How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 111: Ocean Talk Friday
Today on Ocean Talk Friday, Nathan and I decided to change things up. We decided to discuss one article written by past podcast guest Andrew David Thaler who wrote about the losing battle scientists and conservationists face everyday but we always say at the end of the day: "we lost a little less today."
We know you feel the same frustration in Ocean Conservation so we wanted to talk about our feelings about the subject and offer a little hope to chage your view point from "lose a little bit less" to "win a little bit more!"
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Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session111
Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue podcast session 111. Hey everybody. Welcome to another Ocean Talk Friday. Today on the podcast, we are going to talk about something a little different. There was an article by Andrew David Thaler over at Southerd Fried Science, and he talks a little bit about how we get a little frustrated as conservationists and scientists knowing that we're battling an uphill battle. And sometimes we know we just might not get to the end and see the light at the tunnel. So Nathan and I decided that we're going to spend a whole episode talking about this and breaking it down and how we get over that overwhelm. Just like I always talk about how you guys need to get over the overwhelm. So that's up for today on the Speak Up For Blue podcast. Stay tuned. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the Speak Up For Blue podcast, your voice for the ocean. I am your host Andrew Luen, founder, speakupforblue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed oceanpreneur. And today is Ocean Talk Friday. So I am here with my co-host for Ocean Talk Friday, Nathan Johnson. Nathan, how you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me back. You bet. And for all those who are listening to the podcast itself on audio, of course, you haven't really heard a change in Nathan's voice because he hasn't been sick. He hasn't been anything like that. Those of you who watched the video of this podcast, this is the first time in three weeks, Nathan's back on video. We have his internet figured out. I think because he won his battle with Comcast, I'm going to say. They're not sponsored with the show. So we're going to say we won $36 credit. That's a win against a big like multi-billion dollar company and you get $36 bucks. They never let go of that $36. No, I'm going to retire early. Please don't, please don't. No, we're glad to have you back. It's nice to see your face again. We always love having you here. So thank you very much. So before we get into the episode, I just want to thank our Patreon contributors. That is Chris and Claire Jeffert, Dr. Judith Weiss and Ron and Judy. Thank you very much for contributing to our efforts to get the Ocean Conservation message out there that we can live for a better ocean and we try and provide you with the awareness, the education and hopefully inspire you to implement action, to make those issues into solutions and just eliminate them. And that's kind of what we're going to talk about today. But before we do that, if you want to contribute and support our podcast, you can go to speakupforblue.com/patreon and you can do so on a monthly basis. We really appreciate it. It helps us dedicate our lives to getting this message out there. So I appreciate that. Okay, so let's get on with the episode. Today, we're going to talk, we're going to switch it up a little bit. Normally, if you haven't been with us before, we do about four articles, three to four articles per week, per episode. And we talk about, you know, just those different different articles, usually they're fairly different, just to get a good basis, cover all of our basis. And we just kind of give our opinions on it. Today, we found an article, or I should say you were reading Southern Fried Science, Nathan, you found an article that our friends Andrew David Thaler wrote. And it was kind of interesting, why don't you give us a little bit of a basis for it? Because I think it's something that we all feel even as scientists and ocean conservationists. So why don't you kind of break it down for us? Yeah, it's on their website. It's called "Plane Against the Slaughter Rule." It's the title of it. It's a short article, just a little over a thousand words. But it basically gets at what Andrew calls the elephant in the room for marine conservation, in that, as you mentioned earlier, we're fighting an uphill battle in every sense of the word. And it's called "Plane Against the Slaughter Rule," because if you're familiar with Little League Baseball and really crappy Little League Baseball teams, like most of us probably are, you know that at a certain point, they invoke a slaughter rule, where if the other team is up by like 10 runs, I think for me it was six runs when I was a kid, then the inning or the game is over. So that way the team that's losing doesn't have to just sit out there all day and keep playing and keep playing. And Andrew had a similar experience when he was a kid, but his team, you know, he said love the game so much that even though they knew they were going to go lose pretty much every game, they just enjoyed playing. So, you know, he kind of brings that comparison to marine conservation in that, you know, there are so many threats facing the ocean, threats that we're just beginning to understand and threats that, you know, might have been there for years. So it's a really dire situation. And as much as, you know, people like us who talk about this for a hobby or a living or, you know, stress ocean conservation, as much as we try and stay optimistic, you know, there's no denying that the situation is bad. And we definitely don't want to come off as naive or, you know, too much of an idealist to, you know, argue that fact. We're not saying everything is rosy. We're not saying everything is going to be fixed really soon if we just change these couple things. So, you know, Andrew kind of talks about how you deal with that as, you know, if you're an ocean conservation or if you're an ocean research, you pick that field, most likely. You didn't, you weren't placed in it. So how does someone who chose to do this for a living deal with the dire situation that they're up against? And, you know, especially from a personal level, you know, how can, how can you not get overwhelmed with all of the issues that you're facing? So, you know, his argument is basically like saying, yes, we might lose. Some people might say we definitely will lose. Some people say, you know, it's just a matter of time, that sort of thing. But the point is, if that's the case, to lose by less, to chip away at the things we can chip away at, to postpone that, you know, catastrophic event that threshold at some point as far as we can, whether it's on our lifetimes or not, so that whatever the situation may be currently, we make it a little better. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, I love Andrew's writing. We've had him on the podcast before. We'll probably have him again at some point. But I find he's, he's written many novels. I think they call him, was it novelets or whatever he calls him? Yeah, novellas. Yeah. And, and he's an amazing writer. And he gets better and better every, it seems like every day. And this one is, is really no different. He's, it's just, he really starts off by talking baseball. And I was like, what is he up to today? You know, like, what's it going on? And it really, it really comes down. Like, we all feel the overwhelm, whether you're a scientist, whether you're a conservationist, whether you're someone who's just figuring out all this stuff that's happening with the ocean, you get overwhelmed. There are a lot of things that are bad with the ocean. You have within, just within climate change itself, you have ocean acidification, you have rising sea temperatures, you have, what else do you have? You have sea level rise. And then you have change of distribution of species because of all this stuff. It just, just climate change alone feels impossible to change. Then you add on overfishing. Then you add on plastic pollution. Then you add on water pollution, nutrients, coastal development. You know, you look at tourism and recreation when it's not done properly, the, the, the wreckage it can cause. All right. And yeah, you just, it's just sometimes, even I think about it, like, I'll be at work. And I'm working with other scientists and other conservationists. And we just, we get into these kind of talks and you're just like, everybody just after, after we start talking, we just realize all the stuff we've said, you just kind of just, you just take, you just take a deep breath, just, okay, let's get back to work. You know, and you just get back to work because and you're just right. We just chip away. We just, let's lose by a little less today. Let's change the minds of somebody or let's put a paper out that will really catch someone's eye. You know, or for you and I, let's put a podcast out that will really hit somebody. And if we hit one person, that's, that's a win. We take that for that day. We've lost a little bit less. You know, and yes, like when you read the article, you're like, oh, this is kind of depressing. Like, what's he talking about? But every, like, we all feel this. And I think it's the ability to get past that that we need to do. We all need to be like, no, hold on a second. Okay, climate change. Let's talk, you know, let's, let's go climate change first. What I want to do with this, this article is, and this podcast is say, let's look at every single, let's look at the top three. You got climate change, overfishing pollution, like plastic pollution, those that seem to be the three that really hit home with everybody. And let's go in through you and I Nathan, the problems we see, and then how it can like the small things that we can do to, to chip away at it, to start changing. And I think if we do that, maybe by the end of this podcast, people won't be like, oh, crap, we're gonna, this is, there's no point in doing any of this, and be like, okay, all I have to do is turn off my lights in a room when I'm not, when I'm not right, and just go through that and say, by the end, if you can do that, that's a little bit of more of a win. And if you can do that every day, that's a little bit more of a win. And then just keep moving from there, right? And that's what I want to get. I mean, that's why we started this podcast. That's why Speaker for Blue came to be is let's win a little bit more. Instead of saying let's lose a little bit less is let's, let's win a little bit more every day. And that, and the more we win, the closer we get at reducing this problem. And then hopefully the more we reduce the closer we get at eliminating this problem, whether it's in our generation or the next or the next, you know, we can instill that into the generations to come. So it's a big task in this podcast that I'm going to ask to do in the next 23 minutes that we're going to do. But we're going to try and do that. So let's look at, I'll start out with climate change. Like I mentioned before, we have sea level rise, we have ocean acidification, we have increasing water temperatures. And just with those three alone, obviously they're global, they affect different areas in different places. I'm not going to go into why it's happening or what the causes of it's happening. But the consequences are huge. Ocean acidification is not only ruining anything that builds its shell or its body out of calcium. But it's anybody who relies, any person who relies on that for income is really feeling it right now. And in nor in Vancouver last year, there was a huge die out of oysters because they couldn't build their calcium fast enough. And $5 million was lost and a lot of jobs were lost. We've had that down in Texas too. A lot of the oysters are dying off. Exactly, because they just can't maintain their shell. They're just degrading. So it's not just obviously in Vancouver, it's down in Texas. It's probably in Seattle as well where they have a huge oyster industry and everywhere, where there's oyster industries, probably on the east coast and the south coast, anywhere there's oysters, right? So you're getting a lot of problems with those. Sea level rise, look at any storm event, any major storm event in recent years. And you're looking at sometimes a big storm event, like super storm sandy, you're getting increased storm surges where the storms are going right into mid downtown Manhattan and just destroying things. It's just getting worse and worse. And it becomes like billion and trillion dollar cleanups, which affects the economy. It affects us personally. People die because of it. Katrina, people die because of it. And even, I don't even, to this day, New Orleans is not the same, as it was before Katrina, right? And it's just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse. And then you've got increasing sea temperatures, which is shifting all the fisheries around, shifting fish distribution. We're seeing seals that are coming up to the beaches, just exhausted because they're swimming around so much, trying to find food. They can't find food. They're underfed. Sometimes, you know, just luckily, it turned into a good story, but we talked about it a couple of weeks ago, where there was a bunch of turtles that came up beach to shore because they were in a cold swell and they got caught and they were all frozen. And luckily, there were people there that saved over 600 sea turtles and put them back into the ocean safe and sound that always they're not always there, you know, and you're seeing, you know, whales that are just beaching themselves and dying and coral bleaching because of high temperatures, which is ruining just, you know, you know, 1000, 1000 year old coral reefs and tourism and everything like that. Have I depressed you enough, guys? Like seriously, this is depressing me talking about this. So this, this is what I'm talking about before. This is just climate change. We haven't even added the other stuff. So let's just talk about climate change. We talked about the bad things. Let's talk about the things that we can do to help this. So, so Nathan, what do you, what would you suggest the audience and us? What do what do we do just at home? So I think it's there's twofold. There's twofold answered as question. The first is more knowledge never helps. So, or never hurts. It all it's always going to help. So, you know, learn more about this type of stuff. If if you have the scientific training or the background to understand a lot of the peer reviewed papers, the primary literature on climate change, read some of those, even if it's just the abstract, get an idea of what the science is actually saying, because if all you get is your news on science from the mainstream media sources, chances are you probably don't have a great idea of, you know, what the general consensus is. If you don't have the formal training, listen to podcasts like these. If you don't think we're covering climate change well enough, put a comment on our website or, you know, leave a voice message for us. Tell us to focus more on the ins and outs of climate change, and we'd be happy to do that. But, you know, educate yourself as best you can into what the issues are, because that's what's ultimately going to get you can do. You know, we can give you tons of ideas of where to start, but at the end of the day, if you don't find something that you feel comfortable doing, it's not going to stick. So, but having said that, there are a good amount of things that you can do just on your own, even if you don't know the whole science behind climate change that you can do to prevent these types of or mitigate these types of adverse impacts. And a lot of the things that you talked about as far as, you know, rising temperatures, ocean acidification, that's generally tied to rising CO2 emissions or greater energy use. So, a really simple way is just to find small ways to cut your energy usage. So, you know, turn off lights when you're not in rooms, unplug lights if you're not going to use them. There are, you know, there are really like green thermostats, you know, thermostats that show you how much energy you're using and you can set your, you know, schedule to use less and less. You can unplug your TV when you're not using it that saves a lot of electricity. You can bike more places. You can walk more places. Don't drive everywhere. Get outside a little bit more. Don't heat your home as much, you know, put it on a schedule like we had talked about earlier, or just buy a couple jackets. It's a great excuse to go shopping. So, you know, there's simple things like that. And that's, you know, that's not even the extent of the things you can do. That's just stuff that's coming out the top of my head. But these are all ways that if you essentially cut your energy usage in whatever way you consider viable and reasonable for your lifestyle, you can cut down on your respective carbon emission, which is the major driver of a lot of this. Yeah, I agree. And I think what people, when people see climate change, they hear about climate change and they see people, scientists talk about climate change and we're talking about climate change. They see it's so big and it's so global that when it comes to them, they're like, well, what effect can I have? And I guarantee you by reducing your energy with what we just talked about, you know, you know, switching to LED light bulbs, the digital thermometer and figuring out when your peak times are and when they're not driving less or moving to an electric car instead of a gas powered car or hybrid, you know, those things will change. They will help change. If we like, if I start at home, which I have, and you start at home, which you have, and other people start, and more and more people start to change their lives. We change the way we think about our life. If every time you put on a switch on a switch, a light switch, and turn it on and off, you think about the ocean, you think about climate change, you're going to switch it off more times than that. You're not going to need as many lights or you're going to go to reduce lights like a, like a LED bulb, or, you know, you're going to drive less. You're going to say, Hey, you know what, I'm going to, it's a nice day. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to bike. And that's what I, you know, and that's what I'm going to do. It's going to help, you know, all this stuff helps. And if one person does it, another person does it, and another person does it, it just keeps going over and over again. It's kind of, it's snowballs into this, like, massive change and this community change. And we're all getting into that. So it doesn't matter if you're doing a big thing, or a little thing, or just one thing. Try one thing. If you, once you get to handle that, try another thing. Once you get to handle that, try another thing, do like once a month, do a change. At the beginning of every month, I'm going to make sure that every room in the house is, the lights are turned off if I'm not in it, or one of the family members is not in it. You know, get your kids involved, get your family members involved, get your girlfriend involved, boyfriend involved. It doesn't matter. Get the, you know, the people you live with involved and say, Hey, every time you switch off a light, think about how much energy you're saving, think about the, you know, the animals you're saving, and us, you know, think about that kind of way. And then it helps. And if you make one goal a month, you'll get 12 goals and you continue on. It just, it just accumulates, right? So you started now, say you start now, you're going to get 11 goals done by the end of the year, right? And you'll have 11 things that you've changed about climate change, you know, in your own home, right? Or outside, you know, and that's just the, like, like we said, that's just the little things. If you want to go bigger, you can start getting involved with an organization or start educating people, post stuff on Facebook, on your social media. That's true science, you know, listen to the podcast, share the podcast shares, uh, Southern fried science.com article, share deep, see news.com article, share the PLOS one articles that we, that we, uh, that we link to that we talk about on Thursdays, or even if you just start reading them themselves, you start sharing those around, share the real science. Don't share stuff from like Fox News or something that like an article that glorifies, you know, climate change denial, that's wrong, right? Look at the science, be critical about it, but look at the science and share the right science. If you don't know, for sure, ask a scientist that you know, or ask one of us, you can always contact us and you can always ask, Hey, is this legit? You know, I found this article, or can I get more information? You know, you can always provide information. You know, we have a whole page dedicated to that. We'll link to that in the blog post with all the different types of issues that we have in the educational, what you can do to help. So that's what, you know, for climate change, that's what you need to do, right? And just, just to let you know, if you have the money, Tesla's coming out with a $35,000 car instead of $85,000 car. And I'm telling you, I'm seeing in here in Ontario, I'm seeing more and more Teslas than I've ever seen before, because they started to put in these like recharging stations around town. It's kind of cool. And I think they put one in your house too, when you buy it, I'm not sure. But I think they don't quote me on that. But my wife's boss just is about to get one, they're putting in the parking lot. So it's kind of cool that way. Anyway, so do that kind of stuff, you know, if you can afford it and really push the limits of what you can do as you get more and more comfortable with doing this. But let's move on now. Let's go into overfishing, because overfishing is a big problem. So Nathan, why don't you break down what overfishing is? So in its simplest terms, overfishing is just taking too much fish from the ocean. You know, that's a combination of legal fishing and illegal fishing. So, I mean, the reason that you we talk about that a lot is because, you know, with 7 billion people on the planet and with fish being a major source of protein for, I would imagine it's the majority of the world's population. You know, industrial fishing is incredibly large. And there's, you know, it may be difficult for people to understand on an individual level, just because, you know, you really have to look back 100 years, 200 years to understand how much fishing has changed. There's a lot of great books about this. The Mortal C is one about fishing and the Atlantic, and it's really eye-opening. So, you know, it's we fish an incredible amount of the ocean's resources, and the ways that we, you know, sustain this are not very effective currently. So you've got illegal fishing, which obviously not only hurts marine ecosystems in that it's fishing on top of the quotas that we've established are legally and sustainably okay. So we're already breaking those quotas with illegal fishing. It's also hurting the industry of people who fish legally. So it's hurting, you know, the pockets, the revenues of people who try and make an honest living by this. Then you have legal fishing, which, you know, it's just done at such an industrial scale that not only are we taking a lot out, we're also harming a lot of other marine organisms in the process and marine habitats. So we've talked a lot about gill net fishing or trawling. You know, those are pretty destructive to a lot of marine habitats. If you don't know what trawling is, it's essentially dragging a net across the ocean. You drag up a lot of it along the ocean floor, which means you just stir up anything living there. And the habitats that are in there too, right? Right. So if, you know, if you're in a large boat with a large trawling net and you're going at decent speed, you're probably uprooting a lot of the benthic organisms. You may be uprooting certain reefs or hard structures that a lot of organisms rely on. So, you know, you don't see that in the hall, but you're destroying these habitats in the process. Then you've got long lining, which is essential. Oh, we got you cut off those hooks. Nathan, you're cutting out just a little fish. You're actually trying to catch Nathan. Hold on. You just cut out a little bit. Oh, sorry about that. That's all right. Why don't you start? You were talking about all the destruction and stuff and then the fish hooks. I think you were getting into it. Yeah. So, so when you get into the long lining is when you start talking about a lot of bycatch, which you also have with trawling, but, you know, you get, we talked about sea turtles, sharks, fish that may not be economically important, fish that no one's really going to buy. All of these things are caught. We're not specifically targeting an individual species. We're targeting any fish within an area. So, you know, with the fishing industry the way it is, it's just very, and we talked about this, it's very difficult to support it in a sustainable fashion. Because a lot of the fish that's sold is caught in these industrial methods. And it's difficult to know which fish are caught with which methods. So, you know, between the bycatch, between the over-harvesting of fish, between the illegal fishing, you know, all these things not only mean there's less of that type of species in the ocean, but it also means that that's going to have an impact on the rest of the ecosystem. So, you know, we've talked about for sharks and for marine mammals that may be bycatch, it's kind of an easy effect to see, because they're apex predators, they're top of the food chain. You know, you can see that trickle down, whereas for some other fish that we might not have studied as well, it may be difficult to quantify what the impact of it will be on the ecosystem, but there will be an impact just because we don't know what it is, doesn't mean that there isn't one. So, you know, it's a difficult thing because, as I mentioned before, fish is such a large protein source for, you know, the world's population, and it's not something that, like climate change, you can just adamantly disagree with. I don't think it's that black and white. I think there's a lot of sustainable fishing practices out there and organizations focused on that, and the more you can support them, the better. And again, I think a lot of it comes down to education, but, you know, there's a lot of different ways we can address this, and why don't you go ahead and, you know, mention a few things that people can do to sort of tackle this issue? Yeah, you know, this is another one, right? Take a big side before I get into talking about the solutions, because, and we've mentioned this before in previous podcasts, that the state of overfishing, the state of the seafood industry is in such dire straits right now, that it's very, very difficult, I find, and other scientists find as well, to really make an informed decision on what seafood we buy. To what I used to say is to really defeat overfishing, is we have to really make, we change it by our wallets, we change it by consumer demand. All the stuff that we're used to, cod, salmon, haddock, halibut, tuna, you know, snapper, grouper, these are fish that we will see, we expect to see at restaurants that we like, seafood restaurants that we'd like, of course, shrimp, mussels, oysters, clams, what else is scallops, and so forth, and lobsters, of course, you know, we expect to see these, these animals on our menu when we go to a nice restaurant, or we go to really any, any restaurant that serves seafood, we're comfortable with these animals, because we're used to these animals, because they've been fished for hundreds of years, and they've been provided to us for hundreds of years. So what I used to say is, follow these apps that we've mentioned, see the, you know, the seafood watch app, there's an ocean wise program here in, in, in Canada, where restaurants sign up to be a part of this, they have to qualify, and they have a certain set of standards that they go by, and they're sustainable, and that's great because they know where their food is coming from. They know what they're selling, they know that it's sustainable, and you can trust that, you can make an informed decision by going to those restaurants, and saying, I know, I ate this, the right seafood this time, I didn't need a seafood that was a known overfished, or there's a lot of legal fishing that comes out of it, so we can't tell if this fish is coming from a legal source, or an illegal source. I was done by proper long lining, with, with circle hooks, instead of the, the jagged hooks, right, where it's easy, species can actually get off the circle hooks without dying and stuff. So there's a lot of ways these, these, these seafood watch apps, these ocean wise apps, they really helped, and they do help, they still do help for the most part. However, with recent studies now, and recent sort of exposés, is fish markets don't even know what they're selling anymore, you know, and grocery stores don't even know what they're selling anymore, because there've been genetics tests on the type of food that they sell, like the type of fish, like say a, a filet of something, and I believe there's one, it was like tuna that they didn't, it wasn't actually tuna, it was some garbage fish that actually, it wasn't even good for you, you know, it had a lot of like, it had a lot of metals, or it had a lot of cancer-causing kind of cells. So we're eating, not only we're not eating the right fish, but we're not even the, we're not, like, we're eating fish that's harmful to us, and we're paying the prices of eating what we think is the right fish. Tuna steak is not cheap, so we're, when we get a tuna steak, it's like when you get like a nice prime rib, you know, you're going to pay a lot of money, and then all of a sudden, you're not eating the right, the right one, you're eating a garbage fish that's bad for you, you know, that is, that will get me angry, and worry the hell out of me, because we're not eating the right fish, because even our fish markets and our grocery stores and stuff that we depend on, and restaurants don't even know what they're eating, you know, and some scientists, I've been, I've been at restaurants before with ichthyologists, these are fish, you know, biologists, these guys know fish, and I've been there when a plate comes to them, and they've said this is not the right fish, and they're like, well, yes it is, it's the right fish, and they, they dig out the bones, and they say, no, look at the bone structure, this is not the right fish, and call them out on it, but we're not all ichthyologists, right, we can't all do that, even me, I can't do that, I don't know if you can do that, I can't do that, no, but these guys could, but you know what I mean, so it's not as if it's, it hasn't happened before, it seems like this is, this is a big problem in the seafood industry, not only for us as, if we want to consume seafood in a proper way, but to the point of like fish markets for providing the right food, can they be a trustworthy source? In the meantime, so we're looking at solutions now, in the meantime, what we have to do is we have to start looking at alternatives, as I was talking to some of the fish biologists, they were saying, you know what, we're actually going, you know, don't buy from the grocery stores or fish markets, buy right from the fishermen, because they know what they caught, and they know how they caught it, and if you get trustworthy fishermen, then you're good. Now, this might limit us, I live in Ontario, Canada, I am not near in ocean, I am near a great lake, so I can have freshwater fish from a fisherman, I may not be able to get access to someone else here, I'm okay with that, because I'd rather not eat it, than make a bad decision, and have that, you know, I'm a conservationist, I profess, you know, that we should be eating properly, and if I don't eat without knowing what we're having, I won't eat seafood, right? I'll have tilapia, aquaculture tilapia, or have pickerel, or, you know, something that's properly managed, and I know it's not bad, that's what we do, so really look at what the seafood you're eating, don't just pick it up really nearly, and just eat it for the sake of eating it, look at what you're eating, make the right choice, go right to the fisherman if you have to go right to the dock, if you live on the coast, and do that, I know Nate, you're pretty close to the coast, you could probably zip down every once in a while if you wanted to eat it, and then, you know what, not having a lot makes it even more special, because you're not having it a lot, and it makes it worthwhile, you know what I mean, I know it could be a little bit of a pain to get to a coast, or get to the right fisherman, but, you know, you can do that, and I think one, you're actually paying the fisherman themselves, you know, so you know it's going right to a good source, and it's not going through a bunch of middle people, and then it gets, you know, the by the time it gets to the fisherman, they get diddly squat, right, so that's my, you know, really I know it's not a lot, but really it's educate yourself on the type of fish you're eating, make sure that they're not endangered, or critically endangered, then make sure you go to the right source to get that fish, or seafood, and then you'll be better off for it. Yeah, I agree, I think the crux of it is essentially be okay with eating less seafood, just because, like you said, if you know, if you don't know, which a lot of times, even if you go, I've gone to the grocery stores around here, and you know, you try and pinpoint, you know, first of all, is this type of fish okay, you can use the apps to figure that out, but then is the type of fish from the location that it's not okay, is the method that it's used to catch, to catch or to farm it, is that okay? Do I even trust that this is actually where it comes from? You know, sometimes it'll just say this fish is like, you know, this tilapi is from South America, but it won't tell you where, and on these apps, you know, like Ecuador is great, but other places are not so great, and so, you know, the person on the counter probably doesn't know, and you're more than welcome to ask them, but, you know, if they don't know, you kind of got to be cautionary, and you know, do something else, spend the money on a steak or something, and even if you do live by the coast, you know, you might have more access to fishermen, but like down here in Texas, we have, you know, a few fish in Galveston that we know are caught pretty locally, so, you know, snapper trout, that sort of thing. If you get it, you can assume that it's pretty reasonably caught, it's local, you know, the people know how they fit into the ecosystems down here, but, you know, we don't really, at least I personally don't really get salmon down here in Galveston, because, A, it's not as local, so, you know, it's shipped from somewhere else, which kind of makes it a little more questionable as to where it's from, but also, it just doesn't taste as good. The salmon you're going to get here is not going to be as good, and you're right, the less you eat seafood, then a more special will be the times you do eat it. And, you know, people always say that like, well, you know, my individual consumer choice doesn't make a huge impact in these billion dollar industries, that sort of thing, but, you know, that's not necessarily true. There's a, this kind of a small tangent, but there's a macaroni and cheese brand called Annie's, I don't know if you've heard of, but it's like a very popular organic, very healthy mac and cheese brand. It was recently bought by, I forget the organization, but it was a large food organization for millions of dollars, and that's, you know, their second biggest name brand under that conglomerate, because they realized people would pay money to have this organic macaroni and cheese. And so, you know, it's just an example of, but a small choices can make. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think you're seeing more and more of that. We've talked about this before, but we have, in here in Ontario, we have services, and I think this is, this is not just, you know, to Ontario, but you have services where you can buy food from local farmers. So there's, I know there's a company where I can get my vegetables and fruit from that are all from local farmers, so it's basically seasonal stuff. So you're not getting any imported stuff, you're getting seasonal stuff. So one, you know, they talk about how agriculture is, you know, one of the major causes of climate change, getting back to the climate change, well, we can order that, but seasonal, so it's, and it's local, so it's coming, you know, right from the farms here, so you're not traveling as far, right? So the impact, yeah, the impact is less. And the same thing with, and it's organic, right? It's made organically. You may not get every vegetable you want, and you might get a mystery vegetable that is always fun to cook, but you get that, and you get a lot of them too. And, and with, you can do the same thing if you, if you eat meat, you can, you can get like a freezer full of stuff that's vacuum sealed for like two, you can eat up to two years. And it's basically two years worth of meat, whether it's beef, chicken or pork, and they even have some seafood that you can add onto that. So, you know, one meat is expensive, like food's expensive, this is a lot cheaper in the long run, you pay out front, and you pay for the freezer as well, but you know it's local, you know it's organic. There aren't any like hormones injected into it or anything like that, and you know what source is from, you're supporting a local farmer or a number of local farmers. So it makes sense that way. I don't eat as much seafood anymore as I used to because I kind of understood that the seafood industry is really, really wrought with problems, and I'm fine with that. It took me a while to get used to that, but I'm fine with that. I eat a lot of freshwater fish now, like you said, by, you know, you get something local, you know it's fresh, it tastes better, and you know where to go. And, and to be honest, I find like, you know, go to the grocery stores, you go to the fish markets, the better fish markets, if you ask them, they know where this fish comes from, that people behind the counter care about that. If you go to the grocery store, you're probably gonna get someone from minimum wage, who's a some kid who really doesn't care. And that's not for all them, but this is what normally and you ask them and they say no, and then you just tell them, I'm sorry, I can't buy a finger because I have to make sure I know where it's from. Same thing with like restaurants that are not as expensive or as higher class, you know, you get to the lower like brand family restaurants, they won't know where the seafood's from, most likely. Some of them do, some of them don't. It depends on the company and it's usually like a franchise of some sort. But then there are some restaurants that are really high end that will pair like I we went to a wine tour where they paired the wine to the actual local fish. And they, they, we, you know, we got a chef's like, explanation of why he chose that fish because it was local. He knew the he knew the fishermen, he goes straight to the fishermen. And he says, you know, I know how it's caught. I know it's not in danger. It's not protected at any point. And that's not why that's why I buy it. And it pairs it nicely with the same ground and it goes well with the wine because it's from the same system and stuff like that. So those guys know their stuff because they care and they know it adds to the taste and it functions better that way. So I know we spent a lot of time on this one, but I think it's important to know that, you know, take your time with seafood. You don't always have to have seafood. Anyway, let's move on. Let's go to plastic pollution. I'm going to break it down really quick. We don't have much more time on this, but plastic pollution, obviously there's, there's plastic in every part of the ocean in almost every ocean, great lakes. There is plastic pollution, whether it's in large chunks or in very small, soupy type material, we have an ocean pro ocean plastic pollution problem. It's an epidemic. There are, I forget the actual amount, I think it's like 11 million tons of plastic going into the ocean every day. 80% of that is coming from five different countries. They're usually the countries in Asia that have been known and it comes from land based sources. This can be stopped, but it's not being stopped. We see plastic materials that are used all the time. A lot of them are single use plastics. And you'll hear especially advocates and conservationists talk about reduce single use plastics because that's the stuff that ends up in the ocean. We've documented here a number of times sea turtles having plastic straws and plastic forks stuck in their nostril. And research is having to pull it out. It's disgusting. It's sad to see that these animals are seeing that. But if we see two and we're able to save two, imagine how many others animals have them in their nose or in their gut and it's just breaking down or it's it's it's perforating their insides. This happens or choking them to death. This happens all the time. And in the States, it's very well advocated. There's, you know, people know there's a plastic pollution problem. In Canada, not so much now it's being more and more touted as a big problem. But for a while, you know, I had never heard of it before I got into university. And that was a while ago, but it was just starting to come around like marine scientists and conservationist circles in Canada here in Canada. But it's been quite widely known for a while. And there's some major organizations that are helping find five gyres plastic pollution coalition and so forth. Everybody's fighting it and trying to reduce it. But this really comes down the solutions. I'll let you get into a second, but it really comes down to education. But I want you to talk about the solutions. Yeah, so you mentioned things like, you know, plastic straws, the other single-use plastic, plastic bags. I think for most people, again, awareness is going to go a huge way. So, you know, read up the different types of products that, you know, are our major contributors to this. So single-use plastics, but then there's also, you know, lotions, beauty products, that sort of thing. The ban on microbeads in the US. That was big. Come into effect, I believe, for another year or two. I think it's to July 2017. Right, they have until the end of there. So, you know, still be very smart when you purchase these things, try and figure out, you know, do they have microbeads in them? Is it, you know, environmentally safe product? That should be, you know, if you do a little bit of research, normally you can find that out pretty easily. From what I've experienced, most people who buy, you know, face lotions, that sort of thing, they'll find a brand and they'll stick with it. Yeah, so, you know, if you can just find one brand that, you know, the first couple of times you buy, it might seem weird, but once you, all you need to do is find one that's environmentally friendly. Right. And you don't have to consistently make a new decision every time you go. Right. You know, for the single-use plastics, it's really a combination of, try to avoid consuming them or purchasing them or just getting them whenever you can. And when you do get them, try and reuse them as much as possible. So, you know, recycling is great. You should definitely recycle as much as you can, but recycling alone is not going to solve this issue. It's the level at which our planet essentially consumes single-use plastics. So, you know, a big one that is really rampant for ocean pollution is plastic bags. So, if you get from the grocery store, that's also a really easy one to stop yourself from using. Just keep two or three reusable tote bags that you get for free at any sort of fair or event you go to. Keep them in your car. And then, honestly, the most difficult thing is remembering to keep them in your car when you unload your groceries and remembering to take them with you from your car to the grocery store. If you can get that, then you're golden. Another good thing to do for all of this stuff as far as, you know, changing your consuming habits and that sort of thing is tell someone, tell your family, tell your friends that you're going to try and do this. Even if it's, you don't have to make a big show of it, just say, "Oh yeah, I'm trying to, you know, use less plastic bags." So, that's why I have these really weird tote bags in my car. And that way, if they're ever with you when you go grocery shop and they'll tell you, like, "Hey, you forgot your tote bags. Now you have to carry them all to your car as a punishment in your hands." Something like that, keep you honest. Straws, we've talked about this before. Just tell the waiter, waitress, you don't want straws. Stop getting straws if it's a help yourself sort of thing. You really, most people don't need them, you know, unless it's for legitimate help issues. Most of the time, we just have them out of convenience. Yeah, we're just so used to them. It's part of our culture, it seems, now, yeah. Right, yeah, exactly. And, you know, it's just, when you think about it, it's such an obvious thing to switch. And the work is all up front. This will all become habit to you after a while. You know, it takes initial effort and that can be a bit jarring sometimes. But, you know, everyone hates having plastic bags in their house, even if you store them under a cupboard. Everyone hates that. You need to end up taking them to the recycling center, which is its own trip or throwing them away and then you feel bad about it or just keeping them there and they pile up. So, I mean, they have other added benefits in addition to being great for our ocean. But, most importantly, these are easy things that you can do that you could decide to do right now. You don't have to change any real part about your lifestyle. You just have to find a couple bags and stop using straws. Yeah, I agree. I mean, this is something that it's more of developing the habit. We know the solution. We know the problem and we know the solution. And the solution is reachable if we just change our habits. I remember growing up, I used to have in my lunch, I used to have a different plastic, like I used to carry my lunch in a plastic bag every day. And I would throw out that plastic bag every day. And the guilt I feel now is just ridiculous because I know better now. You know, the first like you said, the first key is learning about the effects of plastic pollution. You think about a plastic bag in the ocean upside down, it looks a lot like a jellyfish, Luis jellyfish sea turtles and other animals. If they get that into their system, they can either choke or it can degrade into their stomach and the toxins will get into their system and they can die a slow and painful death. Do not do that. Go out and get a cooler or some kind of lunch bag that's reusable. I've been using the same lunch bag that I cleaned them almost all like and once a week at least. But I've been using the same lunch bag for probably the last six or seven years, they last long. They cost a little bit more, but they last longer. I remember now that I like I use a tow bag when I go grocery shopping, I've forgotten stuff. I've forgotten my bag in the car or at home. And I've punished myself by carrying each individual in the cart and then putting it in it packing it in and then carrying it individually when I got home. And my wife laughs at me, she's like, why are you doing this? I'm like, because I'm going to remember next time, not to forget it, right? And I don't. I rarely forget it. And I bring those and you can get nice ones. You can get like cooler ones so that if you go grocery shopping during work at lunch or something like that, you can keep them in your car if you live in a hot place or something. And it keeps them cool. Just throw a nice pack in there or something like that. You can get really, really cool designs on them. You can get down to an happy tote bag with that thing. Exactly. I'm sure there's a Star Wars tote bag of some sort. There's probably Star Wars. Oh, yeah, you can do you can go crazy on it. And it's just it's one of those things where it's it's it's it's a habit. You know, and there are more alternatives out there. I just bought glass straws from a company who we're hoping to hear more about soon, but I just brought glass straws off the internet. So my kids can have straws because they like straws. I said, okay, fine. You know, you can have straws if you have them glass straws, how they work, I have no idea, but they come with their own cleaners. And it's really cool. And I know I'm going to reuse them over and over and over again. So I don't mind paying a little bit more. And I know they're not going to be harmful because when glass breaks down, it becomes sand. People just goes into sand, you know, and I like when I have like will lunch at work, I bring a glass container, you know, has a plastic top that gets reused. I have a plastic and I have a glass container and many people in my work do the same thing. And it lasts a lot longer. It's it's pretty tough. So it doesn't break as much. And and you don't have to worry about BPA's and all that kind of stuff. It's just really easy to use. And it's pretty solid too. So it makes sense to use those things. But it really comes down to going out there, buying that kind of stuff and getting into the habit of using it. The plastic straws at restaurants, you just, I've forgotten a couple times, I get so angry at myself, but I'm just like, right now, as soon as I get down and they ask for a drink, I'm like, glass of water, no straw, you know, or I'll have a Coke, no straw, you know, or something like that. You know, it just gets down to that, you know, it's just remember it. And it's not going to be the most unusual request that waiter waitresses heard that. No, of course not. Of course not. I'm sure there's many, many weird things. They'll probably be like, sure, fine, no straws, whatever. Yeah, yeah, summer's a prize. I have to admit, summer's a prize. Really, no straws. I'm like, no, no straws, even for the kids, the kids like no stress, no, because I've shown them the sea turtle, the sea turtle video, and they do not like straws anymore. You know, so they're excited about the glass straws because, you know, they can use them again. It's not going to harm a sea turtle. So, there are ways to get around this. There are, this I find is the most attainable. I mean, I know there's the article surfing, surfacing again in the media about how there's this guy, I forget his name, but he's gonna, he's, he's a teenager or a young man who has designed a contraption, clean up thing. Yeah, it doesn't work. It's scientifically proven not to work. And it'll probably never work. I love the fact that he's trying to do something about it. However, it's not one, it's not the only solution. It's not the solution. It's not a solution at all. We really need to work on prevention. It sucks that this has happened, but we really need to work on prevention to stop it from going in. And hopefully, eventually, we can get a handle on this ocean plastic pollution. Right. So it's, it's attainable. It's more of a habit thing, you know, and it's something that we can all control individually, which will help the overall process. So this is something I like to end on this one, because this is the one that is the most wins. You know, you're not losing as much if you gain more, you know what I mean? Like you have the best gains because there are alternatives available 10 years ago, not as many alternatives available. I don't even think, you know, a tote bag or a reusable bag wasn't even really accessible that easily. You'd have to kind of come up with your own and use a knapsack or something. You just kind of keep doing that stuff and it makes it a lot better. My video just turned off, but we're going to get it back on. Nathan, can you still hear me? Yeah. Okay, good. So yeah, so it's just, it's one of those things where we just have to keep plugging away and get the alternatives, learn about the alternatives, and then keep moving from there. Learn about the alternatives, get the alternatives and keep moving around and just keep progressing and progressing. So I think we're going to end it on that note, plus our, I think your video has clunked out on me, but that's okay because we still got the audio. But yeah, I think, I think, well, there we go. I think what we have to, what we have to realize is that yes, there's a lot of overwhelm and there's a lot of disappointment and we're coming up against some big things. But these things didn't just happen overnight. They happened over a long period of time, you know, more than 60, more than 70 years, you can say 100 years, even more than that. It happened. It's getting to a point we haven't reached a threshold yet, I don't think, but it's getting to that point where we really need to change and we're that generation that can change. I think the young generation that's coming through is really aware of this kind of stuff, more where than I was when I was a kid. And it's, it's an immediate a lot. You're getting less of these nonsense climate change deniers and nonsense deniers. If you see a climate change as a denier, especially in politics, it's probably mostly because they're being supported by someone who benefits from climate change being denied. All right. You know, so just be aware of that. And I think it's just it's one of those things where you just you learn about it. You chip away at the solutions and you just you keep doing your part and and help others do their part, right? Don't force them to do it, but provide them with the information just like we're doing here in the podcast. Become, you know, a notion leader, right? And live for a better ocean, not through like by leadership, through your own actions, but help others do it with theirs as well. And I think do you have any last last last words on this on this subject? I think it's just, you know, as we've experienced, it's a sobering conversation to have and a sobering thought to think about. But I think once you get past that initial fear or feeling of overwhelm, and you know, feeling the problem is is overwhelming and too large to tackle. Once you actually start picking apart, you know, what the problems are and potential solutions to those, I think you realize, like you said, that a lot of it is achievable. It's not going to be, you know, a month, year long, decade long battle. It's going to be longer than that. It's going to take a lot of time. But a lot of the work can be done upfront. If you, you know, get into a habit of learning about these things and changing certain behaviors that are, for the most part, small behaviors, small little things that you can change in your daily life, you're, you're much more likely to make a lasting change. And that's how, you know, slowly over a long. Oh, Nate, you're cutting out there. Nate, Nate, hold on. Sorry. You're cutting out there a little bit. Sorry. Okay. Sorry. Just continue on. We'll. Okay. Yeah. So it's, I mean, it's just that they're, their problems are going to take some time to fix, but the sooner you start fixing them and or start working towards fixing them, the sooner you'll start to see a solution. Yeah. And that's, that's really it. It's, it's, you can't, you can't just throw up your arms and give up and just like, we're never going to find a solution to this. We have found the solutions. Now it's just we need to act on them. Right. Yes. Climate change is a little bit bigger than we initially thought. And the solutions are harder to put together because we're so enthralled committed to such a wasteful, um, sort of, uh, energy usage and so forth. However, those things will change in time. We need to force that change to go to happen faster by talking to our politicians, by, you know, moving that, that process faster, by buying more things, researching more things, inventing more things, you know, being more innovative in that kind of way. We've kind of become a little complacent in the way we live. And now it's time to change and we need to, to really kind of innovate in that kind of way. Um, and that's just how we're going to do it. And it's happening. You see it happening more and more. The US has employed more people for solar work than they did for, uh, oil and gas work last year. You know, so that's a big change that you, if you talk to me like five years ago about that, I would be like, no way. That's impossible. This is happening now. Um, so we're seeing that kind of change, that shift. And I think we're going to see more and more of it and faster in the next five years and the five years down from there. So, um, I think that's a good way of, of ending this, this show. Um, I know this show might have been hard for a lot of people to hear because it's, it is definitely overwhelming. And that was the point we wanted to show you that, yes, we, we all get overwhelmed. We all get frustrated and, and we, we let out big size when we hear these problems and we talk about these problems, but there's also solutions that accompany those problems. A lot of them start with us at home individually, whether you be a scientist or conservationist, a non-scientist, just, you know, a person who's just living life, it starts at home. And the more you think about the ocean, the more you're aware of these problems, you can't go back. You're going to, you're going to want to come up with some kind of solution and there are solutions. And that's what we're here to provide. So I think this was a good, I think this was a good, um, podcast again, uh, inspired by our friends over at Southern Fried Science, Andrew David Dailers. So thank you, Andrew, for that. I appreciate that. We appreciate that. Um, uh, but yeah, so, you know, this is just, this is what we do here and speak up for poos. We talk about the hard issues, um, you know, collaborate with other people and, and we just get the solutions out there and hopefully inspire you to really go home and get these solutions done. Um, and, and start implementing. Like I said at the beginning of the show, if you can pick one a month to do for the next 11 months, till the end of this year, you come up with 11 different things that you've done. Right. And that just accumulates and it becomes habit. You know, after the first month might be hard for one thing, but then you just keep doing it and keep doing it. By the month number three, you're going to do a pretty good job. You know, you're going to have it down. It's going to be habit. And then once you get into habits, it's hard to change. Right. So, um, I think it's, I think it's worthwhile. So, um, as I said before, if you want to contribute to our, uh, speak up for blue podcast and support us and support the ocean conservation message that we are saying, you know, five days a week, you can do so at speakerforblue.com/patreon p-a-t-r-e-o-n. And of course, if you want to subscribe to us or leave, uh, a rating or review on iTunes, you can do so at speakerforblue.com/podcast. Uh, and you can, uh, leave a, a nice five star review and, uh, and a review. And, uh, and we'd appreciate that as well. Because that means the more reviews and five stars we get, the more people see it on iTunes and have the potential of being more aware of what's happening in the ocean. So that's a one way of sharing this podcast. So, we, this was a longer one than we expected. Well, I didn't think we, we'd get this far. I think when we first planned this out, I thought, I didn't think we would get to 25 minutes, but we can talk about this stuff, can't we? Yeah. I think we completely covered everything about those issues. I don't think there's, we could have gotten any more in depth. I'm glad, I, you know what, but I'm glad we did. I think this was, was a good episode overall for everybody to hear. So, um, and plus by the way, if, if people want to talk back to us, they can, if you go to speakerforblue.com/connect, you can actually, we have a, a service called SpeakPipe that we've subscribed to. And, uh, all you do is click on the button and you can actually leave us a message. Whether it be a question or a comment on this episode, it'd be greatly appreciated. We'll play it on the next episode, uh, and maybe comment back on it. So, uh, you can do so at speakerforblue.com/connect. And, uh, and we'd love to hear from you. So that's it for the episode today. Uh, Nathan, thank you very much for joining us. And, uh, we very much appreciate it. And, uh, you guys have been listening to speakerforblue podcast. I am your co-host, Andrew Lewin here with Nathan Johnson. We really appreciate you listening. Happy Friday and happy conservation. [Music]