How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 050: Ocean Talk Friday: Social Enterprises using Plastic Pollution, Habitat Health Index, Super Corals and Pirate Fishing!
Ocean Talk Friday is back again where my guest Nathan Johnson and I talk about Countries trying to stop Pirate Fishing; Businesses using ocean plastic pollution in their products; A new way for researchers to assess habitat health; and, Researchers trying to create a new "Super Coral" to combat Climate Change.
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http://www.speakupforblue.com/session50
We're going to talk about pirate fishing, we're going to talk about how we can use plastics to sell stuff, we're going to talk about how one way possibly that we can assess every habitat and find out their health and we're going to talk about how there might be a super coral to end all bleaching. All this on Ocean Talk Friday, session number 50. Stay tuned. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Speak Up for Blue podcast. It's your voice for the ocean. I am your host Andrew Lewin, founder of Speak Up for Blue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer and I am here with my co-host as usual, Nathan Johnson, Nathan, how you doing? I'm doing well, Andrew, doing well, thanks for having me back. Oh, you bet, it's always fun to have you back because it's Friday, well, when people are listening to this, it's Friday, so we always feel good because we record this on Wednesday and then so it feels to me like the week is almost over when I record this. So I get all excited. I'm like, I'm all happy. I'm like one day away or two days away from actually getting finished and that's fun for me. That's awesome. But today we've got four stories that we're going to talk about like we normally do and if you haven't, people in the audience, if you haven't listened to this Ocean Talk Friday before what Nathan and I do is we pick four stories that are interesting to us that happen over the week and we discuss them. We go back and forth, sometimes we agree with each other most of the time. Sometimes we don't, but we always have varying kind of views on things and it's always good to get different points of view, so we do that. So that we're just going to jump right in and we're just going to see what happens today. So let's start off with story number one, Nathan, why don't you give us a description? Okay. So last week on November 5th, President Obama signed into effect or signed the US up for something called the Port State Measures Agreement, which is an international treaty that will come into effect if 25 countries sign up. I think America or the US was the 15th. So we're over half and what it does is it really cuts down on illegal fishing, on illegal activity regarding overfishing, regarding poaching of fish in different areas and it makes it illegal to sell or to import or transport any unauthorized illegal or unregulated fishing within the countries who have signed up for this. So the US would be one of those. And I mean, it's a big deal for ocean conservation in general. It really shows that the United States are making this concerted effort towards stopping illegal fishing from a conservation point of view. It's extremely damaging to these ecosystems. A lot of the fish that are targeted are either apex predators or towards the high end of trophic levels. So you can't always predict what type of impacts that we'll have for the rest of the ecosystem. But from an economic perspective, also having this illegal fishing really hurts the regulated fishing and the legal fishing, because these are for cheaper than the regulated fishing. So it really kind of undercuts the people who are doing it the right way. So it's really exciting. This won't come into effect until the rest of the 25 countries sign up, but it seems that for all intents and purposes they plan on this going into effect in the near future. And it was a bipartisan agreement, which is great. It had support from both Democratic and Republican parties. It passed through, I believe it was passed through the Senate a couple of weeks ago and it passed through the House earlier. But it's just a good story to show that there is work being done that's not necessarily political, that's not necessarily tied to a specific party and that in certain circumstances people in DC can come together and implement policy that will benefit the oceans. Yeah, I have to admit when I read this article I was pretty surprised at the fact that it was a bipartisan agreement. I think they mentioned the number of people in the House that it was like something like 25 people or 35 people in the House that co-sponsored it and it was sponsored by about 13 or 15 all on either on Republican or on Democratic side. So it is nice to see that those 39s are in the House and four diverse in the Senate and 39 in the House. So that does go show that they can agree on some things and they do agree on some things and it probably doesn't get out into the press. All the ridiculous stuff gets out in the press and makes it look bad, but they do agree on some things which is kind of nice to hear. I was actually surprised to hear that the US imports approximately 2 billion a year in illegal, unreported and unregulated seafood. Yeah. That is a huge thing. If you think about it, scientists and regulars at NOAA will set quotas and researchers all over and regulars all over the world will set quotas for fish and seafood. And they set it based on thinking that everybody is going to do it legally. Then you have 2 billion dollars worth of fish that are fished illegally on top of the quotas that are already pushing the boundaries of sustainability anyway. So by knocking down or at least tackling or reducing the impact of this 2 billion dollars a year in illegal fishing, you're really cracking down on some stuff. Even if you can get it down to 1.5 billion and then get it down further to 1 billion and then until it almost gets to zero, you're really putting an impact and promoting more sustainable fisheries, which is great. And like you said too, it's not fair for those fishermen who actually do well, who actually do everything properly. So it's not fair for them. I like this. I don't know how they're really going to crack down on imports, how they know if it's going to come from a legal, if it's going to be a legal and reporter unregulated, unless there's specific paperwork to come by, I don't know if that's easily duplicated. It's really going to be interesting to see how that's done in the future, how it's actually implemented and how it's actually regulated. But I like this idea, it's getting me excited about government again, it's very interesting. Yeah, they have their moments and it's not going to stop illegal fishing. I think everyone kind of understands that this isn't the complete fix. But it is, I think in addition to whatever sort of implementations they'll do to carry it out this bill, I think also it sends a message internationally that, hey, we're actually starting to look at this to crack down on it more effectively. And that in itself might just reduce some of the activity. And you brought up an interesting point that when they, and we kind of talked about this on the episode about the cod in the Atlantic, that when they set these quotas, typically they set them, assuming that this is the only way they're being fished. So you know, you can fish this much, but they don't always take into account in the case of the cod, it was changing climate and the stocks were already very reduced. But in this case, those quotas are being supplemented by illegal fishing. So the quotas are meant to be a manageable number, but obviously if you're harvesting more of these fish, even if it's from illegal areas, you're still having the same effect on the ecosystem as if you were just overfishing on your own. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's a start. It's not the complete solution as many of these things are, these are, this is a big thing to tackle. I'm actually surprised they're even they're even tackling this because usually what happens, and I know this happens a lot in the States. I don't know how much it happens in Canada, but it happens in States and internationally, they put fisheries observers on board ships to make sure they actually check everything, check what's being caught, the weight and length of each being each fish being caught, what's being thrown back, all this, if their fisheries practices are proper, all that kind of stuff, right? They're really checking back on that on that area, but you know, it's one of those things where it's like, you know, are they are they truthful? Are they not? I don't know. And that's that's the one thing that you know, you have to worry about. There is, in fact, I'm actually just looking up the story now if I can find it, but I put it up a story because I don't remember the name of the gentleman, but he was a fisheries observer in South America and he was missing. He went missing and you know, of course, believed to go overboard. And it's one of those things where you're just like, you know, these fisheries observers who are and I assume that's how most of this stuff is going to be reported. Are they are they safe? Can they tell the truth? You know, how are these regulations going to be put in place where these fisheries observers do it can be can be trusted, not to say that they shouldn't be trusted, but it's something that you have to look for, right? So it's it's it's an interesting it's an interesting aspect of how it's going to be regulated. And I know also they have they have fish. They have fisheries observers who come at the door who are at the dock. So when you come home at the docks, then you can actually do something about it, right? Like you can actually say stuff. So, you know, it's going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting to see what happens in the future. So but I like it. I like I like the fact that they're going to build I like how it's bipartisan. I like how there's a lot of countries who already signed on when you said, Oh, there's countries signing on. I was I was like, no, there can't be that many, but there's already 15. That's fantastic to hear. Just go show a lot of countries are actually taking part into this. And I would imagine it's a very hot topic in a lot of fishing areas, right? So I think this is good. So let's go on to the next story. We're going to talk about plastic and how plastics is now on this podcast on the website. We talk about how plastic pollution is just everywhere. It's a dire need. We just you can't get it around being in the ocean without seeing plastic and everybody gets depressed when I talk about it. So I'm glad Nathan you picked this story because this is a story about people who are taking this problem and making an opportunity out of it. And this article on onegreenplanet.org really focuses on three companies that are the articles title three companies that are turning ocean plastic pollution from a problem to an opportunity. It's a great article because they talk about stories that we've talked about. They talked about how, you know, you get plastic straw stuck in a nose of a sea turtle. You get a deceased whale being found with piles of plastic and garbage in its stomach. And you have these companies who are saying, you know what? We have the forethought to actually go out, grab those plastics in the ocean as much as we need and make products out of them or implement them in our products. So there's there's three companies that I want to mention. I'm not going to go into complete detail, but I'll give you a description of what they talk about. There's method soaps, which essentially makes soaps and cleaning materials. And even their bottles are made out of ocean plastic. There's G-Raw, I think G-Star Raw, which are clothes that's that's kind of co-sponsored or co-hosted, I guess, or, you know, promoted by Pharrell, the singer. And it's basically taking ocean plastic and making denim jeans and sweaters and hoodies and all that kind of stuff. I like I like what he's doing, but to be honest, I'm not sure if you've seen it, Nathan, but the prices of G-Raw star, it's G-Star Raw is ridiculous. I can't afford those clothes. But they're doing something nice and it's for specific clientele, I guess, just not one that with my wallet size. But hey, all the power to them for actually going in, it's a company out of, I believe, it's a Denmark or Norway, whereas that I saw it over here, shoot. Anyway, it's somewhere up in the north. I think it's Norway for some reason. Where is it? Oh, well. Anyway, yeah, it's up there. But they're partnering with a company that's already there, that's already been in, that's already selling clothes and they come up with their own line that's all dedicated towards ocean plastics. Then you've got the plastic bank, which is essentially a social enterprise that allows people in developing countries to bring in any kind of plastic and recyclables, bring those into the recycling centers, and then they get sort of features and returns. So some of them talking about you get access to electricity, you get to charge your phones, you get to do all that kind of stuff. So very interesting companies, and they're trying to save the world by utilizing these plastics. So what are your thoughts on this, Nathan? I love it. I think it's kind of like such a simple idea that it's brilliant. When you think about, if you just tell people there's some money in this plastic that's washed up on beaches everywhere, the chances that someone finds a pretty good use for it are pretty good. So I didn't read the business plans. I don't know how long these things will actually last. I liked Pharrell's getting involved. I don't buy clothes that Pharrell wears normally. It's not really going to make an impact in my personal life, maybe if he puts out huge plastic hats or something, then it'll start becoming a fashion statement. But stuff like the bank, that's a really cool idea. I don't know, like I said, how it'll actually work if it'll prove to be a really amazing thing or if it proved to just kind of flop. But it's just such an obvious solution to turn this somehow into some sort of money-making and not in a bad way, just collect your resources, which just happen to be discarded plastic on beaches, turn them into some sort of money-making endeavor. I think it's great. In Galveston, where I am, we have, so we have the seawall, which is like the main, one of the main roads on the city, and it's up against the beach. So it's a big spot for people to go biking on, tourists love it. But it is just so depressing sometimes to just walk along it because, you know, as nice as like the ocean is when you actually look down right at the base of the seawall, there is just like an incredible amount of sprite bottles, beer cans, stuff that you know is just because people are being careless. It's not that there's not trash cans or recycling bins every block. So I think this is great. I think if the more people can focus on turning this into something positive, which a lot of times it's money, I think that's a great idea. Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, the plastic bank has been running for a long time. It's been around for a while, a few years anyway. And you know, the products that they make from it, they partner with Lush, which is like a cosmetic packaging company, or they do cosmetic packaging for products made by Lush, which is like I think another social enterprise that does cleaning materials and things like that. I just remember walking by Lush and it's really, it smells really strong. So it's all about like sensitive stuff and I don't usually go in there. But I mean, a lot of people buy from there, this is a very popular, you know, it's a very popular brand and people love it. And I think what they're doing, they, you know, they dove the plastic bank, they create the term social plastic, you know, which is interesting because it is a social enterprise. It helps with society, giving access to electricity, giving access to power for people who may not already have it. And it gives them something to do during like to get this, get access to the stuff. And we know there's enough plastic in the ocean and on coasts and beaches and stuff like that, that people can pick up and make a pretty good living off of, which I think is, is, is interesting. The, the G star raw has been that line, the recovery ocean plus, I think it's been running with, they say for three seasons and judging by, you know, you know, Pharrell's backing it. He's got a very big following. Again, we always talk about celebrities and they're following, he's got a very specific following that usually love fashion of some sort. And we'll get into this, this kind of clothing, right? I think it would be pretty successful. And then the method's been going since 20, since 2001. So you know, this is really going to, these, these companies have been around for a while. They're sustainable. And I think it's really the future of how we're going to do business and how a lot of people are going to do business. They don't want to just do business to get money. They want to do business to change the world. And I think we're going to see more and more of this. And if you can harness the power of plastics, then, you know, you're on, you're on fire. Like if I can come up with an idea and figure out, partner with an engineer, to come up with, you know, just, even just finding like 3D printing material, right? 3D printing is going to be huge. If you can make 3D printing material out of recycled ocean plastics, because that's all 3D printing material is, you're going to make a killing and it's strong and strong enough to make it, you're going to make, you're going to make a killing. Plus, it's not as if we're, we're in dire need to look for ocean plastics. We see it everywhere. So I think this is a cool story highlighting some really creative companies that have been around for a while and that are really going to turn things around. I think they should be highlighted and they should be watched and people should, you know, figure out how these places are really doing these things and what they're doing. I think we're going to see a lot more in the future. So that'll be good to go. Let's move on to the next story. We're moving on quite well here. Story from NOAA, press release from NOAA, what's the deal with this one? So the press release talks about a article that was published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution this week in the November issue and it's, it's a study from a combination of NOAA researchers and private researchers that look at a way to visually assess different marine ecosystems under some sort of universal may not be the best word, but under some sort of common features or trends or patterns and they, they claim to have found three distinct features or patterns of marine ecosystems that, that apply to a wide variety of types. So I'm imagining that means, you know, coral reef habitats versus like oyster reef habitats versus offshore to seagrass stuff like that, full disclosure, I haven't read the article. But, you know, if someone wants to send me the article, I don't know. That would be fantastic. What people will realize is people who aren't scientists is these articles, unless you have access to a library or to somewhere like university or to a government facility that actually has access, free access to these, to these trends in ecology and these kind of papers, they're very expensive. If you don't, sometimes they cost like hundreds of dollars for each article. So we tend not to see them unless they're open access or they're available on PDF. So sorry, go ahead. I didn't want just one. Yeah. So Christmas is coming up. Send us up. That would be fantastic. It sounds lame, but we would love it. Yeah. For sure. So, and they claim to have found these three trends that you can plot in different, different relationship curves that will show you how the ecosystem as a whole is doing from a range of high disturbance and high stress to a ideal or pretty well functioning ecosystem. So the gist of this is instead of having to look at each single habitat and looking at every single species in there saying, "Oh, well, is this species doing okay? Okay. What about this species?" And then put it all together and say, "Yeah, we think the habitat's fine." You can just look at these three key things that are relatively easy to monitor, relatively easy to plot on some sort of curve. And you can say, "Okay, well, we don't know a whole lot about this one, but it seems to be doing fine." Or this one, we just did a quick assessment and it seems to not be functioning as well as it should be. We should maybe do a closer analysis of this. So, again, whether or not this is actually, you look at these three things and you know, yes, it's definitely correct. That's probably not true, but because monitoring and evaluating these habitats can be so time consuming and costly, I think any way we can more quickly get just sort of a brief idea to see, "Do we need to investigate this further?" I think it's great. And I think what they're trying to do is bring more people to this idea of we need to manage and monitor these habitats and you don't necessarily need to do a year-long project to monitor it. You can at least figure out basic stuff just by looking at these common features. Yeah. And I like the idea. We were talking about this before we started recording. I get a little cautious and concerned when I hear these, you know, I think the title was "Study unlocks faster way to assess ocean ecosystem health" and it is. If you want to do a rapid assessment, which a lot of times when you first initially look at a study or look at a study area, you want to do a rapid assessment, you want to find like, "Okay, what's the health? Are there a lot of fish? Are there a specific diversity? Are they big fish? Are they small fish? You know, what does the habitat look like?" All that kind of stuff. And it's great to come up with a fast way of doing things up, but I strongly caution against it unless you're just doing a rapid one before you get into the entire study. But you know, the way I see it is if we're going to, like it's maybe good to see these assessments, they'll tell you what the health is of the ecosystem, but it's not going to tell you why it's like that. And you have to figure that out, you know, because there's so many cumulative impacts, you know, there's climate change which has a variety of different things, ocean acidification, sea level rise, increased temperature, especially affecting coral reefs and whatnot. But then you have coastal development, you have water pollution, nutrients, all that kind of overfishing, stuff that you may not understand what's there and you have to do a more detailed assessment to get to the health of these features of these habitats. So I like the idea, but I think it has its place in science in terms of how it can be used. And I think we have to be careful doing it. Of course, we have to monitor a lot of different habitats and it costs a lot of money. So this could be a good way economically just to kind of give an overall assessment and then maybe make some guesses in terms of what types of effects or perturbations there are any kind of disturbances there are in the ecosystem that could be affecting the ecosystem. And I think this would be a really interesting opportunity to sort of speak with these researchers and say, hey, you know, what was your goal when you started this? What type of scope can we realistically implement this on because from my experience most researchers are, you know, the most conservative people ever when you talk about how can you apply your findings? They're going to say, you know, we didn't mean it to say, oh, you can assess every single habitat there ever was in the ocean. I think they'll probably say, yeah, it's a great way to get started. It's not a comprehensive monitoring project and it shouldn't be taken as that. But, you know, I think it's a good start, I guess. I think it's definitely in the right direction and the fact that it's published now hopefully means people who know this type of research and can do this type of stuff will be able to critique it and say, yeah, you know, well, you talked about plotting these features, but you know, you got to really take into account these issues or, you know, there's a fourth feature that you didn't add. So, you know, I think it's a start, but I think you're right. I think you really got to be careful what you apply it to. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's one of those things that it's great to have and it's not the, again, be all and all of what you need, but it's great to have as a tool in the toolbox, right, to do that stuff. So, kudos to the researchers who are doing that and I really like to see that kind of stuff. Okay. Last story we're going to get on. Kind of like, you know, the article was on magazine.good.is, you know, it's the article is called, scientists are breeding a super coral to save ocean ecosystem and it's really all about talking about climate change and how they're especially this year because it's an El Nino year and the blob. And then there's the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, you know, you've got a lot of stuff going on here that, you know, are affecting corals in terms of if they're getting bleached. And what we mean by when corals get bleached is corals have symbiotic organisms. They're called, they're just plankton, they're a dinoflagelite, they're a type of phytoplankton that uses photosynthesis to survive. The byproducts of that photosynthesis goes into the corals and the corals are able to build their skeleton. When the heat gets too hot, when the temperature gets too hot, those dinoflagelites get out, though they are not dinoflage, they're phytoplankton, I'm sorry, they get out and they leave the coral and the coral is basically white. The color comes from that phytoplankton and the coral is white, it's completely bleached and sometimes, sometimes depending on how long this temperature lasts, the phytoplankton will come back in and the color will come back and the coral will stay alive. If it doesn't, eventually for prolonged time, it will die. Now this is what's happening all over the world right now. We're having a massive bleaching, worldwide bleaching, we haven't had one as this bad since, I think it was 1998, they're saying. And we're in a big, you know, we've got a lot of cumulative effects that are causing this prolonged approach and then the phytoplankton are not getting back in there. So we're having a problem with that. So what these researchers have done is they've taken specific corals, they find that are pretty resilient in these warming situations, in these climate change situations. They're bringing them back to the lab and they're trying to breed them and trying to, you know, see how far they can go in terms of temperatures, trying to reproduce them and then I guess they're going to come back and put them back. The idea, even though this is a very novel approach, is they're going to bring them back into the ocean and use restoration techniques to create more coral reefs with these sort of super gene, super corals. What are your thoughts on this, Nathan? I don't know how I feel about it because, first of all, Hollywood will tell you messing with genes and helping evolution along never ends well, but in all seriousness, I think it's, and I don't really have a problem with the fact that they're selectively breeding these corals because I think that's good. I mean, we need to learn all we can from the corals that are able to withstand the increased temperatures because who knows what kind of things that can tell us about resiliency to ocean acidification and rising sea service temperatures. So I'm just concerned that people may see this as the answer, I guess, to coral bleaching, where they'll just say, "Oh, we just need to fund more of these programs," which, you know, maybe we do. I honestly think the more we can learn about these the better, and I think one of the researchers mentioned this in a statement that we still very much need to address the issue of coral bleaching from a perspective of that, from a perspective that's different from we need to breed more of these resilient corals. We need to address the underlying issues, and we, I mean, even if we do find a great way to restore coral reefs with these type of resilient corals, you'd be changing an ecosystem from a genetic point of view, which is always kind of risky, but we couldn't do this for all the reefs, so you're still going to need to find some way to, you know, address the underlying cause of coral bleaching. So it is really cool. This paper is open access, so I'm looking forward to reading that, but I think it's just kind of a cautionary thing. If you do it in a lab at the preliminary stage, which I believe it's at now, that's great, you know, I hope it all works, but I mean, I could see this becoming a very real issue if we get to the point where we have the technology and the ability to, you know, selectively breed these and restore coral reefs using these species. Yeah, I know I agree. I think it's kind of grasping at straws, this thing is kind of like a last ditch effort, but it's an adaptation move that I still think needs to be, needs to be explored. We do have to talk about the underlying issues. We do have to address climate change from where it's coming from, from the fact that we're putting a way too much carbon into the atmosphere. There's no doubt about that we have to go into it, but in the meantime, while we do that, we have to explore different ways to adapt to climate change. One of those is to try and keep reefs going on. Now, there is a bit of a theory where coral reefs have been adapting to different, different, I guess, situations, you know, climate situations, different, ocean patterns, different temperatures for a very, very long time, millions of, hundreds of millions of years. What we need to do is realize that they will adapt. The problem is right now is everything has been moving at such a slower pace. Right now, the climate change, the way it's going, it's moving at a very fast pace, faster than it has in the last 200 years, before 200 years ago. So we need to really focus on, okay, we need to slow that period down, that change first. But then we also have to realize that these corals may not adapt as fast as we would like them to, and that means most of the corals. The corals that we know as sort of the building blocks of the reefs, sort of like the stony corals, the acropora corals and the Montapora corals. Those are the ones that you really see, the big, massive corals that you always see in the reefs. We may not see those. We may see a shift because the climate change is happening so fast these days. We may see a shift and see more of those sort of temperature resistant or change resistant corals, and we might naturally just see them popping out more, and they may spread more depending on the situation. Of course, this is all a hypothesis, but this is just sort of how I see it. But we may see a drastic change, and you mentioned it earlier, Nathan, that we might see a drastic change in just the structure of a reef, and it may not have the same benefits as we are going to have, as we see right now. We don't know. We don't know what's going to happen. The key is that we don't really want to change this because we're causing this climate change. We don't want to see huge changes because it could impact our shorelines, it could impact our fisheries, it could impact our tourism, which a lot of countries depend on all three or sometimes just individually these things. I think we have to be careful in terms of what we do and how we treat climate change, but we do have to find ways to adapt because a lot of people are going to be affected by this. Those are my thoughts on this one. Do you have any more thoughts on this article? No, I think you hit the nail in the head when you said it's cool, but I guess just kind of proceeds slowly. If you take it from the point of view of that researchers are studying coral that are resilient from coral bleaching, that's fantastic. We need to study them, and who knows what we'll find, but yeah, I think it's just something that we don't want this to replace the larger issue, which is climate change, which is something we still can do things about. We shouldn't just say, "Oh, that's off on its own now, so we've got to genetically breed different corals that can stand it." Now on an interesting side note, I remember reading papers a while ago on researchers figuring out that there's really five or four different types of phytoplank that live in these corals, and they label them A through D. A, B, C can't really handle too much change in temperature, but the D ones are the ones that can handle higher temperatures, not necessarily four degrees higher than what we're expecting, but they can handle higher temperatures than the A's through C's. That's what's interesting is that those D's only show up in certain corals, certain coral species. That'll be interesting to see if those persist and the others kind of die off, and then if that takes over, what's going to happen with the diversity of corals, with the diversity of coral reefs in general, fish populations and things like that, so it can have a drastic change and drastic effect on what we're going to see, and we're probably going to see a little bit of it in certain places, especially where there's cumulative impacts. But I think that's it for the stories, right? That's four. That's the fourth story, right? That's four. That's four. Ocean Talk Friday, before we go, Nathan and I just want to let you guys know, for those of you who've been listening, this is a repetition I've been talking about it all for the past two weeks, we have an ocean swagst online store available to you. And the good news is that every time you buy one of those T-shirts, one of those travel mugs, one of those at-home mugs, one of those iPhone cases, everything, all the revenues, all the proceeds go towards sea turtles forever, our partner that is working hard to clean up beaches, clean up plastics, coming up with innovative tools to do so, and working hard to protect sea turtle nests, protect sea turtles in general, and make sure those populations are sustainable, working with local communities in Central America to make sure that their economy is sustainable, especially when they work with sea turtles, introducing ecotourism instead of poaching, just all these wonderful things that they're doing out there. We want to support them, so all the revenue that comes from those items that you buy will go right towards the sea turtles forever, I'm cutting them a check at the end of every month after all those, and probably sharing it as we kind of grow this store, and so with the more people that buy it, the greater good you're doing, the URL for that is SpeakUpForBlue.com/shop. All you have to do is just go to there, so SpeakUpForBlue.com/shop. It's in the show notes, which will be SpeakUpForBlue.com/session50, and it's also in the description for any podcast app, but there's going to be a link right there. All you have to do is just click on that link and you can shop right away. I believe it's mobile friendly, I haven't tried it, but I believe it's mobile friendly, so yeah, we can buy ocean items, help corals, and help sea turtles, and what's also great about it is kind of like a win-win situation for ocean conservation, because there's some sayings on there. We have some little sayings that we've come up with that are on these T-shirts, on these items, so you're actually starting a conversation as you wear them. I've worn my shirts around, and people are like, "Hey, I love your shirt, hey, what's this about," and then I explain to them what I do, what SpeakUpForBlue is all about, and then we get in conversations about the ocean, and it's really kind of cool. So if you go to SpeakUpForBlue.com/shop, you can shop away, your heart away, Thanksgiving's coming up, Christmas is coming up, gifts are coming, right? So there's a lot of holidays coming up, right? So you can get a lot of gifts going to your friends, your family, and your special ones. So you can do that by going to SpeakUpForBlue.com/shop, but that's all we have going on for today. Enjoy your weekend, enjoy your Friday, enjoy your weekend, I hope it's a nice one for you, and I hope you get out, and you get back, get out into the, if you're in a buying ocean, get out to the ocean just to watch it, just to look at it, calm your mind, be out in nature, and have a great time. You've been listening to SpeakUpForBlue.com/podcast with Nathan Johnson and myself, Andrew Lewin, have a great weekend, happy conservation.