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U.S. Evacuated American Diplomatic Personnel from Sudan; CNN Hero Recruiting Recreational Divers to Help Rebuild Reefs in Florida One Coral At a Time. Aired 4-4:10a ET
Aired April 24, 2023 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COY WIRE, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. Time for motivation Monday. Have you ever heard of the story of the Chinese bamboo tree? Seed is planted and
nothing happens for almost five years. After lots of watering and care, though, something amazing happens. It shoots up about 90 feet in five
weeks, about three feet per day. So whenever you feel like you`re not seeing any progress, just keep pushing, keep believing, and something
magical just might happen.
I`m Coy Wire. This is CNN 10. And we start with the ongoing conflict in Sudan, Africa. On Saturday, President Joe Biden said that the United States
government personnel and their families had been evacuated from the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. The clashes between rival military groups there have
become way too dangerous. So according to Defense Department officials, a group of more than 100 special operations forces made a fast and clean
extraction, pulling out around 100 people from the war-torn country.
Battles between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, erupted earlier this month after failed negotiations in integrating
the groups and over the distribution of power between the generals.
The World Health Organization reported Friday that 413 people had been killed, thousands more injured. U.S. officials say they`ll continue efforts
to bring an end to the violence and work to extend the ceasefire to which both sides agreed during a religious holiday, though there are reports that
the fighting still continued during that time. CNN`s Oren Liebermann has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: A successful mission carried out in the dark of night in Sudan to evacuate the U.S. embassy in Khartoum.
According to U.S. officials, three Chinook helicopters took off from Djibouti some 750 or 800 miles away from Khartoum, flew into the country,
landed, secured the embassy, and then brought out all of the embassy`s staff and their family members, a group of just under a hundred people.
U.S. officials said they do hope there`s an opportunity here, a ceasefire that holds a resolution between the two warring parties there, and an
opportunity to reopen the embassy. But that is an enormous question as the fighting there enters its second week.
The U.S. was looking for a window of opportunity, a ceasefire that holds essentially, to be able to evacuate the embassy itself. And the weekend
brought that opportunity with the Eid al-Fitr Holiday. The two warring parties committed to the ceasefire, even though there were reports of
violations of that ceasefire.
Now, a large question, what about all the U.S. nationals, the private citizens who remain in the country? And there are thousands of them. Oren
Liebermann, CNN, at the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: Ten second trivia.
Which of these locations in the Florida Keys translates to "purple island"?
Key Largo, Key West, Islamorada, or Marathon? Islamorada is your answer here. It means purple island in Spanish. And this place is known as the
Sportfishing Capital of the World.
Healthy coral reefs are essential to a healthy marine ecosystem. Well, after watching coral reefs disappear over the 20 years he lived in Florida,
one man decided he wanted to build them back.
But he knew he couldn`t do it alone. So he co-founded I.CARE. and recruited other divers to help rebuild reefs in Florida one coral at a time. Meet
Mike Goldberg, one of our CNN heroes.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIKE GOLDBERG, CO-FOUNDED I.CARE: I love being underwater. The minute you go diving, the fish are right in your face. The interaction with that
marine life is unlike anything I`d ever experienced. You`re close up in person with all the animals, all the fish, the lobster, the crustaceans.
The Keys, in general, the ocean, the coral reef, the marine life used to be the best anywhere. The thriving coral reef is incredibly biodiverse.
Multiple species coral, multiple species of fish, invertebrates, all living happily together. It`s kind of buzzing when you get down there. There`s so
much activity.
I can tell you what a dying and struggling reef looks like easily because it`s what I see most of the time now. Due to the water quality issues,
rising temperature, acidification attracts algae. And then in 2014, there was something we called stony coral tissue loss disease as incredibly
virulent. Once you lose the coral, there`s nothing there. It`s a literal underwater desert.
Good morning. You ready for the afternoon?
DR. KYLIE SMITH, CO-FOUNDED I.CARE: Yeah. You got 14.
GOLDBERG: Cool. Let me go get the tanks off the whip and we`ll get them out to the boat.
When I got out of university, I started working in the financial services industry. I was chasing money the whole time. It just wasn`t true to my
core. So in 2004 we moved to Islamorada here in the Florida Keys and opened up a dive shop. You we`ve lost so much coral since I moved here 20 years
ago. It truly is a pretty devastating number. What I saw here was so sad that I just wasn`t sure how to solve the problem. I`m just one guy who`s
watched all of this loss. But then he said, you know what? I`m going to do something. I`m going to try something. It`s not in me to walk away. It
wasn`t in me to just leave it to someone else to do.
Our organization, I.CARE, focuses on the rebuilding of the coral reefs here in the Florida Keys.
SMITH: You can see over on the side here. All that`s new growth, they like to grow.
GOLDBERG: Dr. Smith, my co-founder, is a brilliant scientist. Without her, none of this happens.
(On camera): It`s amazing how fast this coral is growing.
(Voice-over): Our goal is to make our reef self-sustaining and that it requires putting down resilient core. So what we do is we`ll take multiples
of that small piece of core, put them close together on a dead coral head, they fuse. And once they fuse, they`re now large enough to spawn in five to
seven years.
(On camera): So we are speeding up that process. The coral reefs absolutely need human intervention to help. There is no way that this reef
is going to bounce back all on its own.
(Voice-over): I knew the only way that I could make it work is through the power of the recreational dive community. I`m not a scientist, but what I
can do is tell the world of divers that are out there. Let`s band together.
Any certified diver with recent dive skill is able to come out with us and plant coral.
SMITH: If you guys didn`t know, a coral is indeed an animal.
GOLDBERG: A new diver to I.CARE will start the day with a coral workshop. They will learn why we`re doing what we`re doing. They`ll learn the history
of the reef, coral morphology, the science behind the corals.
They will have a hands-on workshop where they actually put coral in their hands that was once living. Learn how to attach it.
SMITH: That looks great. Welcome to Mote`s nursery.
GOLDBERG: And they get a tour of the coral nursery here on shore.
SMITH: Here is some fancy elkhorn. So critically endangered, right?
GOLDBERG: What a beautiful thing. Oh, my God.
And they get to go out and plant coral. The great reward for me is to see the corals that we put down. That`s the fruit of our labor. We`re seeing it
work. Anyone could have done this. And why isn`t everyone taking up arms? It`s simple. It`s not complicated.
I`m happy that I get to be part of something that is maybe a solution. I wake up every day and say, look what I get to do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: Prom season is in the air, and some promposals are getting to be a pretty big deal. So today`s story getting a 10 out of 10 is about a
creative kid from Parkview High School in Orfordville, Wisconsin. Ryan Hazeltine wanted to ask his girlfriend to prom in a big way, so he used a
big canvas using a tractor and a disc.
He spelled out prom? on his family`s farm. And he didn`t use a protractor to make those perfect letters or any other kind of measurements. He just
eyeballed it. He used a drone to virtually fly his girlfriend Abby Anderson, way up for a bird`s eye view. And it was an easy yes for Abby.
Now, if you`re getting nervous about your promposal, don`t worry. Just keep prom and carry on.
Special shout out to Atlanta, Georgia today GLOBE Academy. We see you. Thanks for subscribing and commenting on our CNN 10 YouTube Channel. I`m so
grateful to be right here with you today. Let`s get the good vibes flowing. Dig in and dig deep and make this a great start to the week.
I`m Coy Wire and we are CNN 10.
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