How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 109: Watching British Wildlife with Eco Sapien
We have two very special guests on Interview Wednesday's today. David and Phil run an organization called Eco Sapien, which creates small documentaries on You Tube. Some great quality documentaries, I might add that include conservation science, something that has been missing in many big budget TV programs.
I sit down and chat with David and Phil on why and how they started Eco Sapien and how they got so good at producing documentaries.
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Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session109
Welcome to the Speak Up for Blue Podcast, session 109. Have you ever wondered about the wildlife in the UK? That's what we're going to talk about today with a team from a site called ecosapion.org. They've been creating videos on YouTube, documentary videos on YouTube about British wildlife. And I have to admit, I'm a huge fan as soon as I saw them. And we're going to talk about why on this episode of the Speak Up for Blue podcast. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to the Speak Up for Blue podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now, here's your host, Love's football so much. I mean, he really, really likes it. Andrew Lewin. [MUSIC PLAYING] 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 speakupforblue.com, marine ecologist, and self-proclaimed ocean printer. And today, we've got a very-- actually, it's an awesome interview podcast today with David Bodenham and Philip Taylor-- David, I'm sorry if I pronounced your name wrong-- and Philip Taylor, who are a team of wildlife conservationists who are from the UK. And they are creating videos, documentary videos, short documentary videos on YouTube and working around the UK to educate the youth of the UK about British wildlife, which is something that you don't normally think about when you think of the UK. We just think of the island. We think of the history. And I'll be honest, I'm a little ignorant of the fact because I live in Canada. We have that tie to the UK. We have a lot of respect for it. But you don't have a lot of information on British wildlife. And David and Phil are just amazing guys who just work so well at trying to get their message across. That when I first saw them, I was like, you know what? I've got to have these guys on the podcast. And we've actually developed a pretty good relationship right now and to try and help each other out in terms of getting our conservation methods-- our message out there in the YouTube world as well as the podcast world. So there's a lot of cross promotion going to happen in the future as it's happening right now. So before we get into that, I just want to thank our Patreon contributors, which are Judy and Ron, Dr. Judith Weiss, as well as Chris and Claire Jeffert. Thank you very much for your contributions to our Patreon campaign. You are supporting an ocean conservation message that we are trying to get out in the podcast world-- the podcast community, I cannot speak today-- where we are really trying to just get people to understand what's happening in the ocean. Because I know a lot of times it's a very busy time a year. Every time it's a busy time, there's always excuses, there's a lot of information out there. And people just don't have access to the information. So what we thought we would do, my team, myself, Nathan, and Kate, we decide, you know what? We're going to try and get people to listen in the podcast world, because there's not a lot of ocean conservation science or just conservation in general being professed out there. So we decide, you know what? I'm going to build a show on this, and we're going to have to put a team together. And I've found we've done a very good job so far. As of this past Sunday, we've had almost over $55,000, almost $60,000 downloads, and in about seven months, which is fantastic. I'm really happy to see that. We're really now. We're starting to get about $8,000 to $9,000 downloads per week, which is awesome. Because that means more people are getting reached, are getting our conservation message, and they like it. They keep downloading the episodes, and they like it. So thank you very much for listening. Pass them around to your friends, and thank you and your family, and thank you for sharing them on their social networks. I really appreciate that. So yeah, so let's get talking about Ecosapion. So the story behind how I discovered David and Phil and Ecosapion was interesting. But back in September of 2015-- I had to pay on one time, you're listening. This was about four or five months ago. We looked at-- well, we heard about-- everybody heard about how Rupert Murdoch, the head of Fox News, was taking over a completely national geographic. And it wasn't becoming a nonprofit anymore. It was becoming a for-profit. And with everything that happens at Fox News, if you're familiar, it's not really regarded as an unbiased, newsworthy site. It's just more rhetoric, very right-based, very biased. And to be honest, Ecosapion has just outright lies. And it's more of a gimmick to try and get viewers and ratings than it is to provide you with information. So there were a lot of people, including subscribers who were subscribed to National Geographic, that were very disappointed in hearing this news, including myself. I'm not a subscriber. However, I really enjoyed National Geographic. And now, not only was there a TV station owned by Fox News and run by Fox News, or the people who own Fox News, but now their magazines are as well. And to top it off, Rupert Murdoch is a known climate change denier, which you can't really deny a fact, but that's what he is. He says that. So there were a lot of inherent problems of what's going to happen with the message of National Geographic. Are they going to leave a lot of people outside and not let them in the loop? And there were a lot of layoffs about a month after this happened, and so forth. So I was at a point where I was like, you know what? I'm really disappointed. He had a discovery channel who were putting up-- until last year, we were putting out really bogus fake documentaries on saying that the Megalodon is around, and that sharks are just human killers, and really not giving a proper message during shark week and other documentaries. Animal Planet was coming up with trying to have these fake documentaries about mermaids, how they were alive, just for entertainment purposes. And now people believe that mermaids are alive, and just really ridiculous stuff, and nonfactual based, non-science based, and a lot of that pissed off a lot of scientists, including myself. And so at that point, once we heard the whole National Geographic thing happened, everybody was like, man, this is ridiculous. We need to come up with a way, like, either on YouTube or something, and I even came out. I'm like, I want to put a channel together on YouTube with these documentaries. I started searching around in my research of, like, who's doing something like this? What are we going to be doing? And lo and behold, I came across a channel called Ecosapion. And we're going to put their links in the show notes where she'll be speakupforblue.com/session109. And there was these young guys, wildlife biologists who were from the UK, Phil and David, who were actually creating these five to seven minute documentaries on British wildlife. And sometimes they were insects. Sometimes they were bats. Sometimes they were different types of birds, magpies. Sometimes they were conservation issues. And then, so what I did is I decided, hey, you know what? I'm going to have these guys on the podcast. They weren't covering really ocean things, but I still wanted to get their-- I just wanted to have them on to say, hey, look what these guys are doing. They're putting together some really great videos. And they are great videos. We're probably embed one in the podcast or in the show notes. But they're putting together really great videos on wildlife. Whether it be British wildlife or not, it's really cool. And it's informative. It's science-based. It's really easy to understand. So I wanted to get these guys on the podcast. So I contacted them in September. And I contacted David. And I said, Dave, I'd love to have you on. When can we do this? And I'm like, are you interested? And he said, yes, I'm interested. But, you know, why don't we wait until the new year? Because we're coming out with an episode completely on gray seals, which are very popular. They're found a lot in Britain in the UK, sorry. And so I was like, oh, that's awesome. So we'll wait until then. And then we actually contacted each other a couple times. Because David is just knowledgeable on cameras and video equipment. He's been a photographer for years. And he's just an amazing guy who really opened up his practice and showed me behind the scenes of what he was doing. And he's talking about a lot about Phil. And I got to meet Phil during this podcast, who was the writer and helped co-produce a lot of the videos. So just two great guys who really didn't have a huge budget to do these kind of things. But we're very knowledgeable in the technology. Very good writers. And just had a passion. And still have a passion for promoting British wildlife. And they go into schools. And they have workshops and everything. The website is ecosepian.org. We're going to put the link in the show notes. So it's speakingforblue.com/session109 if you can get the first time. They have all the links to their YouTube channels and everything-- Facebook, pages, Twitter, and everything. But they are awesome guys. They really are. And you're going to get a handle for how awesome they are in this interview. So I just want you to think about what they've been doing and think about how easy it is to get done. And you'll see a lot more of them in the future. I want to have them on an Ocean Talk Friday a few times just to talk about the issues. So I think it'll be great. So anyway, lo and behold, here is David and Phil talking about ecosepian, how it came to be, and why they did it. And we're going to talk about a recent video they just put out last week or a week and a half ago on the Graciel population in the UK. So here are David and Phil. Hi, David and Phil. Thank you very much for joining us on the Speak Up for Blue podcast. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Hello. You, Ben. And you guys, you're coming from your in England right now. So we've got a bit of it. Was it six hour difference, I think? But I really appreciate it. Yes, five, yeah. It's a five hours. OK, five hours, I'm sure with the hour back. But thanks a lot for doing this. I know it's a little later there. So I really appreciate it. And I'm going to tell you-- we kind of talked about it right before we decided to record. The reason why to have you guys on here is because I love-- I still love what you do. And we're going to talk about a recent video that you released last week. But I love the fact that you're doing it. When I discovered ecosepian, it was right at the time that we found out that Rupert Murdoch had completely taken over national geographic. And everybody over here in North America was just surprised and disappointed and wondering what was going on. I'm sure in England, the same thing happened. You guys were like, wait a minute. Like, how is it going to work right now? And then about a week later, I discovered ecosepian channel. And I was like, this is what we need. We need-- obviously, it's the two of you. You're not a huge organization. But you're an organization dedicated to just bringing wildlife information to people through video. And it's just amazing. You're doing it on YouTube. I gave you just like a brief interest. So before we go on with the interview, why don't you guys tell the audience who you guys are, what you do, so they get a feel for what you guys are up to? OK, well, so we're ecosepian, as you've mentioned. And we're an educational organization. And our main goal is to teach people about the importance of biodiversity. So teach them the importance of wildlife and why we rely on wildlife. So that's generally our mission. So the way we do it is through our videos. And they're the core of the organization. And back here in the UK, we also do educational workshops in local schools and with two organizations, et cetera. And all these resources, we pull together to try and teach people this message. Right on, that sounds amazing. It sounds like, yes, that's the way it's supposed to go. But then you see a lot of these other large channels, I should say, like Animal Planet and National Geographic and Discovery that go a little bit above and beyond and really try and glorify what's not there. When you guys see that, did that take into account why you started Ecosapian? I suppose so. I mean, the big thing, we love the BBC documentaries. Obviously, we're proud of the BBC documentaries being some of the best documentaries. Yeah, exactly. Visually, absolutely stunning. But one of the big things that we really struggled with, especially in the more modern BBC documentaries, is how they almost dumb down some of the science. We're both conservation biologists. And we thought, well, where is the science? Yeah, where is the science, exactly? It's a lot of admiring the beautiful answers to the incredible answers. You don't come away with a lot of knowledge about them and why they're so important, why they're so special. You know what, you're right. And I find that that's not just the BBC. That's other documentaries as well. And of course, I'm a marine ecologist. When I look at things, I see beauty and it's awesome. But then you're just like, OK, now what? What's your message? You know, they'll take the last two minutes and be like, oh, and this species is kind of dwindling. So we need to do this, this, this, and this. And that's it. That's the end of the program. And you still see this visually appealing scenery. And then people, I've had people talk to me about Greatbury Reef, and they're just like, oh, yeah, it looks great. I'm like, no, like, yeah, it does. No problems there. Yeah, no problems, right? Except they're dumping dredgerate into the mining dredgerate into the Greatbury Reef. And so they don't see that there's a problem with a lot of these places. And that's what I like about your videos is you guys go into the full detail of everything. But it's not too much. But it's enough that everybody can just realize-- I showed my kids who are six and eight, the roads video and the baths, right? That's what you recently-- I think it was just before after Christmas. It was recent. Just after Christmas. Just after Christmas. Yeah, and I showed it to them. And now, when they go, they look at bridges, and they look at roads and stuff. And they're like, well, daddy, do you think there are bats? They talk about bats and how close they are and stuff. So six and eight, they're big into the environment. They're big into animals. But now they're being more aware of their surroundings and looking at old roads that they've been on countless times. And we've been on countless times. Now there's something about them. And they're like, oh, you know, keep up. Yeah, so it's kind of interesting in that respect, right? I mean, that's precisely what we were trying to achieve. We were trying to tap into that YouTube generation. You know, kids don't get out as much as they used to. And they watch a lot more videos online. So we thought, well, there's a real gap in the market here as such. You know, there's not any YouTube channels specifically focused towards conservation biology and ecology. So we thought we could fill that gap and get across both in a fun way and interesting way, a bite-sized way, these scientific facts, as well as the amazing visuals that might come with the BBC programs. And hopefully that's what we're achieving. Yeah, no, absolutely. And one thing I like about you as well is you focus on the UK, which you don't see a lot. You know, you see a lot of tropical documentaries. You see a lot of like, probably American documentaries and places all over Europe and Asia and, you know, in Southeast Asia and whatnot. But you don't see many just focused on the UK. And I think that's interesting, just especially if you're focusing on kids in the UK. They want to see their own environment, right? Precisely, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I guess that's one of our unique selling points is the British perspective on the British wildlife, which is missing, there's not many documentaries on British wildlife. There's a show called Springwatch, which is produced, which looks at sort of seasonal changes. That's become really popular, but there's only a little bit of science in there. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot of kind of cute fluffy animals. Yeah, well, of course, you have to have the cute. But there's no explanation on the cute fluffy animals, right? That's the problem. There's no biology or ecology behind that. So now, you kind of mentioned something early. It's like, this is the way you chose, like, you chose YouTube to kind of get at the YouTube generation, because obviously, YouTube is just a powerhouse. It's the second largest search engine in the world, apart from Google, which makes sense. But you're scientists. You mentioned you're scientists at the beginning of the episode. And now, you're saying, OK, well, we're doing filming. Yeah. How do you go from-- and I'm going to say-- and this is a testament to you guys, because your videos are amazing. But how do you go from scientists, which are very focused on data, and quantity, and math, and it's right or wrong, to something that's focused more on arts, and scenery, and light, and everything like that? How did you guys do that transition? How was that transition? Well, I suppose, if we tell you a bit about how we first got involved with photography, I suppose. And that's a starting block, really. So I've been a photographer from a very, very young age. About 14, I really started getting to digital photography. I just missed film photography. That's when the digital age came in, and I started taking photographs with digital cameras. And then, from that point, my gear has improved, and I've been taking more and more photos. But I've always had a fascination with movie-making, filmmaking, the process of it, as well as documentary-making. And as the gear has become more sophisticated, I realized I could actually get out there, and film documentaries in the way that I wanted to, from a conservation biologist's point of view. Now, did you think it was really far out there, to actually make a documentary? Because you see the documentaries. You grew up on BBC documentaries. Sir David Attenborough, he's like the king of documentary. Yes. I honestly think he ruined it for any other person who wanted to do voiceovers in documentary. That wasn't from England, because now you can't have a non-British person doing a film, right? A documentary. But did you ever-- He sent the bar high. He definitely did. And he continues to do so at the end, right? But did you ever feel like it was just too far out there? You would never be able to be accomplished? In this day and age, did you always think, well, it had to be a BBC documentary? Or, no, I'm going to put this on YouTube, but still have the same kind of quality? Did you ever feel that one? I guess we just didn't think about it, because we started small. So I started off by just filming with a little compact camera, stuff in my garden. And then when I went away on a field trip to Madagascar, just all the incredible creatures, just filming everything that moved. And then I got home and thought, oh, I've got some free Windows Media Player Live software, high-tech. So I put a camera documentary. It was atrocious. I've always been a storyteller. I love writing stories. I love giving lectures and presenting. And I think the presenting and the writing was enough to draw David's attention, rather than the quality of the filming. Of course. Yeah. That was one of the main reasons I got in touch with Phil originally, because of his writing background. And he had that presenter voice. That's always important. Absolutely. I think one of the other big reasons why we thought we could do it was that technology and SLR cameras certainly allow you to make documentaries on a very low budget, or relatively low budget. I say low budget. It's not quite expensive, but if you have all the gear already, as we both basically did, you can do it. And it's portable. It's small. It's not the size of a house anymore. Dragging a camera around into the wilderness. You have portable equipment. And it becomes more achievable. Yeah, no, absolutely. And now, I guess if you really want to, just like you said, Phil, but you can use your camera, but now you can use phones. I know it's probably not perfect, but my iPhone now can do 4K. And you're just like, how does that work? I mean, obviously, there's a lot of other things that go into it to really get the features that you guys bring out. I know Dave, you and I have had some conversations on lighting and also what was the, I forget the name of the effect, but when you had the blurred, the lights at night? Oh, yes. Well, the official term is bokeh, which is Japanese. Yeah. And getting that nice look to your film, which you can't achieve with smartphones, but smart phones, we do an informal section on Ecosapium where we do video blogs and sometimes we use our smartphones just simply because we're out wherever filming and we can put the smartphone in front of our faces and talk whilst we're walking along. And it's perfect. Oh, yeah, no, it is. And I think it allows you to, and it gives people like your viewers to be like, hey, like these guys are going out. I mean, it's kind of like an inspiration, because if you think about it, these kids are watching you. You're videotaping, you're taking video stuff that you see. Yeah. A lot of times it's like you guys know what to look for. But then you get these other little kids who may not know what to look for, but then they might stumble upon something, like you said, fill in your garden or anywhere. And they can use their iPod or anything, their parents camera just to video it and then learn something and look it up and say, oh, well, what's this? You know, that's, I think, I'm not sure if you ever guys, do you guys ever think about that when your viewership is watching? It's like, show them how they can just take a phone and just start videotaping something in their garden or something like that? Well, yeah, I mean, certainly one of the ideas for the vlog section was to show a bit of the behind the scenes, and show people that they can quite easily do this. And, you know, it's a gift that we have all this technology. And we're able to do this when, you know, 20 years ago, it would have been possible, you know, big citizen science projects that rely on people taking photographs and if everybody's got a smartphone, you know, it's great, this technology is fantastic. It's much more accessible to everyone now, rather than being sort of the preserve of massive production companies. Anyone can give it a go, which is great. Yeah, I agree. And it allows more creativity to come through to allows people to get what they really want. So for instance, for someone like me who's a scientist and I want to watch a documentary about science, you know, like that's actually, you know, like your videos, it has a science in it, it has a conservation aspect in there, and it's about British wildlife, which I know virtually nothing about, you know what I mean? So it's for me to watch that on YouTube and I can watch them for hours. So it's awesome and it helps too. They're in like six or seven minute, you know, under 10 minute sort of episodes. So for me, it doesn't have a lot of time. Try not to exceed that. Yeah, but it's nice. Like the other day we watched, we watched that though, when we watched the roads episode, the bats and the roads, we watched it on my, on our 55 inch Samsung, you know, just the YouTube app and the kids were like, this is amazing. They thought it was TV and they were like, hey, let's change to another episode. And I'm like, this is amazing. Yeah, so it really works well. But speaking of British wildlife, so why did you guys find it important to talk about British wildlife and not something, something else? You know, why British wildlife for you guys in particular? Well, the, the British, specific British wildlife playlist stems from a trip I had to Canada. So, I was over in a, it's a Fino on Vancouver Island, just annoying some marine life with a GoPro camera, filming the fishes and stuff on the pier. And someone came up to me and a fellow photographer, we got chatting, they were really interested in what I was doing. But when they found out I worked in wildlife conservation in Britain, they had a massive laugh and say, what, Britain, what do you have in Britain that's worth conserving? Exactly. And just under pressure, I really struggled to come up with anything. Because obviously, if you walk over the hills of Britain, it's not over on with bears or anything. We've got rid of all our large carnivores. Right, right. I just kind of muttered something about birds of prey and then went back to my filming of the fishes. But it continued to bug me and I thought, well, if that's what people outside of Britain think, do people inside Britain think that? Are we a bit, maybe, ashamed of the wildlife? Do we just sort of handker at the tags and bears of our own? And that's, that would be really shame because there's so much interesting stuff. It might not be massive and furry and have big teeth. But there's still some incredible stuff in Britain to discover. Right. And so we thought, well, we'll highlight some of that stuff that people can just, they don't need top on a plane to see it. They can just walk outside and it's the parody for answering. And what did you, when you started putting these videos together, how did you find the feedback from the audience? What did you, did people in Britain like it? Or was it more people outside? What are you guys finding in terms of audience? Well, in terms of the kind of split between different geographies, we are very popular in the US. But that's because of the YouTube culture over in the US. Right. So it's about, it's about a 50/50 split between the US and the UK. And then we've been viewed in countries, about 50 countries all over the world. So, you know, it's interesting to see what people and which people are watching our videos and if they find them interesting or not. But it's all very well received. We get very positive comments. Everybody seems to enjoy our videos very much. But of course, we get comments which are more argumentative. Yeah, there's all that. So the issues we cover can be quite controversial. And as an independent organization, we have the sort of disintegrate of flexibility in that we can, we don't have to worry about treading on too many toes, really. We can look at the facts and let the facts guide the argument. And that's provoked a few sort of negative comments. For instance, we did a video about magpies, sort of the Crow family. And there's that kind of people think they're responsible for the decline of the UK songbird population. Right. Just because their population has gone up while the songbirds has gone down. But correlation doesn't always equal causation and there's another factor that the countryside's kind of been ripped up during that time, which is the ultimate reason. So we did a video exploring that and it attracted a few kind of haters. Right. But don't you find that, you know, you're getting a comment like that and addressing it through a video, that's sort of your mission too is to sort of dispel the images, right? Yeah. And I think that's really important from that, from your point of view is to be like, okay, well, hold on a second. You think that this is what's happening, but let's look it up, let's do some research to make sure and then do a video on it, present the facts and let other people, you know, see that because what would happen, I find, and this always bothers me. If I put up something on a page and then somebody else puts something down and I don't address it. I feel like people are thinking that I agree with it, you know, or I'm too afraid to get back to it. And then like you and like you guys, I'm independent too. So I don't really have to worry about, you know, you know, stepping on anybody's toes, but I still want to be polite, but I, you know, yeah, but I mean, I know what you mean. Like, like, if you ever did anything about climate change or whaling or anything like that, you get the comments. The trolls come out and they come out and I had, I just had to ban someone from my Facebook page because they kept talking about, and I don't know if you guys know this, but it seems to be in the news, it seems to be a bit of a surge. There's still people who think the earth is flat. Yeah, I saw, I saw this pop up in the internet the other day. Yeah, it's really weird. And so it's so weird. So I have a, I have a page that's separate from speaker for blue where it's, it's, it's called Ocean Conservation Careers that help people get into careers. Yeah. So I put up a video to help people out. And then somebody brought this up on that page and I was like, first of all, it's not even the right medium to do it, like you're way off base. And second of all, you're crazy because we pretty much address this, you know, if you've looked at space, come on, you know, but I just find it, I find interesting, but I think the fact that you could do a video to address it and really allow other people, like your viewers to say, well, okay, this has been addressed, especially that topic is probably not well known outside of, of the UK, you know what I mean? Yeah. I was precisely right. You know, we're getting down to the real nitty gritty in those types of videos where we're, we're looking at the peer review, review journals and actually, you know, picking them apart and showing that the evidence in that situation is overwhelming. Yeah. Says that our microphones are not responsible for songbird populations declines. So you know, it's a ridiculous situation, but it's great to be able to get something that's, you know, really in the scientific world and showing it to the public and it's showing, well, here is the evidence. This is, there's been a lot of research and here it is. Yeah. And it's quite fun. Yeah, it's fun. It's a bit like an investigation. You play it being the nature version of Sherlock Holmes. You pick apart the facts. You make your case. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I find too, like I do that now. I started to do that for the last few months where every Thursday I call it research Thursdays where I take a research paper on something that I found interesting. I read it and then I essentially translate it. So take away a lot of the, the, the scientific or the math part and then present sort of what the overall findings were. And a lot of people, I've gotten a lot of great feedback from it because people are just like, this is great because now we know what the science says. It's not just saying, oh, you know, um, you know, this outlet says this or Ruder says this or the Associated Press say this, they're just grabbing it from the literature. So I'm like, one, I just go right to the literature. I have access to these journals most of the time and just talk about it and say, this is great. You know, and I've gotten a lot of feedback from that. So I'm sure you guys are getting the same, same kind of thing where, and plus we're scientists. So it's nice to read the science. Yes. It is. Keep your head in the loop. I mean, you know, it's tricky. Sometimes you get lost and you don't keep your head in the loop. But if you do, the, the, the bigger advantage for us with doing it, the sapien is we are keeping our head in the loop, you know, and we're communicating with other scientists and we're communicating with the public. So we're getting the best information across as we can. Yeah. And speaking of which, you guys have a program where you go into schools and you talk in school. So how do you guys, what do you guys talk about when you're in there? Is it the same kind of thing? Do you show some of your videos? Tell us what people can expect from a program like that. Ah, we've got loads of different workshops that we can run the whole link into the curriculum. So they're the learning that the schools are required to do. One of our popular ones is just an introduction to biodiversity. Okay. So because we're all about promoting the importance of biodiversity, essentially, like, everything that's alive on a lot of trees, the birds, dogs, et cetera. So we go in and we get the kids thinking about that. We get them sort of introduced to the idea and then hold in on a specific portion of it. In this case, pollinating insects, which that's one of my specialities. And it's a hot topic. It's always in the news about the bees disappearing or be killed off by pesticides. So we'll do a presentation for them, but we like as much sort of interaction as possible. So there's lots of activities. So we'll get a grocery cart full of shopping, spread it out on the table. So right. So if bees went extinct overnight, which of these foods would disappear? So basically you end up chucking out anything that's interesting. You get a loaf of bread, maybe some milk boring, absolutely boring. So they realize that, oh, actually, I won't be able to have apple pie or pizza anymore because the tomatoes and the pizza all have gone and the apples will have disappeared. And that's a really good way of engaging them. That's very smart. I bet you the teachers are probably like, oh, my Lord, you know, like, yeah, we need to do something about this. And another big kind of side to it is trying to get kids outside. So we try and have obviously an indoor, more formal element to it, but then actually get them outside to do pond dipping or go on a batwalk and witness bats flying about catching insects, you know, all of these different elements that really is missing from, especially in the UK and in urban environments, for example, where me and Phil live, I live in Leeds, Phil lives in York, both quite large cities and kids don't really have that connection with nature anymore. Yeah. So we want to get them involved in nature again and then understand why it's important to be with it and also why we rely on it. Yeah. Yes, I agree with you because I mean now we're not only in a YouTube age and it's a YouTube generation, but it's a video game generation where, I don't know, when I was a kid, video games where I did a lot of sports video games, I never did the adventure video game, but even then, there was a start and a stop. It seems like now the video game's never stopped. So you see kids playing it for an adult, playing it for like 24 hours straight, if they got it. Oh, I mean, I'm a gamer. I'm a gamer, I love my games, but you know, then I have to put my foot down and actually persuade myself to go outside and get away from it because they're very active. But at the end of the day, when I get outside, I feel a lot better, an awful lot better. Oh, for sure. Yeah, I know. And it's interesting. There's a guy by the name of, and we've had him on the show before, Wallace Jane Nichols, who's a sea turtle biologist that lives in California, he came out with a book called "The Blue Mind," and it was talking about how the color blue and the ocean is so good for you. And what he did, the whole book was how he teamed up with conservation biologists, marine biologists, oceanographers, and neuroscientists, and really looked at the cognitive ties to being around the ocean and being in nature. And so every summer, he did this 100 days of blue where he was outside all the time. He took his kids. They did road trips. And they would just be outside all the time. They would camp. They would, in their backyard, they would sleep on their trampoline at night as sort of like a camping experience and whatnot. And to watch it, it was just like, "This is amazing." He dedicated his life to do it for 100 days to promote the book, but imagine doing that now. Yeah. It's something to get myself out of the house sometimes, let alone kids. So I think that's fantastic for those programs, to get them outside and get them exploring because once kids get that bug to explore, they always want to do it, right? Yeah. Well, exactly. It's catching them young. It's getting them involved in nature when they're very young, and then they've called the bug. It's hard engaging with adults who haven't had any experience of nature. They're the hardest. It's almost too late in the stage, because if you haven't had a kind of vested interest in it since a kid and you grow up to become, I don't know, a politician who's in charge of making decisions, you don't care because you've had no investment in it. Yeah. No, I agree. And there's always an excuse for the adults. They're busy or they've got this or they've got that. And it's very difficult. You're right. It's easier to get the kids involved, because they will dedicate their lives to doing it. And then, but that will rub off on the parents. Yeah. And then the parents will be like, Oh, let's go outside. And the parents are like, OK, well, we'll get you to go outside because they know it's good for the kids. So they'll do that. I find that's the way to do it. I've actually found too, by doing this podcast, I've had a couple of people who have contacted me. One was in Hong Kong. She's a friend of mine. She's been listening to the podcast. She listened to one of the podcasts where I talked about plastic pollution. And she lives, like I said, she lives in Hong Kong. So one of the countries that was found to contribute one of the most plastic, most amounts of plastic pollution was China. So she wanted to help. So she started looking around for recycling stations and whatnot. She spent her and her partner spent a bunch of time looking around, and now they found a recycling center. So they actually take out their guys from their apartment, separate it, and put it into the recycling center. So she's an adult in her 30s, and I was so surprised that somebody would do that just off the podcast. So it made me feel like, Oh, this is actually making a difference. Yeah, absolutely. So now let's change the subject. I want to talk about this recent video because this is for me, it's been a long anticipated video because when we first contacted you, I was like, Oh, I want to have you on the podcast. This is what we do. And you guys were like, Okay, this is awesome. But because you're an ocean focused podcast, we're having, you know, a gray seal video coming out in January, February. And let's wait till that. And we can promote that. You know what? That's a perfect idea. So this has been long anticipated for me, and I'm super excited and I got a, I even, I have to admit, I showed my kids, you guys sent me a, you guys sent me like, I guess a little preview of what was going to be put up last weekend. And I have to admit, when I watch with the kids, I said, honey, I said, they sent this just us. It's an exclusive and they were very proud of that. They're like, Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's good. But yeah, so, so tell us about the video. It was about gray seals. I didn't even know there were gray seals in, in, in the UK. So this is stuff I've discovered. So tell us how, how it came about. And then we'll talk about the footage and everything like that. Well, so it fed into the new playlist that we've just started the importance of British wildlife. So we're asking that question, why is British wildlife important? So we thought, well, you know, where are some real great wildlife spectacles in the UK? Well, on the Linkarshire coast, which is not too far away from us, it's probably about two hours away, two hour drive. There's a very big seal colony. It's called Don and Nook, the location, interesting name, and they get up to 5,000 seals there every year. It's, it's quite an amazing place. So we thought, well, let's make a trip, see what we get. Yep. You know, it's always the case with our videos that we have to plan ahead, wildlife being unpredictable, weather being unpredictable, that's one of the main ones. So as long as we know that we can get the footage, then we can create an episode. So we went there, filmed the seals, needless to say, we got quite a lot of footage. Yeah. And, and it works out quite well. So we made the episode based around about that. Okay, so when you went out there, well, when you thought about this, did you have a specific idea of what you wanted to base the, the, the film around? Yeah. So it's, it's precise that looking at British wildlife and saying, well, why are gray seals important? So in the context of the world population of gray seals in the UK, we have 40% of the entire world population found around our shores, quite significant in itself, 95% of the EU population. That's amazing. So, you know, it's, it's a very big chunk. So we only briefly touch on different aspects, but we look at their ecology being a top predator. You know, if, if they weren't protected around the UK, what could be the implications of that there could be, although there's not been that much research and it's, it's hard to find much research looking at gray seals and their effects in ecosystem because the experiments are just so hard to conduct. Of course, of course. But if a top predator was taking away, we can reasonably presume that there would be some kind of trophic cascade and there would be some dire effects on the marine ecosystem around the UK and the North Sea where you predominantly get gray seals. And then we really, we, we touched on looking at the fishing industry and how that might tie into it as well. I don't understand, obviously in Canada, that's a contentious issue as well. So there's, yeah, there's a, but I mean, we keep, we kept it brief. We're there. We're now open for discussions, hopefully with YouTubers, getting in touch, asking a few more questions about it. Yeah. Yeah. No, and that is, I mean, like you mentioned, in here in Canada, that's the main debate around the seal hunt that we have that's been infamous around the world now, unfortunately. And the big debate is, you know, obviously the big debate is the seal hunt needed. And a lot of people say, you know, from a cultural perspective, it's, it's needed from, and then from a fishing perspective is needed because the, the argument is that the seals actually take some of the, like, are feed on cod, which is already an over fish population. And now it's taking away from the fishermen. So there, it's almost like they're in competition. And of course, when they're in competition, who's going to win, you know, it's always, it's always the humans, unfortunately, right? So that, and so there's been studies on feeding ecology of seals all around, you know, from Nova Scotia, and you Brunswick, Quebec, everywhere. And it's still a contentious issue because the science is there, but it's not really perfect. And it doesn't really say, well, yeah, it could be, but it's also they're an over fish population. So they're, they, like, the cod for some reason have never really recouped, like they, like they were. All right. And, and they're starting to a little bit, but, you know, in comparison to, like, say somewhere in, like, the northeastern US, but we're still not sure, and a lot of people say, well, it's the seals that are allowing, you know, that are, that are, that are not allowing them to recoup. So it's, it goes back and forth. And of course, now it's almost like this. I don't even know if the science takes, has a seat at the argument table anymore because it's become so political that you don't know really what's going on. And it'll be interesting to see with this new government now that we have that's more environmentally friendly than the last government to see if that will be, it feels still be an issue or what, it's, it's all remained to be seen. But of course, there's other factors that play in, and I'm sure it's the same in, in the UK where there's, there's climate change that plays into it. There's, you know, other habitat destructive things that are going on, both in the UK and Canada that can, that can prevent fish from replenishing or even seals from surviving, you know, yes, you're getting sea lions colonies in California that are, that are turning up dead because there's no food left because all the food have shifted away. So, you know, there's a lot of things going on in the world and to attribute it just, you know, that, that, that fishing populations are not, or commercial fish populations are not up to par because of the seals. I don't know. I think, I think that's precisely the, the main problem. The thing with humans is we, we really, we, we struggle with very complicated, um, effects. So, um, just blaming it on one effect or one, one cause makes it easy. Yeah, it makes it very easy. But the nature of, of ecology, ecology is one of those sciences which it's hard to experiment in any way. And the, the, there are so many different factors and we struggle to comprehend how many different factors are playing into this. So having a scapegoat like the seals is an easy option. It's an easy political option, but it's inevitably more complicated. No, absolutely. And I think there's also, when you, when you talk about any marine mammal, there's also just the ethics of whether people think that marine mammals should be hunted. Should there be a harvest, you know, and that's one of the main things that's going on in Canada here when it's very difficult to say, no, we should harvest these seals and then you will watch them being clubbed over a head with a spike. It's not a, it's not a pretty killing, you know, it's not, they're not helping themselves at all. But apparently that's, and tell them that's the most humane way. So there's that ethics that's playing with the science. And I think the ethics really is winning now, um, from, from, uh, an advocacy perspective or an animal rights perspective, um, than just the fact of whether there should be a harvest at all or whether the populations can actually survive a harvest. Uh, culture, culture is a very hard thing to get by. Um, I mean, obviously we have a lot of traditions in the UK, uh, in lots of other different areas, fox hunting, et cetera, you know, you can, you can pick out lots of examples, they, they can be argued as culture, but you know, we live in, in the modern scientific world. You have to look at things objectively. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's, um, you know, that's one of the difficult parts of, of, uh, presenting this material too, is, is weighing, is trying to tell people, well, this is what the science says. Yeah. And no, but then they use the arm. I don't care what the science says. It shouldn't be happening. And then you're like, okay. Okay. Okay. Fine. But I'm going to present a video based on the science. And I think that's, might be, uh, your, your strength too. When you compare it to say bigger channels, bigger companies like Discovery and animal plant and BBC is they have to cater towards the masses where you guys can cater towards, uh, the specific niche that you're, that you're focusing on. And it was interesting because, uh, we have a colleague, uh, Dr. Nathan Robinson, that's a friend of speaker for blue. He's been on ocean talk. He's, he's been, he's a sea turtle biologist. Um, and he's actually the guy, I'm not sure if you've, if you've, uh, heard about it, but he's actually the guy who filmed or who took out the straw out of the sea turtles nose. Did you guys? Yes. I saw that video. That's, that's him. That's him. Amazing. Okay. So I had him on the podcast. When we talked about that four months later, he contacted me with another video of the same thing happening to a same type of turtle, Oliver Lee turtle. This time was a plastic fork, right? Imagine that the first time one in a million chance, it probably will never happen again. You know, cause he was the second time. Are you kidding me? You know, four months, like 70 kilometers away from the last site. Um, and then anyway, so, but he was talking about how, you know, he liked this podcast cause he gave up on scientific podcast cause it was another, what he liked. But you know, now it's same, we're in the same situation. We're very niche down in a big market. Um, where people really want to see the, cause he, what he liked about this is I talked about the science and that is a lot of absent and a lot of documentaries or a lot of radio programs because they cater to the masses where we can, you and I can focus on the niches that we like and talk about whatever we like, which is now precisely right. I mean, we have no, uh, per se, no political affiliations as big programs that they are hemmed in by politics. Absolutely. They can't really do very much with it, but we have an advantage here. Don't we? I mean, it's, it's a situation where, uh, we're, we're small, we're small enough to basically do what we want in that sense. Yeah. But obviously be a, a, a judgment into it. As, as sort of for coming from a science background, we're familiar with picking up our literature. So yeah, we try to be open in everything we do. So yeah, we'll make an episode like on the reintroduction of wolves or the potential of reintroduction of wolves into the UK, there's lots of science we can look at. And so we pick into that and we examine the dates, pros, cons, yeah, and we list all this sort of information in our reference list, uh, connected to videos. So if people don't agree with us, they can go check for the facts. They can see themselves, make their own conclusions. And when we do express opinions, we always express that we're expressing them as opinions. Yeah. There were not like trying to pass off opinions. As fat would say, right? We think this is the evidence, but we think this should happen. And then the big question, what do you think, which is where the interesting stuff happens? Cause that's when we get the comments back to us. And that's the fun part seeing what other people think. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I think, I think it's great too, because you can help them dispel specific myths that they may not know of, right? Cause they're not specialists in that, that niche, right? Where we are, you know, I get a lot of questions about, uh, you know, the Japanese nuclear power plant, you know, Fukushima with, they're always saying, Oh, it's going to affect us. It's no, no, it's not. And I know resources that I can point them to is like, just read this, you know, and this will dispel everything you think of or that you've read. You know, there was a map that went by that, that circulated the internet, uh, a while ago, just as, as this was happening. And it was, uh, it showed, it, it said that it showed the dispersion of, of, uh, nuclear matter along the Pacific. And if you looked at the map, it was just, it was just covering the North Pacific and hitting California and Washington and everything like that on the Pacific coast. It was a sea surface temperature map that somebody took and cropped it out and said this is radioactive, like, cesium and it's all over the place and you're going to die. All your kids are going to be deformed and this and that. And people don't like it. That's scamongering. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and I had friends at a deep scene news.com, which is a deep scene news blog that basically just took the whole thing and just completely dispelled it. And do you miss it? Yeah. And they got huge coverage because of it. But they just said, we took the science, we told the truth, we had backup and they put all the resources. You can go to different websites to read it and got picked up by New York Times here in Toronto and all over the place and it was just great to see, you know, that that information actually got out. Right? And it's the same thing that we get to do, you know, when people ask us questions about it. So, I think that's great. But let's get back to the film because I have a lot of questions about how you film it because you always see these documentaries and you're just like, oh, how did they get, you know, so close? Did they disturb the animals? Did they not? Did the animals know you're there? All this, you had some really great shots of some gray seals. And even, was it a harbor seal as well? Or harp seal? Yeah, there's a harbor seal, one shot of a harbor seal. Yeah. Uh-huh. But it looks like you get up close. Now, is that just a zoom effect or like, how far were you most of the time from the colony? Because I would love to know this. Well, we would love to say we got a massive zoom lens and they were three miles down. But actually, if you pan out from our shot and you'd see a very short fence and a seal immediately on the other side of it. Oh, okay. So we were literally centimeters away about that far away from the seals. We did have a David zoom lens to get shots of the ones that were further away. But the setup is it's managed by the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust. So they've fenced off the colony, but it's kind of a chest-height fence. So you can, you can peer over them and they're just, they're kind of lounging against the fence. So they're fine with you guys being there. Yeah, they've got some Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust have some wardens there to make sure people don't do anything silly, like jump over the fence or run around a seal colony or get their iPhones eaten by a seal pup, which I did see on my first trip there. So someone's leaning over and the seal went up, almost got it, almost got it. It would have been a beautiful moment. Oh, wow. Now, there's some interesting shots that you had. And it actually, you even mentioned it during the video where you were talking about the mothers and the seal pops. You're talking about when the mothers weren't, they wouldn't feed and giving information about that, how they sort of take care of them in their first few years. And then there was an occasion where another seal, I don't know if it was a male or female, but came up to the mother seal and the pup and the mother and the female basically opened its mouth and kind of gave all the noise that you mentioned, how they'll protect, right? How long did you have to wait for that? Was that just one of those? It happened to happen while you were there and this was a great shot and you can mention this or? So normally it would be, oh, there's a few seals on the beach and we'd be very lucky to get it. But because there were a good few thousand there, the chances obviously increased dramatically. And because of the density of the number of seals on the beach, you know, the very territorial. So you've got basically every five metres, you've got a seal, you know, a mother. So the tensions are high there and every so often they go over just a bit too far, they'll open their mouths or start to look at each other and maybe even go a bit closer. We didn't see any biting but we saw some posturing rearing up and the males are interesting as well because they're waiting for the pups basically to go away, for the females to go back into e-stress and then mate with them and they're just waiting around but they're big brutes and they make a lot of noise and every so often, very ugly as well. The babies are cute, the males are ugly. I'm sure that's how females look at it anyways, right? Even from the human species, they're like, "Oh, the babies are cute, the males will deal with them later." Yes. I think so. Well, the latter name for the greatest to us is Gryphus, which means "Huck nosed sea pig." Yeah. So they've got this big nozzle coming straight out, it doesn't do them any favours. But it's a good idea because you can tell them apart from the harvest seal, which has a much full puppy dog, cute face, whereas it's just got the massive nose that's coming out. Yeah. And we only have two seal species in the UK. So it's quite, we have the occasional one that pops up, but resident seal species, we only have the grey and the harvest seal, so you can quite readily identify them from each other that way. Even if they're just popping out of the water, you can identify them. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. That's those specific features. I don't know some on the video as much, but now next, I'm going to go back and watch and see if I can see the different features I can see. Yeah. Certainly in the future, I probably will make an episode of how to identify UK seals once we get a bit more footage of each, but we only touch on it there. But yeah, it's quite an easy, easy identification, makes you think you're awesome at identifying animals, all sorts of species. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. I know that one. Yeah. Because on your bio is like grey seal expert, you know, identification. Exactly. Exactly. That's on the TV. All right. Don't worry. All the UK seals species. All of them. That's awesome. It's interesting. You just mentioned, actually I'll get that to that later because you just mentioned something interesting, but you talked about the, is it Lincolnshire? Is that the? Lincolnshire? Yeah. Lincolnshire. Okay. The Wildlife Trust. Did you have to get permission from them to film or did you talk to them beforehand? Just in terms of just get to get some information about the trust and what the production and some of the seals. Did you have any like contact with them beforehand? We always do a courtesy call with the authority or organization that maybe owns that land or is in control of or looks after. So yes, we did give them the call. We did it as you wanted to get an interview with them, but they didn't have the time to do it at that point. The other thing we wanted to not highlight in the video was the actual location. We only mentioned that it's the Lincolnshire coast, and they were quite keen that we didn't say Don and Nook. And the reason is you don't get this from the video, you don't see it, but there were probably about 100 people there. Yeah, it's very, very busy. It's becoming a major tourist attraction to local farmers given over their field to become a car park. Obviously they charged cars, but that's a. We encourage people to go watch wildlife, but there is a balance as well. You know, over disturbance isn't a good thing, and it is becoming that way Don and Nook. So we encourage people to obviously go there, but maybe go there only once a year to try and cut down the numbers, because at the end of the day, it's one of the major breeding sites in England for grey seals. And although they don't seem bothered, there will be a certain amount of disturbance, certainly if there is a silly person doing something. Well, that's the thing too, is we're not the most conscientious species in the world. You know what I mean? We're probably the most destructive, whether we mean to be or not and an offense like that. I mean, you know, it'll probably keep people away who have common sense to say, no, there's a fence here. I'm not going to hop it and ride a seal, but that has happened in other places, right? Where you get some morons that do that. So I see what you mean, and that's good that you contacted them and got that information, because, again, it probably goes towards your mission, where it's like, look, we want to take these videos, we want to make sure everything is great, but we don't want to cause anything to do that. No, what people to respect wildlife, you know, that's one of the main things. Nature is to be respected. We're only one tiny little part of it. We have much bigger heads than we deserve, so, you know, we really need to respect it. Oh, absolutely. Now, in the video, you mentioned the management of seals, and we talked earlier about it, and you say that it's a bit of a contradictory issue. Where do you think the management is going to go in the future? Do you think, like, based on what's going on, the research that you have done, the talks that are going on, you know, I'm not sure how your government is in terms of environment these days, because I know it's not too quickly then. Yeah, no, well, because we just went through it, right, and here in Canada, now we're a little better, but, you know, I know Australia's got a very conservative government and what none. I think the UK is very similar, right? Yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah, yes, yes. So, yeah, we have the Conservative Party or the ruling party right now, environmental policies, not very good, lots of cutting/slashing of the environmental sector and the education sector. So, as personally, not very well affected by what they're doing, and, you know, ultimately, it's not going to be very good for British wildlife. Science often goes by the wayside as well, which is such a shame. Yeah, well, like I said, we just went through it for ten years, you know, where we, you know, government science scientists weren't even allowed to speak freely about their work. So, it was very, you know, it was demeaning, really, as a scientist to get through that. Now, it's much better, but you mentioned in the video that the gracials are protected, because, like you said, it was 40% of the population of all gracials worldwide. It represented 95% of the EU population. Do you think those protections will be lifted in term, in replacement of the fishery problem that you, that they're saying they're having? Well, so they've not always been protected. We had mass culling in the '60s and '70s, which is one of the things green piece is quite famous for highlighting through the video, showing the kind of bloodbath that happened. That was stopped due, I guess, to a largely public outrage, but there is, today, so those seals are protected by law, people who manage fisheries or any sort of commercial fishing. They can apply for licenses to shoot individual pest seals. So up in Scotland, we have a lot of fish farms, essentially giant metal cages off the coast where they rear up the salmon, which they have their own issues, but essentially a giant lunchbox for a seal, and if it can get into there, it will do, because it's free food, and that's causing some damage. There's lots of reports of that happening, and so the person who owns the fish farm can apply for a license to shoot that seal or a group of seals that are causing potential for problems. Now, if, in the future, the industry raises their voice and this becomes a major problem or is believed to become a major problem, because there needs to be some research done into that, then maybe they might start calling for a return to the mass calls of the 60s and 70s, and then that will fall on the government to decide whether they grant licenses for this mass calling and whether the government at the time listens to or looks at the scientific evidence or just listens to the anecdotes, just the stories, the general consensus without the data, that could prove to be problematic. We've seen examples in British wildlife recently where the science has been ignored with calling of badgers, with the magpies that we mentioned earlier. So, yes, cautiously pessimistic or cautiously optimistic. Yeah, I'd go with the pessimistic one, but, you know, yeah. I mean, it's disappointing. It really is when, you know, I was speaking to Dr. Carl Safina in an interview a few weeks ago. I'm not sure if you guys know who he is. He's a very, he does a lot of documentaries in the United States. It's okay. Oceans. He's very ocean focused. Ornithologist as a science, you know, from his science work, but he's done a lot of work in the past with managing tuna and along the east coast, the northeast coast and the west coast and did a lot of great, great things for ocean conservation. I asked him the same question. I'm like, why do you, especially in the States, you see science and obviously the UK and Canada, science being put by the wayside and people just not trusting the science that have come out. And I said, you know, why is that happening? He said, he goes, it's funny because he said during the 80s, if the scientists spoke out on something, people would believe that person, you know, it didn't matter where it's coming. They would cite the literature. They would say this is the evidence. They would present the evidence and politicians as well as the public would be like, okay, you know, he's a PhD or she's a PhD and they're saying something, so we're going to believe it. And now it's completely different. And I don't know if it's just because there's more people that have a voice. And some of them are good people and some of them are bad people. And they just kind of, and, you know, and I think what people realize is usually the people who speak against something have a monetary, monetary gain to come of it. You know, you look at people who are speaking against climate change are usually people in the oil and gas industry, you know. So that's what he noticed. And he just says, disappointing that now scientists really have to show. And even when you present evidence, you know, irrefutable evidence, people are still denying it because they don't believe in science. And they're citing other, you know, sort of knowledge or religious practices that are based on, to be honest, no evidence, right? Yes, precisely. Right. It's affecting everybody more and more and it's very, it's very scary from a scientific perspective. And ludicrous, it's ludicrous. But yeah, it's a constant battle. Yeah. Constantly. Now, you know, with that said, you guys are presenting science. You guys are doing some great work with the videos. Are you happy with the response from your videos and outreach? Are you, are you seeing people really get into it that when you do your workshops, the kids really get into it, do you find that after you do a workshop or after you put out a video and you get a good comment or even a comment that people are asking questions that are sort of against what you're saying and you can put another video, you know, respond to that. Do you feel like you've done your job as a, as a wildlife or a conservation biologist saying, Hey, you know what, we're doing our park. Well, you can always do more and you can always get more views. Right. And we're always trying. But no, we get a buzz out of it, don't we, we, when you've, when you've done a workshop with kids and they all, they've all enjoyed it. I mean, that example recently, well, we, we attended a nature reserve open day and ran an eco-sapie install there and we had some good feedback from that. First of all, we did a parent came in with a child face painted up as Iron Man. That was amazing. He said, Oh, my child had a couple of guys come in and do a back talk last week at the local beaver group and he was raving about how amazing it was. That was us. Yeah. We did that talk. Did you recognize him because of the pain? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. You didn't remember presenting to Iron Man, I guess, right? No, no. Besides that would have been, that would have been interesting. Yeah. So that, that was good. The serious side, we had a parent come in with some kids and kids, friends. We helped them out with their insect hunt on the day and the parents said, Oh, this, this kid is not normally engaged at school. He often has some troubles, but with this, so like outdoor stuff, he's really switched on, which that's sort of, that's amazing because not everyone can function in a classroom environment. We need some practical outdoorness, amazing boost. That's why we became biologists, right? Yeah. We like being outdoors. We don't want to be kind of in office all day. We want to be outdoors. But yeah, I mean, think about that. That could change the way the parents see that, the way the child learns. You know, maybe that child is more hands-on person, like a learner, you know, or a visual learner needs to be outdoors and who knows who that person, that kid might become, you know, later on, might become a biologist because of it. So now that's, that's fantastic. Now, just before we go, what can we look for, like upcoming, now you said you have this new playlist, this new segment of, you know, is it like, why British wildlife is important? What kind of videos can we, can you kind of give us that we can look forward to in the future? Well, the next big one is a candidate who represents it, isn't it? Yeah. All right on. To be able to point out all the things we get wrong in this one, yeah, that should be interesting. So we've got the footage of the sort of Vancouver Island area looking at a bit of the rainforest, a bit of the seashore in the marine life, which will probably be an interest to your viewers. Absolutely. But as for the actual British wildlife playlist, we've got a few coming up. We, we're hoping to do one on red kites. Okay. So big bird of prey that's kind of extinct in the UK and has been reintroduced massive success story and we, they were mentioned in Shakespeare plays because they used to be so common in and around cities. They were kind of like scavengers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They did the role of vultures. They'd come in and eat the scraps. They're a hawk. They're a hawk. So yes, we've got that. What else have we got? I'm just trying to think now. Well, we've got a, we've been teaming over a lot of people this year, yourself included. Yeah. But we've also teamed up with the British Arachnological Society, a little group who's going to, they're looking to all things to do with arachnids, spiders, mites, that sort of stuff. Arachnids get a bad press. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Scorpio as honestly as pandas. So we're hoping to do some videos. I don't think that's a debatable point for you guys. No. We're hoping to do some videos highlighting arachnids and just how amazing spiders can be and they're incredible and sometimes useful because a lot of sort of their portrayal in media, like I'm not pointing fingers at Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, but spiders are evil. They're coming to get you. Yeah. Of course. The positive portrayal I can think of is the book Charlotte's web. Right. Kind of. It's children's story. Yeah. But we want to, we want to show the sort of through our documentaries that they can be incredible. They can be amazing. You don't need to be scared of them. You don't need to scream at them. And you definitely don't need to stamp on them because they're incredible. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Go on, Andrew. Well, I mean, one of the other movies I was thinking about, which is probably equivalent to the movie Jaws for Great Whites was Arachnophobia. You know, was it? Yes. I mean, yes. That scared the living daylight out of me before I became a biologist. And then I was around more Arachnids, you know, through school and whatnot. But yeah, no, that, that will send shivers up a lot of people's spines. But I think it's also that it's interesting to do a documentary on, on those types of species because yes, we're a lot of us are afraid of them, but we're also intrigued by them, and especially to see them in a video where you can learn about them. Maybe that will help dispel some of their, their bad press, you know, and, and, and, so we do. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we implore your listeners to watch our videos and we, we've got an aim now. We're trying to keep it as regular as possible. So we, we get a main episode out every Monday, every Monday, every two weeks on a Monday, should I say? Okay. Yeah, like the, the seal episode or the, the bat episode, big, big episodes, big episodes, we need a bit more preparation, of course, to get, get those done. Then on Wednesdays, we have a bit more of an informal, the video blogs, you know, talking about like things like top five species named after Star Wars characters, you know, love that one. Yeah. Love that one. Great timing on that one. Yeah. Yeah. And then on Thursday, we do our eco how episodes or an eco talk, depending mostly eco how episodes are teaching people either how to make their garden, wildlife friendly, how to catch certain animals, you know, to look at in more detail, for example, insect collecting, that kind of thing, biological sampling, and practical conservation as well, how to plant a tree, how to do, do all these different things, you know, things that skills that people can could, you know, build upon themselves and, and of course, make their space more wildlife friendly. Absolutely. No, I think that's fantastic. And I've watched a lot of those videos. And now that my kids have seen a few, they keep asking, they're like, can we watch the eco sapien video? So good. We're watching a lot. Excellent. Yeah. And I think, I think our audience members, we're going to see, I'm going to, we're going to start sharing a lot more of these videos as they come out. So, you know, we'll keep in touch on that respect and, and yeah, yeah, just to let our audience know, like, Hey, you know, this is what's, what's going on in this, because I love these videos. Like I watched these, like, I think I'm not just saying it to help promote your videos. I, I contacted you, which was probably another cool thing that you guys are not like a big large company. It's like, I was actually able to talk to you and you were like, yeah, I emailed, you're like, Hey, let's chat. We're on it. But I was, you know, it's, it's fun to, to watch a video and, and you get excited about it. You're like, Oh, this is awesome. And email or write a comment and interact, you know, with the, with the people who actually created it. So, um, I think it's fantastic and the writing feels amazing. The editing and the video is, is it's, it's like when I looked at it, I was like, these guys are professional, you know, and the, so like the quality is fantastic. And I think you guys have done a fantastic job. So thank you very much for providing that for us. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Just to put you on the spot a little bit. Yeah. But anyway, so what we'll do, we're British, aren't we? We've got fun. I'm comfortable. We've got good supplements. Look at what it's okay. I'm Canadian. So I apologize for that. We're living up to our national stereotypes. Yeah. Exactly. Where's the T.B.T. gun? Yeah. It's not raining here. No, it's not. Yes. And it's not snowing here. Believe it or not. It's actually plus like three. It's with the degree cells. Wow. Ridiculous. Yeah. Um, but anyway, thank you a lot for coming on. What we're going to do, if you go on YouTube and you look and you search ecosapion, you'll find the channel and to the audience members, I highly suggest watching these videos. They're short, which is great. So you have time to watch it. They're amazing. They're very informational. They're awesome. Like I can't, you know, say better things about it. They're just amazing. So what we'll do is on the show notes for this episode, we're going to put all the links, social media link, but definitely the YouTube channel link so they can just go and we'll just, they can just tap on it on their phone or, you know, click on on their computer and they can come and watch you guys and subscribe guys. Subscribe to this channel so you don't miss any of the episodes because, yeah, support these guys. And it's amazing. If you're in the UK and you're a teacher, contact these guys for a program because they, they'd be amazing. I mean, you've already heard evidence of, of Iron Man loving this. So you're going to get more, right? No, you can't argue with Iron Man at all. So yeah, David Phil, thank you very much for joining us on the program. We'll have you back to, and not just when you put up a notion episode, but we'll have you back and we'll chat more about the conservation and all this communication stuff. So just stay on the line and before we start recording, just stay on the line and we'll just chat about what we can do after. And thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. I enjoyed it. Pleasure. Thank you. While that was David and Phil from Ecosapion, I just want to thank them for being on the podcast. It was really interesting to see how they video, how they created this, this gray seal video, how it came to be. It was kind of cool to see that connection from Canada. But it's also interesting to think about how nobody really thinks about the UK wildlife outside of the UK or maybe even, as they say, in the UK. And it's great to see that they're promoting it. They're talking about it in a very scientific manner, but easy to understand manner. And I just want to thank those guys for doing what they do, as well as for being on the podcast. It really helps me out. You'll see them a lot more. We'll get them on a Notion Talk Friday and maybe have them come out when they come out with some more of their fun videos. So thank you very much for listening to that. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any comments, go to the show notes, speakupforblue.com/session109. You can leave a comment whether you like their videos or not. Hopefully you will because they are amazing videos and just congratulate them or have a good message for them. If you have a question for them, please leave it there and I'll send it off to them and have them respond to it. So yeah, so that's our episode for today. If you want to support our Ocean Conservation message to the podcast community, you can do so at speakupforblue.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. And you can put in a monthly support, I guess, just put in money for the month, for each month. And it'd be greatly appreciated, we are working our butts off as a team to get stuff on. Equipment is expensive, it's constantly changing, our marketing gets expensive at times and time consuming. And we want to dedicate our full time on this. So the more you can help by contributing, the faster we can get to our goals and get more messages out there and reach more people. So thank you very much for listening, thank you for sharing the podcast and continue to do so. Talk about it, you can always contact me at speakupforblue.com/contact or if you want to connect with me through audio, you can do so at speakupforblue.com/connect. And we have a system that in place called Speakpipe, it's a service that we have and you can actually leave a message on your computer to me. And you can ask questions, you can leave a comment on the episode and maybe if it's a really good comment, I will actually put it into the episode. So thank you very much for listening, you can listen to Speakup for Blue podcast, it's been a very good episode with Eposapion, Guy's David and Phil and we will talk to you tomorrow for research Thursday, sorry. So have a great day, have a great Wednesday and happy conservation. [Music]