Well, can I speak out for blue podcast session 154. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another interview Wednesday. Today, we have a very special guest. You've heard them on OTF Ocean Talk Friday, many, many weeks in a row. He is the notorious, I guess, the infamous Nathan Johnson. He's helped us out a lot here at Speaker for Blue and he's part of our team and our team going forward as you've heard on Monday. On Monday's podcast and we wanted you to have a chance to get to know him. We've been wanting to do this interview for a while. We finally had the time and here you go. So welcome and getting to... This is you getting to know Nathan Johnson on this episode of the Speaker for Blue podcast. [Music] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the Speaker for Blue podcast, your voice for the ocean. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, founder, speakupforblue.com, marine ecologist, and self-proclaimed oceanpreneurant. Today, we've got a very special guest on the podcast. You've heard him many of times on Ocean Talk Friday. He's helped speak up for blue out since September of 2015 and he's been an immense help and he's really part of our team now. I don't see speak up for blue moving ahead without him. If you listen to Monday's episode 153, you will know that he is definitely a part of our plans to move forward and you'll be hearing and reading a lot of his articles coming up in the Speaker for Blue magazine, the online digital magazine. So we're going to have a lot of fun today. We're going to get to know Nathan. We're going to have to know his day job, which is working as a habitat and stewardship manager at an organization, a nonprofit organization called Artist Boat. I believe it's a nonprofit charitable organization called Artist Boat, which is essentially an organization that fuses art and ocean conservation together and we're going to hear all about the Executive Director, how it began and what exactly Nathan does for this stewardship. We're also going to find out about Nathan that normally what people don't know, how he got started in marine conservation. It's not your typical story of I grew up wanting to be a marine conservationist or marine scientist or marine biologist for that matter. You'll find out what really triggered him to start taking biology classes in university or college and what really keeps him going on in this profession. And what drives his passion to work for Speaker for Blue after his day job. He puts in a lot of hours just as much as I do, if not more, and he really works his butt off because he enjoys it. We do this both as a hobby for now and hopefully a business in the future with Speaker for Blue Institute and we're really going to move forward with this because we think that this is something that's worthwhile pursuing and it's going to be great. So we're going to listen all about Nathan Johnson. I thought it would be good for you guys to get to know the articles you're reading who comes up on Ocean Talk Friday every week. I think it's important to get to know the team, to get to know our business and what we stand for and why we do what we do. So I'm not going to go on any further. Here is the interview that I had with Nathan. Enjoy and I'll see you after. Hey Nate, how's it going? Thanks for joining us again. This time it's kind of weird. You're not on Ocean Talk Friday. This is interview Wednesday. Thank you for joining us. We're going to find all about you today. Are you ready? I'm excited. This is a little different. We've been talking about this on and off for a while and there's two reasons why I really wanted to do this. One, I've been wanting to do it for a while because I want people to get to know you because you are a huge part of Speaker for Blue and you have a day job. I got a message from somebody the other day saying, "Hey, I heard you said on the podcast that I have a full-time job and I do this and she wanted to know how I managed it and all this kind of stuff." I said, "Well, when I told her about the team and about you and about Kate and I was like, "Well yeah, they have other jobs too and they do this to help out." It's like we all do it just because we love doing it. I wanted people to get to know who you were, what you did actually during the day because to be honest, I know, but I don't know everything. I don't know all the details of the company you work for and I think it's a cool company to get out there and get exposure to. That's kind of what I wanted to do today and get to know you more and how you got into this position, how you got into marine biology and all that kind of stuff. Are you ready to dive in, so to speak? I am ready. For those of you who have listened to the podcast, you know Nathan, but for those of you who, this is your first time listening, Nathan, why don't you tell us who you are and what you do? Yeah, this is your first time listening. You picked a great episode. Absolutely. So, my name is Nate. I am the Habitat and Stewardship Program Manager at a nonprofit organization down here in Galveston, Texas called Artist Food. So, we're a small organization. We've got about 10 or 11 full-time employees with some volunteers and some part-time staff as well. Our mission is to promote preservation and awareness of coastal margins, marine ecosystems, coastal environments, through science and art. So, we were started by Carla Clay, who's our CEO in 2003, and she has a degree in marine biology and a degree in fine arts. Wow, cool. So, she very much personifies that mission of combining these two fields that historically work very much, very much seen as compatible. Yeah. And then, you know, past the Industrial Revolution, at least in the United States, it seems very much like you do science or art, or you're science-minded, or you're artistic. But what you find is when you get into one or the other to a professional level, once you get to grad school for research or once you pursue art for a career, you find that it's really not one or the other. There's a lot of overlap. So, one example we like to give is that when you're in the field collecting data, doing sketches or nowadays photography, like that is an artistic way of collecting scientific information and very valuable scientific information. Right, right. So, you know, she started this company to not only bring these two fields together, but also bring the community together, so Galveston is a very island. So, we're constantly talking about our natural habitats, constantly talking about sustainable planning, sustainable management, and getting people outside, giving them to appreciate these areas on the Gulf. So, we do a lot of different programs, and our main goal is to sort of foster awareness and preserve these habitats. That's awesome, and we're going to get into more about, you know, artist's boat in just a second, but first, let's dive deep. Let's go way back to Little Nate, you know, and how Little Nate got to be big Nate and where you are today. So, how did you get involved, or why did you pick marine science to study or to pursue? When did you pick it? Was it some time when you were a little boy? Was it teenage or was it just university when you finally discovered the way? It was late. It was, I didn't take my first past high school when you have to take certain courses. I didn't take my first biology course until I was a junior in college. So, I had a very unusual path. I mean, I was always really into science, I think, as a kid. I mean, I enjoyed it, especially biology. I really did not like chemistry or physics, and still kind of iffy about them, but they're important. But iffy isn't like, legitimacy, or iffy is this, you just don't like that. Oh, no, no, they're completely complicated. I'm not passionate about them. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, I gotcha. So, you know, I mean, I was really into nature and wildlife and stuff, and I remember in high school, I got this pretty significant investment of a fish tank together. Like, I did all this research on which fish go where, and it was a fresh water tank. So, in retrospect, I just threw a bunch of crap together. But, you know, so I did all this research on, you know, you need to have top feeders and bottom feeders, and you need to have these type of plants, and you need to make sure the water quality is okay. So, anyway, none of that really translated or opened my eyes to a career until later in college. I was a business major, and I, you know, had a couple internships, and I just kind of felt like I wasn't really into it. I didn't have a clear career goal, I think, like most college students. The fact that you're expected to know what you want to do when you're 18 or 19 is kind of ridiculous to me. I agree. So, you know, I was floundering around, and I had some extra credits, and I was like, "Well, you know, I always liked science, and the biology minor option seems doable. You know, I wouldn't have to take another year with the credits that were required for it." So, I said, "You know what, I'll pick up a minor in biology. Maybe that'll be really cool. Who knows?" And if not, it's, you know, only a few courses. It's not going to derail my graduation time. Right, right. So, I picked up that junior year, and I was really lucky, I think, with the first few teachers I had. I took Gen Bio in the fall, took Gen Bio 2 in the spring with a Biomechanics course, and a, there was one other animal behavior course, I think. And I also spoke with, there was one marine biology professor at my college who did research, and I spoke with him, and I said, "You know, hey, I've kind of always liked this." And to me, at that point, when I knew that I was really into biology, when I took a few classes and, you know, got like halfway through the semester, and I was like, "Oh, this is actually really exciting. I want to pursue this." Marine biology kind of came naturally, and I don't know if I can explain that other than just, it seemed to be what I was most interested in. It seemed to be a great fit. Like, there wasn't a time where I was trying to decide between, "Oh, you know, well, I could do, you know, I could do cell biology or molecular biology, or I could do marine biology, or I could do, you know, like, medicine or something." It was very much, if I knew, like, science, okay, it's going to be marine biology. And, yeah, you know, I can't really attribute that to, like, fishing growing up as a kid, or, like, all those stories. It just, it seemed to fit. And the professors I had, I mean, they were fantastic teachers. They really got people excited about the subject, and the Marine Biology Professor at Providence, his name is Jack Costello. He pretty much took me in from day one. He was like, "Okay, you want to help with research? We've got a project you can work on, but, you know, read these papers. Maybe next week, we'll talk more about it once you have a better idea of what we'll be doing." And in retrospect, like, he, it was great. He didn't throw me into the fire right away, per se. He didn't give me, like, a full-blown research project ready to publish. He really, you know, kind of dumped it down a little bit to me where the first few months, the data we collected, probably weren't really valid anyway. But it turned into a publication that we ended up getting pushed through into a manuscript after I graduated. So I think I can go a lot to professors who are willing to take a chance on people who probably don't have a clear career goal, but just like, "Hey, I saw what you do. It looks really interesting. Can I help?" Well, and so you went to, you did your bachelor's at University of Rhode Island? Providence College. Oh, sorry. Providence College. Yeah. And where's that? It's in Rhode Island. It's in Providence. Providence, Rhode Island. Okay. So, I mean, the whole city is like 30-minute drive from one end to the other. Right, right. So it's close to URI, but it's right. It's around the same area as Brown, right in the capital and Providence. Okay, okay, great. And so you did four-year degree there. Graduated, had a manuscript, and figured out, you know, you wanted to go into more marine science type of things. What'd you do after that? Did you go in and work, or did you go into graduate school? No, I went straight to grad school. And so to clarify, I went to actually University of Virginia my freshman year. Oh, okay. I transferred. So three years at Providence, but four-year degree. Okay. Yeah, so one of the first conversations I had with Dr. Costello was, you know, he's basically like, "If you really like this enough to pursue it as a career, you can take the risk of just graduating with a bachelor's. You know, you could change your major, good bachelor's of science in biology or something." But the way things are going now, especially if you want to do anything remotely related to research for a career, you know, he was like, "I highly suggest that you go to grad school at some point, at least get a master's." And so, you know, I was like, "Well, we ended up finding a way that I could, you know, take enough classes to definitely get the minor in biology and some extra." You know, I took a couple extra math courses or stats courses to make myself competitive. And I said, "No, you know, I don't really want to take time off. I want to just kind of get into grad school, basically to get it done with as soon as possible." Because I didn't know if I was like it, you know, it was an extra two years of school. So, you know, I wanted to have that master's degree in BS competitive as I could. So, yeah, I went straight in. And how did you choose a school, how did you choose a professor, how did that work? Well, so again, it was a little different situation because I'm a business major. I mean, I still, I finished my business major. I didn't change majors. So, I was, you know, sending out emails to people saying, you know, I'm really interested in your deep-sea genetics research lab. Take a look at my transcript and look at all the great accounting and finance courses. But did you get your bio, like, minor in biology? Yeah, I had my minor in biology. Okay. And I had, at that point, when I graduated, I had two years of research experience, which was a huge help. Oh, yeah, for sure. So, I started my junior year and went all the way through. So, I mean, I was told the best way to do it is read papers that you find interesting and then email the authors and look a little bit into their labs. And so, you know, I did that. I emailed probably close to like 50 professors. Wow. Narrative down to like three to four who seemed interested, had good labs, had an opening. And funding. Yeah, and then so I visited the second school I visited was Texas A&M at Galveston. Cool. And they do, so if you don't know anything about Galveston, they, every November, the first weekend in November, there's this thing called biker rally weekend. Okay. And it's the second or third, from what I understand, largest motorcycle rally in the country. Wow. Unlike the small island, I don't know why it became so big. But anyway, bikers take it over. Like from Thursday to Sunday, they completely take over downtown. Roads are closed off. It's so loud. See like naked people who you don't want to see naked. Everyone's drunk. It's one of those things that if you've never experienced it, you go to check it out. And then afterwards, most people are like, okay, I've seen it. I'm not going to back next. I'll never be able to unsee that. Right. So that just happened to be the weekend that I visited. Of course. And my advisor was showing me around downtown, you know, like she took me out to dinner and then we were going to a bar to meet up with the other students in the lab and get to know them. And we're walking by like crowds of motorcycle people. And she was like, I swear, it's not normally like this. And that was the first time I'd ever been to Texas. So I was from Rhode Island thinking that this is just Texas. Well, yeah, I mean, that's what I think. It's all the time. I'm surprised they weren't on horses, you know. I'm sure it's for this interview because, you know, it's going online, but normally. Where's your hat? You need a cowboy hat too, right? I will never wear a hat. So a lot of it honestly had to do with that visit. Yeah. All biker-ness aside, like the lab was really interesting. The people I met took the time to get to know me and they seemed really just great people. And part of it was that the research project that I wanted to work on was already good to go. My advisor had funding for it already. She had a rough idea and we were able to tailor it enough that it was something I could get interested in. Yep. And then, you know, Galveston itself is I think it's a really good place for grad students because I was really worried about finding a school in an area that wasn't completely in the middle of nowhere. Because every once in a while you get those campuses where it's great for a summer, but if you had to live there for two years, you might go crazy. Yeah. Or you get ones like close to a big city or in a big city and then, you know, it might take people longer to finish their degree because there's so many other things going on. Or it's just expensive. Yeah, I was about to say. You're not making a lot of money. If you're making any at all. So Galveston, as unusual a place as it was when I first looked at it, I mean, it's a cool little island community. You've got Houston an hour away, so if you want to get off the island you can, but you can also stay here. So it really was just sort of a good fit for me at the time. Nice. Nice. That's cool. And so what was your project going to be on? My project focused on cryptic speciation and population connectivity of saponculums, which are little peanut worms. So it was a lot of genetics and looking at the phylogeny of, well, what we thought were cryptic species and that was what we showed is that, you know, they were classified as one, but they're actually two distinct species like slick. So it was worm genetics. So you basically, your master's project basically discovered two different types of population, like different types of species of the same population. Sort of. I hesitate to use the word discover because that implies that we didn't know it and we just kind of like went scuba diving one day and were like, oh, these are two different species. Right. But she had to prove it though. Right, which was not the case. In 2012, I started in the fall of 2012 and a paper came out in 2012 from my advisor and some other people in the lab basically saying like we have these, we have this preliminary data. Yeah. And it seems to suggest that they're two distinct species, but before we're able to classify it or put the nail on the coffin, we need to do a more rigorous study. That was my master's. Was that rigorous study? Right. So that's good. And you learned all about research and these and. Yeah, no, it was a blast. Good. So you graduated and that's fast forward to that you graduated. Now what? What did you do after that? I applied like hell to any job that I could find. That's interesting. So when you applied, did you have a sense of where you want to, because I mean, you're doing genetics, you're studying worms, not to be offensive, but there aren't a lot of places. A lot of places that hire worm geneticists. No, that's. Right. So where does one go from that? Because I think what happened, the reason why I asked is I think a lot of people in the audience who are either graduate students, want to be graduate students, or have just graduated with a very similar background. You know, something in science, something in, say, genetics or something like that, that's very specific. And then they graduate and they're like, okay, how do I apply? Where do I apply? How did you figure out where to go from there? Yeah, I mean, I think, and that's a good point, because I was sort of an anomaly from everyone else who I know who had graduated from that lab. Pretty much all went on to academia. Or, you know, whether they were masters, they went on to PhD or HD, they went on a postdoc. And so, like you said, I mean, if your graduate work is in genetics, you're sometimes limited to a, you know, continuing in academia. Or, or, you know, you can maybe find a lab to work in, either a technician or a lab manager, you know, something where you're still doing genetics. But the, so one of the main reasons I wanted to go to grad school was I wanted to have a science background. Right. Like I wanted to professionally have a science background and a lot, I mean, pretty much from late college when I was looking, thinking about jobs in science. You know, there's always the appeal of doing research, and there still is. I like the freedom it gives you, and I like the, it's, it's just a really cool notion to devote your life to, like, answering questions, or just exploring questions. Right. I mean, I know that's a very romantically romantic sense of what research is, but a lot of me, a lot of part of what I wanted to do also revolved around conservation. I just, I felt like it was a really important thing, especially like in this generation. I thought what I was passionate about was a lot of times protecting or managing these, so I would look at research thinking, okay, what can we do now that we have this knowledge. Right. And less of, oh, what's the next question we can answer? Yeah. So I, you know, I was kind of fortunate in that I knew when I graduated that I would have a bit of a trickier time finding jobs because not many conservation organizations are looking for a geneticist. So I would have to find a different way to market my jobs, my skill set, basically. So part of it. There's that business degree coming into play, right? You know, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to keep it because ever know when it's going to, either I'm going to be the most employable person ever, or I'm not going to be employed by one of the extremes. Right, right. So I applied to a lot of jobs. One of them was artist vote down here, which actually I hadn't even heard much about until I volunteered on one of their events. And one of the people who worked at artists votes says, hey, you know, we got an opening for someone, ideally with a master's degree. You know, we really like keeping people local. So we have good relationships with A&M Galveston here. And so, you know, they're like, you'd be a great candidate, you should apply. So I put in an application and it was pretty much conservation. So the position was managing a lot of the restoration and conservation programs around Galveston. And so I was like, well, I don't know if I'd qualify for that, but it would be really awesome if I did. Right. And then I, you know, I'd like to think my transcript and my cover letter was good. I wrote thank you letters after the interview, which I hear is good to do. So I think, yeah, I think it was just a good fit. And I was in the right place at the right time, I'd like to think. Well, now, so this is a, like, this was in Galveston where you were already for your masters. You volunteered before you knew about the opening, right? You just volunteered to see what they were all about. Is that it? Yeah, they did a bio blitz on the land that, so artist vote owns. It's about 550 acres of land for conservation. Okay. And at that point in 2014, they had really, that 548 wasn't even put together. At that point, it was like just 300 acres. Okay. And they were still getting an idea of how we're going to manage this, what wildlife is out there. So they did what's called a bio blitz where you get, like, a bunch of people with expertise to, you know, walk the area. And at the end of the day, you put a species list together. So one of the grad students at A&M, who also helped out with a lot of artist vote stuff, sent out an email saying they're looking for invertebrate people. Because no one, you know, like they've got planned people, inferred people, insect people, but they want to do some aquatic, you know, like sibs and benthic grabs. And I was like, I mean, I could probably help with that. Yeah. So, so yeah, that's how I volunteered first. So it was a good thing. I mean, one thing, it's good that this, the nonprofit artist boat, and this is good for all nonprofits of whoever manages, whoever listens to this and manages to a non, that manages a nonprofit is to hook up with your local university, especially graduate students who are looking for experience and say, Hey, you know, we're doing this bio blitz or we're doing whatever it is. We're looking for volunteers that have expertise, be great experience for your career and all this and that. And then you have and look what happened for you when you went out with it, you probably just went out on a whim saying, Hey, this would be kind of interesting. You go out there and all of a sudden, Hey, you know, there's a position that's open and you should, you know, you should be, you should apply for it. And that's just networking within, you know, the volunteer ship. And I think, you know, you did a good job. So like right out of university, essentially, you got like after your master's, you got your job and you've been in it for how long now. About a year and a half, a little less than a year and a half. That's awesome. That's fantastic. Not many people, not many people did it. Now, how long before you graduated, did you get this position? I formally graduated in December of 2014. Right. I actually started working December 8th of 2014. That was my first day. So there's a bit of an overlap then. There's a bit of an overlap, but it's a little misleading because if you're in grad school, I think most people understand when you defend your thesis or dissertation and it gets approved, you're basically done. Yeah, you have to make some minor changes or whatnot to your thesis and then you hand it in, you're done, right? The graduation ceremony or the day you officially get your diploma, at least in my situation, really didn't matter. I didn't even show up. Me neither. It was, I remember my advisor asking me at one point, like, you don't plan on going, do you? Because I didn't plan on going. The advisor has to, like, put the hat on you or something, and I was like, oh, no, I'm not going. Yeah. But so I defended in June and then I was fortunate enough to have some funding available to stay on as like a lab manager. Awesome. Sort of position for a semester. Okay. So I helped out with other projects going on and trained some undergrads and applied to a bunch of jobs and got my thesis approved by the office, made changes, started working on trying to get some other chapters published. Yeah. So it, I mean, if you have that option to defend and then stay for another semester, to tie up loose ends and, you know, help your advisor don't just steal money from them. Of course. But if you have that option, I would, I would highly suggest it because it's tough to get a job even with the masters. Yeah. So it really helps to have that three to four month period where you can, there's not as much pressure. Well, I also think, too, it's a great idea because you're still finishing up your thesis. Like what happened with me is I graduated. Well, I got approved. So I defended my thesis. I had some changes to make, but I went home. We went, we, like my wife and I, we came back to Ontario from Halifax, which is, you know, it's a 20 hour, you know, 16 to 20 hour drive away. So I wasn't there all the time when I was fishing up my masters, so I couldn't ask my advisor questions or, you know, have, hey, what do you think of this section? I mean, email was great and still worked, but it took longer periods of time because my advisor just wasn't as good at responding on email. He was a busy person. So that's what I had to do. So I actually had to go back there a couple of times, travel back there and do it. And so I think the fact that you're working for your advisor and then, so you're there. So as you're doing the changes to your thesis, she can be there to, you know, you can ask questions. You can say, Oh, what about this? What about that? And she's there working with you on it. And then that's so much better. Plus you're getting paid for what you're doing. You're gathering up some experience for somebody who knows you, who can provide you with that much more of a reference letter when you, when you need it. It allows you to stay local, allows you to apply for jobs, allows you to finish your thesis. I think it's a, I think it's a great idea for people who can, even if it's not for like the crazy amount of money, even if it's just for like sustenance, just do it, finish up what you need to do, and then go, you know, go forward. I think that's a fantastic way. It's a good springboard too, because you're kind of still in school, but you're a full-time employee and you're still in school. It was odd trying to figure out the paperwork for it and get like a parking pass. Oh, yeah. Because I wasn't a student, but I wasn't really employed as like a staff member. Oh, the university parking pass. That, it's almost like you can dedicate an entire Speak Up for Blue podcast episode to university parking passes and how hard they are to get and how much of a pain they are to have. I almost say if you are in university or college or whatever you want to call it, don't even drive because it's not worth the parking pass problems that you have to go through. Because I know my university, it was a nightmare to just go through the whole, I never had a parking pass. I never had a car until like my last year, and then when I tried a park without having a parking pass and tried to get away with it so I knew spots of where I can get in and where I can't. It's just, I don't know, I think we can dedicate an entire episode to just how to get away with it. Probably. Yeah. Parking pass, yeah. Anyway, okay, so you got this job. So now this is a different nonprofit than what many people think marine science nonprofits should be or marine conservation nonprofits should be. But as you said at the beginning of the show is art and science go very well together. We don't think of it as they go well together, but there are a lot of organizations now that are incorporating sort of artistic activities or some type of art, whether it be paintings and drawings or even spoken word or anything. Or now even videos and stuff like that, and little mini documentaries, and then they're using science as a way, they're using the art form as a way to get science out to the public in an entertaining way. So when you first, you know, you volunteered for these guys, you get the job. Now this job was, it was a habitat stewardship, a habitat manager of the habitat and stewardship program, is that what it is? Yeah. Okay, so tell us about the habitat and stewardship programs and what... Excuse me, I'm choking. As I'm choking, tell us what it's all about. Sorry. Don't, don't, I'm at interview. So it's, the habitat and stewardship program is pretty much any, it's the umbrella program for any projects that we do that work on, I guess, tangible restoration projects. So a lot of what we do is face, is based on education and awareness. But then we also have this aspect of, of artist vote that actually deals with on the groundwork. Okay. So that, you know, generally that's what it is. We've done dune plantings where you go out to some of the dunes and put some native grass pieces in there. We've done some wetland restoration. Now that we've, when I first started, we were sort of finishing up the management plan for that 550 or so acres that we, that we conserved. So since that's gotten off the ground, it hasn't been just restricted to plantings. We've done a lot of like invasive removal, monitoring. We've done some plantings, we've done a lot of basically capacity building. So how you have all this land and when you know, when you learn about land management and conservation, a lot of like what state parks do, that sort of stuff. You, you get a sense really quickly of what equipment you need and what expertise you need and what type of infrastructure you need somewhere. So it's really simple things like having a greenhouse or a nursery. You don't really think about it, but if you're going to be restoring acres and acres of land, you should have the capacity to grow those in house. You, it really helps to have just a couple ATVs or UTVs. If you've got a large area of land to transport things back and forth, you need chainsaws to remove some large woody invasive vegetation. You herbicide to spray some invasives. You need people who just know their local biology, which is harder to find than you may think. So a lot of what I've done since I started is sort of build that capacity to make sure that, you know, hopefully the amount of work that we've gotten done on the land the past year is only going to go up year to year, but we're laying the foundation for a lot of it. So I would say half my job is probably these planting events like volunteer stuff where, you know, we put out this event, we put an advertisement for it and we say, "Hey, we're recruiting volunteers, come help us out with this sort of task." And, you know, that's, they get a tangible benefit. They can say, "Hey, we planted 2,000 plugs today." But also, you know, they learn about the issues facing these dune habitats and why you put grass and sand, that sort of thing. And then the other half is sort of more behind the scenes doing things that volunteers aren't necessarily equipped to do or don't really want to do and more, I guess, more scientific, more technical stuff to keep the land we own is called the Coastal Heritage Preserve. So keep that preserve going. Now, I'm curious, this seems like, you know, on your website, it's on the the artist boat website, it said it went from 2 staff to 13, so it's grown quite a bit. Right. It's an, you know, artist meets science type of organization. How did it get to buy over 500 acres of this wild, I guess it's a wetland coastal area? Yeah. How did that happen? I am very curious to see, because I mean, I know like you have organizations like Nature Conservancy, you know, they buy, that was sort of their mainstay, they buy land and then they preserve it or they keep it preserved. I know it's a kind of a, it's sort of like a model of conservation is buy the land, make sure nobody develops on it and keep it nice and pristine so that nobody can destroy it. But how did an organization that grew from small to large, and I'm assuming it was still small when it got this? How did it happen? Tell me the story about that, if whatever you can know before you got there. Yeah. So, you know, this was before my time, I think we made the first purchase in 2013. Okay. So all of this is just from what I picked up and gathered. Right. So the area itself was an old, it was an old family ranch for like 100 years or so. Yeah. And the rancher wanted to sell it, but he didn't want to break it up into chunks. So he wanted to sell all of the land as it was. Okay. It was the full ranch itself, I think is a little over a thousand acres, so that's a really huge price tag to have on a piece of land. And it had been undeveloped for so long that a lot of the people who lived out close to the area on the west end of Galveston Island wanted to see it conserve to some degree. They didn't want to see it developed on. Right. But at that point, the only people who could afford a thousand plus acres of land were real estate developers. So there's a developing company who bought it. I want to say it was around 2005 that they purchased it. Okay. But that could be incorrect. And so then Hurricane Ike came a few years later, hit Galveston really hard, hit the whole area really hard. Yeah. And then I think less than a year after that was the financial crisis, great recession. Right. So those two things actually helped us out in that it reduced property prices so low to the point that it didn't make sense anymore for the developer who had already bought this land to build on it and to sell it because they wouldn't make a profit. Yep. And they were probably, I'm sure, suffering as it was because it was a real estate crash and they're a real estate company. So I'm sure they didn't have the funds to keep it going. Right. A real estate company that worldwide everyone's hurting, but then especially on the Gulf Coast, which adjusted by a big hurricane, you know, of all places. No one was really rushing to move back down to Galveston after that. True. So, you know, they just had this land and they weren't doing anything with it. And a lot of it is due to my boss, Carla, who was the CEO. Yep. She is just really tenacious with this sort of thing. And she had a good reputation with a lot of the local conservation community. So even though we were small, they knew who she was. Right. And she had been wanting to preserve this area for a long time. So it wasn't something that just randomly came up. Gotcha. But it got to a point where the price tag wasn't so out of the question anymore for a small nonprofit. And she basically just kept talking with the company and talking about, you know, how, look, you guys aren't going to do anything with it. It means so much to the community to have this preserved. You know, there's a lot of tax benefits to selling land to conservation anyway. So it, you know, makes sense for them as well. Right. And after a while of sort of that initiative going, we were able to piece together a few different grants. So we got some money from the Department of the Interior, from the Texas General Land Office. We got some money from National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Wow. And we basically pieced all these smaller grants. They weren't small. I mean, it was a lot of money. Of course. But we pieced together these different grants to buy the land in separate parcels. Okay. Just because that's a lot of how conservation is done. It's so expensive. Right. But so that's how it happened. And it was, you know, I don't know if I can really do it justice because I came in with it already purchased. Right. But you know, it was a multi-year-long process. Oh, I'm sure. Millions of dollars of grants worth. Right. So it, you know, it was very much, I think, just a credit to, to this, to Carla, first of all, an artist going to people working on it, but also to the surrounding community. Yeah. Well, I think too, it, it, it probably upped Carla and artist boats status within the community because they went out and they purchased it to a knowing that it would be conserved. So the, you know, the community wants it conserved. The artist boat wants it conserved and then they go out and they get it from, it seems like what was mostly government funded grants. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Great. Government funded. And I'll tell you why that's so great. And it's, it's kind of surprising, but not really. It's probably surprising to a lot of people that government would actually put the bill for this. Uh, however, you know, as someone who works for government and has been in like stakeholder, uh, consultations and has been into property development. Like, you know, as, as a consultant, I've been on the other side working with developers and talking to, uh, government where they're all just like, it'd be great. It'd be great along coastlines if we could keep certain amount of coastline conserved and protected. But a lot of the times the tools for government are not there to protect this area as a, say, a protected area. But when private entities or nonprofit entities by the, that conservation unit, then it is, or that land unit, then it becomes a conservation unit, which helps government, you know, manage that area. Because if that got developed, it's along the coastline, if that gets developed, that could change the entire, the way the, like, the entire coastlines managed. You know, you talk about hurricane Ike, other hurricanes will come through there and you're like, oh, my Lord, you know, this can really damage it if it was developed. Meanwhile, now you have something that will help decrease the energy, the wave energy that's coming in this area. So I think that's a true testament to the organization to get, uh, an area like this. So now that, you know, they have the area and whatnot, now you're essentially, you're protecting it, you're taking away any kind of invasive species. Are these plant invasive species? Is that what they are? A lot of times? Yeah, for the most part. So because it was ranch land for a while, it's, the ecosystem is, it's a little more than, it's a little more than 50% upland prairie, coastal upland prairie habitat. The rest is varying degrees of wetland. There's tidal flats thrown in, there's, you know, some other micro areas here and there, but it's very characteristic of an overgrazed prairie area. So, you know, there's certain types of species that cattle really avoid, and so those pop up everywhere. And then there's certain types of species that cattle really like to feed on, so they're not there at all. So a lot of it, yeah, I mean, I would say most of the invasives that we deal with are plants, but in Texas, we've got a bad problem with fire ants. They're like everywhere in Texas and they're an invasive species. So we are trying to get rid of those as much as possible, but that's the only real invasive animal we've got out there. Okay, when you got this job and you start taking up this job and you realize that you were going to be the habitat and stewardship manager, did you find a little overwhelming? Oh, yes. When at the beginning being like, these aren't worms, I don't have the best populations. Not to say that your study wasn't good, but it was, it's just the fact that going to something like this is vastly different and more of a, it's a lot of a management type thing because you're managing volunteers, because you guys do tours and things like that, and then you're managing the actual habitat as well. How did you get over that overwhelm when you first got in? Well, I mean, there's kind of no choice. You either get over it and you do okay, and if you're really lucky, then you do really well, or you don't, and either you quit. So, I think, yeah, it was overwhelming and it's still overwhelming, honestly sometimes, but I think that means that you're at a good place. Yeah, if you're not overwhelmed at your work from time to time, I mean, you don't want it to be chronic. You don't want it to be impacting your quality of life, but it's something to be said for working at a place with enough going on and working in a position that pushes you enough that occasionally you're overwhelmed. And I think the biggest testament was that even though, yeah, I mean, my grad school degree did not prepare me from a technical standpoint at all, because there's no worms out there. Yeah, yeah. So, well, I mean, there are, but I don't manage the worms. But one thing I really learned in grad school, and I feel like this is true with a lot of people who do research or do a thesis option, is that you learn to learn things on your own. Okay. And I don't need, I mean, I came into grad school with relatively less science background than some people did, because I didn't have the coursework. Right. But, you know, everyone's thrown into grad school thinking like, "Oh, this is a way over my head." I mean, the first semester, a lot of students think they made the wrong choice. Their advisor just pretty much gives them paper after paper to read, and then they're only available for like a few hours each week, if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, they're off doing field work for a whole semester. So a lot of it is kind of learning how to figure things out by yourself. Yeah. And I mean, that's not, I had a whole lot of help in grad school. My advisor was great. I had a very supportive lab and a lot of different friends and other labs and all of that. But if I went into this job knowing that yeah, it was going to be outside of my own expertise, knowing that for the first, you know, at least two or three months, I was going to be learning a lot. But I knew that I could do it. It would just take time. Yeah. So I think grad school really helps with that. Like regardless of what you study, if you come out of it knowing that you can teach yourself things. Right. And especially if you can convey that to other people, you can convince people that, "Yeah, I can do that." I think that's one of the best things, if not the best thing, you can learn in grad school. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, the fact is is grad school and university, like when you do your undergrad, what you learn is how to learn. How to teach yourself, you know, all this stuff. You're going to get thrown, especially as an undergrad, you get thrown all this information at you and you have to retain it. A lot of it for biology is memorization. I'll be honest. You know, you have to regurgitate the answers and you have to know specific things. But when you get into graduate work, it's more of that critical thinking and really learning things. Like they're going to say, "Okay, here's a stats package. I want you to learn it." And it's not going to be a stats package that costs like $1,500 that basically does everything for you. It's going to be R. And you're going to have to learn R. And it's not easy and it's hell. But once you learn it, it becomes such a powerful tool in the future. But you have to learn it and you have to teach yourself the different softwares. You have to teach yourself, you know, all the paperwork that goes along with being a grad student. You have to figure out how to make extra cash on the side because I'm sorry. I don't know what it is in the States, but in Canada for a master's, you get $12,000 a year. Okay, and that's it. But then you get to do your TA ship and you get to do everything else. But, you know, it's not easy. And it's the ability to learn how to budget, how to learn itself. But how to just survive with a job and school at the same time. I mean, it's not, it's not easy. But it's also you can have a load of fun by doing all that stuff and really getting into it. You meet a lot of great people through your networks and whatnot. You form this great bond with your advisor because they're helping you. You almost become colleagues as it comes to be. And then you become like a bit of a mentor to you as you go through that process. And you probably keep in touch with them afterwards. And, you know, I think it's one of those things that could be really, really rewarding. But you have to put the work in and you have to be ready. You have to be open to putting the work in and understanding that you may not know everything. It's not going to be easy. It's going to be one of the most difficult things you've ever done. But that's the, like you said, that's the challenge. And when you go into a job where the reason I ask that question is when you go into a job, you know, where you're, it's very different from what you did in grad school. You're just like, oh, okay, okay, I just got to deal with this. Because if I don't, I'm not going to have a job anymore. You know, if I fight it too, I got to figure this out. And this, and I'll use the tools that I've learned from grad school and be able to put it in. Because you don't have as much time to learn it as you did in grad school either. That's something that people don't tell you. You have to come up with results right, almost right away. You know, and you have to figure out that process. So, yeah, so this is great. This has been great. I have one more question for you. Yeah. This might be a hard question for you to answer. Behind you. There are two tennis rackets and they have like these frames around it. Are you a tennis player? No. And those look like old rackets. They look like from the 1960s. Yeah, I'm actually awful at tennis. I'm one of those guys who like hits it either straight into the net or over the cage. Yes. That's the tennis court. Yes. I'm the same way. And I am probably the only person in my family. My brother and my sister both played in high school. Oh, really? And so I, yeah, I'm very much the odd person out. I didn't have those because they looked cool. And I got them with a cup, with a dishcloth actually for five bucks at an estate sale. Out of boy. Out of boy. That's purely it. Of course. See, that's what you could have made up some story. But no, you're all about the truth. That's awesome. I think that's, that's great. I like, I like the little, the frames, the old school frames around it as well. They came with them. They were no extra charge. They didn't cost five bucks as well as, as well as, as the rackets. Have you used them? No, they are purely for decoration. They make me look classier than I actually am. Because if you look at the rest of my apartment, I've got a grand taxonomy of rap names poster. Love it. I've got a Kanye West poster and an Irish coffee dishcloth that's hanging up in a frame. Out of boy. Now I, I agree with all those except for the Kanye West poster. That's. We'll, we'll spend another podcast one. I think the credibility and potential genius is gone. The potential genius of Kanye. As, as quoted from his, his own mouth. If it were him, it would be actual genius. Yeah, of course. Exactly. Exactly. Well, he is right. But anyway, thank you very much for doing this. I really appreciate. I think the audience now knows who you are. And of course you guys can reach out to both Nate and I and ask questions, you know, about our careers. You can ask questions about what we do and how we do it. And Nate, thanks a lot for all the stuff you do at Speak Up for Blue. It's been, it's been amazing. You know what I was thinking? Maybe we should, we should do some podcasts on like the behind the scenes of what goes on. Because some people have been asking how we, how we get all this stuff done with full-time jobs. Because as you know, it's not, it's a lot of late nights. Yeah. And if someone wants to watch me for an hour, type up a blog post. It's not going to be very exciting, but I can, I can put a camera behind me while I do it. Should we do like reality TV of, of Speak Up for Blue? Yours might be more exciting than I, but sure, why not? Hey, why not? Uh, but anyway, yeah. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Um, so this, this is going up on a Wednesday. It'll be the next app, well, as people are listening to it, it's this episode. But for us, it's going to be next week, uh, while I, I will be in Cuba as people are listening to this. I am hopefully diving at this point in time as you're listening to this. So, uh, looking forward to that, but, uh, Nate, again, thank you very much. I really appreciate you being on the show. Of course. Thanks for having me. No problem. And we're about to record an Ocean Talk Friday, uh, so just stay on the line. Don't hang up. All right. I'll talk to you later. Bye. So that was Nathan Johnson, the Habitat and Stewardship Manager of Artist Boat. Uh, if you want to go to the, uh, the, the website, we'll put the link on the show notes, which is SpeakUpForBlue.com forward slash session one hundred and fifty four. And uh, you guys can check it out all the website, Nathan's the profile, some videos on there. It's, um, it's a really informative site. Probably needs a little bit updating, but, uh, not, it's a really good site, uh, to get a lot of information. And I hope if you're in the Galveston area, you take advantage of going on one of these tours, these kayak tours that they have, check out the land that they've purchased. I think it's really interesting to see a small organization actually purchase such a large amount of land and manage it. And not only manage it, but give tours around it and, and educate the public and the local community on what animals are there, what types of species are there, and what we can really do to improve the conservation of this area. So uh, I want to thank you very much. I want to thank Nathan for joining us on this podcast episode as well as, uh, just in general. The help that he's done has been, like I said, immensely important to me to, to speak up for Blue to Kate, who's our, who's our assistant that kind of holds us all together. And we just, uh, we love what we do and the amount of work that goes into it shows it. So I just want you guys to get to know him and I wanted you guys to see who he's, what he's all about and who he is and, and what we're going to do in the future so that when we're a part of that team, you get to really know the background. So thank you very much for listening. I really appreciate it as of course I am in Cuba right now. So this is prerecorded as most of them are, but this is really prerecorded the week before, but I hope you're enjoying your week and I hope you have a good Wednesday as I think I am having a good Wednesday. I plan to dive this day or yesterday, Tuesday, but anyway, regardless, I'm going to share a lot of videos when I come back about me in Cuba. Hopefully everything goes well electronically with my smartphones and whatnot because that's how I record my videos and we'll show you all the videos that I have of just Cuba and the resort that I'm on and the dives that I do and so forth. So yeah, stay tuned for that for next week, but Friday we got a bit of a different OTF. It's just going to be me. We're going to talk about something very important that I think is important that I heard on the news this week and I want to share it with you guys and I want to get your thoughts on it. So thank you very much for listening. You've been listening to Speak Up for Blue podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. Happy Wednesday and happy conservation. [Music]
