full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson: A coral reef love story

Unscramble the Blue Letters


In the misdt of all this, I fell in love. With a fish. There are over 500 fish scpeeis that live on Caribbean reefs, but the ones I just can't get out of my head are parrotfish. ptsiaofrrh live on craol reefs all over the world, there are 100 species, they can grow well over a meter long and weigh over 20 kilograms, but that's the boring sutff. I want to tell you five incredible things about these fish.

footnote

First, they have a mouth like a parrot's beak, which is strong enough to bite coral, although mostly they're after algae. They are the lawn mowers of the reef. This is key, because many reefs are overgrown with algae due to nrntuiet plooulitn from sewage and fertilizer that runs off of land. And there just aren't enough herbivores like parrotfish left out on the reefs to mow it all down.

Open Cloze


In the _____ of all this, I fell in love. With a fish. There are over 500 fish _______ that live on Caribbean reefs, but the ones I just can't get out of my head are parrotfish. __________ live on _____ reefs all over the world, there are 100 species, they can grow well over a meter long and weigh over 20 kilograms, but that's the boring _____. I want to tell you five incredible things about these fish.

footnote

First, they have a mouth like a parrot's beak, which is strong enough to bite coral, although mostly they're after algae. They are the lawn mowers of the reef. This is key, because many reefs are overgrown with algae due to ________ _________ from sewage and fertilizer that runs off of land. And there just aren't enough herbivores like parrotfish left out on the reefs to mow it all down.

Solution


  1. midst
  2. species
  3. coral
  4. stuff
  5. nutrient
  6. parrotfish
  7. pollution

Original Text


In the midst of all this, I fell in love. With a fish. There are over 500 fish species that live on Caribbean reefs, but the ones I just can't get out of my head are parrotfish. Parrotfish live on coral reefs all over the world, there are 100 species, they can grow well over a meter long and weigh over 20 kilograms, but that's the boring stuff. I want to tell you five incredible things about these fish.

footnote

First, they have a mouth like a parrot's beak, which is strong enough to bite coral, although mostly they're after algae. They are the lawn mowers of the reef. This is key, because many reefs are overgrown with algae due to nutrient pollution from sewage and fertilizer that runs off of land. And there just aren't enough herbivores like parrotfish left out on the reefs to mow it all down.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
coral reefs 4
marine biologist 2
entire ecosystem 2


Important Words


  1. algae
  2. beak
  3. bite
  4. boring
  5. caribbean
  6. coral
  7. due
  8. fell
  9. fertilizer
  10. fish
  11. footnote
  12. grow
  13. head
  14. herbivores
  15. incredible
  16. key
  17. kilograms
  18. land
  19. lawn
  20. left
  21. live
  22. long
  23. love
  24. meter
  25. midst
  26. mouth
  27. mow
  28. mowers
  29. nutrient
  30. overgrown
  31. parrotfish
  32. pollution
  33. reef
  34. reefs
  35. runs
  36. sewage
  37. species
  38. strong
  39. stuff
  40. weigh
  41. world