes out of whack.

It's complicated, but yet nature does a great job of taking care of itself.

KIRBY: So we know how to get rid of the algae and make it stay away.

I think we're gonna fix the tank.

(Phone buzzing).

CHARLIE: Dude yeah without a doubt.

We got a bunch of voicemails from Casey.

CASEY: Hey Charles, it's Case, just you know, things are getting kind of

green in the tank.

Call me back. Bye.

CASEY: If you could call me back ASAP that'd be awesome.

Thanks.

CASEY: Where the heck are you guys?

I can't handle this stress! Call me back.

CHARLIE: She's freaking out. KIRBY: Is it bad? CHARLIE: It's bad.

KIRBY: We gotta go.

CHARLIE: Alright guys, we'll head back to HQ, we gotta help Casey out.

See you soon. Quick!

KIRBY (off-screen): Weird but true, the surface of the Atlantic Ocean is

saltier than the surface of the Pacific Ocean!

CHARLIE: Hey Casey! CASEY: Guys!

KIRBY: How's it going? CASEY: Terrible.

There's green stuff all over the walls of the tank, and I told Bob like an hour

ago that I'd teach him how to play racquetball.

CHARLIE: Don't worry about it.

We can handle it, just tell Bob we say hi.

CASEY: Oh my gosh you guys are the best!

Thanks! Bye!

CHARLIE: Okay, so it seems like the same problem as the reefs in Hawaii, right?

All this green stuff is just tiny algae.

KIRBY: Yeah, and the first thing they did was remove it.

So.

CHARLIE: This is looking amazing, but we're not done yet.

Remember back in Hawaii after they took the algae out, they put some sea urchins

in to make sure that it didn't grow back.

KIRBY: We don't have any sea urchins.

CHARLIE: Yeah. We gotta to be missing something, right?

I mean, Patrick was able to make this thing work.

KIRBY: Charlie! CHARLIE: Whoa!

There are a bunch of little bugs in here, swimming around!

What's going on, Kirb?

KIRBY: I think this tank is called a refugium.

CHARLIE: What is a refugium?

KIRBY: Hi, Kirby here for refugium.

Your filtration specialist.

KIRBY: This supplemental tank shares water with your main tank,

is powered by sunlight, activated by fish poop, is safe for your fish

and Mother Nature approved.

I'm talking about macroinvertebrates that eat fish poop,

and other beneficial microalgae.

Both of which keep the nutrients in your tank in check.

KIRBY: Look over here, by absorbing the fish waste and balancing the chemicals in the

tank, these organisms are taking nutrients away from the bad algae in the main tank and

promoting a healthier environment for your fish.

What I need from you is to call in the next 4 minutes to get your very own refugium

and we'll throw in a microalgae starter kit, a giant beat up shark and heck,

why not, my brother, Charlie.

CHARLIE: Okay, so I guess this isn't just an empty tank without any fish.

KIRBY: Yeah, this refugium is a filtration system with tiny little organisms in it to

make this a balanced ecosystem.

CHARLIE: How cool is that, tiny little organisms and little plants can have

a huge role in a coral reef.

KIRBY: Yeah, and I guess we just have to connect the two tanks then.

CHARLIE: Yeah, definitely not plugged in here.

And, they're connected!

KIRBY: Boom!

Natural filtration is back online.

CHARLIE: This is looking pretty good, Kirb, not gonna lie.

KIRBY: What can we do to make sure this is in the perfect condition?

CHARLIE (off-screen): I don't know.

What could possibly be left for us to diagnose?

CHARLIE: Hey, Earth.

KIRBY: How have you been feeling recently?

CHARLIE: I'm gonna have to ask you to take a deep breath for me.

KIRBY: And open up wide so I can take your temp.

KIRBY: Hmm, a bit above normal.

CHARLIE: We're gonna have to take a look at your coral real quick.

Oop, very white.

You're suffering from coral bleaching.

CHARLIE (off-screen): That's when the coral gets so stressed from the increased

ocean temperatures, it expels the good algae inside of it that gives it food,

and its color, turning it white.

The coral cannot survive without their algae for very long.

KIRBY: And if we look at your file from 1998, it looks like you lost 16% of your

coral due to a worldwide bleaching event.

KIRBY: It seems to be getting worse every day.

CHARLIE: You're taking in a lot of CO2.

CHARLIE: It looks like your oceans are absorbing 22 million tons of

CO2 every single day.

KIRBY: Look, your water sample just came in from the lab, and it looks like all that CO2 is

causing all of your waters to become more acidic.

KIRBY (off-screen): Ocean acidification makes it hard for corals to

grow their skeletons.

CHARLIE: You're suffering from coral bleaching and ocean acidification.

So, I'm gonna have to recommend that you reduce your daily intake of CO2 and

encourage your caretakers, the people of Earth, to reduce their contribution

to climate change, too.

KIRBY: We're rooting for ya.

CHARLIE: Okay, so coral reefs thrive at specific temperatures and PH levels.

Hmm, oh!

This one's a little frigid.

I'm sure we got to plug into the heater or something.

CHARLIE: Now we got to do a bunch of tests, on like ammonia,

nitrates, we do PH, and oxygen, too.

KIRBY: Keeping a tank is kind of difficult.

CASEY: Hey guys!

Sorry I was gone, but I'm here now.

And this looks amazing.

KIRBY: Yeah, we connected two symbiotic ecosystems,

and we regulated the water temperature.

You want to feed them?

CASEY: For sure!

CASEY: Guys.

KIRBY: What? CASEY: Where's the last fish?

CHARLIE: What are you talking about?

CASEY: In Patrick's note, he said there were 7 fish.

Flip, Flop, Splish, Splash, Rainbow, Dr. Sparkles,

and Colonel Archibald Billingsworth.

There are only 6 fish here.

KIRBY: We lost a fish? CHARLIE: Wait, we didn't lose a fish.

This is how it always looked.

CASEY: Oh, my gosh.

CHARLIE: Don't worry about it, Case.

I'm sure Kirb and I figure this one out, too.

CASEY: No, no, I'm done handing out responsibilities.

Guys, give me some space.

I've got a fish to find.

CHARLIE: Hey guys.

KIRBY: Case has been researching for like an hour and a half.

CHARLIE: She's missed three meetings.

KIRBY: She's not answering her phone.

CHARLIE: It's crazy.

CASEY: I got it! CHARLIE: Where is it?

CASEY: Right here. It's a stonefish.

KIRBY: Woah.

CASEY: Yeah, he looks way more like a stone than a fish.

And he wasn't lost at all, we couldn't see him.

CHARLIE: That's a super close call.

CASEY: Way too close of a call for me.

That's why I'm clearing out time in my schedule to make responsibilities like

this one more of a priority.

Nothing's falling through the cracks.

KIRBY: Probably a good idea.

CHARLIE: You want to know the craziest thing, though?

Patrick has no idea that any of this is happening.

KIRBY: Should we craft him a letter? CASEY: I can help!

KIRBY: Case, focus on the fish. CASEY: You're right.

CHARLIE: Alright, guys, it looks like we have a new project on our hands,

but thanks so much for stopping by.

Come by again when we discover more things that are weird...

KIRBY: But true!

CHARLIE: We'll see you guys later! I want to put a fish in the tank.

KIRBY: We gotta tell em about all this.

Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.