Shayle Matsuda

And then all of a sudden, can we solve or help mitigate choral diseases by also creating a probiotic?

The amount of knowledge we're gaining about bacteria just in general right now has just been a huge driver for knowledge.

The ocean is full of different things, and we're looking at a lot of these interactions, like how many partners need to be in play to get this result or to prevent something from happening.

It's a really exciting time to be studying all of this stuff.

And they're also, you know, really important for tourism and the economy.

And that's also a really great way to kind of switch our,

The way that we think about our economy is instead of extracting from the reef and damaging the reef, we can actually do eco-friendly tourism, bring people, educate people to see the reef.

And it's hard to find an appreciation for something that you have never seen before.

We can all kind of relate to that.

And we all have those moments where you saw something for the first time.

You know, any place in nature, like we can have those kind of moments.

But I think that's really important also.

And especially like here in Hawaii, the coral reef ecosystems are incredibly important culturally.

And there's a lot of history.

There's a lot of stories, a lot of history wrapped up in these ecosystems.

And it's, you know, there's a lot of reasons to protect them.

Not only did I not have a direct go to undergrad, go to your master's, or go straight to your PhD kind of experience, but I'd experienced also a lot of the obstacles and challenges that

you know, folks who don't typically see themselves in science face as well.

And that's not something that you would necessarily get from looking at me today.

And for me, I experienced a lot of sexism when I was younger.