Investigates the ivory trail theyve tried to seize it. Burn it but nothing has stopped the terrible trade in the legal ivory. Now. New tools straight from the lab that could find a crime thats brought elephants to the brink of extinction getting a seizure is a great victory but that owns are already dead. From rita davis and is an environmental biologist i am holding a tray of an elephant who should show us the high tech plan to stop the killing. Then celine stranded along the california freeway yes freeway doctor should do some r. Is a mechanical engineer chill show us whats been done to find out why this is happening at this thanks dave feeling distressed and im still taurus im an entomologist vamps our team then we. Know its do some science. Welcome to techno on phil toys joined by maria to davison and dr shu some laura because there were outlaws out there who are working in the shadows committing horrible acts against the fence list yet majestic animals were talking about the ivory poachers who have decimated the populations of elephants in africa and its really a nominee because ivory guys for about a 1000. 00 a pound has more valuable than an Illegal Drugs and you know what that means is that the damage has been devastating. Thing over 100000 elephants have been killed in just the last 3 years and the question is what can we do about it we found a team of scientists that are using some unexpected weapons d. N. A. And radiocarbon dating check it out. April 18th 2015. Intercepts 4 tonnes of ivory smuggled in being sacks from the democratic republic of congo. It is the largest seizure in this countrys history the ivory on the way to laos seized in bangkok after a tip the seizure makes headlines thai customs displayed over 3 tons of confiscated african ivory worth 6000000 dollars a historic average from kenya Somebody Just 900 elephants but the perpetrators of this horrible crime against animals are never caught for Law Enforcement entities like interpol stopping the killing of elephants at the source is whats critical. The question ends where exactly is all this ivory coming from they almost always shipped the ivory out of a different country from where it was poached because thats where you start your search looking in the wrong place sam wasser is the director of the center for conservation biology at the university of washington. When it comes to solving the mysteries of the illegal trade wasser has created a coalition of scientists virtual detectives using techniques in d. N. A. From ivory. Genetic mapping through dung sampling and radiocarbon dating this multipronged approach attacks a criminal enterprise thats brought the majestic African Elephant to the brink of extinction and theres probably only 450000. 00 elephants left so the whole focus of our lab is to really try to use d. N. A. Assignment of large. Singapore 2002. 6 and a half tons of ivory seized the largest in the countrys history roughly 650. 00 elephants were killed for this haul of ivory. But where in africa did the ivory originate from they assume this much ivory must come from multiple sources authorities send samples to washers lab for analysis right now from anywhere in africa we can assign a seizure of ivory closer than 300 kilometers to where it came from wasser and his team get to work the 1st step is to prepare the samples of seized ivory. We cut off a piece of the ivory and then leave we do is we stick that piece inside a plastic tube with a magnet and stainless steel plugs on the end we drop that in liquid nitrogen which cools it to about minus 240. 00 degrees celsius so extremely cold within 3 minutes it comes out like baby powder. So its a has the ivory and it preserves the d. N. A. At the same time that was one of the biggest breakthroughs of our. Elephant d. N. A. From the ivory seized in singapore is extracted and analyzed in last years lab the d. N. A. From the tusks is then matched against a genetic reference map of africas elephant populations this map has been generated by d. N. A. Taken from another source rich in elephant d. N. A. I am holding a tray of elephant hoop not exactly something youd associate as a tool for fighting International Crime but these samples provide critical pieces of data for creating a genetic map of elephants across africa yup collecting dung samples may not be glamorous work but its a task wasser and his team take seriously we make the map from the dung we take genetic markers out of the dung samples so you see here this map of africa theres about 1400. 00 total samples here and each sample is from a separate family group loesser was able to determine the origin of the 6 and a half tons of ivory seized in singapore and shipped out of malawi it all came from a neighboring country zambia. Washers team had made a discovery that would revolutionize Law Enforcements approach to poaching basically the study debunked some of the assumptions that you and interpol had about how these activities were working what were those assumptions and so as assumptions that Law Enforcement general had and one was when you get a big seizure they were cherry picked from all over africa and what we showed is thats not whats happening there in the same area over and over and over again. The plight of the African Elephant has been well documented these heartbreaking images were shot in a sanctuary for elephant orphans in kenya from before the biggest enemy of elephants when the out in the woods on this 2 year old being bottle fed stood by his mothers body for 3 days after she was murdered for her tusks so 1st you kill the bowls and then you kill the matriarch so now youre destroying the leadership in your group as well as the long term knowledge that these elephants have and when elephants become vulnerable so does the rest of the ecosystem there are these keystone species where you take this one out and it has this huge Ripple Effect on all these other species elephants are true keystone species. Sophisticated transnational syndicates oversee every step of the trade from the illegal poaching to the smuggling of tusks to carving factories and shops around the world. This footage part of an undercover investigation captures a shipping agent explaining how ivory is smuggled out of africa very wrong or very good. We need an urgent method that stops the killing even getting a seizure is a great victory but the owners are already dead. Last month singaporean customs seized another shipment of ivory coming out of kenya and headed for vietnam 3. 00 tons worth an estimated. 8000000. 00 singaporean authorities have already contacted wasser to oversee d. N. A. Analysis washers lab and now receive samples from over 90 percent of all marj i have receivers what we are trying to really do is to figure out where are the major poaching hotspots across africa his latest study based on d. N. A. Analysis of 28 seizures between 19062014 reveals there may be only 2 major hotspots for poaching in africa southern tanzania and a place known as the tri them. When youre saying hot spots you mean hot spots of poaching activity hotspots of seizure activity what are you referring to a hot spot is a place where you are able to provide multiple tons of ivory repeatedly over multiple years then we have a place we can focus Law Enforcement on take those out and perhaps choke the source of the ivory from entering the network and unravel it so thats the big plan. A techno crew member is on vacation in thailand when he comes across this all too common display hes told of their ivory pieces offered up for sale for a price the sale of ivory to foreigners is illegal in thailand yet as our camera reveals it goes on as this old newsreel footage shows ivory was once very popular with a crop but soon to his own but all that changed in 1990 when the International Trade in ivory was made illegal. D. N. A. Analysis is one tool that could ultimately help governments crackdown on where ivory is coming from but it cant tell investigators when the killing took place anything post ban is illegal to. What it comes down to is this this radio carbon dating method can tell us if trade of ivory is legal or not kevin you know is a geo chemist who uses a method known as radiocarbon dating to determine the age of ivory this is the part of the tusk that was actually growing when the animal was shot because we need to know when did this elephant die and so this part of the tusk tells us that and so we drove the powder on to this wave paper here. And we collect it into these vials next to ivory powder is combusted and turned into pure c o 2 so what is this we can bust it in this tube it theres other impurities in there other gases we need to get rid of those so that when we measure the radio carbon content we just are measuring the c o 2 gas radiocarbon dating literally relies on the fallout from the events that took place from 1952 to 1963. 1 fire. Above ground atomic testing between the United States in the soviet union weve basically doubled the radio carbon concentration in the atmosphere now what does that mean then for organisms when you have a spike in radio carbon in the atmosphere what it did do is give them all the unique geochemical fingerprint in their tissues all these photosynthetic organisms trees grasses that sort of thing are taking in c o 2 some of it having carbon 14 in it and in the animals that eat that then also take on that radio carbon signature look there it is you can actually see its freezing down on the right side so now were going to do is torch it off and have the final final product. And bring this to them and you do this individually for each sample yeah this is its time consuming its so you want to wear these to to watch this process just so this is just a regular methane tour. Not to be done at home and the warm glass. All around that its early. Polling stops or. So and its unique. And now you can see. Theres our c o 2 right there thats thats the frozen c o 2 from an elephant heading for radio Carbon Announces after you know receives the radio carbon content of a piece of ivory he can match it against the bomb curves a record of atmospheric levels of c 14 before and after the atomic testing era the radio carbon dating a 5 re could be used to verify the age of ivory being sold on the legal market as antiques but heres the bottom curve and i call this left side before 963 the rising limb so the tusk is imprinted with the radio carbon concentration from that year so we can then go and measure that radiocarbon concentration and say ok its for example 1. 3 and that allows us to draw a horizontal line across the bottom curve here and you can see it actually intersects it into place 2 answers it can be 1960 or it could be 1080 so the way to do this is to sample part of the test that you know is older and in the part of the house you know it is younger and compare the relative radiocarbon concentrations and just fit them back onto this curve so if the older one has a higher concentration in the younger has a lower then youre on this falling limb of the bomb curve november 2013 canadian authorities learned that a pair of tusks are being offered by this toronto based auction house as antiques suspecting the tusks are not as old as the sellers claim authorities confiscate them and turn them over to. Buy dated a pair of tusks clearly showing his elephant was poached after the law went into effect and. The auction house went to court and pleaded guilty now you know and collaborator turi serling have teamed up with wasser to apply this technique to investigate trends in the International Trade in illegal ivory since the International Ban african countries have been stockpiling confiscated ivory occasionally they destroy some of it but much of it remains sitting in government warehouses so they have huge stockpiles on the order of 100. 00 or 120. 00 tons and some of these nations are so theyre sitting on this ivory waiting for the day that the International Market opens again if current poaching hotspots are shut down the next major source for ivory could be the stockpiles and radiocarbon dating would help confirm it to what extent do you wrestle with despair at the situation and to what extent do you embrace hope and there have been some seizures where i got to say you know when we pulled them out and started rinsing in often the blood was pouring out and that we were just sitting there in tears i mean you know that that has happened but you know you get. Used to it and and then you start getting these breakthroughs and so no i feel like you know weve got a plan i feel like were making an impact and thats really what drives me. To steps of d. N. A. Techniques that you talk about that practice has been done for a long time to maybe track the origin of the disease what took him so long to get through tracking down poachers you know weve used d. N. A. Techniques to understand populations of lots of wildlife were using it within the context of conservation a lot more now its still a fairly new field so there was a time when ivory was used in canada and believe it pools and now its illegal but why is the market still so robots the main markets are in china and then actually the United States is the 2nd largest player here part of whats driving that is that theres some. Communities in the us that really value ivory iris you mostly find it as an ornamental carving its very beautiful when its polished and carved and it carries a sort of status because of its values so theres still a pretty high demand now there is a crisis unfolding on the coast of california from san diego up to San Francisco and beyond sea lions are leaving their natural ocean habitat and wandering up on shore even sometimes in peoples yards and streets well i joined a ride on my we were literally rescuing sea lion pops this story is crazy some of its heartbreaking and its coming up that. This punk named johnny cash is making a run towards the open ocean with a satellite transmitter tied to his back he might hold the on says to a sad epidemic among californias coastline. There are plenty of highways that hug californias ocean shores and hes 90 freeway isnt one of them the sight of a baby seen in a quarter of a mile inland is unsettling. But in 2015 its not that unusual according to local News Agencies the creatures are stranding starring in apparently dying in record numbers this year along the coast the images tell on haunting story well we have seen spikes and rethink here as the 2015 is already off to an unusually start the headlines paint a picture of an epidemic of sick pops in desperate search of food but whats really going on is more complex techno went to the san diego headquarters for a federal agency that studies the oceans says ports happened in the last 2 years is the waters in the northeast pacific have warmed up way beyond anything more used to according to noah a warm up ocean off Southern California has made it hard to financing. The lions to forage and as a result the pups are not getting enough nourishment el nino is an event scientists have seen several times but this years temperature is a quite different whats really different is that the waters in the northeast pacific warmed up over a year ago and usually that warming occurs after the only no developed in this case that preceded it ocean warming impacts the food chain from the bottom up as upwelling wins a cooling deep water currents typically rife with cold water nutrients to secularize up mostly nutrient depleted warm water so when you talk about nutrients what is that that biologic material in the deep ocean gets remember allies tend to forget and organic nutrients and so the upwelling them keeps that cycle going so how does it affect the top of the food chain the whole food chain gets depressed a lot of the those fish species that could move have moved northward and a food source has a lot less than we had last year and the evidence can be seen daily all along the californian coast from san diego to San Francisco in san diego sea world the company which face public heat for. Has taken a public role in sea lion rescue efforts. Its really a new thing i was lucky i think yeah this how long do you feed them for typically it will be 2 painting for about 12 days and about 5 days they have gained enough strength to actually start showing some interest again especially and they will start taking water to the sea lions a facet method to an almost tree asure like setting the pups to fed a special protein which formula up to 202 feedings a day take place behind the scenes we have to gradually read about it because their bodies havent seen fresh and they cant process it properly they have to show it to us that they can appoint process 3 to 5 pounds of fish per day which is what they would require to maintain their weight before we stop to feed brands to it observe sea lion health at sea worlds Nonprofit Research on. So in studying their habitats you able to get a better idea of whats happening in terms of Global Climate change food seem to have vanished for some reason the question is whether thats a sign i think of long term Climate Change the bigger issue is are these little intensive answered were seeing recently going to become more common as climate generally changes according to the National MarineFisheries Service is the west. As rescued pups are returning starved again it is the most historically busy year ever of this argument 2500 sea lions stranded in california this year alone in the 1st 12 weeks that were into the year marine biologists and executive director of the Pacific MarineMammal Center keith mythos a has seen it all but. Theyre actually 6 months old coming into us under birthweight thats how star they are the other difference in this year that we didnt see in 20132014 is that were now seeing a lot of adults coming in that are very me seated very star you can see every bone in their body and thats a difference from the last few years metacity and his team aesops might tighten technology to understand why this is happening tagging sea lions is so new to these pups the Research Pioneers and we want to make sure that the animals that were putting back out into the wild during this unusually bad rush and making it tagging happens fast as i learned watching johnny cash get his device he spent 2 months gaining 25 pounds and is a worthy candidate here for you know that i am your god. Send you trying to seal the edges where were going further somewhere in the back that you know the feel good think youre going to tighten up the back but will be good this year several sea lions return to metastases rehab starving once again but rescue centers along the coast compiling satellite tagging dates. This hype that johnny cash and his newly released friends who beat the odds a move the line toward survival rather than the stranding. Or hopefully that no risk tannys and they live a long happy life thats the plan and thats whats going to help and were going to see them out on the rocks in 9 or 10 years were going to begin helping. I work a lot of behavior in my research and what i found really fascinating about this is what is causing this behavior of the popes arches going in a little bit from shore theyre going miles and going on this long journey in there so something evolved in them that the changing climate is just messing with their their innate response to temperature its for us more could it be just utter desperation right i mean if you reach a certain level of lack of nutrition does that suddenly kick in some sort of in instinct to just go where ever necessary to find something i mean because of see the temperature is it a the food that they normally feed on has moved somewhere and started the seed im pops of starving and they are cold and get my they are absolutely desperate thats just thats really heartbreaking each of tonights stories showed problems with the environment but more importantly we got to meet some very smart folks trying to solve them thats it for todays episode be sure to check in so next time youre on tech. In the next episode of techno the team travels to the part of the amazon. Where we are now should be grateful to investigate illegal gold mining mercury has a very unique characteristic of finding the goal for a miner its almost like magic and the technology being used to expose its devastating impact and so what we end up doing is imaging the 1st in very high fidelity street. Techno on all just 0. Short films of hope. And inspiration a series of short personal stories that highlight the human triumph against the odds. Aljazeera selects. The latest news as it breaks this crowd of hundreds of people didnt come with invitations to came to pay their respects to george floyd with details coverage the government needs to balance the needs of the economy with a trace of the virus returning. From around the world organized crime is now beginning to try to play the role of robbing a black guy giving away food to win over the loyalty of people in desperate. They signed up for a luxury cruise but some would never come. When i want to investigate new zealand get leave ok no rush on aljazeera. Now all jews are. And youll. Be the hero the world needs. Washing. d from museum to mosque a Turkish Court reverses the status of istanbuls famous ioseph allowing the president to announce a return of most worship. But from doha everyone on come all santa maria with the world news from aljazeera food medicine and water theyre all hanging in the balance for millions of syrians as the u. N. Security Council Votes on extending aid deliveries into rebel terror. Stuff from al jazeera is want to one east program a question by malaysian police