The Ocean Floor Has A Digestive System | Keystone

Something is eating dirt on the ocean floor right now, processing sand through its body, breathing through its rear end, and quietly keeping your coral reefs alive. It has over four hundred relatives, can throw its own organs at a predator, and it is worth more per kilogram dried than most things you own. Kaito explains what bioturbation is (it sounds worse than it is), why removing the ocean's digestive system has measurable consequences for coral reefs, and what happens when a dried sea slug sells for three thousand dollars a kilogram. → Why the sea cucumber breathes through its cloaca (and what cloacal respiration actually means) → How one animal processes its own body weight in sediment every day → The nutrient chain from sand to seagrass to coral to your dinner plate → Why dried sea cucumber sells for thousands per kilogram (and what that costs Indo-Pacific reefs) → The organ-throwing defense mechanism that is, unfortunately, completely real SOURCES: Uthicke (2001), Nutrient regeneration by abundant coral reef holothurians, Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology Purcell, Mercier & Conand (2012), Sea cucumbers: A global review of fisheries and trade, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper CITES (2002), Review of exploitation and trade of sea cucumbers in the Indian Ocean 🔔 Subscribe for more ecosystem services: every species we cover answers what does this do for us? #seacucumber #ecosystemservices #supporting #ecology #nature #science #coralreef #bioturbation #marinelife #conservation Kaito also hosts Catalyst, a chemistry channel.    / @catalyst-chemicalsubstances   Episodes on the molecules and materials that built the modern world.