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1 .This is Scientific American 60-Second Science. I'm Julia Rosen. Got a minute?
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2 .The Maldives form a constellation of almost 1,200 coral reef islands in the Indian Ocean.
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3 .They have stunning white sand beaches surrounded by emerald blue water.
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4 .And according to a new study, they may owe their existence to parrotfish.
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5 .More specifically: to parrotfish poop.
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6 .If you've ever snorkeled near a coral reef, you've probably seen neon-colored parrotfish.
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7 .Their name refers to their sharp, beak-like teeth.
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8 .You may have heard them too.
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9 .That's a parrotfish literally eating the reef's coral skeleton.
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10 .It bites off tiny pieces of hard coral as it forages for algae.
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11 ."That gets taken into the fish.
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12 .It's then milled.
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13 .And it passes through their intestines and it's then excreted out the back end as clouds of sediment."
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14 .Chris Perry, a marine geoscientist at the University of Exeter in the UK.
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15 ."And that is then distributed onto the reef.
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16 .And it's a way, at least in this system and elsewhere parrotfish are abundant that you can convert coral substrate into sediment grade material."
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17 .In 2013, Perry and colleagues went to the Maldives to find out how the reef, which grows underwater, generates sediments that pile up, forming islands that rise above the water's surface.
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18 .The team discovered that parrotfish play a critical role in this process: their waste accounts for a whopping 85% of all the sand produced on the reef.
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19 ."If you spend time on the reefs and you're following the parrotfish around, it's absolutely incredible how much sediment they're producing.
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20 .So when you're got large populations of them, they can be very important in this respect."
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21 .The new results suggest that protecting parrotfish populations is essential for maintaining the Maldives, which already face threats from rising seas.
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22 ."If you take the parrotfish out of these systems you would basically be shutting down a very significant amount of the sort of supply chain for island-building sediment."
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23 .By the way, the beautiful white sand beaches in parts of Hawaii?
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24 .Also largely parrotfish poop.
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25 .Think about that next time you're spreading out your towel in Oahu.
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26 .Thanks for the minute, for Scientific American 60-Second Science. I'm Julia Rosen.
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