How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 063: Pro Surfer James Pribram is Saving the Ocean from Marine Debris Through Citizen Science
Pro Surfer James Pribram and his organization, Eco Warrior, recruited 63 volunteers to clean up marine debris from creeks and rivers in specific areas in California before the debris had a chance to reach the Ocean.
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Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session63
Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, session 63. On today's episode, we're going to talk about a pro surfer who stops a sea monster from reaching the beach. What is that sea monster? Well, you're about to find out on today's episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast. Stay tuned. Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now, here's your host, he still puts his hands in the air because he doesn't care. Andrew Lewin. Hey, everybody, welcome back to a mysterious Speak Up For Blue Podcast. I am your host. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to a mysterious episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, your voice for the ocean. I am your host, Andrew Lewin, founder of Speak Up For Blue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed oceanpreneur. And I feel a little teasy today because of an article I just read and I'm about to talk about. Today's article was written by Lisa Casp oil. It's a wonderful article and it's entitled a pro surfer stops sea monster from reaching beach. It's in the Huffington Post green section, I guess, of the website. And Lisa Casp oil is a huge proponent of the environment. She's a lawyer. And she's just a fantastic person I've had her on, I've known her through the internet for quite a bit and I've been following her for quite a while. She's now working with a sea with a surfer organization and really looking at their environmental purpose. And it's a really, so she wrote a really cool article on this sea monster that is so mysterious. And really what she's talking about is ocean trash and marine debris is what we also refer to it, plastic pollution, all that kind of stuff. In fact, Lisa Casp oil was a, I believe a founding member or on the board of directors of plastic pollution coalition, which is a huge organization that gave birth to other organizations such as five gyres, which I believe she's either an advisor or on the board or involved in some sort of way with five gyres and five gyres organization that educates people about ocean plastic pollution. And they also advocate for stricter regulations on plastic pollution and the creation of single use plastics. Five gyres really represents the five major circular circulation, ocean circulations in the sea. There are these five gyres are located all throughout the oceans. There's one in the Atlantic. There's one in the Pacific, there's one in the Indian Ocean, one north and south. So there are quite a number of them, five obviously, but they, those circulations tend to accumulate ocean plastic pollution, so ocean plastic pollution pieces. So they're very known for the Pacific garbage patch. You might have heard of it. If you've heard me speaking about or someone else in ocean conservation, speaking about it, that's in a gyre system in the Pacific Ocean. Very popular for all their plastics that they find in there. So this article talks a lot about plastics and talks a lot about how 50% of plastics are buried in landfills, how most plastics are produced for single use, and that's it. And then they're made to be thrown out. You know, essentially it goes through a lot of the different types of plastics and how they can harm our environment, harm our fish, harm our animals, harm us. And indirectly or directly. And it's a great, it's a great article, but what I really loved about this article was how she talked about how former pro surfer James Prabram, now I'm not a surfer. I apologize if I mispronounce James's last name. I don't know who James is other than I know he's a pro surfer or former pro surfer. But what I like is he's devoted himself to stopping ocean plastic pollution from going upstream in the creeks and stuff, going to going downstream into the oceans and onto the beaches. And what he's done, him and his nonprofit called Eco Warrior have attacked the problem with an upstream cleanup in Southern California, focused on specific channels and creeks. So Sulphur Creek, Narco Channel, Lagoonan, Nagwil Lake and Alison Creek on this one, there's some pictures taken on November 21st, 2015. So essentially what they've done is James has coordinated an organization with a bunch of volunteers and they've actually gone out and they've cleaned up beaches now or they've cleaned up plastic or marine debris before it gets to the beaches, which is an amazing thing because what happens is from the landfills, from the streets, from all the sewage, the plastic pollution or marine debris gets into these creeks, these headwaters, flows downstream until these headwaters, especially along the coast, empty into the ocean, onto the beaches and into the ocean. These are basically the entry points in the battle for ocean plastic pollution. Once they get into the ocean, they're gone. If you look at, we'll post some of these pictures, we'll link to these pictures in the blog in this show notes, which will be a speakupforblue.com/session63. And the plastic pollution in there is disgusting. When you first see, you see a before and after picture and he ends up taking out a lot of plastic pollution. I'm not sure how he does it. I'm sure he has ways of filtering it. The last cleanup said they found 14 hypodermic needles. That's disgusting. Imagine that stepping on one of those along the beach. They just find out a lot of things, but they have a lot of partners, they have a lot of volunteers to help in this cleanup. And it's interesting to me when I saw this, is this is a great citizen science project to do, to get volunteers together and clean up beaches that are upstream of the ocean. Like get it right from the source point, because Oceana released an article and I covered this in one of the episodes. I forget which one I'll have to look it up, where 81% of marine debris and plastic pollution come from land. So if you think about, if we have a citizen science group set up to clean up along the beaches, say once a month, or along the upstream creeks once a month before it gets into the ocean, you're saving, you can drastically reduce that number from getting of ocean plastic pollution that comes from landfills, or that comes from land to get into the ocean. You're drastically reducing it, maybe even by half if you get all the creeks, which is could say it's almost impossible to get that many volunteers, but if you can do that once a month, organize somebody, organize a bunch of people, your friends, or a bunch of people to get out there and clean up that plastic pollution, then you are drastically reducing how much of that pollution gets into the ocean. And if everybody does their part, say you get a group of 10 people once a month, you go in, grab a boat, flow up into the creek, and just get as much as you can. This last on November 21, James's crew were quite impressive what they removed, 63 volunteers removed 550 pounds of trash before it washed down Alice and Creek, Alice Oak Creek, and onto their beaches and into the ocean after a big rain, after the first big rain of winter. So if you go after, you know, it's interesting that sentence actually reminded me of something. When I was in Costa Rica, I went with it on a family trip, it was my parents, my brother, and my family, my wife, and my kids, kids were pretty young then. We went on the beach, along the beach, the beach is beautiful, public access, anybody can have access, it was just wonderful, just beautiful beaches, clean, I was very surprised how clean they were, water was wonderful, it was clear, it was warm, awesome, great, great beach, and water, and just a great trip. We had a big rainfall one night, huge, it lasted probably for about four hours, and just poured rain, torrential rains, which is fine because it kind of cooled us down. We didn't mind the rain, but the next day we went to the beach, and it was amazing, it was like day and night, it was a complete 180 of what it looked like the day before, how pristine it was. There was trash lining the beach, there were shoes and sandals, alcoholic bottles, empty ones of course, some of them there was some dead fish, there were a lot of little microplastics that were there, and it was just trash. There were shopping carts, there was everything, and most of that stuff gets washed up on the beach, it's coming from the river systems, because it's coming from upstream, it's coming from the cities and towns where people just litter and pollute, and it comes down. I'm not saying that Costa Rican people, a lot of them litter and pollute, I'm sure there are their numbers, but that's where it's all coming from, it's coming from maybe the landfills aren't holding their own, there's a lot of different places where that pollution can come through, you got a lot of hotels, you got a lot of houses, all that kind of stuff, your waste management system may not have been good, but they're not the only country, I'm not single out of Costa Rica, this happens everywhere, every country has this, so once you get the torrential downpour of rain, the night after the day after you can go and do a big clean up, right before that stuff hits the ocean, and clean all that stuff that's about to hit the ocean up, and you get it out of the ocean, it's easier to manage from a small creek or a river than it is in the ocean, right? It doesn't get dispersed as much, it's probably easier to work in depending on the conditions of course, but if you think about if somebody, if you get a bunch of people together once a month to clean up those areas, you're doing a pretty good job, you're doing your part, you don't have to hit every creek, but one creek is just good enough, right, and if everybody hits a creek that's amazing, and I just think it's a valiant effort, I think it's a really cool thing that I wanted to share with you, now I know Lisa works for a surfing organization, and so I think this is part of their publicity, but I think it's fantastic, I think it's great publicity, I'd love to get James on the show to find out, maybe I'll try and get him on the show to find out how he started this and why he started this and how he continues it, you know, and how he deals with the overwhelm, because there must be overwhelm, because you must think, the first thing that I think of is, well, how many rivers do you cover, you know, how much can you do, it's kind of one of those things that you just, yeah, you have to think about, right, and see how people react to it, you know, how do they get the volunteers, the same volunteers, all those kind of questions, it'd be interesting to ask them, maybe I can try and get them out onto the podcast, but I've got to get more guests on the podcast, I think, because you guys have been listening to me quite a bit, but anyway, that's, that's kind of what I want to share is you see people out here, you know, this is a former pro surfer, so he obviously did well for himself, and he's out there, he's got an organization nonprofit, I'll link to it in the session notes, the show notes called Eco Warrior, and he's attacking at an interesting point, he's attacking this marine debris, this sea monster, as it's referred to by Lisa in this article, and what they're doing about it, and they're, they're hitting at a critical point where it's manageable and you can clean it up, obviously that stuff needs, needs to, you know, we need to stop how it gets there, but until then, we can clean it up in that area, and I, I just think it's a valiant effort, I think it's a great ocean responsibility, and it's, it's an interesting story, so I just want to share that with you guys, it's a bit of a shorter show today, but that's okay, and yeah, that's basically it, I want to, does this, I want to know if these stories inspire you to go out and do the same thing, would you go out and put a citizen science group together, or put a group together, just get a bunch of volunteers, your family members, whatever, and go clean out a creek, or a river of plastic pollution that you see, whether it be after a rainfall or before a rainfall, or when there's no rainfall, you know, it doesn't matter, I'd be interested in, it's interesting in you letting me know, go to the website, go to the show notes, speak up for blue.com/session63, and let me know in your comments, would you be willing to go and clean up a creek or a river of, of debris and, and plastics, I'd be very, very curious to find out. Anyway, that's it for me today, I really appreciate you listening, I really appreciate all your reviews, all your ratings, it's been fantastic, I actually checked in the store, we have over 30 reviews and ratings all at five star, in the US store, we have six I believe in Canada, and a few in Great Britain, that is awesome, I really appreciate those guys, it's, it's, it's really nice to know that you guys are loving the show, and you're caring enough to relieve a review, so that I really appreciate that. And yeah, we're going to be coming back with you again Thursday with another wonderful story, we're going to try and keep it positive this week, just keep it, keep it moving, keep it positive. Oh, I almost forgot, I mentioned it yesterday in the podcast, but what I want to mention it again and go into more detail, I am setting up crowdfunding campaign on patreon.com, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com, it is to support my podcast, essentially what I want to do is there's lots of different ways to run a business, I wanted to do this podcast to really reach out to an audience that doesn't get to normally hear about ocean conservation projects and wonderful citizen size projects that James is putting on with his organization EcoWarrior to clean up beaches, I want it to inspire people to get them to love the ocean and protect it as much as possible through their daily routine or through actions such as the ones that EcoWarrior does. So what I've decided to do is instead of, you know, try and get my numbers up as high as possible and try and get advertisements and sell products that you may or may not use, I decided to go and set up a crowdfunding, it'll come out next week, a crowdfunding page at patreon.com where people who really love the show and people who love my mission and like what I'm doing can support me at various levels. The support is a monthly basis and there will be different levels of support, whether one, I think I have $1, $5, $10, $25, $50 and even $500 and of course you can donate as much as you want but there are different incentives at the different levels and you can see on the Patreon page you'll see I have specific goals once I hit a certain amount that I'll be adding on to the show and giving you more and just all of what I can give to this podcast and even add some video in there to do a video podcast on YouTube, on iTunes, on Vimeo, wherever I can really get a good reach so essentially if you like the show you can go to patreon.com search my name Andrew Lewin or speak up for blue but I will give you the links to that when it comes out hopefully I'm hoping it will come out on Monday I just have to launch it and I'm just putting the final touches on some videos and stuff but you'll get access once you once you donate at the $1 level or even more you'll get access to more of me, awesome behind the scenes, some different videos that I do that are separate from the podcast so there's some different incentives there so check it out on Monday when I come out I'm gonna obviously make an announcement I'll send an email out and we can go from there and don't forget always the speakupforblue.com website is available to you has all the articles written on the stuff that I've talked about on these podcasts so we do a little summary for each of this podcast Nathan who comes on Nathan Johnson who comes on the ocean talk Friday with me as a guest and we talk about different ocean issues he does a lot of the writing so I really appreciate him you can take a look at those on speakupblue.com and yeah that's basically it that's the show for today so I'm really excited to launch this crowdfunding campaign and I hope that you guys if you feel that you really love the show and you want to see it continue it even get better and better and better I would love your support it'd be greatly appreciated and I will reward you greatly for it not physically but through the internet right but anyway thank you very much I really appreciate it you've been listening to speakupblue podcast I am your host Andrew Lewin happy conservation [Music]