Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's all pop here.
Speaker 2: So mowing the lawn in those shorts your mother wishes?
Speaker 2: I throw away Alley ward back with another episode of Ologies.
Speaker 2: Now in this episode, let's just belly up to the coast.
Speaker 2: Let's gaze out over a craggy cliff and stare into
Speaker 2: the glimmering sea. What wonders? What mystery? What possibility? What
Speaker 2: a shit show? We've made it? But is there hope?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm not an oceanologist, but that's okay
Speaker 2: because other people are. And you're gonna get the real
Speaker 2: time scoop on whether or not we have missed the boat,
Speaker 2: on saving the sea and what we're doing to make
Speaker 2: it better. So hank tight because before we sit sail
Speaker 2: a few things you can do to help keep this
Speaker 2: podcast afloat. So thank you to the patrons who pledge
Speaker 2: a bucker more a month to the show. You have
Speaker 2: kept it running almost a full year, now, can you
Speaker 2: even it's almost in our anniversary.
Speaker 1: Your questions are great, your hearts are greater.
Speaker 2: If you want to support Ologies via items ologiesmarch dot
Speaker 2: com has you covered literally the link is in the
Speaker 2: show notes. And if you spend all your money on
Speaker 2: a very tiny baseball jersey for your hamster. I get it.
Speaker 2: And you can support ologies with just your words and
Speaker 2: your thumbs by telling friends and tweeting and gramming and
Speaker 2: making sure that you're subscribed. So reviews and ratings are
Speaker 2: free to do. You can just do them and kind
Speaker 2: of like a rodent and clothes. I'm just a little
Speaker 2: creepy and I read every single review because it's really
Speaker 2: nice that you leave them, and it makes me remember
Speaker 2: that there are real human beings in the void listening
Speaker 2: to this. So this week I just want to say
Speaker 2: thank you to Jenny Farn who says every day I
Speaker 2: commute an hour each way to my job, God bless
Speaker 2: you teaching elementary school art, and this podcast is like
Speaker 2: a billion mini hot tubs for my overworked brain cells.
Speaker 2: Will also give me cool stuff to talk to the
Speaker 2: kids about, like shark vomit and why the darn sky
Speaker 2: is blue but not on Mars. Also, I've stolen Burbye
Speaker 2: as my favorite way to exit conversations with hyper six
Speaker 2: year olds and online conversations that have taken a bad turn.
Speaker 2: Thanks for everything. You're very welcome, Jen Okay Oceanology board,
Speaker 2: are you saying oceanography. Wrong, No, no, my tender bitches,
Speaker 2: I am not so. Oceanology is a thing. It's defined
Speaker 2: as the branch of technology and economics dealing with human.
Speaker 1: Use of the sea.
Speaker 2: So heck, yes, this person is very much an oceanologist.
Speaker 2: Now at warning. Is this the cheeriest of episodes? Is
Speaker 2: it full of warm fuzzies? No, no it's not. But
Speaker 2: is it important? Yes, yes it is. I did my
Speaker 2: best to balance the gloom with some wonder, and I
Speaker 2: promise you it is important enough to stick with the
Speaker 2: entire episode. There's so much good information. Also, a special
Speaker 2: thank you to one of my favorite science in politics
Speaker 2: and Internet heroes, Baritunde Thurston for hooking me up with
Speaker 2: this ologist who I nervously emailed the all caps question.
Speaker 1: How screwed are these oceans?
Speaker 2: Keep listening to hear her answer. So she's based on
Speaker 2: the East Coast, so I had her on my wish list,
Speaker 2: and one day in August I got myself to her
Speaker 2: native Brooklyn, and I tried to pretend I was cool
Speaker 2: enough to be there, and we met up at an
Speaker 2: audio studio at Pioneer Works, which is this beautiful art
Speaker 2: and cultural center and event space where I would love
Speaker 2: to live as a stowaway if they would never find
Speaker 2: me out Now, as a marine biologist and a policy strategist,
Speaker 2: she does TED talks. She's worked with the Environmental Protection
Speaker 2: Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She's an
Speaker 2: adjunct professor at NYU. She's also an environmental advocate. She
Speaker 2: travels the world working with politicians and communities to make
Speaker 2: their relationship to the oceans healthier. I am just like
Speaker 2: gentle awe of her now. She had just gotten back
Speaker 2: from an occupational adventure the night before, and I just
Speaker 2: had the tape rolling as I waited for her arrival
Speaker 2: in the studio. Way too eager didn't want to miss
Speaker 2: a second, so we talked about her favorite aspects of
Speaker 2: the ocean when she fell in love with it, coral reefs, parrotfish,
Speaker 2: their butts, disgusting whale trivia, even more disgusting plastic trivia,
Speaker 2: the amount of doomed we are, what fish you shouldn't eat,
Speaker 2: and whether or not plastic straws really deserve their evil reputation.
Speaker 2: So it's not all sunny, but she is an expert
Speaker 2: who will real talk us all into action, So please
Speaker 2: get ready to listen to the crashing waves of wisdom
Speaker 2: from oceanologist doctor Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. So, do you need
Speaker 2: a minute, do you need anything else?
Speaker 1: I'm good?
Speaker 2: Or do you just want me to start lobbing questions
Speaker 2: about oceans?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 1: I just got back from the oceans.
Speaker 2: So you just got back in the ocean like five
Speaker 2: minutes ago, pretty much.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: How much of your work is in the field in
Speaker 2: the ocean and how much is like traveling around making policy?
Speaker 2: Because I know that you do both.
Speaker 1: I don't have an active research program right now, so
Speaker 1: in the ocean, I'm just kind of like checking it
Speaker 1: out or hanging out, keeping in touch with the ecosystems
Speaker 1: and what's going on down there. So most of my
Speaker 1: work is more so than policy specifically, just strategy work.
Speaker 1: How do all these different organizations make their campaigns better,
Speaker 1: their communications better, policy work more strategic. So Ocean Collective,
Speaker 1: the company I founded, is a consulting group that's ports
Speaker 1: other organizations trying to amp up the impact of their
Speaker 1: conservation efforts. It's thirteen incredible experts from professional surfers, marine biologists,
Speaker 1: underwater robot makers, filmmakers, policy experts, and we're all just
Speaker 1: coming together as this team to try to see what
Speaker 1: we can do to help.
Speaker 2: And can we talk about your background a little bit about.
Speaker 1: Your totally love of the ocean. That was so melodic.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to like ask me questions
Speaker 1: about my former acappella career. So did you have a
Speaker 1: former acapella career? I maybe did. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: jazz singer for most of my youth.
Speaker 2: Really side note, I'm sorry I sang it you. And
Speaker 2: also I asked if she had any music of hers
Speaker 2: that I could put in here, and she said, no,
Speaker 2: no jazz clips to share. Sorry about that, so I
Speaker 2: did try. Okay, all right, back to the sea. When
Speaker 2: when did you get into oceans and marine biology? When
Speaker 2: did you decide to take that path?
Speaker 1: When I was five, I learned to swim in the
Speaker 1: Florida Keys on a family vacation. My parents would be
Speaker 1: down there specifically to teach me to swim, and I
Speaker 1: went on a gloss bottom boat and I saw crawl
Speaker 1: rey for the first time, and it blew my damn mind.
Speaker 1: It was so incredible. I mean just it's like a
Speaker 1: window to another world. Right. You look down and there's
Speaker 1: just fish and coral and all these colorful things that
Speaker 1: you could never have imagined. So that for me was
Speaker 1: the moment that I just wanted to know everything about
Speaker 1: the ocean.
Speaker 2: So Iana went on to get a bachelor's degree from
Speaker 2: just this little startup college called in the field of
Speaker 2: environmental science and public policy. She also obtained a PhD
Speaker 2: from Script's Institute of Oceanography in marine biology, studying coral
Speaker 2: reef sustainability. Now during all of that, did she ever
Speaker 2: think like, maybe I should switch my major to bagpiping,
Speaker 2: like just take I could turn into something totally non oceanic.
Speaker 1: I decided pretty early on not to take any turns.
Speaker 1: So my PhD is technically in marine biology, but it
Speaker 1: was done through an interdisciplinary program at the SCRIPTS and
Speaker 1: Soution of Oceanography that was partnering with the Economics department
Speaker 1: to make sure that ocean conservation was integrating all these
Speaker 1: different things, because it's really a puzzle, right. There's a science,
Speaker 1: and there's the policy, there's the communications, there's the law
Speaker 1: and economics, and so I wanted to make sure that
Speaker 1: I had at least a reasonable handle on all these
Speaker 1: different pieces of the puzzle so that I could go
Speaker 1: out into the world and help to try to solve
Speaker 1: it in a broader sense. There's obviously like a strong
Speaker 1: need for people to go really deeply into each of
Speaker 1: those Like, for example, I'm really glad there are people
Speaker 1: out there who just study octopuses and like tell us
Speaker 1: everything they learn because they're amazing by the way my
Speaker 1: mind works. And what I'm passionate about is that bigger
Speaker 1: picture puzzle and how we can really shift human relationship
Speaker 1: with the ocean, because the ocean is obviously like it's
Speaker 1: doing everything right. It's humans that are causing all these challenges.
Speaker 1: So that's the piece that I focus on.
Speaker 2: So here's how I thought I would split up the episode.
Speaker 2: I mean, everyone's like, how can we make the ocean
Speaker 2: less fucked? Like we've really, we've really messed.
Speaker 1: Up, that's the question.
Speaker 2: So I thought we would start with, let's talk about
Speaker 2: the good things about the ocean.
Speaker 1: Sure, there's lots, and.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to essentially play like good cop, bad cop.
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you all the good questions, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to let the patrons ask all the what
Speaker 2: are we going to do plastic? Oh my god, we're
Speaker 2: all gonna die. So I'm going to ask I'm going
Speaker 2: to ask you the happy questions about the ocean before
Speaker 2: we get to oh my god, what are we going
Speaker 2: to do? I would love to know did you ever
Speaker 2: have well, it sounds like when you were looking in
Speaker 2: that glass bottle both you had kind of an epiphany
Speaker 2: that there's this whole world under the sea that you
Speaker 2: never realized. Have you had any other kind of epiphanies
Speaker 2: about the ocean or yeah, any other moments that you've had.
Speaker 1: So when I started my PhD research, I was I
Speaker 1: was thinking about fishing and how it can be really
Speaker 1: wasteful you catch fish that you don't end up using.
Speaker 1: And in fact, a recent research project I've been doing
Speaker 1: for WWF, the World Wildlife Fund, I learned that half
Speaker 1: of the seafood we catch in the US and EU
Speaker 1: is wasted somewhere along with supply chain. It's just insane.
Speaker 1: But there's also like the unsustainable aspects of fishing. They're
Speaker 1: both problems. So I'm already diving, no problems, but I
Speaker 1: swear I'm getting to the good stuff. So fishing can
Speaker 1: overfishing is a problem, and unsustainable fishing, and then what
Speaker 1: we do with what we catch is a whole separate issue,
Speaker 1: but I was focused on how can we redesign fishing
Speaker 1: gear to make it more sustainable, and so I worked
Speaker 1: with fishermen and the fisheries department in Curasau in the
Speaker 1: Caribbean to redesign their fish traps to let babystickle, the
Speaker 1: baby fish and the ornamental the nemo shaped skinny species
Speaker 1: out of the traps. And it turns out you can
Speaker 1: let out eighty percent of the bycatch the fish you
Speaker 1: don't mean to catch without herting fishermen's incomes because all
Speaker 1: the valuable fish stay inside. It's basically just inch wide
Speaker 1: slot down the side of the trap that lets all
Speaker 1: the little guys out. And you can't do it with
Speaker 1: a just making it a larger mesh size because then
Speaker 1: you have like a big, a big hole that any
Speaker 1: fish could get out, including the valuable ones.
Speaker 2: So do google her paper entitled quote Reducing bycatch in
Speaker 2: coral reef trap fisheries escape gaps as a step towards
Speaker 2: sustainability for more on this I did, and then reading
Speaker 2: the abstract, I did a little yay way to go
Speaker 2: squeal about it. Now there are also diagrams online and
Speaker 2: the regular fish traps that snag all of those other
Speaker 2: little fishies can just be retrofitted with side panels that
Speaker 2: have little narrow slits for little fishies to sneak out
Speaker 2: and say later days, dude, I've got more growing to do,
Speaker 2: or you don't even eat my species. It's a set
Speaker 2: eventually the equivalent of an Irish goodbye for coral reef fish.
Speaker 1: So that was really exciting to me because it was
Speaker 1: a moment where I saw that you don't actually need
Speaker 1: super high technology in all these cases. You just need
Speaker 1: to think practically about solutions, and if you work with
Speaker 1: the fishing community and with the government, these things can
Speaker 1: actually become law. And so encouris how that type of
Speaker 1: trap design is now required and in a few other
Speaker 1: places as well, in Barbuda, and I think they're using
Speaker 1: it in Kenya. So that was super exciting to me
Speaker 1: because you can this idea of low tech solutions I
Speaker 1: think is underappreciated, right, So that was a really eye
Speaker 1: opening moment and which led to the next one, which
Speaker 1: was it's not actually about fish. Wait, it's not about
Speaker 1: the fish. Did I hear that right? It's not actually
Speaker 1: about fish.
Speaker 2: This reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from
Speaker 2: one of my favorite movies, Adaptation, which bears the iconic
Speaker 2: line from a former aquarium enthusiast, I once fell.
Speaker 3: Deeply, you know, profoundly in love with tropical fish.
Speaker 2: Until he grows bored.
Speaker 3: In one day, I say fuck fish. I renounce fish.
Speaker 3: I vowed never to set foot in that ocean again.
Speaker 3: That's how much fuck fish now.
Speaker 2: Two things, that clip from Adaptation is so beloved that
Speaker 2: someone has built a website at fuck dot fish. That's
Speaker 2: only that clip from the movie. You just press play
Speaker 2: and enjoy. Secondly, that wasn't Ayana's deal at all. When
Speaker 2: she says it's not actually about fish, she means that
Speaker 2: she loves fish so much she had to take a
Speaker 2: step back and look at the bigger picture.
Speaker 1: I had done all this work, like counting fish and
Speaker 1: surveying fish populations on coral reefs, and then I was like, actually,
Speaker 1: it's about fishermen, it's about coastal communities. It is about
Speaker 1: the tourism sector and how people are impact in the ocean.
Speaker 1: So that's when my research shifted to doing hundreds of
Speaker 1: these socioeconomic interviews with people across the Caribbean. From this
Speaker 1: mindset that I had to understand and people how people
Speaker 1: were using the ocean, what problems they saw, what solutions
Speaker 1: they would support. Ask them if they could write the
Speaker 1: laws to manage the ocean, what would they be, And
Speaker 1: then see what I could learn from all these experts
Speaker 1: who spent more hours than I ever have in and
Speaker 1: on the ocean.
Speaker 2: So in order to save species in the ocean, we
Speaker 2: have to look at the humans on land and like
Speaker 2: what they're even doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, human behavior and like what makes us tick and
Speaker 1: our incentives and motivations and culture.
Speaker 2: That makes so much sense because the fish are like,
Speaker 2: don't look at me, dude, Like I'm not the one
Speaker 2: rooting exactly, Like I'm.
Speaker 1: Just simming around. I like find a snack, make some babies,
Speaker 1: like not get munched by a shark or whatever.
Speaker 2: But you're like, hey, humans, let's look. Yeah, let's put
Speaker 2: the microscope on you guys for a minute.
Speaker 1: Time out, let's think through this.
Speaker 2: So, oceans, it's not you, it's us. It really really,
Speaker 2: really really really is us. But anyway, okay, sorry, this
Speaker 2: portion is the positive portion of the episode. Let's try
Speaker 2: to stick to the light fun stuff before the conversation
Speaker 2: gets a little bleak. Can you give some like an
Speaker 2: anatomy lesson of the ocean, some zones. What's an ocean
Speaker 2: versus what's a sea? Like just basic dumb questions.
Speaker 1: So the way that we talk about the ocean has
Speaker 1: changed a lot in the past decade, and now we
Speaker 1: say the ocean. It's really one ocean. It's all connected,
Speaker 1: and there's these different sort of parts that we name
Speaker 1: seas and to have different ocean titles, but there's currents
Speaker 1: that run through and connect everything. So I guess the
Speaker 1: easy answer is it's just the ocean. Oh yeah, So
Speaker 1: there's the Caribbean Sea in the Mediterranean Sea, and there's
Speaker 1: the Lantic Pacific in India and all these oceans. But
Speaker 1: really it's all one big thing. And then as the
Speaker 1: zones that are more important when I think about the ocean,
Speaker 1: I think about sort of the depths of the ocean.
Speaker 1: The shallower waters where there's more sunlight have a very
Speaker 1: different thing going on than super deep parts of the ocean.
Speaker 1: And so it's a lot of it as about temperature
Speaker 1: and sunlight that creates these different zones.
Speaker 2: Okay, quick quick rundown of ocean zones. We covered this
Speaker 2: in the Ichnology fish episode. But who doesn't love a
Speaker 2: refresher course. So let's break it down. Now, epipologic is
Speaker 2: at the top. This zone from the surface to about
Speaker 2: two hundred meters or six hundred feet down gets some sunshine,
Speaker 2: so plants grow. The bulk of ocean life hangs out
Speaker 2: there below that are the mesopolagic, bathy polagic, abysso polagic,
Speaker 2: and finally the very bottom the hatal zones. Now, the
Speaker 2: average depth of the ocean is about thirty seven hundred
Speaker 2: meters and its deepest known point is almost seven miles
Speaker 2: below the surface in a trench near Guam. I'm just
Speaker 2: thirsty for stats. Here's another good one.
Speaker 1: That ninety seven percent of the water on Earth is
Speaker 1: in the ocean. So when we think about fresh water
Speaker 1: and drinking water, that's a good like reality check on
Speaker 1: how important it is to be careful with our water.
Speaker 2: Sure that like children asking this, but the ocean, why
Speaker 2: is it salty? I'm just gonna ask. I'm gonna ask.
Speaker 1: The ocean was formed by like all this stuff that
Speaker 1: comes off of land, right, So all the rocks that
Speaker 1: are sort of eroding over time into the sea have
Speaker 1: different things in them that make the ocean salty. And
Speaker 1: I think Over time, things change, right as evaporation happens
Speaker 1: and things like that, So salinity can fluctuate a bit.
Speaker 1: And that's actually part of what creates these large ocean currents,
Speaker 1: is how salinity has an effect on things. Because if
Speaker 1: you've ever had the chance to go in the ocean
Speaker 1: after it rains, you'll realize that it's in the Caribbean anyway.
Speaker 1: So this just happened to me. I jumped in the
Speaker 1: Caribbean sea after a rainstorm, and there's a layer of
Speaker 1: fresh water on top that's cold, like cool rain, and
Speaker 1: then the ocean underneath it is salty and warm. Because
Speaker 1: salt water is heavier, it's more dense, and so it's
Speaker 1: and colder water is also more dense than it sinks,
Speaker 1: and so that sets up can set up either like
Speaker 1: layers or currents that are are moved just by like
Speaker 1: these gradients in slinity and temperature.
Speaker 2: So imagine dense cold water and dense saltwater doing a
Speaker 2: very fluid kind of sensual tango. Now I'm still trying
Speaker 2: to keep this half of the episode light and sunny.
Speaker 2: So okay, let's see questions about the oceans that are
Speaker 2: not depressing. Okay, all right. Was she always into like
Speaker 2: messages in a bottle like the world's oldest one was
Speaker 2: found earlier this year in Western Australia bearing a note
Speaker 2: from a German naval vessel from eighteen eighty six. Maybe
Speaker 2: that's fun.
Speaker 1: I was super into picking up like shells and pieces
Speaker 1: of sea glass and things like that. I was always
Speaker 1: enamored by the things that you would find on the beach,
Speaker 1: but not messages per se. Right, do you.
Speaker 2: Still have any of your seashells?
Speaker 1: And ohto you do? Yeah? I started a shell collection
Speaker 1: when I was five in Key West, Florida, and I
Speaker 1: usually find one shell from every beach I go to.
Speaker 1: I mean, you couldn't. I don't want to like take
Speaker 1: all the pretty things, but and sometimes I take just
Speaker 1: like a little tiny fleck of something to just put
Speaker 1: in my I have a fish bowl full of one
Speaker 1: tiny thing from each to beach I've ever been to.
Speaker 2: Really, do you have a name for that fishbowl or
Speaker 2: is this a fishball?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Have you been to all of the what would have
Speaker 2: been considered oceans?
Speaker 1: And I've spent a lot of time in the Caribbean,
Speaker 1: a little bit of time in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: but very little time in the Pacific, just the whole
Speaker 1: world of Pacific islands. I haven't been to yet.
Speaker 2: Now is it true that the Pacific Island, that the
Speaker 2: Pacific Ocean was named because they thought it was calmer?
Speaker 1: I think that's right. Is that not to be the case?
Speaker 2: A little backstory, So Portuguese explorer Magellan had hit some
Speaker 2: shitty conditions through what's now known as the Straits of
Speaker 2: Magellan near the southern tip of Chili. This was in
Speaker 2: the fifteen hundreds, and rounding the corner into the Pacific Basin.
Speaker 1: He was like, oh, so much better.
Speaker 2: It's so calm here, it's so Pacific, hence the name.
Speaker 2: But not all of it is calm, however, but in
Speaker 2: the equatorial region of the sea, that part tends to
Speaker 2: have kind of a more chill vibe, less wind activity,
Speaker 2: and it's technically called the doldrums, that is the maritime
Speaker 2: term for it. So the next time you're having kind
Speaker 2: of like a ho hum period of your life, I
Speaker 2: guess just take comfort that life isn't tossing you around
Speaker 2: and making you barf into its violent currents. See this
Speaker 2: is the optimistic part of the episode. Do you listen
Speaker 2: to any ocean apps on your phone to chill out.
Speaker 1: Like ocean sound like, yeah, no, I put earplugs in
Speaker 1: and just like zone all the way out.
Speaker 2: I wasn't sure if someone who studies the ocean and
Speaker 2: has dedicated their life to essentially saving the ocean would
Speaker 2: be like I don't want to hear an app because
Speaker 2: it's just a bad simulation.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, I'm a pretty light sleeper, Okay, so I
Speaker 1: like complete silence, and I think, yeah, as someone who
Speaker 1: is like ninety five percent vegan mm hmm and who
Speaker 1: never eats fake meat, is maybe the same thing, right,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not going to go have like a soy
Speaker 1: hot dog and I'm not going to listen to like
Speaker 1: fake ocean sounds.
Speaker 2: Do you do a lot of like diving? Did you
Speaker 2: have to do a lot of diving?
Speaker 1: I used to. Yeah. For my PHDV search, I did
Speaker 1: three or four hundred dives.
Speaker 2: Do you like being underwater? I know some people are
Speaker 2: like it's so beautiful, it's like I'm flying, and other
Speaker 2: people like it's so big, it's terrifying.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean some people think that
Speaker 1: if you don't scuba dive, you can't experience the ocean
Speaker 1: fully and I totally disagree with that. I think scuba
Speaker 1: diving is nice because I can't hold my breath for
Speaker 1: an hour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I neither can.
Speaker 1: I I only learn to dive when I realized that
Speaker 1: I needed to as a tool for my scientific research.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty neat. I mean, to be able to,
Speaker 1: you know, be underwater long enough to really watch the
Speaker 1: behavior of an octopus or a parrot fish or whatever
Speaker 1: it is is an amazing opportunity. But I think snorkeling
Speaker 1: is underrated. Yeah. I think more people should get like
Speaker 1: super into snorkeling because you can see so much just bye,
Speaker 1: you know, diving down and taking a look and being
Speaker 1: in shallow water. So I hate the thought that people
Speaker 1: think if you're not scuba diving and then like why
Speaker 1: bother because there's so much you can learn about the
Speaker 1: sea and just enjoy, like the spectacular creatures from the
Speaker 1: surface or from like a little shallow dive down with
Speaker 1: your mask on.
Speaker 2: You just got to learn that trick where you blow
Speaker 2: the water out when you surface. Right, Yeah, okay, is
Speaker 2: that hard to master?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: You can totally do it. Anyone can do. Or sometimes
Speaker 1: when I don't have enough air, left in my lungs.
Speaker 1: When I come after the surface, for whatever reason, I
Speaker 1: just take the mouthpiece out and just breathe are normally
Speaker 1: you could do that too. There are definitely ways that
Speaker 1: anyone can figure this out.
Speaker 2: But as long as we're banding about some facts, why
Speaker 2: is the sea such a pretty blue? Well, same reason
Speaker 2: the sky is. The water absorbs the redder part of
Speaker 2: the visible spectrum and then the shorter, bluer wavelengths bounce
Speaker 2: back at our faces. Most scientists, especially oceanologists, agree that
Speaker 2: this is very pretty.
Speaker 1: The one thing it reminds me of is how the
Speaker 1: color of blue and shallower water changes based on the
Speaker 1: color of the sand. So if you have really white sand,
Speaker 1: you have really bright turquoise in the shallow water, and
Speaker 1: then as the sand gets different colors, you get kind
Speaker 1: of different colors of blue. So it matters what the
Speaker 1: bottom is. If you have like a dark rocky bottom
Speaker 1: or like a volcanic it's different.
Speaker 2: And I didn't realize that a lot of white sand
Speaker 2: is coral sand.
Speaker 1: R Yeah, yeah, and a lot of it came out
Speaker 1: of a parrotfish's but yeah, So parrotfish are my favorite fish.
Speaker 1: They have a beak like a parrot and they come
Speaker 1: in all these like teal, yellow, green, red, magenta, like
Speaker 1: amazing colors, and they have a beak like a parrotfish,
Speaker 1: and they a bite. They scrape algae off the reef.
Speaker 1: Basically they are the lawnmowers of the reef, a very
Speaker 1: important job. And as they're doing that scraping, they get
Speaker 1: bits of dead coral or rocks, and then they digest
Speaker 1: that and they poop sand. So if you're on a
Speaker 1: reef with a lot of parrotfish, and this is where
Speaker 1: it's actually very cool to be diving, and you look
Speaker 1: out at the landscape of the reef and you see
Speaker 1: all these fish swimming over it, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them are parrotfish, and they're just like leaving trails of
Speaker 1: sand in the water behind them. But it looks like
Speaker 1: these like con trails of parrotfish poop, as if the
Speaker 1: sea was the sky and they were airplanes.
Speaker 2: I had no idea.
Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing. So some beaches are like ninety something
Speaker 1: percent like parrotfish poops. I mean, it is coral and
Speaker 1: rocks and stuff, but it's like that's how it's been pulverized.
Speaker 2: You're like, thanks dudes.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. And so there's a push right
Speaker 1: now to protect these fish because they're doing such important
Speaker 1: work of taking algae off the reef, because alga grows
Speaker 1: so much faster than coral. Coral only grows a centimeter
Speaker 1: or so a year, whereas algae, like plants, just go
Speaker 1: gangbusters and wes we're putting in more nutrients are running
Speaker 1: off into the ocean from different kinds of human pollution,
Speaker 1: agriculture in particular. You're seeing that the algae is basically
Speaker 1: being fertilized, so it's growing even faster and there's more
Speaker 1: of it. So we need these parrotfish, these lawnmowers more
Speaker 1: than ever. And so there's a bunch of people working
Speaker 1: on campaigns around the world to protect.
Speaker 2: Parrotfish, protect sand butts.
Speaker 1: Protect their the sand poopers.
Speaker 2: What's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in the ocean?
Speaker 1: Oh, that's such a good question. Oddly, because we were
Speaker 1: just talking about the colors of blue. The thing that
Speaker 1: comes to mind for me is just really really clear
Speaker 1: water and being able to see like one hundred feet
Speaker 1: and that's pretty amazing that just that clarity of being
Speaker 1: underwater and being and really being able to see.
Speaker 2: Here we veered off into a whole discussion about the
Speaker 2: horrors of shrimp. But I'm just gonna stick with this
Speaker 2: format of a happy first half of the episode. More
Speaker 2: on shrimp in just a few minutes, just a few
Speaker 2: more wistful, positive things, and then we're going to get
Speaker 2: to Patreon questions and ocean sadness. I'm just trying to
Speaker 2: stick with this vision. It's hard. Do you have a
Speaker 2: favorite movie or book set in, set in or about
Speaker 2: the ocean? Do you have like an escapist movie where
Speaker 2: you're like, ah, love that ocean?
Speaker 1: The Life Aquatic is pretty good. Really, yeah, I'm really
Speaker 1: cracks me up, especially because it captures like the ridiculousness
Speaker 1: of light on boats and like, yeah, trying to capture
Speaker 1: rare creatures and get along in tight living quarders with
Speaker 1: a bunch of weird scientists and yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1: And I'm writing a children's book about the ocean. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's about a little black girl from Brooklyn who goes
Speaker 1: to the Caribbean, falls in love with the ocean, and
Speaker 1: decides to try to save it. But on earth to
Speaker 1: do with that idea? I don't know. It just like
Speaker 1: came to me to dream. Do you have a title
Speaker 1: for it yet? Can you say no? Not yet. I'm
Speaker 1: just like starting to finish up the very first draft,
Speaker 1: so I don't have an agent or anything for it yet,
Speaker 1: but stay tuned. Oh my god, heads up.
Speaker 2: If you are a literary agent listening to this and
Speaker 2: you're not the one to reach out to doctor Johnson
Speaker 2: to get this idea, made I feel bad for you,
Speaker 2: because this book is going to be so good. Also,
Speaker 2: as she was grabbing something out of her purse at
Speaker 2: this moment, she told me a very wonderful story.
Speaker 1: Loved to have.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, that's so great.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: I never leave the house about what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a friend who does a lot of
Speaker 1: theater work.
Speaker 2: M h.
Speaker 1: I met up with her when I was just coming
Speaker 1: back from a trip out to Long Island, and I
Speaker 1: was telling her about it and she introduced me to
Speaker 1: another person as a marine biologist. And then I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I didn't even like use my snorkel this weekend
Speaker 1: and like pull it out of my person. She was like,
Speaker 1: I would never even use that in like a play.
Speaker 1: It's just so over the top that you carry this. No,
Speaker 1: so sometimes like pull snorkels out of my handbag.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is where we're going to take a turn.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm ready.
Speaker 2: We're going to ask some questions from patroons. Now this
Speaker 2: is we've talked all about how wonderful the ocean is.
Speaker 2: It's time to get into maybe the darker stuff that
Speaker 2: we're like. This is where like the sad music would
Speaker 2: be cute, like you've really fallen in love with a
Speaker 2: character in a movie and then you find out that, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know whatever, they have a horrible disease. So okay,
Speaker 2: let's do it. Let's get into the sad stuff via
Speaker 2: questions from the Ologies Patreon patrons.
Speaker 1: Let's dive in.
Speaker 2: But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners,
Speaker 2: we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of
Speaker 2: the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know what they do?
Speaker 2: They help us give money to different charities every week.
Speaker 2: So if you want to know where Ologies gives our money,
Speaker 2: you can go to Aliward dot com and look for
Speaker 2: the tab Ologies gives back. There's like one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty different charities that we've given to already, with more
Speaker 2: every single week. So if you need a place to
Speaker 2: go donate a little bit of money, but you're not
Speaker 2: sure where to go. Those are all picked biologists who
Speaker 2: work in those fields, and this ad break allows us
Speaker 2: to give a ton of money to them. So thanks
Speaker 2: for listening and thank sponsors. Okay, your questions.
Speaker 1: So Becca asks how bad?
Speaker 2: Just point blank? How bad have we found up the oceans?
Speaker 2: Is it salvageable or are we just playing a sad
Speaker 2: waiting game. So she says, it makes me really emotional
Speaker 2: to think about the discuss and terrifying things down there.
Speaker 2: Who are going to die because people are assholes? And
Speaker 2: then Mama Awesome said, this is also my question.
Speaker 1: So this is like, this is the big question, how bad?
Speaker 1: Really bad? He's the answer, it's really bad.
Speaker 2: Oh maon, this is like the scene where a corseted
Speaker 2: heroin cough's blood into a white kerchief. Here we go.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have done an amazing job of messing
Speaker 1: up the ocean on a planetary scale. We've completely changed
Speaker 1: the chemistry of seawater through polluting the air with carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1: The ocean is absorbing thirty percent of that and so
Speaker 1: it's acidifying the oceans, which makes it hard for things
Speaker 1: with shells to grow their shells, makes it hard for
Speaker 1: fish to smell their homes and navigate and make them
Speaker 1: a little bit delusional and not run away from predators.
Speaker 1: There's all these different things that we're just learning about
Speaker 1: that changing the very chemistry of the ocean is doing
Speaker 1: so so that's pretty bad. And just the warming of it.
Speaker 1: All these creatures have been adapted to specific temperature ranges
Speaker 1: and now those ranges are changing, and so they're trying
Speaker 1: to migrate so that they don't like melt. Their metabolisms
Speaker 1: can't necessarily handle all this, So between the acidification and
Speaker 1: the warming that are associated with climate change, and then
Speaker 1: overfishing is a big one. We've taken out about ninety
Speaker 1: percent of the big fish in the ocean since nineteen fifty.
Speaker 1: Right now, ninety percent of fish populations around the world
Speaker 1: are either fished to capacity or overfished. So there's ten
Speaker 1: percent that are like not fully exploited. The other ninety
Speaker 1: percent are fully exploited or over exploited, so there's not
Speaker 1: like a lot of room left to take more. And
Speaker 1: we've also been fishing further from shore into deeper waters
Speaker 1: using like more and more high tech tools, all the
Speaker 1: radar and sonar and helicopters, and these things that were
Speaker 1: developed to fight war are being used to find the
Speaker 1: last fish. So we have these really high tech boats
Speaker 1: and high tech equipment that we have to use because
Speaker 1: the fish should become so rare and so. And then
Speaker 1: with coastal development, we're destroying the habitatsal on the coast,
Speaker 1: whether that's mangroves or wetlands or whatever that is. And
Speaker 1: those are the nursery habitats for the sea, and those
Speaker 1: are the NAFTA filtration systems from land to sea.
Speaker 2: As long as we're in the sad half, let's get
Speaker 2: some straight talk about shrimp, one of my favorite foods,
Speaker 2: which I also always assumed was relatively sustainable because they
Speaker 2: are like the ocean's cockroaches. They're small, they're gross, they're plentiful.
Speaker 1: Right, Ninety nine percent of shrimp is horrifically unsustainable.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's either caught with like a net the size of
Speaker 1: a football field in industrial fishing. That's like dragged along
Speaker 1: the seafloor, taking up everything up, and a large portion
Speaker 1: of what's caught, like up to half or so of
Speaker 1: what's caught, might be thrown back dead and wasted. Oh
Speaker 1: I catch, So that's no good, and that proportion can
Speaker 1: actually be even worse, and it, you know, bulldozes the
Speaker 1: habitat while that's happening as well.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's terrible. What about farmed fish, is there such
Speaker 2: an arm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so farm shrimp is often farmed by bulldozing mangroves
Speaker 1: along the coast to make these ponds for them. And
Speaker 1: the mangroves are the nursery habitat for all the fish
Speaker 1: on the reef. They filter pollution running off from shore.
Speaker 1: They and they protect places from storms like in the
Speaker 1: tsunami in Indonesia ten years ago now more. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: places that had intact mangroves fared a lot better because
Speaker 1: that buffers the waves. And so when we bulldoze that ecosystem,
Speaker 1: that's the protection, it's the nursery habitat. It's all these
Speaker 1: functions that we're losing. And then we just pollute it
Speaker 1: with shrimp growing in high density and feed them all
Speaker 1: this stuff and antibiotics as we're growing them in such
Speaker 1: close quarters that they're all getting sick. So's it's not
Speaker 1: really a great way to do it either. And then
Speaker 1: there's been some exposees in the last few years that
Speaker 1: a lot of shrimp grown in Southeast Asia is probably
Speaker 1: peeled by slaves.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So whether you care about like the human rights angle
Speaker 1: or the sustainability angle, I'd stay away from shrimp.
Speaker 2: So ask your fish sellers where the shrimp comes from.
Speaker 2: Ayana says there are domestic shrimp farms in Florida and Oregon.
Speaker 2: They're doing a really good job bringing less guilt laden
Speaker 2: shrimp to market. But it'll cost a little more for
Speaker 2: obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: But if you're not paying like twenty dollars a pound
Speaker 1: for shrimp, it's not good for the planet or for people. God.
Speaker 1: And it's all like laden with these antibiotics and chemicals
Speaker 1: from the processing, so it's not healthy for you either.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So the fact that it's the most popular seafood in
Speaker 1: America and like people don't know their day it's all
Speaker 1: these like buffets. It's probably in my calling I'm a monster.
Speaker 1: He yeah, Well that's the thing, Like people don't know
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: I thought they were like you'd figure like, oh, they're
Speaker 2: lower maybe on the food chain, and they're kind of buggy,
Speaker 2: they're a little bit insect like maybe they're maybe it's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: I have known.
Speaker 1: I think the challenge is that this is another one
Speaker 1: of those moments when I realized had a realization about
Speaker 1: ocean conservation, is that traditions don't necessarily scale. Like the
Speaker 1: things that humans could eat and the ways we could
Speaker 1: fish and use the ocean when there were you know,
Speaker 1: one billion people on the planet or less. It's just
Speaker 1: very different what we can get away with As we're
Speaker 1: approaching eight we just can't do things in the same way.
Speaker 1: And that's a really hard conversation to have with communities
Speaker 1: that have these strong traditions tied to the sea, but
Speaker 1: whose populations are growing and are being impacted by what's
Speaker 1: happening in other places because the ocean is all connected. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're at this moment where we just need to rethink
Speaker 1: our relationship with the ocean. And that doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: can can't still enjoy it, and there is such thing
Speaker 1: as sustainable seafood, but we just need to be more
Speaker 1: careful and change our expectations for what we're how we're
Speaker 1: going to be able to use it, and be ready
Speaker 1: to make some adaptations.
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking about cruise ship Shrimpface.
Speaker 1: What a horror show. It's a house of horse.
Speaker 2: Listen, I warned you that this episode would be more
Speaker 2: on the tragic side, So let's just dive deeper.
Speaker 1: So between coastal development and overfishing and climate impacts and
Speaker 1: then just like straight up pollution. Yeah, everybody knows at
Speaker 1: this point about plastic pollution in the ocean, but there's
Speaker 1: also a lot of pollution that comes from the runoff
Speaker 1: of all the pesticides and herbicides we put on to
Speaker 1: our farms. When it rains runs into rivers, and that
Speaker 1: runs into the sea. So even if you're inland, there's
Speaker 1: still that connection. So yeah, we've done a really good
Speaker 1: job of thoroughly screwing up the ocean. But there are
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons to not give up. Because I'm
Speaker 1: also extremely good at sitting on my couch eating popcorn
Speaker 1: and watching trashy television, and so I would like hone
Speaker 1: that craft if I'm not in the ocean or just
Speaker 1: not worth it anymore. And so instead, I'm like seasons
Speaker 1: behind on everything and really focused on this because I
Speaker 1: feel like we have an incredible opportunity to really make
Speaker 1: a difference. We've seen so many examples of things that
Speaker 1: work that when you change the way that fishing happens
Speaker 1: when you establish a protected area, when you work with
Speaker 1: hotels and companies to change the way they manage their waste,
Speaker 1: when you work with farmers to explain how things stick
Speaker 1: to the sea and they change their practices. There are
Speaker 1: just more and more and more stories about things that
Speaker 1: are working, and so it's about replicating what's working and
Speaker 1: scaling that work. So definitely don't give up. But I
Speaker 1: obviously I'm not sugarcoating it either, Like it is bad.
Speaker 1: The ocean is different than it was when we were born,
Speaker 1: and we're not even that old. Wow. So the ocean
Speaker 1: that I saw in nineteen eighty five, when I first
Speaker 1: saw the ocean is different now and perhaps permanently. So
Speaker 1: the way that I deal with this sort of like
Speaker 1: existential crisis of like, oh my god, the planet is dying.
Speaker 1: What do I do? Should I just like drink a
Speaker 1: bottle of whisky and forget about it? The answer is like, no,
Speaker 1: I can't be hungover, because there's all this great work
Speaker 1: to do, and it's a matter it's not a matter
Speaker 1: of like zero like a totally dead ocean or like
Speaker 1: one hundred percent healthy ocean. It's where we're going to
Speaker 1: fall in between, because with eight billion people on the planet,
Speaker 1: we can't go back to like a perfectly pristine ocean,
Speaker 1: but we can aim for eighty percent or sixty percent
Speaker 1: or even thirty percent is much better than zero in
Speaker 1: our livelihoods, our food security, our health hangs in the balance.
Speaker 1: So depending on the day, am either fighting for like
Speaker 1: twenty percent or eighty percent, but like, any of it.
Speaker 2: Is better than zero and now, okay ocean Cleanupry Steward
Speaker 2: and Rob Smith both had the same question, does supporting
Speaker 2: a group like for Ocean really helping up the ocean
Speaker 2: of plastics? Like, are any of those methods of getting
Speaker 2: things out of the ocean? Are those really going to work?
Speaker 2: Are those like do we want to believe that they work?
Speaker 1: We definitely want to believe that they work. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: do we want to believe that they work? And a
Speaker 1: lot of people have been sort of fooled into thinking
Speaker 1: that that problem is solved, like there's this technology that
Speaker 1: we'll just like clean it up and we don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about it anymore. But that technology is far
Speaker 1: from being proven, very far from being proven. And if
Speaker 1: we think about the challenges of cleaning up something as
Speaker 1: big as the ocean, which is, you know, seventy two
Speaker 1: percent of the planet. That's a tall order, and not
Speaker 1: to say we shouldn't try, but I think the question
Speaker 1: is where are we going to devote our resources and energy?
Speaker 1: And so one when I think about it, I think
Speaker 1: about how do we stop the flow of plastic into
Speaker 1: the ocean.
Speaker 2: This is a good point and gird your hearts for
Speaker 2: another horrifying statistic.
Speaker 1: Because the cleanups don't matter if we're still dumping one
Speaker 1: ton of plastic into the ocean every four seconds. What
Speaker 1: I worked with the group Lonely, Well, I've been working
Speaker 1: with them on making these calculations how much are we
Speaker 1: actually putting in, where is it coming from, what types
Speaker 1: of sources is it? And that's the number that we
Speaker 1: came up with. One ton of plastic is entering the
Speaker 1: ocean every four seconds globally, And so when we think
Speaker 1: about that, I've spent my time thinking about how to
Speaker 1: prevent every second of plastic entering the ocean.
Speaker 2: So quick history, how long has plastic been around? So
Speaker 2: technically since eighteen fifty six, but it wasn't until World
Speaker 2: War Two that mass production started. Now around nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 2: du Pont and Dow Chemical invented and licensed expanded polystyrene,
Speaker 2: which is used in packaging and bottles, although there's a
Speaker 2: bunch of different types of plastic. So yeah, in the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties we saw an explosion of plastics in commercial uses. Now,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven's classic film The Graduate was sadly on
Speaker 2: point about one piece of career advice. I just want
Speaker 2: to say one word to deal, just one word, yes, sir,
Speaker 2: I am listening. Yes or plastics?
Speaker 1: So what can we do not? And I think beach
Speaker 1: cleanups are great. They raise awareness, they build community. We
Speaker 1: obviously should pick up what we can. I think the
Speaker 1: focus should be more on coastal cleanups as opposed to
Speaker 1: weigh out in the ocean, because once you get to
Speaker 1: weigh out in the ocean, you're dealing with a lot
Speaker 1: of like interesting physics and oceanography challenges, but also the
Speaker 1: fact that if you're just scooping everything up, you're scooping
Speaker 1: up the marine life as well. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of opportunity to just clean up along the coast, but
Speaker 1: then to really force corporations and governments to do their part.
Speaker 1: This shouldn't be about you and me going up and
Speaker 1: picking up straws and bottles from the coast. It should
Speaker 1: be about us refusing to use them. But it should
Speaker 1: should really be like corporations changing the way they are
Speaker 1: manufacturing things, and governments improving their recycling capacity and demanding
Speaker 1: that companies produce only recyclable things. So much of the
Speaker 1: plastic that's produced is not even recyclable. Oh, I didn't
Speaker 1: know that.
Speaker 2: Just checked out a nat GEO article from last year
Speaker 2: that said ninety one percent of the world's plastic isn't recycled,
Speaker 2: and I audibly whimpered in a public coffee shop. So
Speaker 2: you know how plastics usually have a triangle with a
Speaker 2: number in the middle on the bottom. Not all of
Speaker 2: those will be reincarnated into other objects. One and two
Speaker 2: usually can, four and five are maybe and three, six
Speaker 2: and seven are usually not accepted by recycling programs. So
Speaker 2: read up on the hot goss between the numbers. Because
Speaker 2: some types of plastics even contain fun chemicals like BPAs
Speaker 2: that have shown to contribute to infertility. Did I warn
Speaker 2: you that this podcast be a bummer, because I know
Speaker 2: I did. Welcome to Hell.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Luckily, people like Ayana are out there working on better
Speaker 2: public policy. She's like the Amal Cloney of the sea. Also,
Speaker 2: some folks in the other room while we were recording this,
Speaker 2: we're having kind of a spirited discussion. So if you
Speaker 2: hear their chatter, just pretend we're having a fun time
Speaker 2: at a cocktail party chatting about preventing environmental doo.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of room for improvement there, but we're
Speaker 1: seeing I think we're actually seeing some really positive signs
Speaker 1: in that direction. The UN has been organizing something called
Speaker 1: the Clean Seas Initiative, and they have gotten i think
Speaker 1: three dozen countries to sign on and make commitments to
Speaker 1: reducing ocean plastic pollution. So we're starting to see commitments
Speaker 1: at not just at the individual level. I will give
Speaker 1: up bags and straws and carry my own water bottle,
Speaker 1: and these are all great things to do. I do them.
Speaker 1: But what really inspires me is Kenya and Rwanda banning
Speaker 1: plastic bags, Costa Rica pledging to go completely without single
Speaker 1: use plastics by twenty twenty. The EU is starting to
Speaker 1: make some big policies, and so all around the world
Speaker 1: we're starting to see these shifts. I think Chile just
Speaker 1: ban plastic bags as well, so Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of good stuff happening there. We're starting to see a
Speaker 1: lot of momentum there, and I think that's great because
Speaker 1: it's also an opening to talk about ocean problems more generally.
Speaker 1: Great now that you care about, you know, a straw
Speaker 1: and a turtle's nose, like, let's talk about let's talk
Speaker 1: about what else is happening to those turtles. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about overfishing and poaching and the state of the habitats
Speaker 1: that they are trying to live in.
Speaker 2: Right, So what you're saying is the tide is changing,
Speaker 2: the tide is turning. Of course, I got this question
Speaker 2: and I'll just touch on it just in case there's
Speaker 2: anything that you didn't just answering that. But Maria Kumro,
Speaker 2: Jen Borlick, and Sarah Millington all wanted to know how
Speaker 2: much positive impact on marine plastic debris will the plastic
Speaker 2: straw band really have? They all kind of want to know,
Speaker 2: like what's your thought on like plastic straws are the problem?
Speaker 1: Like they are, But essentially the plastics straws are a
Speaker 1: really big problem because they cannot be recycled. They're like
Speaker 1: too small for municipal recycling to deal with, Okay, So
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons they're a particular problem. There's
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of other problems. We're using a million
Speaker 1: plastic bottles every minute, so that's not good.
Speaker 2: Just personal shout out to companies like LK and Hosley
Speaker 2: Taylor for making these public water bottle filling stations so
Speaker 2: we could stop buying plastic bottles when we're parched and
Speaker 2: in public. It's they're so great. Look for the little
Speaker 2: bottle silhouette near a water fountain. You can roll up
Speaker 2: with your thermos and just filler up boss for zero dollars.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 2: And they have these little counters that took off the
Speaker 2: number of plastic bottles they've prevented from being on Earth,
Speaker 2: and so when your bottle's done filling, the number goes
Speaker 2: up one more. It's very fulfilling.
Speaker 1: And bags, I think we the average plastic bag is
Speaker 1: used for twelve minutes before it's thrown out. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of other issues. But straws are problematic because
Speaker 1: they can't be recycled, and they also are one of
Speaker 1: the top items that you find in BA cleanups. Are
Speaker 1: they so they're like they're they're small, right, so they
Speaker 1: kind of like escape garbage cans and like people, they
Speaker 1: just they end up on the beach a lot, and
Speaker 1: so that means they end up in the ocean a lot.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're one of the top five items that
Speaker 1: the Ocean Conservancy has been consistently finding when they do
Speaker 1: these organize these global international ocean cleanups, and they collect
Speaker 1: data on you know, what are what is really out there?
Speaker 1: Like what are the top ten? And plastic straws are
Speaker 1: always in the top five and number one. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you guess what number one is?
Speaker 2: Oh no, I would say bottles, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's cigarette butts. What the number one beach pollution like
Speaker 1: by the number of items, not by like the mass
Speaker 1: of them. Is cigarette butts. And it's those plastic filters
Speaker 1: at the end. And of course that's like all the
Speaker 1: chemicals from the cigarette. It's like a lot of them
Speaker 1: are trapped in that filter. So they're pretty toxic too,
Speaker 1: So don't just throw your cigarette butts in the sand.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, they're like plastic cancer Tampa. That's the worst.
Speaker 1: It's pretty bad.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is funny that culturally, it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I never drop a wrapper on the ground. But people
Speaker 2: like I just like a cigarette butt. Where do they
Speaker 2: think that goes? Like raccoons are eating them? No, nobody
Speaker 2: wants those. That's really illuminating. I had no idea, and
Speaker 2: I wasn't sure if like plastic straws were like being
Speaker 2: a scapegoat for or if they were, But that's good
Speaker 2: to know.
Speaker 1: I think they also are not necessarily escape books scapegoat,
Speaker 1: but symbolic, right because for most people they're completely unnecessary,
Speaker 1: like reapply your lipstick because that's your issue, or like
Speaker 1: whatever it is. I think there's a really important exception
Speaker 1: that needs to be made for the disability community. There
Speaker 1: are people who need to use straws, and that's fine,
Speaker 1: because that would be a scapegoat if we're saying, like
Speaker 1: there are a few people who really need them because
Speaker 1: that's how they drink, that's fine, But I think so
Speaker 1: there's no need. Absolutely we should avoid making these blanket
Speaker 1: statements that are problematic for folks who need them, but
Speaker 1: most of us really really really don't need them. And
Speaker 1: the way that drinks are made, they just like come
Speaker 1: with straws in them, So I think even just the
Speaker 1: flip from straws automatically to straws only on request would
Speaker 1: make a really big difference.
Speaker 2: What about those lids that are like, no worry, you
Speaker 2: don't need a straw, but they're more plastic.
Speaker 1: I think that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's I thought.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is probably like an uncouth opinion, but
Speaker 1: I thought that Starbucks like really punted on that one.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's already like, you know, adult sippy cups
Speaker 1: is like their whole thing, and I just just like
Speaker 1: doubled down on it.
Speaker 2: I saw that I saw someone drinking out of that,
Speaker 2: and I was like, what is that like host of straw?
Speaker 2: And then I read something later that day that was like.
Speaker 1: This plastic I was like, God, damn silly. Although the
Speaker 1: alternative which I do when I have like an urgent
Speaker 1: need for an iced coffee and they try, I always
Speaker 1: order it in a paper cup, oh, without a lid.
Speaker 1: Good to know. So that's in my hack for that
Speaker 1: because obviously, like ice coffee is delicious, and I sometimes
Speaker 1: do get enough sleep, so I get it. I just
Speaker 1: you know, there are ways to work around this or
Speaker 1: I think a really big other opportunity for that anyone
Speaker 1: can do, and that it shouldn't be just about individual responsibility,
Speaker 1: but like restaurants and cafes should do is ask you
Speaker 1: do you want it for here? Or to go? Because
Speaker 1: if you go into a cafe and you look around,
Speaker 1: everyone's using like to go containers and they're all sitting there,
Speaker 1: and it drives me bonkers, I know, and I think
Speaker 1: it's like no one wants to wash the dishes, or
Speaker 1: they haven't actually built these cafes with enough dishwashers or whatever.
Speaker 1: So I think there's a shift that needs to happen
Speaker 1: there and just ask me do you want it for here?
Speaker 1: To go? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I drank a cup of tea in a cafe before
Speaker 2: this that was given to me in a paper cup,
Speaker 2: no lid, thank god, but still and I got it
Speaker 2: and I had it in my hand and I was like,
Speaker 2: oh no, yeah, oh I don't need this jerk. Okay,
Speaker 2: question about the garbage patch. Let's talk about the garbage patch.
Speaker 2: Blair Nelson an Eva both ask like, what's going on
Speaker 2: with the Great Pacific garbage Patch, which honestly sounds like
Speaker 2: it sounds like not even a real thing. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know it's very real, but it's just like so
Speaker 2: fancifully horribly named, and then what should we do about it?
Speaker 2: And like what are we and what's happening with like
Speaker 2: microbeads and tiny, tiny particulate plastic.
Speaker 1: So for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that's a thing.
Speaker 2: There's actually.
Speaker 1: So the reason that it exists is because of ocean
Speaker 1: currents that sort of swirl around in these gyres and
Speaker 1: then collect things.
Speaker 2: So a gyre is like a spiral or a whirl.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a cow lick of the ocean.
Speaker 1: And so since there's plastic that gets concentrated into this patch,
Speaker 1: most of the plastic in that patch is really small,
Speaker 1: so it's like the size of your pinky fingernail. It's
Speaker 1: not like a bunch of bottles floating on the surface.
Speaker 1: It's not actually like an island you could walk across.
Speaker 1: And so I think the initial reporting on that was
Speaker 1: great because it got people to care about it, but
Speaker 1: it also created sort of a false image in our
Speaker 1: heads of what it looks like. It's just it's a
Speaker 1: higher concentration of plastic in that part of the ocean.
Speaker 1: So it's actually like a little bit, which makes it
Speaker 1: a lot harder to clean up, right, because it is
Speaker 1: quite diffuse.
Speaker 2: I watch some videos and the plastics hauled from the
Speaker 2: ocean's range from like mountains of soggy fishing nets to tiny,
Speaker 2: tiny flecks of broken down bottles and toys. And the
Speaker 2: Great Pacific garbage Patch is estimated to be between the
Speaker 2: size of Texas to the size of Russia, somewhere between there. Now,
Speaker 2: it may be the largest on the planet, but it's
Speaker 2: not alone. It has other garbage patch friends.
Speaker 1: And there's one of these garbage patches in every ocean gyre.
Speaker 1: So there are five major ocean gyres, and there's a
Speaker 1: garbage concentration, our garbage patch in every single one. So
Speaker 1: what we can do about it is lobby for changes
Speaker 1: in corporate and government practices regarding plastic to prevent this
Speaker 1: one ton of plastic entering the ocean every four seconds.
Speaker 1: We can obviously change our individual behavior, and we can
Speaker 1: support conferservation groups that are doing really practical things to
Speaker 1: turn that around. So one of the there's a few
Speaker 1: groups that I think are really exciting. There's Lonely Well
Speaker 1: is doing really good work on the corporate level, gathering
Speaker 1: together partners for that to push there and working with
Speaker 1: the UN. The Ocean Conservancy started something called the Trash
Speaker 1: Free Seas Alliance that's also working with corporations and governments
Speaker 1: to shift policy, and the Status Quo surf Rider, which
Speaker 1: is an organization that's focused on the surfing community and
Speaker 1: activating people who love the ocean to help protect it.
Speaker 1: They have been really active in campaigns against single use plastic.
Speaker 1: I think that's the term that we need to think
Speaker 1: about as like single use. There are certainly some like
Speaker 1: medical uses of plastic that I'm happy to have for
Speaker 1: you know, for safety and sanitary reasons, but I think
Speaker 1: just like the disposability of everything all the time in
Speaker 1: our daily lives is problematic and actually creates this mindset
Speaker 1: of like oh, I'll just get a new one or
Speaker 1: I'll just whatever, and it's like feeding this which is
Speaker 1: really unsustainable, consumerist, disposable mindset that I think is not
Speaker 1: super great, not good. There's a lot of things we
Speaker 1: can do about it, so support groups like that, and
Speaker 1: there's also a lot of there's like cool low tech
Speaker 1: solutions that are out there, and my favorite one is
Speaker 1: called mister trash Wheel, which is basically like you know
Speaker 1: those old fashioned like steamboats that had like a big
Speaker 1: water wheel at the back it's basically like this huge
Speaker 1: water wheel, and then behind it is a dumpster.
Speaker 2: Oh so, I just checked out a video of mister
Speaker 2: trash wheel, and it's the happiest I've been during the
Speaker 2: entire making of this episode. I was not prepared for
Speaker 2: how cute this garbage gobbling machine is. So picture a
Speaker 2: water wheel on one side, and then a domed canopy
Speaker 2: that looks kind of like a covered wagon, but with
Speaker 2: one end a big mouth fed by a conveyor belt
Speaker 2: of trash. Atop this whole structure, two huge googly eyes,
Speaker 2: giving this giant trash apparatus the look of this hungry,
Speaker 2: floating earth saving cartoon. I want to hug it, even
Speaker 2: though it's the size of like a motor home and
Speaker 2: also probably very smelly and would eat me and throw
Speaker 2: me in a dumpster, but with good intentions.
Speaker 1: And so you put this water wheel in a harbor
Speaker 1: or a river, and as pollution runs down the river,
Speaker 1: it gets sort of funneled towards this water wheel. And
Speaker 1: then as this wheel spins, it picks up bottles or
Speaker 1: tires or whatever floating down and just like deposits it
Speaker 1: as it turns in the dumpster behind it. And then
Speaker 1: you take away the dumpster and like dispose of it
Speaker 1: properly in the dump and so you're preventing all this
Speaker 1: stuff from ever even getting to the sea. So this
Speaker 1: is in Baltimore. There's mister trash Wheel and then there's
Speaker 1: Professor trash Wheel. So there's two. And they did like
Speaker 1: a big social media reviewer where they revealed that Professor
Speaker 1: Trasheel was a woman, which I was obviously amused. But
Speaker 1: so stuff like that I think is really promising. And
Speaker 1: so instead of thinking about like cleaning up the middle
Speaker 1: of the ocean, there's so much that we can be
Speaker 1: doing closer to land and should be doing.
Speaker 2: It's amazing that you're like, oh, wait, we didn't have
Speaker 2: something to prevent that from going out.
Speaker 1: There exist whole time. Yeah, exactly do we? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Iolanthe wants to know how can we
Speaker 2: save the Great Barrier reef?
Speaker 1: We could stop climate change? That would you like the thing?
Speaker 2: Cool?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: What about sunscreens? I hear that's a factor.
Speaker 1: It is a factor. And Hawaii just banned these sunscreens
Speaker 1: with these chemicals that are harmful to corals. I can't
Speaker 1: remember the name of like oxy spend Spend They also
Speaker 1: grew up your hormones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fun, So it's worth it to do a
Speaker 2: little more reading on chemicals like oxybenzone, which can lower
Speaker 2: testosterone in adolescent boys. It can leach into mother's breast
Speaker 2: milk and cause endercrine disruption among humans. So even if
Speaker 2: you have a personal beef against coral reefs and you
Speaker 2: don't care if they die, you might want to switch
Speaker 2: to mineral sunscreens just for the sake of your own gonats.
Speaker 1: Basically we should only be using mineral sunscreens like with
Speaker 1: zinc and like that make you look weird and pasty,
Speaker 1: like that's the one you want, or just what I
Speaker 1: do is like I just wear long sleeves are sitting
Speaker 1: in the shade when I've had too much sun. Also
Speaker 1: super effective.
Speaker 2: The mineral ones are great for summer goths.
Speaker 1: It's a great way to do that, one hundred percent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think it's great that Hawaii is leading the
Speaker 1: way on that. So that makes a difference. I mean
Speaker 1: fishermen that I've talked to in the Caribbeans, when then
Speaker 1: cruise ships come in and all the tourists like slather
Speaker 1: on all the sunscreen and then jump in the ocean
Speaker 1: and go snorkeling. It looks like this oil slick of
Speaker 1: like shiny iridescent stuff on the surface, and they're like,
Speaker 1: obviously this is bad for the fish and the corals.
Speaker 1: So it's a problem in places where there are high
Speaker 1: densities of people more so. But there's tons of great
Speaker 1: options of mineral sunscreen, so just look for things with
Speaker 1: zinc in them.
Speaker 2: Okay, And my question here, what's going to bone the
Speaker 2: ocean more? Is it going to be the acidification, the plastics,
Speaker 2: or the rising temperatures.
Speaker 1: I can kind of cheat and just say climate change
Speaker 1: because the acidification and the warm rising temperatures are both
Speaker 1: effects of climate change as a sea level rise, which
Speaker 1: is doing some crazy stuff to coastal ecosystems too, so
Speaker 1: not to mention to our homes and our infrastructure. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think climate change is the number one. Plastic is
Speaker 1: pretty insidious, and the rate at which we're just like
Speaker 1: taking things out of the ocean, the overfishing is pretty wild.
Speaker 1: But the ocean can is incredibly resilient, so it will
Speaker 1: be fine without us. Like if we really screw this
Speaker 1: up and kill the ocean, which means we're killing the planet,
Speaker 1: which means we're killing ourselves. When humans go extinct, the
Speaker 1: ocean will be fine. It'll be different, but it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: So it's really like our survival that we should be
Speaker 1: worried about, right, And so for those who need a
Speaker 1: more self centered motivation, or we should conservation and there
Speaker 1: you go, save the ocean to save yourself.
Speaker 2: Paula Herrera asked, were the boys in my middle school
Speaker 2: right how much of the ocean is actually whale sperm?
Speaker 2: I don't think that's quantifiable.
Speaker 1: Correct, That is not a number that I have heard.
Speaker 1: And then although they do have enormous penises.
Speaker 2: Hey, mom, Dad, fast forward like thirty seconds. Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: So writing this in a coffee shop, I made sure
Speaker 2: to angle my screen before hesitantly typing into Google how
Speaker 2: big are whale dicks? And in huge font the answer
Speaker 2: popped up twelve inches. I was like, oh, okay. Then
Speaker 2: I realized that was the diameter. The length is ten feet. Also,
Speaker 2: whales can pee up to two hundred and fifty gallons
Speaker 2: a day, sometimes floating on their backs and just becoming
Speaker 2: tinkling geysers. Ayana delightfully topped that fact with this.
Speaker 1: But barnacles barnacles have the largest penis to body size
Speaker 1: ratio of anything because they have to have sex without moving.
Speaker 1: They're like stuck on rocks and they literally have to
Speaker 1: like penis comes out of one barticle like finds another barnacle,
Speaker 1: like knocks on the door. They like open their cell, like,
Speaker 1: let this penis in.
Speaker 2: Can you even imagine, Oh my god, you're in like
Speaker 2: a long distance relationship. Yeah, the only way to get
Speaker 2: a touch is like send your dick over. It's a
Speaker 2: good dicagram, basically babies. I'm Christa Avanpado, Jenny Kloda, and
Speaker 2: Anne Sophie Karen all pretty much asked about your job,
Speaker 2: like where would someone begin becoming a marine biolog or
Speaker 2: someone who works on like science policy, Like how do
Speaker 2: people become you?
Speaker 1: I don't advise becoming me exactly, but I would love
Speaker 1: for more people to join Teamotion because there's really exciting
Speaker 1: work to do and it's a wonderful community of folks.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that my personal story is super instructive.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of different paths to get
Speaker 1: to this type of work. I took the science path
Speaker 1: towards policy because at the time it seemed like there
Speaker 1: were a lot of lawyers going towards ocean policy, but
Speaker 1: not a lot of scientists sort of meeting them halfway.
Speaker 1: And so that's the direction I took. But you can
Speaker 1: go straight into law and policy, you can do communications.
Speaker 1: We obviously have a lot we can do to better
Speaker 1: tell the story and engage people. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: really amazing art happening around community engagement for oceans, and
Speaker 1: this organization that I mentioned, TBA twenty one and their academy,
Speaker 1: is supporting a lot of really amazing ocean art. Places
Speaker 1: like Pioneer Works where we are now that are integrating
Speaker 1: the science studio with the arts exhibitions here are really
Speaker 1: important to changing the cultural narrative. So I guess I
Speaker 1: would say it depends like what are you passionate about,
Speaker 1: what are you good at if you want to and
Speaker 1: then how can you do that in service of the ocean.
Speaker 1: So whether that's art or science or law or communications writing,
Speaker 1: I think there's an opportunity to rewrite our relationship with
Speaker 1: the ocean. I've done more. I'm doing more and more
Speaker 1: writing now because I feel like there's just not enough
Speaker 1: literature out there about our changing planet and how we
Speaker 1: relate to it, not in like a depressing way, but
Speaker 1: just in a like what does it mean to be
Speaker 1: a human in this day and eight? That was probably
Speaker 1: not super helpful. But there's lots of different like fellowships
Speaker 1: and internships and positions in all these organizations. So an
Speaker 1: organization like the Ocean Conservancy needs you know, it's a
Speaker 1: big NGO or Oceania or World Wildlife Fund or Wildlife
Speaker 1: Conservation Society, they all have the Majior Conservancy Conservation International,
Speaker 1: they have global ocean conservation efforts. And to run an
Speaker 1: organization like that, you need secretaries and janitors too who
Speaker 1: are committed to like keeping that going. You need accountants,
Speaker 1: you need lawyers, you need policy newers, you need science experts,
Speaker 1: you need people running social media. So it's all those things.
Speaker 1: You need caterers, I mean, and boy do we need
Speaker 1: better sustainability in events. So I think there's a million
Speaker 1: ways to get involved and to do it either full
Speaker 1: time or to start like an adjacent business or join
Speaker 1: something that's related to it. So hop on in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that's great, find what you're good at and
Speaker 2: then approach it that way. Yeah, that's instead of trying
Speaker 2: to shoehorn yourself into.
Speaker 1: Because not everyone wants to be a marine biologists and
Speaker 1: some people think scuba diving is scary, And that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you can't be helpful.
Speaker 2: I would be the worst lawyer. Like when I see
Speaker 2: pictures of you, like doing policy and you're in a
Speaker 2: boardroom with like a bunch of people.
Speaker 1: In suits and you all have and that to me
Speaker 1: is scarier.
Speaker 2: Than like being under the ocean in a vast like
Speaker 2: so funny, I guess like that to me, I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh God, there's so many terms that you have to know,
Speaker 2: like the fact that you have an.
Speaker 1: Ad foreglanguages I might be learned.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you know, And I think you've touched on
Speaker 2: this before. But in a nutshell Mariner cosplay, Neil Williams,
Speaker 2: Sarah Meredith Smear tactics all kind of want to know, Like,
Speaker 2: in a nutshell, what can the average person do in
Speaker 2: their life to just help. I mean, I know, limiting
Speaker 2: single use plastic, do not dump a bunch of garbage
Speaker 2: into the ocean.
Speaker 1: That's a great place to start litter. I've got a
Speaker 1: list actually on the Ocean Collective website. There's a resources
Speaker 1: page where you can learn more about all this stuff.
Speaker 1: There's a page on protected areas and on fishing, and
Speaker 1: on climate and on pollution, and there's lots of articles
Speaker 1: and facts you can meete about all that. But there's
Speaker 1: also a list of like ten things you can do.
Speaker 2: So this list is up at oceancollective dot co and
Speaker 2: there's no e on collective.
Speaker 1: But number one is to vote OHO and because because
Speaker 1: politicians are off the hook on a lot of environmental stuff,
Speaker 1: because their constituents aren't making demands of them. And believe me,
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of other issues people are
Speaker 1: dealing with in the political sphere right now. But if
Speaker 1: we don't hold our politicians accountable for the state of
Speaker 1: the environment, because they have a lot of ability to
Speaker 1: change the rules of the game and give the earth
Speaker 1: a better fighting chance. So I think I think that's
Speaker 1: the number one thing is to be politically engaged. When
Speaker 1: there are bills that come up on you know, funding
Speaker 1: ocean cleanups or research into ocean a certification, or funding
Speaker 1: protection of marine parks, like we should be chiming in
Speaker 1: and saying yes this matters, Yes we want to end
Speaker 1: over fishing. There's a possibility this there's a bill that
Speaker 1: could change the way that fishing is managed, and people
Speaker 1: need to be weighing in and saying, excuse me, you
Speaker 1: want to roll this back and allow people to overfish
Speaker 1: by law. That doesn't seem to make much sense to me,
Speaker 1: and so it seems counterintuitive, but political engagement is the
Speaker 1: number one. And then obviously we can all be more
Speaker 1: careful about choosing sustainable seafood and bringing it up at
Speaker 1: the establishments that we care about and asking for it,
Speaker 1: Reducing our single use plastic, reducing our carbon footprint because
Speaker 1: climate change is having such a big impact on the ocean.
Speaker 1: We can choose resorts when we go on vacation that
Speaker 1: are more ocean friendly or sustainable in general, there's no
Speaker 1: reason to leave your values at home when you go
Speaker 1: on vacation.
Speaker 2: This goes against literally everything Las Vegas was built on,
Speaker 2: which is why it's great advice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so the list kind of goes on from there.
Speaker 1: I think I maybe got five or six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I cross checked this with the take action
Speaker 2: section of the Ocean Collective site, and the remaining items
Speaker 2: were get informed. You're listening to this, great job. Choose
Speaker 2: other sustainable foods and farms, not just seafood. You can
Speaker 2: clean up the coast. You can donate to an ocean
Speaker 2: cause and she has some recommendations on the resources page
Speaker 2: and to help spread the word. So tell people about
Speaker 2: this episode if you feel like it. Okay, now, what
Speaker 2: do you do if you're crying into a bowl of
Speaker 2: fish chowder right now? And when it comes to sustainable seafood,
Speaker 2: is that kind of something that is said to make
Speaker 2: us feel better or is there really no that's real?
Speaker 1: And I think with aquaculture where that kind industry kind
Speaker 1: of got a rough start, but they are figuring out
Speaker 1: sustainable practices. There's a lot of the most exciting work
Speaker 1: in that space for me is around integrated farming or
Speaker 1: vertical ocean farming or called three D ocean farming, and
Speaker 1: it's about growing oysters and muscles and clams and all
Speaker 1: these different kinds of algae together in a simplified ecosystem
Speaker 1: that kind of creates habitat for other things to swim
Speaker 1: through as well. Algae is super, super healthy and underrated
Speaker 1: sea vegetables, as there are now sometimes called in hip spots.
Speaker 1: So eat more algae farmed shellfish you can eat with
Speaker 1: impunity as much as you want those oysters, muscles, clams
Speaker 1: because they actually just filter the water, so we don't
Speaker 1: have to catch wildfish to feed the farmed fish, which
Speaker 1: is a problem with some other species. Although they're also
Speaker 1: innovating feeds from like plant proteins and insect proteins to
Speaker 1: feed fish now, so that industry is coming along well.
Speaker 1: So what I personally eat is those things I eat seaweed,
Speaker 1: I eat farmed shellfish, and I eat sardines and anchovies.
Speaker 1: Because those tiny fish they reproduce quickly, there's lots of them.
Speaker 1: Those tend to be more sustainable than like tunas and
Speaker 1: swordfish and sharks and those things that like take a
Speaker 1: long time to reproduce. They don't make a ton of babies,
Speaker 1: and they tend to be really heavily targeted by fishing.
Speaker 1: So from the big picture, I'd say that, But then again,
Speaker 1: like if you're working, if you're in a local community,
Speaker 1: if you know you're fishermen, if you're part of community
Speaker 1: supported fishery, like the vegetable boxes, the essays community supported agriculture.
Speaker 1: They're now doing that for local fisheries, which is cool.
Speaker 1: You can get like whatever the fishermen caught, you can
Speaker 1: get a share of the catch.
Speaker 2: This by the way, is also a great excuse to
Speaker 2: just casually use the word fishmonger in conversation fishmunges, fishmonger, fishmonger.
Speaker 1: And there's also an app that's helpful, which is from
Speaker 1: the Monitary Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program that you can download.
Speaker 2: So that's not I wasn't sure if that was just
Speaker 2: focus focus and like.
Speaker 1: No, that's real. There are things that we can feel
Speaker 1: comfortable eating. But I think the question is also like
Speaker 1: how many meals a month or a day should we
Speaker 1: expect to be wild animals, because we would never expect
Speaker 1: to be eating like lions and tigers and you know,
Speaker 1: antelopes as our primary source of protein on land, but
Speaker 1: that's what we're expecting from the ocean. I mean, tuna
Speaker 1: are so high up the food chain, and swordfish and
Speaker 1: all these things, and so I think we just need
Speaker 1: to change the mindset that we can live sustainably off
Speaker 1: of wild animals from the that are at the top
Speaker 1: of the food chain.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess we see the words seafood buffet together
Speaker 2: too much. It's good, I mean, it really does. It's
Speaker 2: the wrong impression of what's out there, and I.
Speaker 1: Think that's part of The problem is that the price
Speaker 1: of seafood hasn't skyrocketed in tandem with the with overfishing.
Speaker 1: You'd think that when something gets more rare, it gets
Speaker 1: more expensive, but we haven't seen that as much with
Speaker 1: seafood because it's often really heavily subsidized by governments are
Speaker 1: helping to pay for fuel or boats or whatever to
Speaker 1: send more people out fishing. And so you can still
Speaker 1: get a can of tuna for like what one or
Speaker 1: two bucks? And so if you if that's the case,
Speaker 1: why would you think that it's a problem. It's so cheap,
Speaker 1: there must be a lot of it. And so I
Speaker 1: think until the price of things reflects their value and
Speaker 1: their rarity, then it's going to be really hard to
Speaker 1: have these conversations that sink in because because that price
Speaker 1: is such a strong signal.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, can you imagine if a can of tunea
Speaker 2: was like seventeen dollars?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I can't stop picturing Mariah Carey instagramming herself eating tuna
Speaker 2: from a can with like a golden fork and other
Speaker 2: people seeing it. Just like, man, I will never know
Speaker 2: that kind of life, so aspirational. So now I always
Speaker 2: ask these questions at the very end. What about your
Speaker 2: job sucks the most?
Speaker 1: What is the worst email? Really? But it's the same
Speaker 1: thing that sucks about many jobs. I spend way too
Speaker 1: much time answering email. Yeah, just an end listen, but
Speaker 1: it's I mean, that's also the way that I'm able
Speaker 1: to have colleagues all over the world and avoid video chats,
Speaker 1: which I really hate. So so yeah, but so it's
Speaker 1: a blessing and a curse.
Speaker 2: And what do you love the most about your job?
Speaker 2: Or the ocean?
Speaker 1: I love jumping into the ocean, and I love the
Speaker 1: look on people's faces when they understand something about it.
Speaker 1: And it's not like I think the joy and happiness
Speaker 1: the ocean brings us is amazing and I appreciate that too,
Speaker 1: But when like a teenager comes up to me and
Speaker 1: explains to me that parrotfish are important because they eat
Speaker 1: algae and poop sand, and they have this like intense
Speaker 1: look on their face, like I'm explaining to you how
Speaker 1: this ecosystem works, and like we all to be on
Speaker 1: board with this, Like that's what brings me the deepest
Speaker 1: joy is so like the confidence and the engage, like
Speaker 1: the engagement in solutions that people have when they learn
Speaker 1: something about it. So that's something that really inspires me.
Speaker 2: Right, It's great when you can see that shift from
Speaker 2: an ownership of the ocean, like it's ours to exploit,
Speaker 2: versus like, uh, a responsibility to the ocean, do you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? Like absolutely, you know, like a
Speaker 2: familiarity and an investment in it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But and now where can we find you and your company? Like,
Speaker 2: give us, give us some links so we can gently stock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm very easy to stop. I think if you
Speaker 1: put like Iana and marine biologist and you'll find me.
Speaker 1: And that Ocean Collective is the name of the company.
Speaker 1: And there's no e at the end of collective because
Speaker 1: that is a heavy metal band in Australia. And obviously
Speaker 1: we needed all the social handles to be consistent, so
Speaker 1: it's Oceancollective dot co is our website, and we're at
Speaker 1: Ocean Collective on Twitter and Instagram. Cool and then personally
Speaker 1: and you can find me at Aana Eliza on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Iona dot Elizabeth on Instagram. I think the online
Speaker 1: ocean community is actually a really cool aspect of the
Speaker 1: job as well, because nerdy ocean jokes are amazing.
Speaker 2: There's so many puns to be made.
Speaker 1: So anyone, I actually haven't ever know a file full
Speaker 1: of ocean punds? Do you really this is the thing
Speaker 1: I have?
Speaker 2: Do you have? Do you have to highlight one and
Speaker 2: just pop it in the end of an email?
Speaker 1: No, I actually try to avoid them. I like, I'm
Speaker 1: amused by the list of them and how many there
Speaker 1: are that you wouldn't know until you're writing an email
Speaker 1: about the ocean, and then you'd be like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's dive into this people and like figure it out,
Speaker 1: like don't be afraid to get your feet wet, like
Speaker 1: let's just like figure out how we're gonna And I'm
Speaker 1: just like, Anna, you can't do that because it's confusing
Speaker 1: if you're actually talking about the ocean.
Speaker 2: Does anyone ever write back? I see what you did there?
Speaker 1: Always not yet ort not yet.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm excited for your book to come out too.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for the work that you do.
Speaker 2: I'm sure the ocean would.
Speaker 1: Thanks for your great questions and all of your patreons questions.
Speaker 2: There's so many questions, I mean, I had to consolidate
Speaker 2: into categories. So many people were like whoa, yeah, So
Speaker 2: thank you for doing this.
Speaker 1: My pleasure anytime.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Okay, so we have come to the final credits
Speaker 2: of this sad, romantic saga, but with a glimmer of
Speaker 2: hope for maybe a happier sequel. So find doctor Anna
Speaker 2: Johnson all over the internet, watch her amazing ted, talk
Speaker 2: her public speaking, check out Ocean Collective, and just tell
Speaker 2: the world about the episode so we can stop losing
Speaker 2: sleep of the ocean and just start making better choices. Now,
Speaker 2: go talk to your fishmunk. You can sign up for
Speaker 2: a beach or river cleanup. You can donate five bucks
Speaker 2: to an ocean charity, or start reading up on plastic use.
Speaker 2: You got this, You're so well armed. Now you got this.
Speaker 2: Now to support the podcast, you can sign up to
Speaker 2: be a patron if you want at patreon dot com.
Speaker 2: Slash Ologies Merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com, and
Speaker 2: there's a grip of back to school stuff up as
Speaker 2: of today, so collegiate crestedge shirts and things to put
Speaker 2: you in kind of an autumn frame of mind. Thank
Speaker 2: you Bonnie Dutch for all your new designs, and Shannon
Speaker 2: Feltis for helping run the site and for putting on
Speaker 2: the sold out campologies event in Portland in a few
Speaker 2: weeks in September. Thank you Aaron Talbert and Hannah Liippo
Speaker 2: for being admins to the Facebook Ologies podcast group, and
Speaker 2: thank you as always to podcastmonger Stephen Ray Morris for
Speaker 2: editing and helping produce this. The music was written and
Speaker 2: performed by Nick Thorburn, who also did Cereals podcast seme
Speaker 2: he makes other great music in the band Islands and
Speaker 2: in solo efforts. Now, if you stay at the end
Speaker 2: of the episode, you know that I tell you a secret.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for all of your support in
Speaker 2: terms of last week's secret about how I'd never seen
Speaker 2: any of the Harry Potter movies and this, you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna give you another Harry Potter secret because you
Speaker 2: guys seem to be passionate about it. I was really
Speaker 2: afraid of taking the test to find out what house
Speaker 2: I would be in because I was like, what if
Speaker 2: I come up Slytherin? What if I find out I'm
Speaker 2: like kind of lightly evil just through a Harry Potter quiz.
Speaker 2: I took the quiz, and I guess it turns out
Speaker 2: I'm Gryffindor. I don't know what that means, but I
Speaker 2: think it's okay, okay, we're all in this thing together.
Speaker 1: Good job, Bye.
Speaker 2: Bye, pacadermatology, mombiology, rypdo zoology, lithology, zology, meteorologyology, ethnology, zeriology.
Speaker 1: When life gets you down, you know what you gotta do.
Speaker 1: I don't want to know what you gotta do. Just
Speaker 1: keep swimming, Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming,