Dr. Stephen Dunbar and PhD student Dustin Baumbach are researching Sea Turtles in Honduras, where 9 years ago, not much was known about these iconic species (Hawksbill and Green Sea Turtles).
In addition to their research, Stephen started a non-profit charity to facilitate his work with the local community and brought on other faculty at Loma Linda University that specialized in public health. The added services made PROTECTOR a social enterprise as it helped the local community with health, education, and livelihoods.
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to the speaker for blue podcast session 145 what's up everybody it's interview Wednesdays today I have a special guest on the program actually two special guests Dr. Steven Dunbar and Dustin bombock bombock I think that's I'm sorry Dustin I think that's your last name anyway they are two researchers out of the out of California out of the University of Loma Linda Loma Linda University it's actually the there's a it's a normally a health university known for the its health sciences however Dr. Steven Dunbar has a a lab there that does marine conservation he's a marine conservationist and we're gonna talk to both Dustin and Stephen about the app that Dustin made for sea turtle citizen science and we really focus on their actual project in Honduras looking at sea turtles basically starting from scratch in terms of what they know about sea turtles in this area and how it became a citizen science project and how it's going to become a citizen science project in the future so we're really pleased to have them on the show so stay tuned for this episode of the speaker for blue podcast welcome to the speak up for blue podcast helping you get involved in ocean conservation and now here's your host he just discovered periscope and might be slightly addicted and drew Lewin hey everybody welcome back to another exciting episode of the speak up for blue podcast your voice for the ocean I'm your host Andrew Lewin founder speak up for blue dot com marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer that's right everything I do as an entrepreneur has to do with protecting the ocean today we have two special guests on the program that we're back to interview Wednesdays which is fantastic Dr. Steven Dunbar and Dustin Beaumach Dustin is a Ph.D. student of Stevens and they both work out of Loma Linda University in California just outside of LA and their focus their research focus is on really just discovering what sea turtles do in Honduras because out of the islands off of Honduras Roton Islands and Utah islands they don't know a lot about the sea turtle behavior in those regions they don't know about the foraging they don't know about where they go the migrations and and so forth went nine years ago when Steven first started discovering there and or when he first came upon this area they didn't know a lot of us sea turtles and now nine years later they know a little bit more and they're really just scratching the surface of what they're finding and it's just amazing as a marine biologist for myself just to and a marine ecologist just to understand that people don't just don't know what was happening with sea turtles in this area wasn't that they weren't doing very well wasn't that they weren't doing great but they just didn't know what they didn't know anything about them they didn't know how many they were they're just trying to get the idea now how many there are they didn't know where they went what they ate and so forth so it's really interesting to see you know a research group go in work with a community and the way they work with this community is really unique for especially for a research group at a university to do and I'll get into that in a minute but they go in and they really with the community they discover these sea turtles and what they do and how they live and how they eat and where they go and it's just amazing I mean to be a master student like Dustin when he first started and to go into a PhD as he is now to and to continue to study sea turtles and their forging behavior is just it's phenomenal it's just one of those things where you not many people get to do that anymore so I think this is a very great opportunity for for Dustin who's a young scientist and of course for Steven who's heading who's leading the research in this and like I said before they they're doing it in a very unique way they are they Steven started a nonprofit organization because it was easier to work with the local community with a nonprofit there it didn't seem as to I guess as aggressive as maybe a research center going in doing their research then coming out so what he did he set up a nonprofit organization worked with the community and then not only did he just work with me on marine conservation but because he had the opportunity and worked with a bunch of faculty that were part of health they were part of health sciences he actually got them involved and when they go down now as a group they go down and they look they educate the local the local part the local community they get them you know they check their health and they do everything and that's like taking it's like a company taking care of their employees right cuz when Steven goes down as part of the nonprofit they have all these different programs they are allowed they can pay the people who are interested in and see sea turtle conservation they can pay them to help with their work so they're employing the community and with those employees they get this sort of almost like free health care which is unheard of in a place like Honduras which is probably one of the more poorer countries in the in the Central America area so it's just a great opportunity for both the community of the Rotown Islands and the Utah Islands as well as the researchers going down there and and it's just amazing so you know we hear all about that which which was a surprise to me I had no idea the reason why I had the mon was to talk about the the sea turtle app the citizen science app that Dustin put together and I think that's one of the one of the things that we talk about new towards the end and it's wonderful thing what he's doing I think this is actually be pretty big and we're gonna help out as much as possible and in marketing this thing through speak up for blue because I think this citizen science I think you know me a citizen science to me is probably one of the biggest things that's coming out of science right now it's very popular people are really enjoying doing it and the researchers are enjoying working with the citizens to do this kind of stuff and then when they you know when they get the data back the citizens like to be involved and see with the results and everything and it's just makes people more engaged in the community in the conservation community which makes them more aware what's happening in the ocean and makes them live for a better ocean and that's what we do here at speaker for blue we want to encourage that so we want to encourage an app like this called turt I believe it's going to be called an app like this because it's one of those things where you're like oh this is gonna be a good application it's gonna it's gonna work out well now it's named turt because it stands for turtles uniting researchers and tourists also the nonprofit organization that they have is called protector it's it's it stands for protective turtle ecology center for training outreach and research incorporated it's called protector Inc and that's the name of the nonprofit organization there so just a wonderful like a wonderful it's a wonderful story a wonderful research project one for organization it's really doing well for this this research facility this school you know the the Loma Linda University so it's really doing well and I'm glad that we had them on the show they were great to have on we had some bit of audio difficulty at the beginning before we started recording but then once the record button we figured it out before we hit the record button so worked all well so thank you very much guys for for being on the show and we'll have them on the show as well later on but anyways here is your so before you go on before we get to the interview the show notes are at speaker for blue dot com forward slash one or session 145 all you have to do is just go to those go to those show notes and you can just click on any of those links that we have there we have links to the school the University we have links to Stephen Dunbar's lab of course includes Destin's lab or Destin's research on there the Facebook page protectors Facebook page and so forth we got all the all the different links for you so you can go to the speak up for blue dot com forward slash or sorry go to speak up for blue dot com forward slash session one 45 and you'll be able to find all those shown up so here's the interview enjoy and I'll see you after hey Stephen Dustin thank you very much to join me and welcome to speak up for blue podcast thanks very much for having us on yes it's good to be on you bet this has been great because the reason why I'm having you on is because I got an announcement on one of the sea turtle listservs that I'm that I'm a part of and and Stephen I believe it was you that wrote the initial email or or is a press release from from the University saying you know hey we've got this sea turtle app it's all about citizen science and and of course here we're all about citizen science because we want to get people involved our audience members want to get more involved in conservation so I thought hey let's have you guys on you guys jumped at the opportunity I think it's like this is the fastest we've been able to get somebody on the week so this is awesome so thanks for joining us guys yeah welcome yeah right on okay so what we're gonna do is we have two of you on I've never had actually I had one that interview we had two of on so what I'm gonna ask you guys to do is just introduce yourselves one at a time and then kind of say who you are and what you do and then we'll move on from there sure well my name is dr. Steve Dunbar and I am professor of biology here in the Department of Earth and biological sciences at Loma Linda University and my main area of research these days the last nine years or so has been with sea turtles in the country of Honduras we have very little information about turtles in Honduras previous to our work and initially as a result of getting started with the projects down there I started the nonprofit organization which is the protective turtle ecology center for training outreach and research and the acronym of that long title is protector so it's 501 3c and now we are really focused our research and conservation efforts in Honduras on sea turtles that's fantastic no sorry let's go with it doesn't let's go with you and then I'll ask questions based on that okay yeah I'm a PhD student working with dr. Dunbar here at Loma Linda University and I am fourth year interested in sea turtle foraging looking at how they're using the habitat for foraging if there's differences between males and females for foraging that kind of thing down in the row time marine part for Honduras I started off looking at started off my project looking at eastern Pacific Hawksbills to see if we could locate them in the Gulf of Fonseca but due to some complications I had to relocate to Roetan over in the Caribbean okay so that's interesting now I have a couple questions of course you know one thing I have to mention I'm Canadian and Steve's Canadian as well so you actually you know grew up not far from each other of course you went you moved to Vancouver and will forgive you for that but and but we're also fellow leaf fans so that's always good but it's interesting from I haven't encountered this often where a research at a university will open a nonprofit organization and focuses research through that nonprofit how why did you choose that way how does how does that work well I chose that that path mainly because in the first few instances in dealing with government agencies in Honduras I was very sensitive to the issue of a university coming down to the country and basically saying okay we're here to do research right kind of take over you know the whole process of research on sea turtles so I thought it would make it a lot easier to facilitate students like Dustin right being on sea turtle projects in Honduras if there was a nonprofit organization if it was an NGO that they could essentially run their research through rather than a university just just being sensitive to kind of the culture and being sensitive to you know some national pride and the and those kinds of issues in the country so it's it's worked out well and it's also allowed me to to raise funds for our research and be able to do things like have turtle adoption programs right and sell t-shirts and those kinds of things that are not tied to the university but being a nonprofit we can still provide tax receipts and those kinds of business ends to to people who are interested in being involved that's interesting do you find that this is a good a great way for not only for you to sort of keep pursuing the research but also for Hondurans to actually work within that framework within that nonprofit framework yes yeah that and that's exactly why we designed it that way and so not only Hondurans but other volunteers and interns from around the world are able to be what we have a we have a protector intern or volunteer program and then connect through the NGO to the research and and being involved in education outreach and the conservation in the country right and that's one thing I also want to get into too is you there's there outreach is in the name of this of this organization and that's you know for science it's it's I feel like for the past you know five six years it's really come to come to the mainstream we're now scientists researchers NGOs and and everybody are really focusing on outreach not only to the public but to the local community as well it's it's a big it's a big function of that when you thought of the name and you put outreach in there it was that your goal was to really get you know information to the public and to to the local communities yeah absolutely and it wasn't only about getting information because of where I am here at Loma Linda University which is very much a medical and health university right I really foresaw the opportunity to get other faculty other students other schools involved in some of our projects not so much on the conservation and but on working with the local communities and kind of giving back to the local communities in offering free health care for instance getting distant doctors and nurses down into these local communities so right now we have actually two programs that actually go to two different communities that I work in down on Juris and we take teams of doctors and dentists nurses social workers public health students and they are then linked into the system in being able to just give back you know kind to right kind of encouraging the local community to continue to work with us continue to partner with us and so we were able to spend a week or ten days down there just putting back to the community and saying you know this is part of being involved with protector right well we kind of are looking beyond just the sea turtle work and the conservation to really addressing some of the larger issues of the community that's amazing it's you're not just like a nonprofit slash research group you're a social enterprise that's correct right I mean that's amazing you don't really see that where you know you take the opportunity of where you're working like you said it's a lot of it's a it's a primarily focus on health and you take that opportunity within the faculty and to offer it to you know the local community in Honduras I mean that's and that's taking care of the people you know who are actually volunteering with you or helping you out and you know to do to do the protected area and all the research you do there that's a that's amazing I don't think I've ever heard of that before no you know in all the years that I've been doing the work here and going to the international sea turtle symposiums you know I have colleagues all around the world we have never seen that model before right well this whole idea of addressing the larger issues of health and nutrition and just you know the whole community I think we're really the only ones that are doing that so far absolutely now Honduras is I don't know much about hunters I've been to Costa Rica now I know Costa Rica's it's a pretty good country where they take care their people education is free I know they're they are focusing on health a little bit more as well what's can you just kind of give us a brief description of sort of the state of Honduras itself as a country Honduras of course in Central America is probably one of the poorest countries in Central America altogether okay and so there is there is some infrastructure there's education infrastructure there's health infrastructure but because of the turnover in government and some of the issues with government there is very little emphasis put on things like basic infrastructure of roads right health outreach to the communities things like education so that even though children for instance get a free education it's often not kind of the quality that you find in some of the other Central American countries right and so there is a lot of poverty especially in these rural coastal communities where many times we're working and so they just really have a lot of a lot of physical needs a lot of social we're trying to deal with some of those communities in building up some infrastructure for things like ecotourism one of the communities we've worked with we've helped them actually build a turtle center which now they're using and they continue to get some funding through some grassroots efforts there but really helping them develop a system where people can come and stay and pay and go out and see the turtles and that's starting to bring them into the community so those are those are really exciting things to see that it's not just about us going and collecting data right doing our research but actually reaching out to the community doing education doing health education and continuing to help support them for things like income development right and it and of course especially the latest research always tells us that a sea turtle that's alive is much more it's worth much more than a dead sea turtle or a sea turtle who's had its nest poached and which is a I'm assuming it'd be similar to Costa Rica we're poaching of for sea turtles like sea turtle shells and also grabbing eggs it was a big problem in those in that area as well yeah absolutely it still continues to be a major problem throughout the country but in areas where we're working we're starting to see the progress of fishermen for instance who see a tag turtle who previously would just capture that turtle kill it needed and now because it has a tag on it they're actually turning those turtles back over releasing love and giving us the information on those so it's really gratifying to see you know after nine years of working a little bit of progress and people starting to respond to what's going on and of course shows like yours really help to spread the message and kind of get the word out there as well well thank you yeah I mean that's that's the idea right we want to you know there's a lot of organizations who are working in these countries that you know not necessarily need our help but benefit from the extra education and the extra work that they do there and I mean what you guys are doing goes above and beyond what other people are doing which is which is amazing I just you know with especially with sea turtles in Central America it seems to be a big focus especially with a lot of the intern programs that they have in Costa Rica and Honduras and Belize and and everywhere it seems like it's a it's a big it's a big ecotourism thing and it it shows the people of that country from what I've been told that you know the sea turtles alive are worth so much more than they are dead and and the longevity of that or the sustainability of that that niche is is actually worthwhile for them to kind of continue absolutely this yeah so that's it that's amazing now you said you were there for nine years how long was it before you saw before you saw pro progress and what really led to that progress well we've been seeing kind of slow progress and especially with the area in two main areas well I guess three the two islands wrote on a utility that we've been working on really started the projects in wrote on actually connected with another Canadian who oh yeah yeah who was a new resort owner the the reef house resort guy named Larry Stevenson and his family had a lot and you know just wanted to to see something happen they had some of the fishermen bring them some dead turtles to serve the meat in their restaurant and they kind of you know made a firm line in the sand and said don't ever bring dead turtles here right we'll bring live ones then we'll you know we'll work with you we'll pay you a little bit for them so they set up a system where this fishermen were starting to bring the turtles to to the the resort right as I started working down there I became familiar with flarry and and what he was doing and we sat down together and said hey this is something that we could turn into a great research project conservation project and up until that time there was no information about centrals and Honduras right and well this was in 2006 and prior to that no mentions of Honduras and any of the literature and any current votes so we really started from scratch yeah the process up from there so we started seeing you know some of the other NGOs local NGOs in the country like the Roatan marine park wanting to get engaged with sea turtles some of the other NGOs on utila conservation Association for instance wanting to to do projects with turtles but not having the the background well having the the skills you know the research knowledge to actually set up some projects where they could do some some honest tracking and some some real research right well we started working alongside those not necessarily all the time with them but alongside them and sharing information and then kind of building relationships with them and we've seen some good progress at a very small nesting beach on utila we're starting to get more turtles turtle activity there and more numbers trying to keep the poaching down and and between those NGOs and ourselves being able to spend more time on the beach and protect the turtles as they come up and then you know protecting the nests and so forth and that that seems to have taken off and more and more people have become interested in that so that they're coming and spending even even volunteers coming in weeks or months at a time helping us monitor the nesting beach and just stay out there night after night so because of that the numbers of nesting turtles seem to be improving and it's the same around the Roatan marine park again because it's protected you don't have fishermen coming in and actually capturing the turtles and and taking them out we're starting to see then we think the numbers of turtles increasing there and so it's one of our projects and something that Dustin is involved with as well trying to understand the numbers of turtles that are actually in the area right now what kind of what kind of sea turtles are in the area is it Hawksbill and Green is that what they're really the Roatan marine park it is mainly Hawksbills and Greens additional loggerhead has been seen or reported to have been seen a lot of the time we see Hawksbills and green turtles yeah okay it's interesting because I just read an article and actually covered it the other day about green sea turtles there was a I forget where it was I'm not sure if it was Huffington Post no maybe somewhere else but they said green turtles actually actually was it we covered it in the last the last ocean talk ocean talk that we had where green sea turtles were actually increasing in numbers and they were they were downgraded from endangered to threatened I believe it was Gulf of Mexico and in Florida waters yeah how do you guys feel about that I must that's a big win for sea turtle community and the conservation community you know around now you think the way sea turtles migrate and and how far they can go do you think that could be linked towards Honduras like do you think that there's a link in the population of green turtles from there you know we we don't know that much yet about green turtles we we get in the area of the island get relatively few sightings of green turtles there's a there are there but it's mostly Hawksville because of that coral reef habitat okay but we do have quite a large population as far as we know off the the northeast coast of Honduras around the mosquito region we haven't had a chance to to work in that area yet we're hoping to start some work there this year and so we're hoping to get a handle on both green turtles as well as the leatherback turtles that do nest in that region we don't see turtles green turtles or leatherbacks really nesting in the Bay Island so far and again we've we've looked for them for many years but right to be nesting there that much so so we don't really have a handle yet on what's going on with green turtles but certainly we know more about the Hawksbills that are migrating from areas like northern go sorry northern Mexico right down through Belize and into the Bay Islands where we've actually tracked some nesting turtles that's quite a distance so it's quite a distant yeah yeah we'll be more tracking this this coming summer's more satellite tracking yeah well it'd be amazing to see the numbers now for both of you you know this must be you know as a scientist this this must be sort of like a bit of like you found some gold where there's not much known about sea turtles in this area so you essentially starting from scratch finding out everything you can Dustin when you first started did you first start as a master's or a PhD yes I first came in as a master student and then as of last spring upgraded to the PhD program right now well congratulations on that thank you I mean that must have been something for you to just come in and be like okay you know it seems like like hey like we get it we need to find out as much as we can let's find out about their foraging habitats or foraging behavior and whatnot how did you feel when you first started to get out there and really knowing you're you're starting almost from scratch to find out about what these turtles are doing this area I actually was really excited at the opportunity to start from scratch and there's so much potential for things to do and a lot of the information that we will collect will some of it will be one of a kind which I find absolutely exciting and even when I came in as a master's student I had no previous knowledge about turtles so I'm just diving into the literature doing a whole bunch of reading it was it was amazing what I found the beauty of graduate work you learn everything you can and I'm sure you had to do a lot of reading beforehand and oh yes yeah what not something that you know we always we always have young scientists that have just graduated from their undergraduate and thinking of going into graduate programs so Dustin tell me how did you seek out Steve how did you get into this graduate work what was that what was that process like for you like what made you go into graduate work and how was that process well I mean even from undergrad I knew that I wanted to go on to graduate school because a lot of the people in my undergrad were focused mainly on medicine dentistry pharmacy but I knew that I didn't want to go into any one of those fields I wanted to do something more in the natural sciences realm so I actually was born and grew up here in Loma Linda and once summer when I was on summer break I came looking around the department trying to find something to do and I talked to a couple of the professors Steve being one of them and said hey is there anything I can do for you around here and there wasn't a whole lot of actual field work for me to do at the time but I was just talking to him about what it was that he did and what what I could possibly do for the future and as he was describing all the turtle work to me and all the other invertebrate work that goes on in our lab it all sounded really amazing and kind of what I wanted to get into so I applied to the program about maybe three years later and started thinking you know what what organism do I want to do my studies on right so kind of looking around and thinking about things I said yeah you know see turtles I think that would be a really interesting creature to work with on it would be something that you know none of my friends are doing I want to contribute to the sea turtle literature and the knowledge so I think I'm gonna go with that that's amazing I love it I love how you know at a younger age you had the gust to kind of just go up to Steven and just be like hey what can I do around here yeah you don't normally see that with a lot of people I deal with a lot of people helping them with you know getting their careers going in one and the first thing I say is if you're doing an undergrad or you know you're in the midst of thinking about doing graduate work or trying to get experience it's like go to a research lab and just ask what you can do ask to volunteer and get work because I guarantee you they're gonna take you on something around there that they can go Steven when somebody comes up to you like that how do you what are you thinking what are you thinking about that person when they when they do that well you know someone like Dustin who takes the initiative and really has the drive to to seek someone out and say hey I'm available let me see what I can do those are the kind of students that I think every professor's looking for you know right well one of the things that I suggested to Dustin was that he he do our our protector internship program and come down to fund yours for a summer and spend some time really you know hitting the beach and getting sweaty and dirty and and dealing with the mosquitoes and the rain and all that kind of good stuff yeah and really get a feel for what it was like and he just couldn't get enough of it he was like hey this is really what I want to do for for you know the rest of my life is being involved this kind of research so as soon as I took him on he was scung ho and ready to go and in fact before he really started his research in the Caribbean side of Honduras he went and we went down he took his diving certification down there along with one of my other master's students and has just really put that to to good use and really spending a lot of time in the water doing his transects and surveys and surveys for turtles as well yeah I saw some of your posters that looked amazing and I mean I'm jealous my work right now is a lot of office work and that you know as a biologist you want to get out you see the biologists like we have a big lab you see the biologists around and when it becomes winter time here of course you guys probably don't have the same feeling down where you are but you know winter time up here in Ontario you see you know biologists get the biologists itch you just need to go get out doing some ice fishing or something you know playing right and that's that's the best thing so the fact that you get to dive as part of your research I mean that's just oh yes I dream come true right very lucky yeah yeah I mean it's just amazing now I have to ask a couple questions and you I don't know if you knew this person this individual but back in 2013 and I'm don't know if I'm pronouncing his name properly there's a sea turtle I guess he was a conservationist out in Costa Rica working on the the eastern part the Caribbean part Jero Mora is it Jero is I'm I pronouncing that properly yeah okay and and unfortunately he was he was killed he was murdered and I bring this up because recently the for the people who were involved were were sentenced found guilty and sentenced to essentially at least 50 years in prison as sea turtle biologists I mean I know it's a it's a tight knit community I'm starting to get to know a lot of the people in the community and many people that I speak to knew him or knew of the organization he worked for and and I mean he was essentially protecting nests from sea turtle poachers when you guys do the same type of work how do you approach this work especially now in light of what happened to Carol that's a great question and you know every every situation is a little bit different every country is a little bit different part of the the bigger issue that we as especially kind of beach conservation you know sea turtle marine conservation just have to deal with because we do spend a lot of nights on the beaches looking for turtles coming up is this whole issue of the drug problem you know narco trafficking going on throughout Central America and we have been very very fortunate that we've never had any issues with people we make it very clear we go into an area we we talk to a lot of people we make it known that you know we're going to be on these beaches we're gonna be trying to protect sea turtle nests and we're gonna work with people who are poachers as much as possible to get them on side to help them understand the value as we were talking about before right right these live turtles rather than dead turtles and well in some cases what we'll try to do is actually hire them and say okay we'll pay you you know a certain amount every night that you come out with us and work with us and and instead of you know turning this into criminal activity let's turn it into activity that benefits everybody and and that actually can do really valuable as well because they on previously poaching know where all the sea turtles come up on the beach know where all the nests may be located and so working with them it's easier for us to track both turtles and nests on the beach and and as well we you know having those kind of people working with us we have less concerns about the kind of people that would be coming up to do things like drug trafficking you know if some of those people are with us that can can deal with any situations in kind of a native context in a local complex then that's always helpful to us but so far we've never had any issues with coming across anybody that's running drugs or right well I'm there to give us any kind of problems or hassles and again the the fact that we're now having some of these local NGOs that have volunteers associated with them as well and they're now putting several people on the beaches and several hustle beaches you know the if you can make it more of a kind of a fun atmosphere and not a good group of people down there then the drug trafficking stuff is less likely to be an issue because they don't want to come to areas where there are lots of people and lights and you know people that are working so and I must say too that it does it I mean this thing this doesn't happen often thank God but this was a very rare occurrence unfortunately it was a very tragic occurrence but it was it's a very rare occurrence that that it actually happened so I'm glad I mean I'm glad you explained what it's like and in the sort of the atmosphere that you put in perspective because you're right if you put if you get the people who were poaching and you tell them what you're here to do and then you you bring them in to the fold and and you know pay them to come out at night they know where the best spots are for turtleness obviously because they know where they've been going for years and years they see the value they see what you're doing they get involved and once you get people involved it's almost like you're part of the project you know and you want to see the results and you want to see the sea turtles succeed they become sort of your champions right your your evaluation so that always makes it good now I have to ask you another question it's kind of a little it's not as heavy of a topic but Nathan Robinson from the Leatherback Sea Trust sorry sea turtle Leatherback Trust in Costa Rica he's been on the show before he had I'm not do you know Nathan Robinson okay so he he contacted me one time actually the first time I contact because he had a video of a sea turtle that they found it was an olive really sea turtle and it had a piece of plastic straw no right so I talked to him about the whole the whole thing and you know what they did and the whole process and you can see the videos you know on our on our site or on YouTube and then you know we we were discussing over like well that's a one in a million chance of happening right I mean nobody I've never heard of it happening he's never heard of it happen of course he talks to a lot of people probably within that you know the sea turtle conservation community and it was a big surprise and then four months later he sends me another video yeah this time it's an all this really sea turtle with a plastic fork in its nose yeah which is even worse I think I don't know if it's what it sounds worse you know the way the video was but what what do you guys think of this do you think this is gonna be a bit like do you think it's gonna be a problem of the future the way we use plastic how it's coming up now Nathan said you know all the really sea turtles are omnivores they tend to eat shrimp and that could have been mistaken as a shrimp so they may be prone to this this situation more than sort of algae eating sea turtles what do you guys think about this were you guys just as surprised as I was I mean when I saw the video initially I was really shocked of what they were pulling out of the sea turtles nostril yeah but there's there's also the case of like leatherbacks which are which mainly feed on jellyfish mistaking plastic bags is really right right so yeah sadly it is an occurrence that is happening quite frequently I hope that a lot of this plastic and garbage that's floating around in the sea with some education can kind of be reduced right to prevent this from happening but with all the garbage that's in the sea currently it's gonna be such a struggle it's a huge problem huge problem and you know there there's been quite a bit of research done on turtles in water and the impacts of consuming plastic material getting trapped in plastic material right but there's been much less information out there about the impacts of pollution on the nesting beaches both the adults the females coming up to nest and the hatchlings right one of the areas of study that we're working on as well as looking at the impacts of plastic on the hatchlings once they actually hatch from the nest and have to get down to the beach down to the water what are the impacts on their running ability what's the impacts of the pollution on the sand temperatures because that may also be driving their metabolism and their ability to run faster or slower right some projects on that but you know I think I think the problem is that the the plastic is so persistent and it is so it's present everywhere even where there are no people inhabiting you know right these small islands we're having plastic float around and being carried by tides and currents to just about every place yeah on the planet and so you know I think one of the answers is I saw an amazing just a little blip a couple of weeks ago about some people I think in India who are now making spoons and forks out of out of wheat oh really well they're actually edible spoons they last for about three meals two or three meals and then you can either just throw them away or you can eat them you know and if you throw them away they just gonna yeah they're just gonna disintegrate yeah those are the kinds of solutions I think that we really need to be looking forward to and moving away from not only plastic but even things like you know paper paper plates yeah let's make them out of corn material or something so when they're throwing away you know they actually are helpful rather than hurtful exactly actually there's also a place not not far from you guys in LA you guys are what about an hour outside of LA yeah it's called simply straws and they have a website simply straws calm they're not a sponsor of our site by the way they make glass straws oh reusable straw and they sell each straw comes with like a pipe cleaner yeah I ordered a bunch just stuff from my kids and stuff because they love straws so I take them everywhere I go yeah we're going to a restaurant we say no we don't want straws and we just pop in the straws because the kids love the straws but they're they're nice and handy and they're easy to clean yeah you can carry them around wherever you want to go so my wife just kind of put some in her purse and we take them take them along with us wherever we go and and so that's you're right solutions like that companies are coming up with some great solutions on you know we're using there's some there's some sunglasses sunglass companies are now using or creating sunglasses from marine debris and plastic debris so they're repurposing them for that and I think you know that's what we need to do we start you know we're using these kinds of materials absolutely but you know let's get into this app because and the citizen-sized part of your projects because this is something that I thought was awesome when I first read the announcement I was like okay I got to get these guys on this is amazing so Dustin you your project in from what I've read entails using citizen science correct scientists how did that come about you know kind of give us the process of the thinking of why using citizen scientists well it's it's something that stems from an idea that popped into my head about three years ago when I was out working in the Pacific when I started out on I really thought it was odd that there wasn't some type of global database that people could be logging turtle sightings and sharing data with other sea turtle scientists and so and that that was my initial idea on I then went on to do a geo geographic information systems certificate and within that certificate we kind of learned about application mapping and how to create your own map applications so when I was kind of playing around with the the maps I said hey wait wouldn't it be a great idea if we could make this app and release it have people interact with it we can work with them to have them log sea turtle observations and sightings to us that we can use for our research on maybe other sea turtle researchers can utilize this app and we can work with them to give them the data on yeah that's pretty much how it came about just just from playing around with some ideas and some examples right on now how did you get the sign like the citizens to kind of use this this sort of system I guess the app has it was just made so when you first started out did you start using you know divers right off the bat or did that slowly come into to the fold as you start to think more and more about this our main work-based population right now where my field where I am in the field is mainly dive-centered so we're maybe working with the dive shops and divers for now but we hope that people just monitoring beaches will upload sightings of nesting turtles upload some photos of the nesting or the nest and other divers from around the world as well right on sorry go ahead some of the stems from some of the previous work that we've been doing because for several years we've been working with some of the dive shops going to them and actually giving them paper forms right to to log you know their sightings and their guest sightings of turtles and then we've also been doing some projects using photo identification for turtles oh nice yeah so that's really been developing quite nicely and so part of what Dustin was doing initially last year was developing a map that we could essentially take to the dive shops where they could click on to a dive site around raw time dive sites that they that they dive and they know and then their guests or themselves could upload photos to right well that system was basically computer based you know actually on your laptop or your home computer so we we kind of launched that last year but then as we started talking more and more about it we thought you know wouldn't be cool if we could expand this whole idea to to a global perspective anywhere you are if you have this little app you could log in your sightings and log in some metadata as well so so Dustin just went to work and kind of took the map idea and converted it into into this really cool app yeah so I have to ask you did you develop that yourself Dustin I'm coding yes I it initially I used a template from Esri's our app studio yeah and I did some of the custom coding myself that's amazing that's awesome yeah that's a really good skill to have isn't it yeah really incredible so he would he would develop it and and you know he'd send it to me and we would try it out and play around with it and say well maybe it would be good if we had this in there or what about trying that he just go back to to his computer and start working on things and he'd show up two days later with you know here's here's those changes wow then we thought hey this really needs to get out to to the wider community so absolutely yeah take me through the process so when say if I'm a diver and I'm say I'm in I'm in your area I'm say I'm a volunteer we're doing a tranzac would come across a turtle this is so this is underwater obviously we're not taking I'm not taking my iPhone down underwater have a good case and what not so how are the divers expected to log I just want to give the audience sort of a perspective of what actually happened so is there you know you have a card and you just kind of write on the card underwater is that it and you can do it that way yes basically the criteria that we ask for in the map when you actually get to the metadata form is who is logging it the visibility underwater and what depth you saw the turtle at species if you can identify the species decks if you can identify the sex also I know a lot of the turtles in our study area are juveniles so the sex can't be determined difficult yeah and weather condition kind of stuff like that so a lot of it is as long as you remember what day you went on your dive or what time of day a lot of it is just oh yeah I was really sunny that day so I'm gonna put that it was sunny and yeah a lot of the shore or on the boat you can work before and then nowadays a lot of divers that I see diving either have a video camera or a camera that they can picture so even if they're not sure of the identification they can always can they upload the picture to the to the yeah correct that's the course there's the metadata within the photo itself so of course the photo itself will tell you what time you know you took the photograph and what day so some of that information they they can get from the actual photograph oh that's amazing yeah sorry good then the bigger part of this project is that we're hoping working right now with a group called IBIS and they're actually computer programmers who work with biologists to to develop programs specifically for answering big big questions that biologists have right we're working with them on this whole photo ID system yes so what the plan is is to be able to use something like this app to upload not only information but the photographs that would eventually go into this huge global database right and actually chunk through thousands hundreds of thousands of photographs and and potentially tell you that you have a match with a total with a turtle that maybe two weeks ago was in a different island or six months ago wasn't a different country and you get that information back on your iPad within a minute or your iPhone within a minute or two of you uploading and sending your photograph and then all of a sudden now you have kind of a history of that particular turtle yeah I love it I love it now for turtles like I know for sharks Michael Baer who's actually a friend of the shows he runs actually not far from you guys he's in San Diego he runs a seven-gill shark program in La Jolla where it's a citizen science program where they have a similar sort of program where divers go out and they they log all this information they take pictures video and they've actually figured out a way to identify individuals by the markings on the side yes so for turtles how do you identify individuals what's the unique identification feature or attribute well so far what we're finding is that the scale patterns on the head or face and potentially the scale patterns on the flippers all be unique and programs are fairly easily able to kind of match up right in both shapes and contours colors and this IBIS program is really it's using deep neural network computer technology so it's actually computer learning and every photograph that you send in and say this is the same turtle it's it's really teaching the computer more and more about that specific turtle so again you know this whole dream of having a global system where you can track turtles where you can identify the same turtle in different places around the world that's that's really what we're aiming at absolutely now I have to ask you that citizen science the whole aspect of citizen science and where it's going all these programs that are that are kind of coming up does it not excite you as a scientist like I mean the how many more resources we have to get out there and do their thing you know and and and just I think it's just amazing I love I love I guess it's me so excited to see all these different programs that have similar sort of processes and it's just I think it's gonna catch on because I think the diving community is all into this kind of thing isn't it that's right that's right yeah and and by extension you know the people who are volunteering I mean there are thousands hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world right you for instance nesting beach monitoring you know and they go out there they're excited to take the photograph of that turtle nesting and share it with everybody back home and this is a perfect opportunity for them to actually not just use that photograph as a means of telling other people what they're doing right actually contributing that to the research on that turtle you know and and to actually say hey I contributed to understand a little bit more about nesting beaches or about in water research whatever it is but I contributed to that it's not about me having my own photographs and sharing it with right mom and dad no it's it's me doing a sign or purpose yeah yeah even some of the divers that I've talked to about what I'm doing when I go down to Honduras and they wish that they could get involved with my work in some way and so a lot of the time I'm like okay well yeah you know come diving with me help me look for turtles and take photographs and if you want to upload those photographs to this cool little application I have you know go for it we love your observations and it helped my work so it's a good way to get involved with us and they see the results right if it's the same individual or you know in the future when you guys get that program running I mean that's just that's just amazing yeah I'll tell you what what we'll do I actually one more question for you before we we end this what are the next steps what is for this app obviously so we have Google the app is in the Google Play Store and it's it's virtually gonna come out in the iTunes store within the next couple of weeks correct and so it'll be available and and we'll help promote it of course here on speaker for blue and and and so what are the next steps for you guys is it more of okay now let's let's get the word out and let's get as many users as possible using is that the next step yeah absolutely I think that's an important step for us to get people aware that the app is available to get people using it you know I think that people who are going on vacation to Hawaii they need to have this app with them because everyone comes back and says hey I saw these turtles you know while I was out snorkeling where I saw turtles on an nesting beach well here's the opportunity to actually help us use that information rather than just you know well that's what I saw yeah and so getting this really out and then as we mentioned getting this tied into these larger the larger photo ID and database systems so that some of that some of those dreams that we have about getting histories with turtles and finding out you know tracking turtles through this app that can actually be reality so that's gonna be amazing I can't wait well you know what we'll do is we'll get back together again get you back on the show and like you know six seven months from now we'll see kind of what the data is all about and what is what is showing you and how the users yeah that'd be awesome look Steven doesn't thank you very much I have tons of more questions but we're running out of time but I really appreciate you guys coming on so quickly and on Blab of course this is what we've been we've been kind of interviewing on our on our this live platform and stuff so hopefully we'll get more and more people to come and ask questions next time but thank you very much for joining us I really appreciate it you guys have been great and we can't wait to hear back of what you guys are gonna do sounds great thank you very much look forward to being on again absolutely absolutely so just I'm just gonna pause it but just stay on the for just a sec okay okay all right thanks a lot now who's excited to do citizen science I know I am I'm very excited I'm actually going to Cuba in a few weeks and I'm gonna try out that app if I can if it's available and iTunes I want to try out that app and I want to I want to get in I want to be one of the first ones to get in on on putting in data that's not part of the project maybe in a different part hopefully I get to see a sea turtle while scuba diving there so I hope you enjoy the interview and like I said before the before the interview started you can go to the show notes at speak up for blue dot com forward slash session 145 to check out all the links there to the school to dr. Dunbar's page and all of his research and of course dustins will be on there as well and of course the protector's got a Facebook page and we got all bunch of other links for you as well so thank you very much for for listening I really appreciate it share this story because I think it's one of the best that we've had on just because of what they're doing of course all our guests are amazing so this one's just topping it off as well but yeah share it like it whatever you can do for it just do what you know share it among your friends and family among people you know who are scuba divers and we'll see what happens hopefully this will catch on we'll continue to promote it as we go forth on all our social networks and we'll continue to promote it in the future and we'll have them back on when they have a little bit more data and we can really analyze it and go through and see what happens okay so thank you very much you've been listening to speak up for blue podcast my name is Andrew Lewis I am your host happy Wednesday and happy conservation we'll see you Friday
