Speaker 1: Oh hello, Ologites. Okay, so this is an encore presentation
Speaker 1: of an episode, but with a few new bells and whistles.
Speaker 1: I just added because you loved this ologist so much
Speaker 1: when this first aired in twenty eighteen. And she has
Speaker 1: a brand new podcast of her own. It just launched.
Speaker 1: It's called How to Save a Planet and it's co
Speaker 1: hosted by Alex Blumberg. The latest episode of her new
Speaker 1: podcast addresses the most common Patreon question we got for her,
Speaker 1: So you're definitely gonna want to go check out our
Speaker 1: new podcast. Also, at the break, you're going to hear
Speaker 1: an update from the Ologist herself that she sentenced.
Speaker 2: Specifically for Ologies listeners.
Speaker 1: Trust me, you want to hear what she has been
Speaker 1: up to the last two years. It's amazing. Just trust me. Also,
Speaker 1: I think I swore like your grandpa at poker night
Speaker 1: in this episode, so sorry. Also, there's a new secret
Speaker 1: at the end. Okay, here we go. Oh hi, it's
Speaker 1: all pop. Here sot mowing the lawn in those shorts
Speaker 1: your mother wishes. I throwaway Alley Ward back with another
Speaker 1: episode of Ologies. Now. In this episode, let's just belly
Speaker 1: up to the coast. Let's gaze out over a craggy
Speaker 1: cliff and stare into the glimmering sea. What wonders? What mystery?
Speaker 1: What possibility? What a shit show? We've made it? But
Speaker 1: is there hope? I don't know. I'm not an oceanologist,
Speaker 1: but that's okay because other people are. And you're gonna
Speaker 1: get the real time scoop on whether or not we
Speaker 1: have missed the boat, on saving the sea, and what
Speaker 1: we're doing to make it better. So hank tight, because
Speaker 1: before we sit sail a few things you can do
Speaker 1: to help keep this podcast afloat. So thank you to
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Speaker 1: support ologies via items, ologiesmarch dot com has you covered
Speaker 1: literally the link is in the show notes.
Speaker 2: And if you spend all.
Speaker 1: Your money on a very tiny baseball jersey for your hamster,
Speaker 1: I get it. And you can support ologies with just
Speaker 1: your words and your thumbs by telling friends and tweeting
Speaker 1: and gramming and making sure that you're subscribed. So reviews
Speaker 1: and ratings are free to do. You can just do
Speaker 1: them and kind of like a rodent in clothes. I'm
Speaker 1: just a little creepy and I read every single review
Speaker 1: because it's really nice that you leave them, and it
Speaker 1: makes me remember that there are real human beings in
Speaker 1: the void listening to this. So this week I just
Speaker 1: want to say thank you to Jenny Farn who says
Speaker 1: every day I commute an hour each way to my job,
Speaker 1: God bless you teaching elementary school art. And this podcast
Speaker 1: is like a billion mini hot tubs for my overworked
Speaker 1: brain cells. Will also give me cool stuff to talk
Speaker 1: to the kids about, like shark vomit and why the
Speaker 1: darn sky is blue but not on Mars. Also, I've
Speaker 1: stolen Burbie as my favorite way to exit conversations with
Speaker 1: hyper six year olds and online conversations that have taken
Speaker 1: a bad turn. Thanks for everything. You're very welcome. Jen Okay,
Speaker 1: Oceanology board, Are you saying oceanography wrong? No, no, my
Speaker 1: tender bitches, I am not so. Oceanology is a thing.
Speaker 1: It's defined as the branch of technology and economics dealing
Speaker 1: with human use of the sea, So heck, yes, this
Speaker 1: person is very much an oceanologist now at warning, Is
Speaker 1: this the cheeriest of episodes? Is it full of warm fuzzies? No,
Speaker 1: no it's not. But is it important? Yes, yes it is.
Speaker 1: I did my best to balance the gloom with some wonder,
Speaker 1: and I promise you it is important enough to stick
Speaker 1: with the entire episode. There's so much good information. Also,
Speaker 1: special thank you to one of my favorite science in
Speaker 1: politics and Internet heroes, Baritonde Thurston for hooking me up
Speaker 1: with this allogist who I nervously emailed the all caps question.
Speaker 2: How screwed are these oceans?
Speaker 1: Keep listening to hear her answer. So she's based on
Speaker 1: the East Coast. So I had her on my wish list,
Speaker 1: and one day in August, I got myself to her
Speaker 1: native Brooklyn, and I tried to pretend I was cool
Speaker 1: enough to be there, and we met up at an
Speaker 1: audio studio at Pioneer Works, which is this beautiful art
Speaker 1: and cultural center and event space where I would love
Speaker 1: to live as a stowaway if they would never find
Speaker 1: me out. Now, as a marine biologist and a policy strategist,
Speaker 1: she does TED talks. She's worked with the Environmental Protection
Speaker 1: Agency and the National Oceanic and atmospheric Administration. She's an
Speaker 1: adjunct professor at NYU. She's also an environmental advocate. She
Speaker 1: travels the world working with politicians and communities to make
Speaker 1: their relationship to the oceans healthier. I am just like
Speaker 1: in gentle awe of her now. She had just gotten
Speaker 1: back from an occupational venture the night before, and I
Speaker 1: just had the tape rolling as I waited for her
Speaker 1: arrival in the studio. Way too eager didn't want to
Speaker 1: miss a second, so we talked about her favorite aspects
Speaker 1: of the ocean when she fell in love with it,
Speaker 1: coral reefs, parrotfish, their butts, disgusting whale trivia, even more
Speaker 1: disgusting plastic trivia, the amount of doomed we are, what
Speaker 1: fish you shouldn't eat, and whether or not plastic straws
Speaker 1: really deserve their evil reputation. So it's not all sunny,
Speaker 1: but she is an expert who will really talk us
Speaker 1: all into action. So please get ready to listen to
Speaker 1: the crashing waves of wisdom from oceanologist doctor Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson.
Speaker 1: So do you need a minute, do you need anything else?
Speaker 2: I'm good?
Speaker 1: Or do you just want me to start lobbing questions?
Speaker 1: About oceans. I you I just got back from the oceans,
Speaker 1: So you just got back in the ocean like five
Speaker 1: minutes ago, pretty much. Yeah, how much of your work
Speaker 1: is in the field in the ocean and how much
Speaker 1: is like traveling around making policy, because I know that.
Speaker 2: You do both. I don't have an active research program
Speaker 2: right now, so in the ocean, I'm just kind of
Speaker 2: like checking it out or hanging out, keeping in touch
Speaker 2: with the ecosystems and what's going on down there. So
Speaker 2: most of my work is more so than policy specifically,
Speaker 2: just strategy work. How do all these different organizations make
Speaker 2: their campaigns better, their communications better, policy work more strategic.
Speaker 2: So Ocean Collective, the company I founded, is a consulting
Speaker 2: group that supports other organizations trying to amp up the
Speaker 2: impact of their conservation efforts. It's thirteen incredible experts from
Speaker 2: professional surfers, marine biologists, underwater robot makers, filmmakers, policy experts,
Speaker 2: and we're all just coming together as this team to
Speaker 2: try to see what we can do to help.
Speaker 1: And can we talk about your background a little bit about.
Speaker 2: Your totally love of the ocean. That was so melodic.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to like ask me questions
Speaker 2: about my former acappella career. So did you have a
Speaker 2: former acapella career? I maybe did. Yeah, I was a
Speaker 2: jazz singer for most of my youth.
Speaker 1: Really side note, I'm sorry I sang it you. And
Speaker 1: also I asked if she had any music of hers
Speaker 1: that I could put in here, and she said, no,
Speaker 1: no jazz clips to share. Sorry about that, So I
Speaker 1: did try. Okay, all right, back to the sea. When
Speaker 1: when did you get into oceans and marine biology? When
Speaker 1: did you decide to take that path?
Speaker 2: When I was five, I learned to swim in the
Speaker 2: Florida Keys on a family vacation. My parents would be
Speaker 2: down there specifically to teach me to swim, and I
Speaker 2: went on a glass bottom boat and I saw crawlry
Speaker 2: for the first time, and it blew my damn mind.
Speaker 2: It was so incredible. I mean just it's like a
Speaker 2: window to another world. Right. You look down and there's
Speaker 2: just fish and coral and all these colorful things that
Speaker 2: you could never have imagined. So that, for me was
Speaker 2: the moment that I just wanted to know everything about
Speaker 2: the ocean.
Speaker 1: So Iana went on to get a bachelor's degree from
Speaker 1: just this little startup college called in the field of
Speaker 1: environmental science and public policy. She also obtained a PhD
Speaker 1: from Script's Institute of Oceanography in marine biology, studying coral
Speaker 1: reef sustainability. Now during all of that, did she ever
Speaker 1: think like, maybe I should switch my major to bagpiping,
Speaker 1: like just take a turn into something totally non oceanic.
Speaker 2: I decided pretty early on not to take any turns.
Speaker 2: So my PhD is technically in marine biology, but it
Speaker 2: was done through an interdisciplinary program at the SCRIPTS and
Speaker 2: Soution of Oceanography that was partnering with the Economics Department
Speaker 2: to make sure that ocean conservation was integrating all these
Speaker 2: different things, because it's really a puzzle, right. There's a science,
Speaker 2: and there's the policy, there's the communications, there's the law
Speaker 2: and economics, and so I wanted to make sure that
Speaker 2: I had at least a reasonable handle on all these
Speaker 2: different pieces of the puzzle so that I could go
Speaker 2: out into the world and help to try to solve it.
Speaker 2: In a broader sense, there's obviously like a strong need
Speaker 2: for people to go really deeply into each of those, Like,
Speaker 2: for example, I'm really glad there are people out there
Speaker 2: who just study octopuses and like tell us everything they
Speaker 2: learn because they're amazing by the way my mind works.
Speaker 2: And what I'm passionate about is that bigger picture puzzle
Speaker 2: and how we can really shift human relation with the ocean.
Speaker 2: Because the ocean is obviously like it's doing everything right.
Speaker 2: It's humans that are causing all these challenges. So that's
Speaker 2: the piece that I focus on.
Speaker 1: So here's how I thought I would split up the episode.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone's like, how can we make the ocean
Speaker 1: less fucked? Like we've really, we've really messed.
Speaker 2: Up, that's the question.
Speaker 1: So I thought we would start with let's talk about
Speaker 1: the good things about the ocean.
Speaker 2: Sure, there's lots, and so.
Speaker 1: I'm going to essentially play like good cop, bad cop.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you all the good questions, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to let the patrons ask all the what
Speaker 1: are we going to do?
Speaker 2: Plastic?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, we're all gonna die. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask I'm going to ask you the happy questions
Speaker 1: about the ocean before we get to oh my god,
Speaker 1: what are we going to do? I would love to
Speaker 1: know did you ever have well it sounds like when
Speaker 1: you were looking in that glass bott of both you
Speaker 1: had kind of an epiphany that there's this whole world
Speaker 1: under the sea that you never realized. Have you had
Speaker 1: any other kind of epiphanies about the ocean or any
Speaker 1: other moments that you had.
Speaker 2: So when I started my PhD research, I was I
Speaker 2: was thinking about fishing and how it can be really
Speaker 2: wasteful you catch fish that you don't end up using.
Speaker 2: And in fact, a recent research project I've been doing
Speaker 2: for WWF, the World Wildlife Fund, I learned that half
Speaker 2: of the seafood we catch in the US and EU
Speaker 2: is wasted somewhere along with supply chain. It's just insane.
Speaker 2: But there's also like the unsustainable aspects of fishing. They're
Speaker 2: both problems. So I'm already diving, no problems, but I
Speaker 2: swear I'm getting to the good stuff. So so fishing
Speaker 2: can overfishing is a problem, and unsustainable fishing and then
Speaker 2: what we do with what we catch is a whole
Speaker 2: separate issue. But I was focused on how can we
Speaker 2: redesign fishing gear to make it more sustainable, And so
Speaker 2: I worked with fishermen and the fisheries department in Curasow
Speaker 2: in the Caribbean to redesign their fish traps to let babystickle,
Speaker 2: the babyfish and the ornamental like the nemo shaped skinny
Speaker 2: species out of the traps. And it turns out you
Speaker 2: can let out eighty percent of the bycatch the fish
Speaker 2: you don't mean to catch without hurting fishmen's incomes because
Speaker 2: all the valuable fish stay inside. It's basically just inch
Speaker 2: wide slot down the side of the trap that lets
Speaker 2: all the little guys out. And you can't do it
Speaker 2: with a just making it a larger mesh size, because
Speaker 2: then you have like a big, a big hole that
Speaker 2: any fish could get out, including the valuable ones.
Speaker 1: So do google her paper entitled quote reducing bycatch in
Speaker 1: coral reef trap fisheries escape gaps as a step towards
Speaker 1: sustainability For more on this I did, and then reading
Speaker 1: the abstract, I did a little yay way to go
Speaker 1: squeal about it. Now there are also diagrams online, and
Speaker 1: the regular fish traps that snag all of those other
Speaker 1: little fishies can just be retrofitted with side panels that
Speaker 1: have little narrow slits for little fishies to sneak out
Speaker 1: and say later days, dude, I've got more growing to do,
Speaker 1: or you don't even eat my species it's essentially the
Speaker 1: equivalent of an Irish goodbye for coral reef fish.
Speaker 2: So that was really exciting to me because it was
Speaker 2: a moment where I saw that you don't actually need
Speaker 2: super high technology in all these cases. You just need
Speaker 2: to think practically about solutions, and if you work with
Speaker 2: the fishing community and with the government, these things can
Speaker 2: actually become law. And so en curis how that type
Speaker 2: of trap design is now required and in a few
Speaker 2: other places as well, in Barbuda, and I think they're
Speaker 2: using it in Kenya. So that was super exciting to
Speaker 2: me because you can this idea of low tech solutions
Speaker 2: I think is underappreciated, right, So that was a really
Speaker 2: eye opening moment and which led to the next one,
Speaker 2: which was it's not actually about fish.
Speaker 1: Wait, it's not about the fish.
Speaker 2: Did I hear that right? It's not actually about fish.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from
Speaker 1: one of my favorite movies, Adaptation, which bears the iconic
Speaker 1: line from a former aquarium enthusiast.
Speaker 2: I once fell deeply, you know, profoundly in love with
Speaker 2: tropical fish. He grows bored in one day, I.
Speaker 1: Say a fuck fish, I renounce fish. I vowed never
Speaker 1: to set foot in that ocean again. That's how much
Speaker 1: fuck fish now. Two things, That clip from adaptation is
Speaker 1: so beloved that someone has built a website at fuck
Speaker 1: dot fish. That's only that clip from the movie. You
Speaker 1: just press play and enjoy. Secondly, that wasn't Ayana's deal
Speaker 1: at all. When she says it's not actually about fish,
Speaker 1: she means that she loves fish so much. She had
Speaker 1: to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Speaker 2: I had done all this work, like counting fish and
Speaker 2: surveying fish populations on coral reefs, and then I was like, actually,
Speaker 2: it's about fishermen, it's about coastal communities. It is about
Speaker 2: the tourism sector and how people are impact in the ocean.
Speaker 2: So that's when my research shifted to doing hundreds of
Speaker 2: these socioeconomic interviews with people across the Caribbean. From this
Speaker 2: mindset that I had to understand people how people were
Speaker 2: using the ocean, what problems they saw, what solutions they
Speaker 2: would support, Ask them if they could write the laws
Speaker 2: to manage the ocean, what would they be, And then
Speaker 2: see what I could learn from all these experts who
Speaker 2: spent more hours than I ever have in and on
Speaker 2: the ocean.
Speaker 1: So in order to save species in the ocean, we
Speaker 1: have to look at the humans on land and like
Speaker 1: what they're even doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, human behavior and like what makes us tick and
Speaker 2: our incentives and motivations and culture.
Speaker 1: That makes so much sense because the fish are like,
Speaker 1: don't look at me, dude, Like I'm not the one
Speaker 1: rooting exactly.
Speaker 2: Like I'm just simming around. I like find a snack,
Speaker 2: make some babies, like not get munched by a shark
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 1: But you're like, hey, humans, let's look. Yeah, let's put
Speaker 1: the microscope on you guys for a minute.
Speaker 2: Time out, let's think through this.
Speaker 1: So, oceans, it's not you, it's us. It really really,
Speaker 1: really really really is us. But anyway, okay, sorry, this
Speaker 1: portion is the positive portion of the episode. Let's try
Speaker 1: to stick to the light fun stuff before the conversation
Speaker 1: gets a little bleak. Can you give some like an
Speaker 1: anatomy lesson of the ocean some zones? What's an ocean
Speaker 1: versus what's a sea? Like just basic dumb questions.
Speaker 2: So the way that we talk about the ocean has
Speaker 2: changed a lot in the past decade, and now we
Speaker 2: say the ocean it's really one ocean. It's all connected,
Speaker 2: and there's these different sort of parts that we name
Speaker 2: seas and to have different ocean titles, but there's currents
Speaker 2: that run through and connect everything. So I guess the
Speaker 2: easy answer is it's just the ocean. Oh yeah, So
Speaker 2: there's the Caribbean Sea in the Mediterranean Sea, and there's
Speaker 2: the Atlantic Pacific in India and all these oceans. But
Speaker 2: really it's all one big thing. And then as the
Speaker 2: zones that are more important when I think about the ocean,
Speaker 2: I think about sort of the depths of the ocean.
Speaker 2: The shallower waters where there's more sunlight, have a very
Speaker 2: different thing going on than super deep parts of the ocean.
Speaker 2: And so it's a lot of it is about temperature
Speaker 2: and sunlight that creates these different zones.
Speaker 1: Okay, quick, quick rundown of ocean zones. We covered this
Speaker 1: in the Ichnology fish episode, but who doesn't love a
Speaker 1: refresher course, So let's break it down.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Epipologic is at the top. This zone from the surface
Speaker 1: to about two hundred meters or six hundred feet down
Speaker 1: gets some sunshine, so plants grow. The bulk of ocean
Speaker 1: life hangs out there below that are the mesopolagic, bathy polagic, abyssopolagic,
Speaker 1: and finally the very bottom the hatl zones. Now, the
Speaker 1: average depth of the ocean is about thirty seven hundred
Speaker 1: meters and its deepest known point is almost seven miles
Speaker 1: below the surface in a trench near Guam. I'm just
Speaker 1: thirsty for stats. Here's another good one.
Speaker 2: That ninety seven percent of the water on Earth is
Speaker 2: in the ocean. So when we think about fresh water
Speaker 2: and drinking water, that's a good like reality check on
Speaker 2: how important it is to be careful with our water.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that like children ask you this, but the ocean,
Speaker 1: why is that salty? I'm just gonna ask.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna ask. The ocean was formed by all this
Speaker 2: stuff that comes off of land, right, so all the
Speaker 2: rocks that are sort of eroding over time into the
Speaker 2: sea have different things in them that make the ocean salty.
Speaker 2: And I think over time things change, right as evaporation
Speaker 2: happens and things like that, So salinity can fluctuate a bit.
Speaker 2: And that's actually part of what creates these large ocean currents,
Speaker 2: is how salinity has an effect on things. Because if
Speaker 2: you've ever had the chance to go in the ocean
Speaker 2: after it rains, you'll realize that it's in the Caribbean anyway.
Speaker 2: So this just happened to me. I jumped in the
Speaker 2: Caribbean sea after a rainstorm, and there's a layer of
Speaker 2: fresh water on top that's cold, like cool rain, and
Speaker 2: then the ocean underneath it is salty and warm. Because
Speaker 2: salt water is heavier, it's more dense, and so it sinks,
Speaker 2: and colder water is also more dense than it sinks,
Speaker 2: and so that sets up can set up either like
Speaker 2: layers or currents that are are moved just by like
Speaker 2: these gradients in salinity and temperature.
Speaker 1: So imagine dense cold water and dense saltwater doing a
Speaker 1: very fluid kind of sensual tango. Now I'm still trying
Speaker 1: to keep this half of the episode light and sunny.
Speaker 1: So okay, let's see questions about the oceans that are
Speaker 1: not depressing. Okay, all right? Was she always into like
Speaker 1: messages in a bottle like the world's oldest one was
Speaker 1: found earlier this year in Western Australia bearing a note
Speaker 1: from a German naval vessel from eighteen eighty six. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's fun.
Speaker 2: I was super into picking up like shells and pieces
Speaker 2: of sea glass and things like that. I was always
Speaker 2: enamored by the things that you would find on the beach,
Speaker 2: but not messages per se.
Speaker 1: Right, do you still have any of your seashells?
Speaker 2: And oh, totally you do. Yeah. I started a shell
Speaker 2: collection when I was five in Key West, Florida, and
Speaker 2: I usually find one shell from every beach I go to.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can't. I don't want to like take
Speaker 2: all the pretty things, but and sometimes I take just
Speaker 2: like a little tiny fleck of something to just put
Speaker 2: in my I have a fish bowl full of one
Speaker 2: tiny thing from each to beach I've ever been to.
Speaker 1: Really, do you have a name for that fishbowl?
Speaker 2: Or is this a fishball?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: Have you been to all of the what would have
Speaker 1: been considered oceans?
Speaker 2: And I've spent a lot of time in the Caribbean,
Speaker 2: a little bit of time in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic,
Speaker 2: but very little time in the Pacific. Is the whole
Speaker 2: world of Pacific islands I haven't been to yet? Now?
Speaker 1: Is it true that the Pacific Island that the Pacific
Speaker 1: Ocean was named because they thought it was calmer?
Speaker 2: I think that's right. Is that not to be the case?
Speaker 1: A little backstory. So Portuguese explore Magellan had hit some
Speaker 1: shitty conditions through what's now known as the Straits of
Speaker 1: Magellan near the southern tip of Chili Is in the
Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds, and rounding the corner into the Pacific basin.
Speaker 1: He was like, oh, so much better. It's so calm here,
Speaker 1: it's so Pacific, hence the name. But not all of
Speaker 1: it is calm, however, but in the equatorial region of
Speaker 1: the sea, that part tends to have kind of a
Speaker 1: more chill vibe, less wind activity, and it's technically called
Speaker 1: the doldrums. That is the maritime term for it. So
Speaker 1: the next time you're having kind of like a ho
Speaker 1: hum period of your life, I guess just take comfort
Speaker 1: that life isn't tossing you around and making you barf
Speaker 1: into its violent currents. See this is the optimistic part
Speaker 1: of the episode. Do you listen to any ocean apps
Speaker 1: on your phone to chill out?
Speaker 2: Like ocean sound? But yeah, no, I put earplugs in
Speaker 2: and just like Zone all the way out.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure if someone who studies the ocean and
Speaker 1: has dedicated their life to essentially saving the ocean would
Speaker 1: be like I don't. I don't want to hear an
Speaker 1: app because it's just a bad simulation.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, I'm a pretty light sleeper, Okay, so I
Speaker 2: like complete silence, and I think, yeah, as someone who
Speaker 2: is like ninety five percent vegan m hm and who
Speaker 2: never eats fake meat, is maybe the same thing, right,
Speaker 2: Like I'm not going to go have like a soy
Speaker 2: hot dog and I'm not going to listen to like
Speaker 2: fake ocean sounds.
Speaker 1: Do you do a lot of like diving? Did you
Speaker 1: have to do a lot of diving?
Speaker 2: I used to. Yeah. For my PHDV search, I did
Speaker 2: three or four hundred dives.
Speaker 1: Do you like being underwater? I know some people are like,
Speaker 1: it's so beautiful, it's like I'm flying, and other people
Speaker 1: like it's so big, it's terrifying.
Speaker 2: It's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean some people think that
Speaker 2: if you don't scuba dive, you can't experience the ocean fully,
Speaker 2: and I totally disagree with that. I think scuba diving
Speaker 2: is nice because I can't hold my breath for an hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I neither can.
Speaker 2: I I only learn to dive when I realized that
Speaker 2: I needed to as a tool for my scientific research.
Speaker 2: And it's pretty neat. I mean, to be able to,
Speaker 2: you know, be underwater long enough to really watch the
Speaker 2: behavior of an octopus or a parrot fish or whatever
Speaker 2: it is is an amazing opportunity. But I think snorkeling
Speaker 2: is underrated. Yeah. I think more people should get like
Speaker 2: super into snorkeling because you can see so much just bye,
Speaker 2: you know, diving down and taking a look and being
Speaker 2: in shallow water. So I hate the thought that people
Speaker 2: think if you're not scuba diving and then like why
Speaker 2: bother because there's so much you can learn about the
Speaker 2: sea and just enjoy like the spectacular creatures from the
Speaker 2: surface or from like a little shallow dive down with
Speaker 2: your mask on.
Speaker 1: You just got to learn that trick where you blow
Speaker 1: the water out when you surface, right, Yeah, Okay, is
Speaker 1: that hard to master?
Speaker 2: Now you can totally do it. Anyone can do. Ok.
Speaker 2: Or sometimes when I like don't have enough air left
Speaker 2: in my lungs when I come after this surface for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, I just take the mouthpiece out and just
Speaker 2: breathe there. Normally you could do that too. There are
Speaker 2: definitely ways that anyone can figure this out.
Speaker 1: But as long as we're banding about some facts, why
Speaker 1: is the sea such a pretty blue, Well, same reason
Speaker 1: the sky is the water absorbs the redder part of
Speaker 1: the visible spectrum and then the shorter, bluer wavelengths bounce
Speaker 1: back at our faces. Most scientists, especially oceanologists, agree that
Speaker 1: this is very pretty.
Speaker 2: The one thing it reminds me of is how the
Speaker 2: color of blue and shallower water changes based on the
Speaker 2: color of the sand. So if you have really white sand,
Speaker 2: you have really bright turquoise in the shallow water, and
Speaker 2: then as the sand gets different colors, you get kind
Speaker 2: of different colors of blue. So it matters what the
Speaker 2: bottom is. If you have like a dark rocky bottom
Speaker 2: or like a volcanic it's different.
Speaker 1: And I didn't realize that a lot of white sand
Speaker 1: is coral sand, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of it came out of a
Speaker 2: parrotfish's but why Yeah. Fish are my favorite fish. They
Speaker 2: have a beak like a parrot and they come in
Speaker 2: all these like teal, yellow, green, red, magenta, like amazing colors,
Speaker 2: And they have a beak like a parrotfish, and they
Speaker 2: a bite. They scrape algae off the reef. Basically, they
Speaker 2: are the lawnmowers of the reef. A very important job.
Speaker 2: And as they're doing that scraping, they get bits of
Speaker 2: dead coral or rocks, and then they digest that and
Speaker 2: they poop sand. So if you're on a reef with
Speaker 2: a lot of parrotfish, and this is where it's actually
Speaker 2: very cool to be diving, and you look out at
Speaker 2: the landscape of the reef and you see all these
Speaker 2: fish swimming over it, and a lot of them are parrotfish,
Speaker 2: and they're just like leaving trails of sand in the
Speaker 2: water behind them. But it looks like these like con
Speaker 2: trails of parrotfish poop, as if the sea was the
Speaker 2: sky and they were airplanes. I had no idea. It's
Speaker 2: pretty amazing. So some beaches are like ninety something percent
Speaker 2: like parrotfish poop sand. I mean it, it is coral
Speaker 2: and rocks and stuff, but it's like that's how it's
Speaker 2: been pulverized. You're like, thanks dudes, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: And so there's a push right now to protect these
Speaker 2: fish because they're doing such important work of taking the
Speaker 2: algae off the reef. Because algae grows so much faster
Speaker 2: than coral. Coral only grows a centimeter or so a year,
Speaker 2: whereas algae, like plants, just go gangbusters. And as we're
Speaker 2: putting in more nutrients are running off into the ocean
Speaker 2: from different kinds of human pollution, agriculture in particular, you're
Speaker 2: seeing that the algae is basically being fertilized, so it's
Speaker 2: growing even faster and there's more of it. So we
Speaker 2: need these parrotfish, these lawnmowers more than ever, and so
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of people working on campaigns around the
Speaker 2: world to protect.
Speaker 1: Parrotfish, protect sand butts.
Speaker 2: Protect the sand poopers.
Speaker 1: What's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in the ocean?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's such a good question. Oddly because we were
Speaker 2: just talking about the colors of blue, the thing that
Speaker 2: comes to mind for me is just really really clear
Speaker 2: and being able to see like one hundred feet, and
Speaker 2: that's pretty amazing that just that clarity of being underwater,
Speaker 2: being and really being able to see.
Speaker 1: Here, we veered off into a whole discussion about the
Speaker 1: horrors of shrimp, but I'm just gonna stick with this
Speaker 1: format of a happy first half of the episode. More
Speaker 1: on shrimp in just a few minutes, just a few
Speaker 1: more wistful, positive things, and then we're going to get
Speaker 1: to Patreon questions and ocean sets. I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: stick with this vision. It's hard.
Speaker 2: Do you have a.
Speaker 1: Favorite movie or book set in, set in or about
Speaker 1: the ocean. Do you have like an escapist movie where
Speaker 1: you're like, ah, love that ocean?
Speaker 2: The life Aquatic is pretty good? Really yeah, I really
Speaker 2: cracks me up, especially because it captures like the ridiculousness
Speaker 2: of light on boats and like, yeah, trying to capture
Speaker 2: rare creatures and get along in tight living quarders with
Speaker 2: a bunch of weird scientists and yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 2: And I'm writing a children's about the ocean. Oh, it's
Speaker 2: about a little black girl from Brooklyn who goes to
Speaker 2: the Caribbean, falls in love with the ocean, and decides
Speaker 2: to try to save it. But on earth to you
Speaker 2: with that idea? I don't know. It just like came
Speaker 2: to me to dream. Do you have a title for
Speaker 2: it yet?
Speaker 1: Can you say?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Not yet.
Speaker 2: I'm just like starting to finish up the very first draft,
Speaker 2: so I don't have an agent or anything for it yet,
Speaker 2: but stay tuned. Oh my god, heads up.
Speaker 1: If you are a literary agent listening to this and
Speaker 1: you're not the one to reach out to doctor Johnson
Speaker 1: to get this idea. Made I feel bad for you
Speaker 1: because this book is going to be so good. Also,
Speaker 1: as she was grabbing something out of her purse at
Speaker 1: this moment, she told me a very wonderful story and
Speaker 1: I would have loved to have mm hmm, that's so great.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: I never leave the help about right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a friend who does a lot of
Speaker 2: theater works. Had I met up with her when I
Speaker 2: was just coming back from a trip out to Long Island,
Speaker 2: and I was telling her about it, and she introduced
Speaker 2: me to another person as a marine biologist. And then
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, but I didn't even like use
Speaker 2: my snorkel this weekend and like pull it out of
Speaker 2: my person. She was like, I would never even use
Speaker 2: that in like a play. It's just so over the
Speaker 2: top that you carry this. I know, so sometimes I
Speaker 2: pull snorkels out of my handbag.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is where we're going to take a turn.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm ready.
Speaker 1: We're going to ask some questions from Patreons. Now this
Speaker 1: is we've talked all about how wonderful the ocean is.
Speaker 1: It's time to get into maybe the darker stuff. We're like,
Speaker 1: this is where like the sad music would be cute,
Speaker 1: like you've really fallen in love with a character in
Speaker 1: a movie and then you find out that, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, they have a horrible disease. So okay,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Let's get into this sad stuff via
Speaker 1: questions from the ologies Patreon patrons. But okay, before we do,
Speaker 1: because this is an Encore presentation, we have the power
Speaker 1: to time travel two years into the future, almost to
Speaker 1: the day that this interview was recorded, so we checked
Speaker 1: back in with doctor Anna Johnson about what she's been
Speaker 1: up to. Okay, you're going to want to hear this.
Speaker 2: Hello, Alogy's crew, this is doctor Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson. I
Speaker 2: am so glad to be back with you. I am
Speaker 2: coming to you live from my closet in my apartment
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn, where lots of podcasts I think are getting
Speaker 2: made these days in various closets around the country, and
Speaker 2: I thought I would give you a little update to
Speaker 2: let you know what's happened since twenty eighteen when it
Speaker 2: comes to my work and the ocean. So I started
Speaker 2: a think tank called Urban Ocean Lab for the future
Speaker 2: of coastal cities, so I get to nerd out about
Speaker 2: ocean and climate and urban policy and design, which is
Speaker 2: a total blast. And maybe the most exciting thing actually
Speaker 2: is that on this very podcast, when Ali was interviewing me,
Speaker 2: I talked about wanting a book agent, and Anthony Mattero
Speaker 2: from CIA actually heard this interview while he was on
Speaker 2: a treadmill and apparently almost fell off and found my
Speaker 2: email address and got in touch with me. And we
Speaker 2: now have signed two book deals with Penguin Random House,
Speaker 2: and the first one is coming out in just a
Speaker 2: few weeks in September on the twenty second, and it's
Speaker 2: called All we Can Save, Truth, Courage and Solutions for
Speaker 2: the Climate Crisis. It's an anthology of essays and poems
Speaker 2: and quotes and illustrations by women climate leaders that I've
Speaker 2: co edited with doctor Catherine Wilkinson, and it's really beautiful.
Speaker 2: So if you want to learn more about who the
Speaker 2: contributors are and other details, you can find us at
Speaker 2: All we Can Save dot Earth. But one of the
Speaker 2: reasons I'm here back with you today is because I
Speaker 2: have just started my own podcast with Spotify and Gimlet,
Speaker 2: co created with Alex Bloomberg. And he and I are
Speaker 2: co hosting it as well. It's called How to Save
Speaker 2: a Planet, and it's all about climate solutions and what
Speaker 2: we can all do to effect change at the level
Speaker 2: that really matters. So I hope you will find us
Speaker 2: and tune in on Spotify or wherever else you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. Yeah, because we've got some work to do
Speaker 2: when it comes to the climate. So the last thing
Speaker 2: I'll say is we're coming up on election season, and
Speaker 2: I hope you will all think about a climate and
Speaker 2: the ocean when you're deciding who to vote for, because
Speaker 2: that really matters, and we are running at a time
Speaker 2: to get it right when it comes to the environment,
Speaker 2: so please vote. And the last last thing I'll say
Speaker 2: is that when I came on this show two years ago,
Speaker 2: I got the loveliest, war most welcome from the whole
Speaker 2: ologies community. My comments were just overflowing with sweet things.
Speaker 2: So thank you all for being so darn wonderful and
Speaker 2: keep it up, okay.
Speaker 1: In side note, back in twenty eighteen, we didn't have
Speaker 1: sponsors of the show, just wonderful patrons who helped with
Speaker 1: all the expenses. But now since we have sponsors, we
Speaker 1: can donate a portion of the proceeds to a cause
Speaker 1: relevant to the ologist. So I'm choosing to donate it
Speaker 1: to Urban Ocean Lab. Urban Ocean Lab harnesses collective wisdom
Speaker 1: to envision and design targeted solutions for the future of
Speaker 1: coastal cities, and that drives development of policy frameworks, and
Speaker 1: that drives development of policy frameworks to catalyze legislative change.
Speaker 1: So Urban Ocean Lab is a five oh one c
Speaker 1: three nonprofit founded by doctor Johnson herself, and you can
Speaker 1: learn more at Urbanoceanlab dot org. And so that donation
Speaker 1: was made possible by spon who you will hear about. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: onto your ocean questions. They are salient ones.
Speaker 2: Let's dive in.
Speaker 1: So Becca asks how bad, just point blank, how bad
Speaker 1: have we found up the oceans? Is it salvageable or
Speaker 1: are we just playing a sad waiting gabe. So she says,
Speaker 1: it makes me really emotional to think about the disgusting
Speaker 1: and terrifying things down there. Who are going to die
Speaker 1: because people are assholes? And then Mama Awesome said, this
Speaker 1: is also my question.
Speaker 2: So this is like, this is the big question, how bad,
Speaker 2: really bad? Y's the answer, It's really bad?
Speaker 1: Oh man, this is like the scene where a corseted
Speaker 1: heroin cough's blood into a white kerchief. Here we go.
Speaker 2: I mean, we have done an amazing job of messing
Speaker 2: up the ocean on a planetary scale. We've completely changed
Speaker 2: the chemistry of seawater through polluting the air with carbon dioxide.
Speaker 2: The ocean is absorbing thirty percent of that, and so
Speaker 2: it's acidifying the oceans, which makes it hard for things
Speaker 2: with shells to grow their shells, makes it hard for
Speaker 2: fish to smell their homes and navigate, and make them
Speaker 2: a little bit delusional and not run away from predators.
Speaker 2: There's all these different things that we're just learning about
Speaker 2: that changing the very chemistry of the ocean is doing
Speaker 2: so that's pretty bad. And just the warming of it.
Speaker 2: All these creatures have been adapted to specific temperature ranges
Speaker 2: and now those ranges are changing, and so they're trying
Speaker 2: to migrate so that they don't like melt. Their metabolisms
Speaker 2: can't necessarily handle all this. So between the acidification and
Speaker 2: the warming that are associated with climate change, and then
Speaker 2: overfishing is a big one. We've taken out about ninety
Speaker 2: percent of the big fish in the ocean since nineteen fifty.
Speaker 2: Right now, ninety percent of fish populations around the world
Speaker 2: are either fished to capacity or overfished. So there's ten
Speaker 2: percent that are like not fully exploited. The other ninety
Speaker 2: percent are fully exploited or over exploited, so there's not
Speaker 2: like a lot of room left to take more. And
Speaker 2: we've also been fishing further from shore into deeper waters,
Speaker 2: using like more and more high tech tools, all the
Speaker 2: like radar and sonar and helicopters and these things that
Speaker 2: were developed to fight wars are being used to find
Speaker 2: the last fish. So we have these like really high
Speaker 2: tech boats and high tech equipment that we have to
Speaker 2: use because the fish should become so rare and so.
Speaker 2: And then with coastal development, we're destroying the habitats on
Speaker 2: the coast, whether that's mangroves or wetlands or whatever that is.
Speaker 2: And those are the nursery habitats for the sea, and
Speaker 2: those are the natural filtration systems from land to sea.
Speaker 1: As long as we're in the sad half, let's get
Speaker 1: some straight talk about shrimp, one of my favorite foods,
Speaker 1: which I also always assumed was relatively sustainable because they
Speaker 1: are like the ocean's cockroaches. They're small, they're gross, they're plentiful.
Speaker 2: Right, percent of shrimp is horrifically unsustainable. Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's either caught with like a net the size of
Speaker 2: a football field in industrial fishing, that's like dragged along
Speaker 2: the seafloor, taking up everything, and a large portion of
Speaker 2: what's caught, like up to half or so of what's caught,
Speaker 2: might be thrown back dead and wasted. I catch. So
Speaker 2: that's no good, and that proportion can actually be even worse,
Speaker 2: and it, you know, bulldozes the habitat while that's happening
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's terrible. What about farmed fish? Is there such
Speaker 1: a army?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So farm shrimp is often farmed by bulldozing mangroves
Speaker 2: along the coast to make these ponds for them. And
Speaker 2: the mangroves are the nursery habitat for all the fish
Speaker 2: on the reef. They filter pollution running off from shore.
Speaker 2: They and they protect places from storms like in the
Speaker 2: tsunami in Indonesia ten years ago now more. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: places that had intact mangroves fared a lot better because
Speaker 2: that buffers the waves. And so when we bulldoze that ecosystem,
Speaker 2: that's the protection, it's the nursery habitat, it's all these
Speaker 2: functions that we're losing, and then we just pollute it
Speaker 2: with shrimp growing in high density and feed them all
Speaker 2: this stuff and antibiotics as we're growing them in such
Speaker 2: close quarters that they're all getting sick. So it's not
Speaker 2: really a great way to do it either. And then
Speaker 2: there's been some exposees in the last few years that
Speaker 2: a lot of shrimp grown in Southeast Asia is probably
Speaker 2: peeled by slaves.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So whether you care about like the human rights angle
Speaker 2: or the sustainability angle, i'd stay away from shrimp.
Speaker 1: So ask your fish sellers where the shrimp comes from.
Speaker 1: Ayana says there are domestic shrimp farms in Florida and Oregon.
Speaker 1: They're doing a really good job bringing less guilt laid
Speaker 1: in shrimp to market, but it'll cost a little more
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons.
Speaker 2: But if you're not paying like twenty dollars a pound
Speaker 2: for shrimp, it's not good for the planet or for
Speaker 2: oh my god. And it's all like laden with these
Speaker 2: antibiotics and chemicals from the processing, so it's not healthy
Speaker 2: for you either.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I eat.
Speaker 2: So the fact that it's the most popular seafood in America,
Speaker 2: and like people don't know their day. It's all these
Speaker 2: like buffets. It's probably in my college. I'm a monster. Yeah,
Speaker 2: well that's the thing, Like people don't know about it.
Speaker 1: I thought they were like you'd figure like, oh, they're
Speaker 1: lower maybe on the food chain, and they're kind of buggy,
Speaker 1: they're a little bit insect like maybe they're maybe it's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my god, I had known. I think the
Speaker 2: challenge is that And this is another one of those
Speaker 2: moments when I realized had a realization about ocean conservation,
Speaker 2: is that traditions don't necessarily scale. Like the things that
Speaker 2: humans could eat and the ways we could fish and
Speaker 2: use the ocean when there were you know, one billion
Speaker 2: people on the planet or less. It's just very different
Speaker 2: what we can get away with as we're approaching eight
Speaker 2: we just can't do things in the same way. And
Speaker 2: that's a really hard conversation to have with communities that
Speaker 2: have these strong traditions tied to the sea, but whose
Speaker 2: populations are growing and are being impacted by what's happening
Speaker 2: in other places. Because the ocean is all connected so yeah,
Speaker 2: we're at this moment where we just need to rethink
Speaker 2: our relationship with the ocean. And that doesn't mean we
Speaker 2: can't still enjoy it, and there is such thing as
Speaker 2: sustainable seafood, but we just need to be more careful
Speaker 2: and change our expectations for what we're how we're going
Speaker 2: to be able to use it, and be ready to
Speaker 2: make some adaptations.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking about cruise Ship Shrimpface.
Speaker 2: What a horror show. It's a house of course.
Speaker 1: Listen, I warned you that this episode would be more
Speaker 1: on the tragic side, So let's just dive deeper.
Speaker 2: So between coastal development and overfishing and climate impacts and
Speaker 2: then just like straight up pollution. Yeah, everybody knows at
Speaker 2: this point about plastic pollution in the ocean, but there's
Speaker 2: all so a lot of pollution that comes from the
Speaker 2: runoff of all the pesticides and herbicides they put on
Speaker 2: to our farms. When it rains, runs into rivers, and
Speaker 2: that runs into the sea. So even if you're inland,
Speaker 2: there's still that connection. So yeah, we've done a really
Speaker 2: good job of thoroughly screwing up the ocean, but there
Speaker 2: are a lot of reasons to not give up, because
Speaker 2: I'm also extremely good at sitting on my couch eating
Speaker 2: popcorn and watching trashy television, and so I would like
Speaker 2: hone that craft. If I'm not in the ocean, We're
Speaker 2: just not worth it anymore. And so instead I'm like
Speaker 2: seasons behind on everything and really focused on this because
Speaker 2: I feel like we have an incredible opportunity to really
Speaker 2: make a difference. We've seen so many examples of things
Speaker 2: that work that when you change the way that fishing happens,
Speaker 2: when you establish a protected area, when you work with
Speaker 2: hotels and companies to change the way they manage their waste,
Speaker 2: when you work with farmers to explain how they go
Speaker 2: snick to the sea and they change their practices. There
Speaker 2: are just more and more and more stories about things
Speaker 2: that are working, and so it's about replicating what's working
Speaker 2: and scaling that that work. So definitely don't give up.
Speaker 2: But I obviously I'm not sugarcoating it either, like it
Speaker 2: is bad. The ocean is different than it was when
Speaker 2: we were born and we're not even that old. Wow,
Speaker 2: So the ocean that I saw in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: when I first saw the ocean is different now and
Speaker 2: perhaps permanently. So the way that I deal with this
Speaker 2: sort of like existential crisis of like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: the planet is dying. What do I do? Should I
Speaker 2: just like drink a bottle of whisky and forget about it?
Speaker 2: The answer is like, no, I can't be hungover because
Speaker 2: there's all this great work to do, and it's a
Speaker 2: matter It's not a matter of like zero, like a
Speaker 2: totally dead ocean, or like one hundred percent healthy ocean.
Speaker 2: It's where we're going to fall in between, because with
Speaker 2: eight billion people on the planet, we can't go back
Speaker 2: to like a perfectly pristine ocean, but we can aim
Speaker 2: for eighty percent or sixty percent or even thirty percent
Speaker 2: is much better than zero in our livelihoods, our food security,
Speaker 2: our health hangs in the balance. So depending on the day,
Speaker 2: am either fighting for like twenty percent or eighty percent,
Speaker 2: but like, any of it is better than zero?
Speaker 1: And now, okay. Ocean cleanup. Carrie Stewart and Rob Smith
Speaker 1: both had the same question, does supporting a group like
Speaker 1: for Ocean really help clean up the ocean of plastics? Like,
Speaker 1: are any of those methods of getting things out of
Speaker 1: the ocean? Are those really going to work. Are those like,
Speaker 1: do we want to believe that they work?
Speaker 2: We definitely want to believe that they work. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: do we want to believe that they work? And a
Speaker 2: lot of people have been sort of fooled into thinking
Speaker 2: that that problem is solved, like there's this technology that
Speaker 2: we'll just like clean it up and we don't have
Speaker 2: to worry about it anymore. But that technology is far
Speaker 2: from being proven, very far from being proven. And if
Speaker 2: we think about the challenges of cleaning up something as
Speaker 2: big as the ocean God, which is, you know, seventy
Speaker 2: two percent of the planet, that's a tall order. And
Speaker 2: not to say we shouldn't try, but I think the
Speaker 2: question is where are we going to devote our resources
Speaker 2: and energy? And so one when I think about it,
Speaker 2: I think about how do we stop the flow of
Speaker 2: plastic into the ocean.
Speaker 1: This is a good point, and gird your hearts for
Speaker 1: another horrifying statistic.
Speaker 2: Because the cleanups don't matter if we're still dumping one
Speaker 2: ton of plastic into the ocean every four seconds. What
Speaker 2: I worked with the group Lonely Well, I've been working
Speaker 2: with them on making these calculations. How much are we
Speaker 2: actually putting in, Where is it coming from? What types
Speaker 2: of sources is it? And that's the number that we
Speaker 2: came up with. One ton of plastic is entering the
Speaker 2: ocean every four seconds globally, and so when we think
Speaker 2: about that, I've spend my time thinking about how to
Speaker 2: prevent every second of plastic entering the ocean.
Speaker 1: So quick history, how long has plastic been around? So
Speaker 1: technically since eighteen fifty six, but it wasn't in until
Speaker 1: World War Two that mass production started. Now, around nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four, DuPont and Dow Chemical invented and licensed expanded polystyrene,
Speaker 1: which is used in packaging and bottles. Although there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of different types of plastic. So yeah, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties we saw an explosion of plastics in commercial uses. Now,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven's classic film The Graduate was sadly on
Speaker 1: point about one piece of career advice.
Speaker 3: I just want to say one word to deal, just
Speaker 3: one word yes, sir Ian listening, yes or plastics?
Speaker 2: So what can we do not? And I think beach
Speaker 2: cleanups are great, they raise awareness, they built community. We
Speaker 2: obviously should pick up what we can. I think the
Speaker 2: focus should be more on coastal cleanups as opposed to
Speaker 2: weigh out in the ocean, because once you get to
Speaker 2: weigh out in the ocean, you're dealing with a lot
Speaker 2: of like interesting physics and oceanography challenges, but also the
Speaker 2: fact that if you're just scooping everything up, you're scooping
Speaker 2: up the marine life as well. So there's a lot
Speaker 2: of opportunity to just clean up along the coast, but
Speaker 2: then to really force corporations and governments to do their part.
Speaker 2: This shouldn't be about you and me going up and
Speaker 2: picking up straws and bottles from the coast. It should
Speaker 2: be about us refusing to use them. But it should
Speaker 2: should really be like corporations changing the way they are
Speaker 2: manufacturing things, and governments improving their recycling capacity and demanding
Speaker 2: that companies produce only recyclable things. So much of the
Speaker 2: plastic that's produced is not even recyclable.
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't know that. Just checked out a nat
Speaker 1: GEO article from last year that said ninety one percent
Speaker 1: of the world's plastic isn't recycled, and I audibly whimpered
Speaker 1: in a public coffee shop. So you know how plastics
Speaker 1: usually have a triangle with a number in the middle
Speaker 1: on the bottom. Not all of those will be reincarnated
Speaker 1: into other objects. One in two usually can four and
Speaker 1: five are baby and three, six and seven are usually
Speaker 1: not accepted by recycling programs. So read up on the
Speaker 1: hot goss between the numbers because some types of plastics
Speaker 1: even contain fun chemicals like PPAs that have shown to
Speaker 1: contribute to infertility. Did I warn you that this podcast
Speaker 1: be a bummer, because I know I did. Welcome to Hell.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Luckily, people like Ayana are out there working on better
Speaker 1: public policy. She's like the Amal Clooney of the sea. Also,
Speaker 1: some folks in the other room while we were recording this,
Speaker 1: we're having kind of a spirited discussion. So if you
Speaker 1: hear their chatter, just pretend we're having a fun time
Speaker 1: at a cocktail party chatting about preventing environmental doom.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of room for improvement there, but we're
Speaker 2: seeing I think we're actually seeing some really positive signs
Speaker 2: in that direction. The UN has been organizing something called
Speaker 2: the Clean Seas Initiative, and they have gotten I think
Speaker 2: three dozen countries to sign on and make commitments to
Speaker 2: reducing ocean plastic pollution. So we're starting to see commitments
Speaker 2: at not just at the individual level. I will, you know,
Speaker 2: give up bags and straws and caramun water bottle and
Speaker 2: these are all great things to do. I do them.
Speaker 2: But what really inspires me is Kenya and Rwanda banning
Speaker 2: plastic bags, Costa Rica pledging to go completely without single
Speaker 2: use plastics by twenty twenty. The EU is starting to
Speaker 2: make some big policies, and so all around the world
Speaker 2: we're starting to see these shifts. I think Chile just
Speaker 2: ban plastic bags as well. So yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of good stuff happening there. We're starting to see a
Speaker 2: lot of momentum there, and I think that's great because
Speaker 2: it's also an opening to talk about ocean problems more generally.
Speaker 2: Great now that you care about, you know, a straw
Speaker 2: and a turtle's nose, like, let's talk about let's talk
Speaker 2: about what else is happening to those turtles. Let's talk
Speaker 2: about overfishing and poaching and the state of the habitats
Speaker 2: that they are trying to live in. Right, So what
Speaker 2: you're saying is the tide is changing, the tide is turning.
Speaker 1: I of course I got this question, and I'll just
Speaker 1: touch on it just in case there's anything that you
Speaker 1: didn't just answering that. But Maria Kumro, Jen Borlck, and
Speaker 1: Sarah Millington all wanted to know how much positive impact
Speaker 1: on marine plastic debris will the plastic straw ban really have.
Speaker 1: They all kind of want to know, like what's your
Speaker 1: thought on like plastic straws or the problem like they are.
Speaker 1: But essentially, the.
Speaker 2: Plastic straws are a really big problem because they cannot
Speaker 2: be recycled. They're like too small for municipal recycling to
Speaker 2: deal with. Okay, So that's one of the reasons they're
Speaker 2: a particular problem. There's obviously a lot of other problems.
Speaker 2: We're using a million plastic bottles every minute, so that's
Speaker 2: not good.
Speaker 1: Just personal shout out to companies like LK and Hosley
Speaker 1: Taylor for making these public water bottle filling stations so
Speaker 1: we could stop buying plastic bottles when we're parched and
Speaker 1: in public. It's they're so great. Look for the little
Speaker 1: bottle silhouette near a water fountain. You can roll up
Speaker 1: with your thermos and just filler up boss for zero dollars.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 1: And they have these little counters that took off the
Speaker 1: number of plastic bottles they prevented from being on Earth,
Speaker 1: and so when your bottle's done filling, the number goes
Speaker 1: up one more. It's very fulfilling.
Speaker 2: And bags, I think we the average plastic bag is
Speaker 2: used for twelve minutes before it's thrown out. So there's
Speaker 2: a lot of other issues. But straws are problematic because
Speaker 2: they can't be recycled, and they also are one of
Speaker 2: the top items that you find in beach cleanups? Are
Speaker 2: they So they're like they're small, right, so they kind
Speaker 2: of like escape garbage cans and like people, they just
Speaker 2: they end up on the beach a lot, and so
Speaker 2: that means they end up in the ocean a lot.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they're one of the top five items that
Speaker 2: the Ocean Conservancy has been consistently finding when they do
Speaker 2: these organize these global international ocean cleanups, and they collect
Speaker 2: data on you know, what are what is really out there?
Speaker 2: Like what are the top ten? And plastic straws are
Speaker 2: always in the top five and number one? Yeah, and
Speaker 2: you guess what number one is?
Speaker 1: Oh, no, I would say bottles, but I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's cigarette butts.
Speaker 2: What the number one beach polition, like by the number
Speaker 2: of items, not by like the mass of them. A
Speaker 2: cigarette butts, and it's those plastic filters at the end,
Speaker 2: and of course that's like all the chemicals from the cigarette.
Speaker 2: It's like a lot of them are trapped in that filter.
Speaker 2: So they're pretty toxic too, So don't just throw your
Speaker 2: cigarette butts in the sand.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, they're like plastic cancer tampons.
Speaker 2: That's the worst. It's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is funny that culturally it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I never drop a wrapper on the ground, but people
Speaker 1: like I just like a cigarette butt. Where where do
Speaker 1: they think that goes? Like raccoons are eating them? No,
Speaker 1: nobody wants those. That's really illuminating. I had no idea,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't sure if like plastic straws were like
Speaker 1: being a scapegoat for or if they were, But that's
Speaker 1: good to know.
Speaker 2: I think they also are not necessarily escape books scapegoat,
Speaker 2: but symbolic, right because for most people they're completely unnecessary,
Speaker 2: like reapply your lipstick because that's your issue, or like
Speaker 2: whatever it is. I think there's a really important exception
Speaker 2: that needs to be made for the disability community. There
Speaker 2: are people who need to use straws. And that's fine,
Speaker 2: because that would be a scapegoat if we're saying, like
Speaker 2: there are a few people who really need them because
Speaker 2: that's how they drink, that's fine, but I think so
Speaker 2: there's no need. Absolutely we should avoid making these blanket
Speaker 2: statements that that are problematic for folks who need them,
Speaker 2: but most of us really really really don't need them.
Speaker 2: And the way that drinks are made, they just like
Speaker 2: come with straws in them. So I think even just
Speaker 2: the flip from straws automatically to straws only on request
Speaker 2: would make a really big difference.
Speaker 1: What about those lids that are like, no worry, you
Speaker 1: don't need a straw, but they're more plastic.
Speaker 2: I think that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's I thought.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is probably like an uncouth opinion, but
Speaker 2: I thought that Starbucks like really punted on that one.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's already like, you know, adult sippy cups
Speaker 2: is like their whole thing, and I just just like
Speaker 2: doubled down on it.
Speaker 1: I saw that I saw someone drinking out of that,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what is that like host of straw?
Speaker 1: And then I read something later that day that was like.
Speaker 2: This is plastic. I was like, goddamn silly. Although the
Speaker 2: alternative which I do. When I have like an urgent
Speaker 2: need for an iced coffee and they try, I always
Speaker 2: order it in a paper cup, oh without a lid.
Speaker 2: Good to know. So that's my hack for that because obviously,
Speaker 2: like ice coffee is delicious, and I sometimes they'll get
Speaker 2: enough sleep, so I get it. I just you know,
Speaker 2: there are ways to work around this or I think
Speaker 2: a really big other opportunity for that anyone can do,
Speaker 2: and that it shouldn't be just about individual responsibility, but
Speaker 2: like restaurants and cafes should do is ask you do
Speaker 2: you want it for here? Or to go? Because if
Speaker 2: you go into a cafe and you look around, everyone's
Speaker 2: using like to go containers and they're all sitting there,
Speaker 2: and it drives me bonkers, I know, and I think
Speaker 2: it's like no one wants to wash the dishes, or
Speaker 2: they haven't actually built these cafes with enough dishwashers or whatever.
Speaker 2: So I think there's a shift that needs to happen
Speaker 2: there and just ask me do you want it for here?
Speaker 2: To go? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I drank a cup of tea in a cafe before
Speaker 1: this that was given to me in a paper cup
Speaker 1: no lid, thank god, but still and I got it
Speaker 1: and I had it in my hand and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh no, yeah, oh I don't need this jerk. Okay,
Speaker 1: question about the garbage patch. Let's talk about the garbage patch.
Speaker 2: BLAIRR.
Speaker 1: Nelson and Eva both ask like, what's going on with
Speaker 1: the Great Pacific garbage Patch? Which honestly sounds like it
Speaker 1: sounds like not even a real thing. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know it's very real, but it's just like so fancify
Speaker 1: horribly named. And then what should we do about it?
Speaker 1: And like what are we and what's happening with like
Speaker 1: microbeads and tiny, tiny particulate plastic.
Speaker 2: So for the Great Pacific garbage Patch, that's a thing.
Speaker 2: There's actually so the reason that it exists is because
Speaker 2: of ocean currents that sort of swirl around in these
Speaker 2: gyres and then collect things.
Speaker 1: So a gyre is like a spiral or a whirl.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a howlick of the ocean.
Speaker 2: And so since there's plastic that gets concentrated into this patch,
Speaker 2: most of the plastic in that patch is really small,
Speaker 2: so it's like the size of your pinky fingernail. It's
Speaker 2: not like a bunch of bottles floating on the surface.
Speaker 2: It's not actually like an island you could walk across.
Speaker 2: And so I think the initial reporting on that was
Speaker 2: great because it got people to care about it, but
Speaker 2: it also created sort of a false image in our
Speaker 2: heads of what it looks like. It's just it's a
Speaker 2: higher concentration of plastic in that part of the ocean,
Speaker 2: so it's actually like a little bit, which makes it
Speaker 2: a lot harder to clean up, right, because it is
Speaker 2: quite diffuse.
Speaker 1: I watch some videos and the plastics hauled from the
Speaker 1: ocean's range from like mountains of soggy fishing nets to tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny flecks of broken down bottles and toys. And the
Speaker 1: Great Pacific garbage batch is estimated to be between the
Speaker 1: size of Texas to the size of Russia, somewhere between there. Now,
Speaker 1: it may be the largest on the planet, but it's
Speaker 1: not alone. It has other garbage patch friends.
Speaker 2: And there's one of these garbage patches in every ocean gyre.
Speaker 2: So there are five major ocean gyers, and there's a
Speaker 2: garbage concentration, our garbage patch in every single one. So
Speaker 2: what we can do about it is lobby for changes
Speaker 2: in corporate and government practices regarding plastic to prevent this
Speaker 2: one ton of plastic entering the ocean every four seconds.
Speaker 2: We can obviously change our individual behavior, and we can
Speaker 2: support confservation groups that are doing really practical things to
Speaker 2: turn that around. So one of the there's a few
Speaker 2: groups that I think are really exciting. There's Lonely Well
Speaker 2: is doing really good work on the corporate level, gathering
Speaker 2: together partners for that to push there and working with
Speaker 2: the UN. The Ocean Conservancy started something called the Trash
Speaker 2: Free Seas Alliance that's also working with corporations and governments
Speaker 2: to shift and the status Quo surf Frider, which is
Speaker 2: an organization that's focused on the surfing community and activating
Speaker 2: people who love the ocean to help protect it. They
Speaker 2: have been really active in campaigns against single use plastic.
Speaker 2: I think that's the term that we need to think
Speaker 2: about as like single use plastic. There are certainly some
Speaker 2: like medical uses of plastic that I'm happy to have for,
Speaker 2: you know, for safety and sanitary reasons, but I think
Speaker 2: just like the disposability of everything all the time in
Speaker 2: our daily lives is problematic and actually creates this mindset
Speaker 2: of like, oh, I'll just get a new one or
Speaker 2: I'll just whatever, and it's like feeding this which is
Speaker 2: really unsustainable, consumerist, disposable mindset that I think is not
Speaker 2: super great, not good. There's a lot of things we
Speaker 2: can do about it, so support groups like that, and
Speaker 2: there's also a lot of there's like cool low tech
Speaker 2: solutions that are out there. And my fra one is
Speaker 2: called mister trash Wheel, which is basically like you know
Speaker 2: those old fashioned like steamboats that had like a big
Speaker 2: water wheel at the back. It's basically like this huge
Speaker 2: water wheel and then behind it is a dumpster.
Speaker 1: Oh so I just checked out a video of mister
Speaker 1: trash Wheel and it's the happiest I've been during the
Speaker 1: entire making of this episode. I was not prepared for
Speaker 1: how cute this garbage gobbling machine is. So picture a
Speaker 1: water wheel on one side, and then a domed canopy
Speaker 1: that looks kind of like a covered wagon, but with
Speaker 1: one end a big mouth fed by a conveyor belt
Speaker 1: of trash. Atop this whole structure two huge googly eyes
Speaker 1: giving this giant trash apparatus the look of this hungry,
Speaker 1: floating earth saving cartoon. I want to hug it, even
Speaker 1: though it's the size of like a motor home and
Speaker 1: also probably very smelly and would eat me and throw
Speaker 1: me in a dumpster, but with good intentions.
Speaker 2: And so you put this water wheel in a harbor
Speaker 2: or a river, and as pollution runs down the river,
Speaker 2: it gets sort of funneled towards this water wheel. And
Speaker 2: then as this wheel spins, it picks up bottles or
Speaker 2: tires or whatever is floating down and just like deposits
Speaker 2: it as it turns in the dumpster behind it. And
Speaker 2: then you take away the dumpster and like dispose of
Speaker 2: it properly in the dump And so you're preventing all
Speaker 2: this stuff from ever even getting to the sea. So
Speaker 2: this is in Baltimore. There's mister trash Wheel and then
Speaker 2: there's Professor trash Wheel. So there's two. And they did
Speaker 2: like a big social media review where they like revealed
Speaker 2: that Professor Trasheel was a woman, which I was obviously amused.
Speaker 2: So stuff like that I think is really promising. And
Speaker 2: so instead of thinking about like cleaning up the middle
Speaker 2: of the ocean, there's so much that we can be
Speaker 2: doing closer to land and should be doing.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that you're like, oh wait, we didn't have
Speaker 1: something to prevent that from going out there exists whole time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, do we Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh my god Iolanthe wants to know how can we
Speaker 1: save the Great Barrier reef?
Speaker 2: We could stop climate change? Okay, do you like the thing?
Speaker 1: Cool?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What about sunscreens? I hear that's a factor.
Speaker 2: It is a factor. And Hawaii just banned these sunscreens
Speaker 2: with these chemicals that are harmful to corals I can't
Speaker 2: remember the name of, like oxyxy spend spend.
Speaker 1: They also screw up your hormones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 1: So it's worth it to do a little more reading
Speaker 1: on chemicals like oxybenzone, which can lower testosterone in adolescent boys.
Speaker 1: It can leach into mother's breast milk and cause endercrine
Speaker 1: disruption among humans. So even if you have a personal
Speaker 1: beef against coral reefs and you don't care if they die,
Speaker 1: you might want to switch to mineral sunscreens just for
Speaker 1: the sake of your own gonats.
Speaker 2: Basically, we should only be using mineral sunscreens like with
Speaker 2: zinc and like that make you look weird and pasty,
Speaker 2: like that's the one you want or just what I
Speaker 2: do is like I just wear long sleeves, are sitting
Speaker 2: in the shade when I've had too much sun. Also
Speaker 2: super effective.
Speaker 1: The mineral ones are great for summer goths.
Speaker 2: It's a great way to do that. One hundred Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think it's great that Hawaii is leading the
Speaker 2: way on that. So that makes a difference. I mean,
Speaker 2: fishermen that I've talked to in the Caribbean said, when
Speaker 2: then cruise ships come in and all the tourists like
Speaker 2: slather on all the sunscreen and then jump in the
Speaker 2: ocean and go snorkeling, it looks like this oil slick
Speaker 2: of like shiny iridescent stuff on the surface, and they're like,
Speaker 2: obviously this is bad for the fish and the corals.
Speaker 2: So it's a problem in places where there are high
Speaker 2: densities of people more so. But there's tons of great
Speaker 2: options of mineral sunscreen. So just look for things with
Speaker 2: zinc in them.
Speaker 1: Okay, And my question here, what's going to bone the
Speaker 1: ocean more? Is it going to be the acidification, the
Speaker 1: plastics or the rising temperatures.
Speaker 2: I can kind of cheat and just say climate change,
Speaker 2: because the acidification and the warm rising temperatures are both
Speaker 2: effects of climate change as a sea level rise, which
Speaker 2: is doing some crazy stuff to coastal ecosystems too, so
Speaker 2: not to mention to our homes and our infrastructure. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I think climate change is the number one. Plastic is
Speaker 2: pretty insidious. And the rate at which we're just like
Speaker 2: taking things out of the ocean overfishing, it's pretty wild.
Speaker 2: But the ocean can is incredibly resilient, so it will
Speaker 2: be fine without us. Like if we really screw this
Speaker 2: up and kill the ocean, which means we're killing the planet,
Speaker 2: which means we're killing ourselves. When humans go extinct, the
Speaker 2: ocean will be fine. It'll be different, but it'll be fine.
Speaker 2: So it's really like our survival that we should be
Speaker 2: worried about, right, And so for those who need a
Speaker 2: more self centered motivation or oshi conservation, and there you go,
Speaker 2: save the ocean to save yourself.
Speaker 1: Paula Herrera asked, were the boys in my middle school right?
Speaker 1: How much of the ocean is actually whale sperm? I
Speaker 1: don't think that's quantifiable.
Speaker 2: Correct, That is not a number that I have heard,
Speaker 2: although they do have enormous penises.
Speaker 1: Hey, mom, Dad, fast forward, like thirty seconds. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So writing this in a coffee shop, I made sure
Speaker 1: to angle my screen before hesitantly typing into Google how
Speaker 1: big are whale dicks? And in huge font the answer
Speaker 1: popped up twelve inches. I was like, oh, okay. Then
Speaker 1: I realized that was the diameter. The length is ten feet. Also,
Speaker 1: whales can pee up to two hundred and fifty gallons
Speaker 1: a day, sometimes floating on their backs and just becoming
Speaker 1: tinkling geysers. Ayana delightfully topped that fact with.
Speaker 2: This, but barnacles. Barnacles have the largest penis to body
Speaker 2: size ratio of anything because they have to have sex
Speaker 2: without moving. They're like stuck on rocks and they literally
Speaker 2: have to like penis comes out of one barticle, like
Speaker 2: finds another barticle, like knocks on the door. They like
Speaker 2: open their cell, like, let this penis in. Can you
Speaker 2: even imagine?
Speaker 1: My God, you're in like a long distance relationship.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The only way to get a touch is like
Speaker 2: send your dick over.
Speaker 1: It's a good dicagram.
Speaker 2: Basically, thousand babies.
Speaker 1: Christa Avanpado, Jenny Kloda, and Ann Sophie Karen all pretty
Speaker 1: much asked about your job, like where would someone begin
Speaker 1: becoming a marine biologist or someone who works on like
Speaker 1: science policy, Like, how do people become you?
Speaker 2: I'm I don't advise becoming me exactly, but I would
Speaker 2: love for more people to join Team Motion because there's
Speaker 2: really exciting work to do and it's a wonderful community
Speaker 2: of folks. I don't know if that my personal story
Speaker 2: is super instructive. I think there's a lot of different
Speaker 2: paths to get to this type of work. I took
Speaker 2: the science path towards policy because at the time it
Speaker 2: seemed like there were a lot of lawyers going towards
Speaker 2: ocean policy but not a lot of scientists sort of
Speaker 2: meeting them halfway, and so that's the direction I took.
Speaker 2: But you can go straight into law and policy, you
Speaker 2: can do communications. We obviously have a lot we can
Speaker 2: do to better tell the story and engage people. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of really amazing art happening around community engagement
Speaker 2: for oceans, and this organization that I mentioned, TBA twenty
Speaker 2: one and their academies supporting a lot of really amazing
Speaker 2: ocean art places like Pioneer Works where we are now
Speaker 2: that are integrating the science studio with the arts exhibitions
Speaker 2: here are really important to changing the cultural narrative. So
Speaker 2: I guess I would say it depends like what are
Speaker 2: you passionate about, what are you good at if you
Speaker 2: want it, and then how can you do that in
Speaker 2: service of the ocean. So whether that's art or science
Speaker 2: or law or communications writing, I think there's an opportunity
Speaker 2: to rewrite our relationship with the ocean. I've done more.
Speaker 2: I'm doing more and more writing now because I feel
Speaker 2: like there's just not enough literature out there about our
Speaker 2: changing planet and how we relate to it, not in
Speaker 2: like a depressing way, but just in a like what
Speaker 2: does it mean to be a human in this day?
Speaker 2: And that was probably not super helpful. But there's lots
Speaker 2: of different like fellowships and internships and positions in all
Speaker 2: these organizations. So an organization like the Ocean Conservancy needs
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's a big NGO or Oceania or
Speaker 2: World Wildlife Fund or Wildlife Conservation Society. They all have
Speaker 2: the major conservancy Conservation International, they have global ocean conservation efforts.
Speaker 2: And to run an organization like that, you need secretaries
Speaker 2: and janitors too, who are committed to like keeping that going.
Speaker 2: You need accountants, you need lawyers, you need policywers, you
Speaker 2: need science experts, you need people running social media. So
Speaker 2: it's it's all those things. You need caterers, I mean,
Speaker 2: and boy do we need better sustainability in events. So
Speaker 2: I think there's there's a million ways to get involved
Speaker 2: and to do it either full time or to start
Speaker 2: like an adjacent business or join something that's related to it.
Speaker 2: So hop on in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like that's great. Find what you're good at and
Speaker 1: then approach it that way. Yeah, that's instead of trying
Speaker 1: to shoehorn yourself into.
Speaker 2: Because not everyone wants to be a marine biologists and
Speaker 2: some people think scuba diving is scary, and that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean you can't be helpful. I would be the worst lawyer.
Speaker 1: Like when I see pictures of you, like doing policy
Speaker 1: and you're in a boardroom with like a bunch of
Speaker 1: people in suits and you all have folders, and that
Speaker 1: to me is scarier than like being under the ocean
Speaker 1: in a vast like so fundings like that, to me,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, oh god, there's so many terms that
Speaker 1: you have to know, like the fact that you have an.
Speaker 2: As forages I might be learned.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, and I think you touched on
Speaker 1: this before, but in a nutshell Mariner cosplay, Neil Williams,
Speaker 1: Sarah Meredith smear tactics all kind of want to know,
Speaker 1: like in a nutshell, what can the average person do
Speaker 1: in their life to just help. I mean, I know,
Speaker 1: limiting single use plastic, do not dump a bunch of
Speaker 1: garbage into the ocean.
Speaker 2: That's a great place to start litter. I've got a
Speaker 2: list actually on the Ocean Collective website. There's a resources
Speaker 2: page where you can learn more about all this stuff.
Speaker 2: There's a page on protected areas and on fishing, and
Speaker 2: on climate and on pollution, and there's lots of articles
Speaker 2: and facts you can meet about all that. But there's
Speaker 2: also a list of like ten things you can do.
Speaker 1: So this full list is up at Oceancollective dot co
Speaker 1: and there's no e on collective.
Speaker 2: But number one is to vote OHO and because because
Speaker 2: politicians are off the hook on a lot of environmental stuff,
Speaker 2: because their constituents aren't making demand of them. And believe me,
Speaker 2: I know there's a lot of other issues people are
Speaker 2: dealing with in the political sphere right now. But if
Speaker 2: we don't hold our politicians accountable for the state of
Speaker 2: the environment because they have a lot of ability to
Speaker 2: change the rules of the game and give the earth
Speaker 2: a better fighting chance. So I think I think that's
Speaker 2: the number one thing is to be politically engaged when
Speaker 2: there are bills that come up on you know, funding
Speaker 2: ocean cleanups or research into ocean a certification, or funding
Speaker 2: protection of marine parks, like, we should be chiming in
Speaker 2: and saying, yes, this matters, Yes we want to end
Speaker 2: over fishing. There's a possibility there's a bill that could
Speaker 2: change the way that fishing is managed, and people need
Speaker 2: to be weighing in and saying, excuse me, you want
Speaker 2: to roll this back and allow people to overfish by law.
Speaker 2: That doesn't seem to make much sense to me, and
Speaker 2: so it seems counterintuitive, But political engagement is the number one.
Speaker 2: And then obviously we can all be more careful about
Speaker 2: choosing sustainable seafood and bringing it up at the establishments
Speaker 2: that we care about and asking for it, reducing our
Speaker 2: single use plastic, reducing our carbon footprint. Because climate changes
Speaker 2: having such a big impact on the ocean. We can
Speaker 2: choose resorts when we go on vacation that are more
Speaker 2: ocean friendly or sustainable in general. There's no reason to
Speaker 2: leave your values at home when you go on vacation.
Speaker 1: This goes against literally every thing Las Vegas was built on,
Speaker 1: which is why it's great advice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so the list kind of goes on from there.
Speaker 2: I think I maybe got five or six.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I cross checked this with the take action
Speaker 1: section of the Ocean Collective site, and the remaining items
Speaker 1: were get informed, you're listening to this great job. Choose
Speaker 1: other sustainable foods and farms, not just seafood. You can
Speaker 1: clean up the coast, you can donate to an ocean cause.
Speaker 1: And she has some recommendations on the resources page and
Speaker 1: to help spread the word. So tell people about this
Speaker 1: episode if you feel like it. Okay, now, what do
Speaker 1: you do if you're crying into a bowl of fish
Speaker 1: chowder right now? And when it comes to sustainable seafood,
Speaker 1: is that kind of something that is said to make
Speaker 1: us feel better or is there really.
Speaker 2: No that's real? And I think with aquaculture where that
Speaker 2: kind of industry kind of got a rough start, but
Speaker 2: they are figuring out sustainable practices. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: the most exciting work in that space for me is
Speaker 2: around integrated farming or vertical ocean farming, or called three
Speaker 2: D ocean farming, And it's about growing oysters and mussels
Speaker 2: and clams and all these different kinds of algae together
Speaker 2: in a simplified ecosystem that kind of creates habitat for
Speaker 2: other things to swim through as well. Algae is super
Speaker 2: super healthy and underrated sea vegetables, as they are now
Speaker 2: sometimes called in hip spots, So eat more algae. Farmed
Speaker 2: shellfish you can eat with impunity as much as you
Speaker 2: want those oysters, muscles, clams, because they actually just filter
Speaker 2: the water, so we don't have to catch wildfish to
Speaker 2: feed the farmed fish, which is a problem with some
Speaker 2: other species. Although they're also innovating feeds from like plant
Speaker 2: proteins and insect proteins to feed fish now, so that
Speaker 2: industry is coming along well. So what I personally eat
Speaker 2: is those things I eat seaweed, I eat farmed shellfish,
Speaker 2: and I eat sardines and anchovies because those tiny fish
Speaker 2: they reproduce quickly, there's lots of them. Those tend to
Speaker 2: be more sustainable than like tunas and swordfish and sharp
Speaker 2: and those things that like take a long time to reproduce,
Speaker 2: they don't make a ton of babies, and they tend
Speaker 2: to be really heavily targeted by fishing. So from the
Speaker 2: big picture, i'd say that, But then again, like if
Speaker 2: you're working, if you're in a local community, if you
Speaker 2: know you're fishermen, if you're part of community supported fishery
Speaker 2: like the vegetable boxes CSAs community supported agriculture. They're now
Speaker 2: doing that for local fisheries, which is cool. You can
Speaker 2: get like whatever the fisherman caught, you can get a
Speaker 2: share of the catch.
Speaker 1: This, by the way, is also a great excuse to
Speaker 1: just casually use the word fishmonger in conversation.
Speaker 2: Fishmung jes, fishmonger, fishmonger. And there's also an app that's helpful,
Speaker 2: which is from the Monitary Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program
Speaker 2: that you can download.
Speaker 1: So that's not I wasn't sure if that was just
Speaker 1: focus focus and like, no.
Speaker 2: That's real. There are things that we can feel comfortable eating.
Speaker 2: But I think the question is also like how many
Speaker 2: meals a month or a day should we expect to
Speaker 2: be wild animals, because we would never expect to be
Speaker 2: eating like lions and tigers and you know, antelopes as
Speaker 2: our primary source of protein on land. But that's what
Speaker 2: we're expecting from the ocean. I mean, tuna are so
Speaker 2: high up the food chain, and swordfish and all these things,
Speaker 2: and so I think we just need to change the
Speaker 2: mindset that we can live sustainably off of wild animals
Speaker 2: from the ocean that are at the top of the
Speaker 2: food chain. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess we see the words seafood buffet together too much.
Speaker 2: It's not what I mean, it really does.
Speaker 3: Yeh.
Speaker 1: That's the wrong the wrong impression of what's out there.
Speaker 2: And I think that's part of the problem is that
Speaker 2: the price of seafood hasn't skyrocketed in tandem with the
Speaker 2: with overfishing. You'd think that when something gets more rare,
Speaker 2: it gets more expensive, but we haven't seen that as
Speaker 2: much with seafood because it's often really heavily subsidized by
Speaker 2: governments are helping to pay for fuel or boats or
Speaker 2: whatever to send more people out fishing, and so you
Speaker 2: can still get a can of tuna for like what
Speaker 2: one or two bucks, And so if you if that's
Speaker 2: the case, why would you think that it's a problem.
Speaker 2: It's so cheap, there must be a lot of it.
Speaker 2: And so I think until the price of things reflects
Speaker 2: their value and their rarity, then it's going to be
Speaker 2: really hard to have these conversations that sink in because
Speaker 2: because that price is such a strong signal.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, can you imagine if a can of tunea
Speaker 1: was like seventeen dollars?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't stop picturing Mariah Carey instagramming herself eating tuna
Speaker 1: from a can with like a golden fork and other
Speaker 1: people seeing it. Just like, man, I will never know
Speaker 1: that kind of life, so aspirational. So now I always
Speaker 1: ask these questions at the very end, what about your
Speaker 1: job sucks the most?
Speaker 2: What is the worst email? Really? But it's the same
Speaker 2: thing that sucks about many jobs. I spend way too
Speaker 2: much time answering email. Yeah, just an end listen, But
Speaker 2: it's I mean, that's also the way that I'm able
Speaker 2: to have colleagues all over the world and avoid video chats,
Speaker 2: which I really hate. So so yeah, but so it's
Speaker 2: a blessing and a curse.
Speaker 1: And what do you love the most about your job?
Speaker 1: Or the ocean?
Speaker 2: I love jumping into the ocean, and I love the
Speaker 2: look on people's faces when they understand something about it,
Speaker 2: and it's not like I think the joy and happiness
Speaker 2: the ocean brings us is amazing and I appreciate that too.
Speaker 2: But when like a teenager comes up to me and
Speaker 2: explains to me that parrotfish are important because they eat
Speaker 2: algae and poop sand, and they have this like intense
Speaker 2: look on their face, like I'm explaining to you how
Speaker 2: this ecosystem works, and like we all to be on
Speaker 2: board with this, Like that's what brings me the deepest
Speaker 2: joy is so like the confidence and the engage, like
Speaker 2: the engagement in solutions that people have when they learn
Speaker 2: something about it. So that's something that really inspires me.
Speaker 1: Right, It's great when you can see that shift from
Speaker 1: an ownership of the ocean like it's ours to exploit
Speaker 1: versus like, uh, a responsibility to ocean, do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like absolutely, you know, like a familiarity
Speaker 1: and an investment in it, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But and now where can we find you and your company?
Speaker 1: Like give us give us some links so we can
Speaker 1: gently stock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very easy to stop. I think if you
Speaker 2: put like Iana and marine biologist and you'll find me.
Speaker 2: And that Ocean Collective is the name of the company,
Speaker 2: and there's no E at the end of collective because
Speaker 2: that is a heavy metal band in Australia and obviously
Speaker 2: we needed all the social handles we consistent, So it's
Speaker 2: Oceancollective dot co is our website, and we're at Ocean
Speaker 2: Collective on Twitter and Instagram. Cool and then personally and
Speaker 2: you can find me at Iana Eliza on Twitter and
Speaker 2: Iana dot Elizabeth on Instagram. I think the online ocean
Speaker 2: community is actually a really cool aspect of the job
Speaker 2: as well, because nerdy ocean jokes are amazing.
Speaker 1: There's so many puns to be made, so anyone.
Speaker 2: I actually I haven't ever know ifile full of ocean pods?
Speaker 2: Do you really this is the thing I have? Do
Speaker 2: you have?
Speaker 1: Do you have to highlight one and just pop in
Speaker 1: the end of an email?
Speaker 2: No? I actually try to avoid them. I like, I'm
Speaker 2: amused by the list of them and how many there
Speaker 2: are that you wouldn't know until you're writing an email
Speaker 2: about the ocean, and then you'd be like, all right,
Speaker 2: let's dive into this people and like figure it out,
Speaker 2: like don't be afraid to get your feet wet, Like
Speaker 2: let's just like figure out how we're gonna and I'm
Speaker 2: just like, I don't know. You can't do that because
Speaker 2: it's confusing if you're actually talking about the ocean.
Speaker 1: Does anyone ever write back? I see what you did there,
Speaker 1: just always not yet ort not yet. Well, I'm excited
Speaker 1: for your book to come out to thank you so
Speaker 1: much for the work that you do. I'm sure the
Speaker 1: ocean would.
Speaker 2: Thanks for your great questions and all of your patreons questions.
Speaker 1: There's so many questions. I mean, I had to consolidate
Speaker 1: into categories.
Speaker 2: So many people were like, whoo yeah, so thank you
Speaker 2: for doing this, My pleasure anytime.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Okay, So we have come to the final credits
Speaker 1: of this sad, romantic saga, but with a glimmer of
Speaker 1: hope for maybe a happier sequel. So find doctor Anna
Speaker 1: Johnson all over the internet. Watch her amazing ted talk,
Speaker 1: her public speaking check out Ocean Collective. Also check out
Speaker 1: her brand new podcast Hello, how to Save a Planet,
Speaker 1: her nonprofit Urbanoceanlab dot org. You can buy her anthology
Speaker 1: book All We Can Save, which is due out September
Speaker 1: twenty second, And there's going to be links to those
Speaker 1: wonderful things in the show notes and just tell the
Speaker 1: world about the episodes so we can stop losing sleep
Speaker 1: of the ocean and just start making better choices. Now,
Speaker 1: go talk to your fishmonger. You can sign up for
Speaker 1: a beach or river cleanup. You can donate five bucks
Speaker 1: to an ocean charity, or start reading up on plastic use.
Speaker 1: You got this, You're so well armed. Now, you got this.
Speaker 1: Now to support the podcast, you can sign up to
Speaker 1: be a patron if you want at patreon dot com.
Speaker 1: Slash Ologies Merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com, and
Speaker 1: there's a grip of back to school stuff up as
Speaker 1: of today, so collegiate crested shirts and things to put
Speaker 1: you in kind of an autumn frame of mind. Thank
Speaker 1: you Bonnie Dutch for all your new designs, and Shannon
Speaker 1: Feltis for helping run the site and for putting on
Speaker 1: the sold out Campologies event in Portland in a few
Speaker 1: weeks in September. Thank you Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo
Speaker 1: for being admins to the Facebook Ologies podcast group. And
Speaker 1: thank you as always to podcastmonger Stephen Ray Morris for
Speaker 1: editing and helping produce this. The music was written and
Speaker 1: performed by Nick Thorburn who also did serials podcast seme
Speaker 1: he makes other great music in the band Islands and
Speaker 1: in solo efforts. Okay, so if you stick around to
Speaker 1: the end of the episode, you know I tell you
Speaker 1: a secret. And this week's secret is.
Speaker 4: That The original secret was about how I'd never seen
Speaker 4: the Harry Potter movies but I took a quiz to
Speaker 4: see what house I was in and it said Gryffindor
Speaker 4: and I was like, I don't really know what that means,
Speaker 4: but okay, But I decided to put a new secret
Speaker 4: out because Jaki Rowling is treading out to be a
Speaker 4: realtord in a transphobe, which is it's just an epic bummer,
Speaker 4: and I can't abide by that.
Speaker 1: So the updated secret is that I still haven't seen a.
Speaker 4: Harry Potter movie or read a book, but I feel
Speaker 4: a lot less bad about that now.
Speaker 1: Also, it's five fifteen in the morning. I am about
Speaker 1: to leave for Lax to board a flight, and it's
Speaker 1: my first flight since COVID started. So I got a mask,
Speaker 1: I got a face shield, I got gloves.
Speaker 2: Okay, but right
Speaker 1: On the form, as relations have form