What do you know about marine pollution? Probably not a lot because it's not something that we discuss as a whole. We discuss plastic pollution. That's probably the major marine pollution that we discuss. We don't talk a lot about toxins and algae and all this other kind of stuff and chemicals in the water and so forth, but not to worry because you can find out everything you need to know by buying the book, "Marine Pollution," what everyone needs to know. It's the second edition and I have Dr. Judith Weiss, who is the author of this edition and she was the author of the first edition, and fun fact, Judith was my first ever interview, my first ever episode here on how to protect the ocean podcast. It was called Speak Up for Blue at that point, but now it's called How to Protect the Ocean. It's been 10 years later and she is here to talk about her new edition because we talked about the first edition. Now we're going to talk about the second edition and I can't wait for you to hear this. So let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you could speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And on today's episode, we are talking to Dr. Judith Weiss, who has written a book called Marine Pollution, What Everyone Needs to Know the Second Edition. And like I said in the pre-intro, this is a very special episode for me. It kind of brings me back to my first ever episode that I published with Judith talking about Marine Pollution and what everybody needs to know, the first edition. And I love the book because of this. It's not just your regular textbook. Now, you know, Judith has one hell of a fulfilling career in academia. She has published multiple, multiple journal articles on marine ecology, on water quality, seagrass salt marshes, all these different types of systems, plastic pollution, and so forth. And she turned to writing books. And a lot of the times I guess skeptical when somebody from the academic field starts to publish books for, you know, a general audience, but she has done it perfectly. It's such an easy read. It tells everything you need to know about marine pollution. It divides it up into certain categories. It's not pessimistic. You don't feel the doom and gloom afterwards. You feel hope, you feel optimistic about what you can do to help with marine pollution. And I think that's something that's extremely, extremely helpful, and it's something that we need to do more. And to be honest, like it's something that we talk about a lot here in terms of helping and how you can help and how you can feel optimistic about the ocean. But this book is something that I highly recommend for anybody who wants to know more about how important water quality is, whether it be fresh water, whether it be brackish water, which is a mix of ocean and fresh water or ocean water. It doesn't matter. Marine pollution affects everything. It affects everybody, especially when we talk about plastics. It actually affects our own health, you know, in terms of now we're seeing it in the air. We're seeing it in the water. We're seeing it in our drinking water. It's everywhere. And so we need to do something more to reduce it. And to do the first thing you need to do is inform yourselves and to inform yourself you need to buy this book to inform yourself on marine pollution. But I want you to listen to this interview because a lot of it's focused around, you know, marine plastics and marine debris, something that's really, really important. But we talked a little bit about algae, the recent episode that I covered about the toxins that were released from algae, from dinoflagellite, in Florida that affected 80 species, killing 80 different species of fish. So we're going to talk a lot about that. And we talked about, you know, how policies important, how, what to look for in the upcoming elections, whether you're in the states or potentially in Canada, which might happen a little earlier than we expected, earlier than 2025, or probably earlier than October 2025, I should say. But yeah, I think this is going to be one of those episodes where you can be like, "Man, this is really, really good. Due to this awesome, I can't wait for you to listen to this interview. So here's the interview with Judith Weiss talking about marine po- her book, Marine Pollution, what everyone needs to know, second edition, enjoy, and I will talk to you after." Hey, Judith, welcome back to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about your book on marine pollution? Sure, I'd love to talk about it. All right, on. This is a very special episode for me. Not only is it great to have Dr. Judith Weiss on the podcast, but Judith, you were my first ever interview for this podcast. That's 10 years ago. I actually was even further back than that because it took me a while to get it published. So we have known each other for over a decade. We've met in person, not in the US, because we're actually closer than we think, but actually in Borneo, in Malaysia, at a conference. And that's sometimes how it works in the marine world. But you have released a second edition of Marine Pollution, which is the reason why you were on the podcast in the first place talking about marine pollution, a book that I absolutely love and I recommend to a lot of people. I think I actually just lent it out to someone recent in the last couple of months. But it's the one I always tell people to read because it's a book that's really easy to understand for people who don't know much about the ocean or about marine pollution and the pollution that it faces. And so I love the fact that you came out with the second one. There's probably a lot to update, so I can't wait to get into that. But before we do, Judith, why don't you just let people know and remind the audience, the real fans, the ones that have been here since day one, why don't you just remind people who you are and what you do. Hi, I've been a professor of marine biology at Rutgers through an entire career I'm now technically retired, but still very busy. A lot of that time I studied aspects of pollution. I worked in parts of northern New Jersey that were highly industrialized and had all kinds of metals and organic contaminants as a result of a century or so of heavy industry without any rules and regulations about what these industries should do with their wastes. They were just dumping them right into the water. So we did lots of studies of how the mixture of all these contaminants, what kinds of effects it had on the animals that lived there and stuff like that. But in addition to the original research, we published lots of academic papers. I was also interested in writing books for the general public. That was a pretty recent, I didn't do that through the career. I started that maybe 15 years ago with getting closer to 20 years ago. So having published a book about salt marshes, a book about fish, a book about crabs, I noticed that Oxford University Press was doing a series called X calling what everyone needs to know. Right. Or could be any topic from history, social science, English literature, any field at all, including science. So I thought, well, and I wrote and asked, would they be interested in one on marine pollution? And that's how it all came about a decade ago. And then about two years ago, maybe a year and a half, two years ago, I got an email from the guy who had been my editor. And he said, would you be interested in doing another, a second edition of this book? I thought about it and thought, yeah, there's a lot of things that have happened since then. And so that's what I spent the whole fair amount of time doing was revising the book. I love it. I love it. And I can't wait to get into this book because you have a number of other books that you have written, what, you know, going from a career in academia and looking at applications and looking how water is affected by sort of disturbances. And like you said, unchecked, sort of dumping unchecked, just any kind of of whatever we decide to do as humans during that time. What made you decide to start writing these books? Like you said, you kind of did it towards the end of your career. Was it something of like, is just more like, I've learned so much, I need to hit a different audience because you have publications and so forth. So I'm sure you've, you've, you know, contributed to the scientific community. What made you decide to go there? I never had thought about it. A friend asked my husband if he would be interested in working with him on a book about salt marshes. Okay. And my husband said, I was there and I said, yes, I would. And we talked back and forth for several months and it turned out that he was very busy and really had no time to do it after all. And then I went and found another co-author because this was my first venture into writing books for the general public rather than a technical scientific type journal articles. So I found the co-author who helped me with the writing to make it more user-friendly writing for a general audience. And that was the salt marsh book. And then it kind of went from there. So it's total accident. It was nothing I thought to myself. Yes, I should write some books. If he hadn't approached my husband about writing this book, I probably none of this would have happened. So it's just being at the right place at the right time. And it must have hit something like triggered something that intrigued you about writing to sort of a general audience, a non-scientific audience. What about that was important to you to follow? Because, I mean, taking on a book, as you know, is a huge, it's a bigger project than a lot of people think. What triggered that in you to be like, I want to speak to the non-scientific community. I just thought it was very important to do that. You know, scientists can't be just in a little clump talking to each other. The general public needs to know, particularly with all these environmental topics that lead into policy choices and voting choices and everything about being a good citizen of the world and being concerned about the state of the environment of this planet. And I had taught courses for non-science majors. So I felt, you know, I was capable of doing this. And so that's where it was. It's sort of part of my activism or whatever, I've been in an environment to get more people to understand the problems and want to act on them. Gotcha. Now you've had, you know, an extensive career over decades. A lot of the times, you know, talking about science or talking about marine ecology was not really looked favorable or the people weren't incentivized to do so. You know, as you started writing these books, were you worried about what colleagues would have said or what the public would have said in terms of trying to attack any of the books that you said? Or you were just like, no, I know my stuff. I'm just going to go out and I'm going to write this good support. I had no concerns like that. I was still publishing papers. You know, I was very close to retirement. So, no, no worries at all. I didn't have any worries earlier on in my career when I was an activist. So I did. The university did not harass me, did not bother me about what I did. Right. And what, can you elaborate just a little bit on that activism part? Like what were you speaking out against or for? Well, back in the early days, when I was very young, I was about in the women's movement and I was about feminism. But later on, I got involved in public policy about the environment. I went down to Washington as a science policy fellow for the American Association of Advancement of Science. They always sponsor people to go to Washington and I worked in the Senate. And then I, you know, that sort of started me off in some policy issues. And Rutgers did not have a problem with that. They actually gave me an award about 20 years ago, you know, a policy that, you know, I don't remember what it was called, but it was something that dealing with policy, just your academic, I can't remember what it was called. And that's fine. I think what's interesting is, is, you know, seeing someone in academia take that stance and being like, look, I have all this in, like, I have all this information and knowledge and experience and marine ecology and looking at how it's been affecting, you know, our, our water systems. But then you go above and beyond and just be like, okay, now I'm interested in looking how policy shapes that. Because I think as scientists throughout our careers, we get, we almost get to like certain epiphanies during our career, where the first you want to start off a lot of people academia and let's do research and let's do this. And then you start noticing things as you learn more and more about the environment and the things that are affecting, you realize that there are certain times where the environment takes a backseat to, you know, what happens out there, you know, and, and, and to policies and so forth. And a lot of times, things get built over, over natural land, salt marshes, mud flats and so forth. And you realize, well, I should have maybe I could have stood up for that a little bit. And then you start to get a little bit more of an activist as you get later on your career, or even mid-career, depending on, on the person. So I think that's like a fair assessment, right? Have you seen that happen with, with many of your colleagues throughout your career? I, it's really started mid-career with me. It was 1980s. I haven't seen a lot of my colleagues go there, but I certainly have met many other people there who were at still our academics one place or another. Right. So there is a, you know, a good collection of academics in some sort of environmental field that are out there trying to improve the environment one way or other, not just study it. Right. Right. And that's, that's a great, great insight. I think it's really, you know, it's, it's interesting to see like a book come out on marine pollution. We hear about, and I talk a lot about, you know, issues that are facing the ocean. You know, you got fisheries, climate change. You have, you know, coastal development. You have marine plastics, which is a water quality and marine pollution issue, but it never gets qualified as like, like when you hear about plastics, you hear about plastics as the pollution and it is a pollutant and it's a big problem, but you don't hear the term marine pollution a lot being covered in the media or even like, even on my podcast, I rarely say the word marine pollution unless I'm referring to your books or I was like, if you want to know about marine pollution, you got a great guy here. You know, why do you think like people aren't talking about marine pollution other than like say things like plastics as much in sort of the general conversations? Well, plastics is the one thing that is in the news a lot. Right. The, I don't know if I'm going to regret saying this, but it's the biggest problem that has not yet been addressed. Well, I can't, that's not true, climate. Yeah, climate is being addressed, but not enough. Right. And I include a chapter in climate. That's not typical in a marine pollution book to have a chapter out climate. I also have a chapter on invasive species, which I generally not thought of as pollution, but could be considered, you know, biological pollution. Yeah. And I'm a little plant that's not been there, that's they're making problems. So, you know, so I lost the track of the question. I was going to say like, you know, that's why you talked a lot about what I asked. You know, in terms of marine pollution, like we know plastics is like a big thing with marine pollution. The biggest deal these days. Right. And it's what I've been spending a great deal of my time on. And not just in the research world, but in the policy world as well. I'm a member of there. There is a scientists coalition for an effective plastics treaty, which is a worldwide network of a couple hundred scientists from, from all over, some of whom can go to the negotiating sessions for the treaty. The last one was in Ottawa. I haven't gone to any, but I have friends that I've made there, some of whom I have not met face to face, but I still consider them friends because we have meetings and we write position papers and policy briefs and all this sort of thing. And so that, you know, I'm not physically been there, but I've got friends in this coalition who go there. And as an objective science, bringing science, the science about plastics to the negotiators, because with that, the scientific community, they would be hearing only from the lobbyists of the plastics industry, who show up at those meetings in large numbers, there were 200 of them at the Ottawa meetings. So that's far more than the scientists who were able to come. But, you know, we still don't know, we have one more meeting left in Busan Korea in a few months. That's supposed to be the final meeting where they hammer out the final part of the treaty. Yeah. And the scientists coalition is putting out policy briefs on specific issues and think that we hope the negotiators read. These are also written for the lay, just like my book. Yeah, just like it. But the non-scientists, the negotiators are probably mostly all lawyers. And so it's the same idea, writing short two-pagers on, you know, specific issues about plastic pollution. So I'm involved with this, as well as still writing papers. I'm not generating new data. I'm retired. I don't have a lab. I don't have graduate students, all that. But I still can write reviews and critiques and work with teams of other people about various issues about plastic. That's what I've been focusing on most of the time over the past decade, I'd say. Yeah, and you've been very active. I've seen you on there. There's a listserv, the marine debris listserv, and you've been very active on there. I've seen you very active on social media talking and sharing information about marine plastics. And it's really interesting, you know, looking at the book and how you write the book for a non-scientific audience. A lot of things come out about marine plastics within sort of like the general context of things. The big thing I hear, it's almost like people are just sick of hearing about plastic straws. As you know, you know, a plastic straw was pulled out of a sea turtle's nose. It was actually done. The video was taken by a friend of mine, Christine Figner, as well as the person who took it out was Dr. Christine Figner and Dr. Nathan Robinson took it out. And then later on, you know, about four months later, he took out, he found an olive-rilly turtle with a plastic fork in his nose, took that out just about four months after that fork. It's the same kind of thing. He thought it was a straw. He was actually out. It was four months, it was just about 70 kilometers south of where he was. And somebody, it was like a tourist attraction when all the all the reallys come in to lay their eggs. And people were walking around and he was doing, he was doing epi-biotic, or epi-biome study. And somebody pulled them aside and said, "Hey, there's something wrong with this turtle." And he was bleeding from his nose again. And he said, "Oh, it's probably a straw." And then ended up taking out a plastic fork. You know, and it was literally folded within its nasal cavity. And one nasal cavity, when he took it out, it folded up. And he's like, "Yeah, he's like, it's a plastic fork." And so, you know, what? "The turtle must have inhaled it tongs first." Yeah, it must have been. Yeah, I don't know how that happened. What Nathan kind of assumed was that all of Ridley's tend to experiment a little bit in terms of what they, how they eat. And so they bite on something first before they realize that it's not food. This one, the way it was in the water may have looked like a shrimp. And so when it went, it may have just gotten it in the fold. And then as it it coughed or something, tried to get it out and it went through its naval cavity, he thinks. So obviously, awful stories to see. And it made a huge impact at that time. It kind of brought the plastic straw to the forefront of the plastic, you know, the clean up plastic movement. And now I constantly hear people joking about plastic straws. Like, I'm sick of plastic straws and this and that. And they're just like, we're not worried about a plastic straw. The way I always say is it's sort of like a symbol of our plastic problem that we have in this world. And this is just an example. This poor sea turtle, both sea turtles had this in their mouth, in their nose. So I guess the question is that I have for you, as I go on this long, long rant, is, you know, you hear people talk about this. You hear politicians talk about this, where they're sick of like, oh, the plastic straw is not an issue and this and that. And they kind of like, it seems like it's taken a turn for in the opposite direction of how people are looking at plastics. How as scientists and science communicators, do we combat them and kind of bring them over and just be like, hey, no, there is actually a problem. It's not just start and ends with with one plastic straw. How do we convince people of that? Or change their minds in a way? I don't know how to convince people who are skeptical about all of this. But there have been plenty of cases, for example, of dead whales washing up with a stomach full of plastic, which is perhaps more upsetting than the turtle with the straw. The feeding on so many animals that feed on plastic pieces and they can't get regular food, their stomach's all clogged with the plastic and they basically starve to death. It happens, I think, much more frequently than the turtles with the straw fork in their nose. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, whales are something that people tend to relate to. But, you know, that's with the big stuff. I have a new chapter in this book about microplastics, which were a very small part of the chapter about, I guess it was marine litter, it was called original book, microplastics were just beginning to be studied. And now there's an enormous literature every year, thousands of new papers are coming out about microplastics, which are tiny pieces coming from fragmentation of all sorts of things. I mean, people used to think it was, you know, just styrofoam boxes breaking up. That's the small part of it. A lot of places have now banned styrofoam. So, I mean, we've had progress in certain areas in certain places. But the microplastics, there's four major sources of them. One is textiles is perhaps the most important ones. Synthetic clothing in the washing machine sheds tiny fibers. If a whole lot of them collect, you might call it lint. Right. This happens every time it's washed and it happens also when it dries in a dryer. So, that's one of the major sources are clothing and carpets too, also shed microfibers. These are, you know, lo and thin fibrous pieces of plastic. Another source is tires, tires, tire wear. You know, after driving on a tire for some years, the tread is not as thick as it used to be. Right. And eventually the tread is worn down. That's, didn't evaporate into thin air. It shed tiny particles onto the road as you're driving the car. And these tiny particles, when it rains, you know, runs off into the water, down storm drains, and gets into the water. And the tires have, I should say, back to the fibers from the clouds. It's not just an issue of a tiny piece of plastic, a tiny piece of plastic, contain chemicals, toxic chemicals, that are built into them to make the plastic have certain characteristics to make them harder or make them more malleable or whatever, however the product is supposed to be. So, a lot of these chemicals are highly toxic. So, when an animal eats microplastics, it's not just getting little bits of plastic that it might poop out later. It may or may not. That's, you know, an issue of how well it passes through the digestive system. But it's also that the plastic has chemicals that can come off it and be toxic in various ways. So, anyway, I'm digressing, until we've got the fibers and the tire wear particles. Another source of microplastics are pre-manufactured pellets, what we call them, pellets or nerdals. Nerdals, yeah. Is what they're called. This is the way plastic is manufactured in the first place. These tiny things about the size of a lentil and there have been, you know, shipping where they spill millions of them. If there's a ship spill, a few years ago, there was a spill of these things from a ship that ran aground or something near Sri Lanka. And the beaches on Sri Lanka were about six feet deep in the pellets, these nerdals. It's just the hearts we've imagined this. So, and then the fourth major contributor's paints. Paint is now plastic. We don't use oil paint anymore. We use latex paint, what's latex? It's plastic. And, you know, we both get scraped off or, you know, even flaking off from building structures or anything near the water, you get tiny paint particles as another major contributor. But I would say the textiles, the nerdals and the tire wear particles are the big three. So, you know, these are all these types of products, right? And consequences of such products. They're in our everyday lives, right? We've got clothes, we've got tires. I mean, we're seeing them all over the place. When people want to do something about, you know, marine pollution like this, they want to reduce or things like, how do they get away from all this kind of stuff? How do they, like, it's not as if there are a lot of it's alternative. There are more probably now than there were 10 years ago. But some of it's really, really expensive. And it's not necessarily everything's expensive now. So that makes it really more expensive. How do you suggest that people help in terms of reducing the amount of materials that are in there and these types of chemicals and these types of products? How do we get rid of how do we reduce our, not only our single footprint, but as a collective? Well, in terms of the textiles, there are things that individual people can do. I mean, you can buy more clothing that are not synthetic, that's wool or cotton. Not to say that those have no problems, but those less problems. Less problems, yeah. In terms of some people buy clothing, wear it a few times and then throw it at fast fashion. This is really terrible because that ends up in a landfill somewhere and just releasing microfiber. So buy clothes and wear and keep them for a while. I have some clothes I've had for decades. When you wash the clothes, there are things you can do to reduce the amount of shedding using full loads rather than washing a few things at a time. That helps using a front loading machine rather than a top loading machine. Not using fabric softener helps. Not doing a pre-washed cycle helps. So all these personal decisions and choices and then after they're all washed, if you have a possibility of hanging them out on a line to dry rather than putting them in a mechanical dryer where they're going to just spew the fibers out into the air, hang them on a line instead, if you can. There are also things you can do to capture the fibers once they've been released. There are filters on the market that you can buy to attach to your washing machine that capture a fairly pretty good lot of them. And those are available to purchase from about $150. So the filter will help. This will all contribute to having fewer microfibers from clothing coming into the water bodies. So people can do stuff with regard to that. Also, the textile industry is aware of the problem. And researchers are trying to develop. I mean, this is bringing back to the source rather than intercepting them on the way to the water. If we can get fabrics that shed much less or ideally don't shed at all, that will be a solution to the problem. And that depends on the textile people, not the marine biologists. We find the problems. They know that loose weaves like fleeces shed a lot more. And a tighter weaves shed much less. They also know that if the fibers used are long rather than very short, that helps that all stay together instead of shedding. So it's up to the textile scientists and the textile industry. And they are working on it. When it comes to the tires, I have not heard anything about the tire companies being concerned and trying to do something about it. They may be, but I have not heard of that. So you haven't heard of like different like materials being used in tires to. I have heard nothing about it that may be just that I'm not tuned into the sources. But you know, I'm I know and getting stuff about the textile industry. I'm not learning about the tire industry. The tires are particularly worrisome because there is a chemical in the tires called 6PPD-Q. The Q is quinone. I forget what the PPD is. But it's a chemical that is exceptionally toxic to salmon, much more so than other fish or any other creatures, right, particularly to salmon. And this chemical, when you've got the tire wear particles around, huge numbers of salmon migrating up to spawn are killed by the chemical by very low concentrations of this chemical is killing them coho salmon, and perhaps other salmon species. So, you know, this is something, you know, that the tire people should try to find a replacement for. Right. Are they doing that? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. The information is not necessarily readily available to you as is the textile industry and so forth. Right. The textile industry. I somehow have connections. Right. I'm giving a seminar in late October going up to Cornell. Oh, wow. Alamo. Alamo. So I'm delighted to go there. And I'm not giving this seminar in the biology department or the environmental department. I'm giving a seminar to the textile department. Oh, interesting. I like that. Yeah. And they will, you know, let the biology and environmental science and so forth, the other departments, the departments that I would relate to more inviting people to come. But I'm talking to the textile people. And, you know, I have the next to last slide is says, you know, what you can do in the general public and I talk about the washing machine and the do it and the front loading and not so much fabric softener and blah, blah, blah. That's the next to last slide. And then the last slide is what you can do as a textile scientist. You know, yeah, one thing, find ways to have fabrics released less. Yeah. Five or five real fibers. And you're seeing it. Like I see, I do agree, there's a lot more information on the textile industry. And I've seen more people start to experiment and there is at least one company I know that's looking at making fabrics and and and textiles out of kelp and other marine, uh, algal sort of plants and and and algae. It's all good stuff. Yeah. Very long time. Very long time. Now this this company that I've been watching is is a little a little faster and starting to release some items and being in the fashion shows and stuff. I don't know if they're going to be high fashion or if they're going to be like fashion for what I guess what like the regular purchased items, you know, t-shirts and shirts and all that kind of clothes and stuff like that that everybody kind of does, not just not just some of the extravagant sort of fashion that we see on our right. Environmentalists. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But like like obviously a marine pollution or or plastic pollution is a big deal. You know, we know that we can we know one way of reducing it, which is great that you've gone over. We know policies and other thing that we could do with support organizations that are following, you know, looking at marine plastics and trying to work on the policy side to with governments to get these things going as well as supporting, um, individual scientists or other, you know, organizations and academics who are, you know, taking part in the treaty and you know, trying to help and and get people to understand that the ramifications if we do let plastics continue to to go in. And that's a that's a big deal too, right? Yes, there are also efforts in state legislatures about filters and there was a bill in California last year and in Oregon last year. It didn't make it all the way through, but there were bills that had quite a fair amount of support to require that new washing machines to be sold in their state had to be equipped with a filter with a felt. I've heard that too. I understand that France has passed the law requiring that, um, in some future year, I don't know in the late late 2020s, sometimes. That's wonderful. I mean, you wish it's faster, but that's wonderful to have to see it. Other bills about plastic is a break free from plastic pollution act that's been in the US Congress. Um, you know, it has some support, but it hasn't got enough right to pass. But, um, there's also just last week, one senator put into a bill for a national requirement of filters on washing machine. You know, I don't know that these bills are going to go very far. I don't think there's that much support yet. And we've had stuff in New York state, um, various things that have not on on microplastics and filters, but on, um, reducing plastic wrapping, you know, like the plastic wrap and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That that came pretty close to passing last year. Um, but then there's also an issue where sometimes when a bill passes, um, the governor may not want to sign it. And, um, that's another issue. And sometimes when it's passed and the governor signs it, it doesn't get enforced very well. If the department of environmental conservation who's supposed to enforce the law doesn't do a bad job very well. I mean, I'm thinking of the plastic bag law in New York state years ago, New York state passed, uh, a law prohibiting supermarkets and so forth to give out plastic bags. Well, there are huge neighborhoods where hundreds of stores are still giving out plastic bags in New York city. So interesting. Yeah, they're not enforcing it by any means, right? I mean, that there's a lot to go like just to like it's a lot to get a bill passed to get a bill drawn up and passed. And then there's enforcement as well. And we all know through our experience and in the environment, you know, enforcement is a huge, huge issue, a lack or lack thereof is a huge, huge issue. And, you know, just getting, uh, you know, politicians to start considering and starting getting educated on the subject matter, then passing or supporting a bill to pass it, then the enforcement has to happen. Then the people have to kind of follow it as well. It's, it's a, it's not, it's an uphill, it's uphill battle. We, we know that for a fact, but I feel as though we're starting to get progress, especially in the plastics, uh, sort of case where we're starting to see more and more people supporting bills like this, more and more people supporting laws like this. Um, it's, it's not as convenient for everybody, but I think we need to be a little inconvenienced. It's not all about convenience in our lives. It's about looking after, you know, the ocean and looking after our planet. But I think that's really interesting just to move it quickly. Um, you know, because all this stuff is covered in the book, you know, you got, you know, plastic pollution, marine, marine, marine litter, you know, but there's, there's something that's been really, uh, especially in this past summer ends of spring that really kind of hit Florida a little hard. We saw about 80 different fish species get hit with some sort of bad water quality. Yeah, where they would turn around, especially soft fish, where they would turn around and swirl around in circles and they would, and they would die. I just did an article actually on this where, uh, it was a, it was a multiple toxins from, uh, a dinoflagellate, a genus, uh, that could, that could expel multiple toxins. Um, unfortunately, the soft fish got it probably the worst because they got in their gills and their liver. We're seeing, you know, things like red tide. We're seeing things like these multiple toxins get released at some point and they still don't know the mechanism of why they're usually on the, on the bottom or on like some sea plants of some sort or algae, but all of a sudden they got into, you know, 80 different species of fish. They don't know why they don't know if it was concentrated somewhere. Is this also something that you cover in terms of like, like, is this a type of marine pollution? Like you said, a little bit of a biological pollution? Oh, yeah. I have, uh, uh, I guess the first chapter of the book is, uh, about nutrient pollution, which is responsible for algal blooms, including harmful algal blooms, which are the ones that are, are, you know, putting out toxic stuff. So yeah, there's, um, yeah, that's the, the utrophication. And the utrophication is one thing that seems to be getting worse. It happens more. I mean, we have got some control in areas where there's sewage treatment plants of, of, of this, but there are so many people with big lawns and putting fertilizer, I mean, agricultural pollution from fertilizer, but also the rich communities with the gigantic lawns going down to a lake, right, or going down to an estuary. And then it rains and all of that is ending up in the estuary. And, and you'll get an algal bloom, which may or may not have some toxic species. Right. Right. So this is a problem that seems to be getting worse while some problems and plastic is also getting worse. And some problems seem to be getting better. You know, we don't see, we haven't seen a big oil spill in a long time. We have, you know, less problem with oil spills. Some of the other contaminants are improving, uh, like, um, less PCBs or mercury, because they're not being released anymore. And in the sediments and the highly polluted sediments are getting covered over by cleaner sediments. So they're getting down further and further and not going to be making trouble. Right. So we have some things improving. Well, even New York City Harbor has improved in water quality with all of those factories that that haven't been able to, you know, they kind of literally cleaned up their act in terms of allowing those chemicals to go. And we've seen the Medhan come back, we've seen humpback way. Yeah. Yeah. So the med hatener back, the whales come back. And there's nothing so exciting as going on a whale launching trip from Brooklyn, New York. Yeah. And seeing whales with the city skyline in the back. Yeah. So for the, I had, a couple years ago, nominated the New York, New Jersey Harbor estuary to become a hope spot. Oh, right. Sylvia Earls. Yeah. Organization Mission Blue, has designated certain areas as hope spots. So now, um, our estuary, the New York, New Jersey Harbor estuary is one of the hope spots because of how much better it's gotten. It's certainly not sustained, still polluted. For sure. But there's been improved. Since the Clean Water Act, it has gotten so much better. And, um, I, I, when it's started that and, well, congratulations. That's awesome. Cause that does like, that brings a lot of attention towards New York City Harbor, right? It brings a lot of attention towards the hope and the optimism that if we actually do things right, we actually obey the law, we put the laws in, we obey them, we enforce them, we can get our environment back, we can get our oceans back, we can get our lakes and our rivers back. And I think that's, that's really important. And it really does start with things like the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. And we start to see these bills. Like, you know, we've, one of the biggest in the, in the US, some of the biggest, uh, acts like the Magnuson Stevenson's Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act in the 70s have really allowed species that were once considered almost extinct or critical to really come back great white sharks, the Pacific sea lions and so forth have kind, and even like, I think some of the smaller fish, uh, like the, um, um, it's escaping me right now, um, sardines and things like that have started to come back, you know, more and more because of those protections. And, you know, and, and I don't want to put you on the spot. I don't want you to say if you don't, if you're not comfortable, who you're going to support, but there's a really important election coming out, not only in the US and it looks like it. Yeah. I think so. I think so. Yes. I think so. But I think this is really important because look, uh, in Canada, we thought we weren't going to have one until 2025. It looks like that might be having a little earlier federal election. And so in, in both Canada and the US, um, where there's, there's a lot at stake in terms of the environment because it seems like one party is, is for protecting the environment and you can almost criticize not enough, but they're actually have policies to protect the environment and keep certain, uh, legislations and laws in place. And then you have other parties that are another party that, that is not talking about protecting and even talking about regressing some of those laws, which happened in, in the US, happened between 2016, uh, in 2020 when President Trump was in there. Yeah. So. And this, this candidate thinks climate change is, is a hoax. Right. Right. He's almost like 40 years behind the sort of what people are kind of going. So like, I guess the question for me is, um, for this audience and for people who you talk to, who, you know, you want this audit, the, the honest that read your book, what would you recommend they do in terms of, of finding out what each party stands for, especially on an environmental platform? They have to do their own work. Yeah. And pay attention. Yeah. I mean, you can't just, you know, go out and vote and pick a candidate, get informed. Yeah. Who is supporting what? And I would expect most of your audience would be informed. Why would they? It's true. Well, they're, they're looking at this podcast to be informed. So that helps. Yeah. They're, they're clearly informed if they're yeah, listening to your podcast. Yeah. So. Yeah. I guess it's, it's, it's, it's frustrating to me. And, and I guess you, you've seen this a number of times too, where, um, in election cycles, the environment takes a backseat. And it's always the economy over the environment. But at what point, uh, do you just, do we realize or do the, the, the, like sort of the general public realizes that a lot of the times the economy is still tied to the environment. So if the environment goes to crap, our economy is going to go to crap. And, and case in point, a lot of the consequences from climate change, increased storm surges, increased hurricane, typhoons, tornadoes, droughts, fi wildfires. At what point do we put a price on the cleanup and tie it to how it's affecting the economy? All those bad things are happening mostly to poor people. Yes. They're not happening to the billionaires. Right. Yeah. It's true. Many of those people are, are powerless. Mm hmm. You know, it, you got to look who, who's getting affected and, and who is making more money by not having good environmental policies. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if anybody has ever calculated the total amount paid out from FEMA or from any, you know, government organization on the cleanups of all these things and, and sort of the bailing out of people and all these things and tied that to the debt or to who's paying for that or how that's going to affect the future. It should be done. I don't know if somebody is that certainly should be done. Yeah. I think I'm going to have to do an episode on that next because I think that's the, the next question. Um, and, and question for you, you know, for me as someone who has the ability to get messages out through this podcast and, and other means, um, what do you think I should focus on from an environmental standpoint to help people, uh, inform themselves in terms of what's going to, what they're voting for in the selection. I know we're coming down to the, the last couple of months, but, um, like, is there something that I could, could, uh, publish on other than reading right directly from your book? I think you should have other people to talk with that are going to be talking about this too. Yeah. If each, each episode you do, I don't know how many you're going to do between them in the election. It's three weeks. So it's a good amount. Okay. So you've had a lot of this. Yeah. Um, you can hammer it home with different people coming on your show. Right. Right. Yeah. I think this is something that I might, I, I'm going to definitely consider seeing if I can line up some people who can help out and, and talk about some of these important issues and how it affects people, uh, that, you know, we may not hear and debate or we may not, because I think climate change was only talked about just a little bit, uh, in the debate, this, this past one, right? Was it the last couple of minutes and nobody had time to say anything? Yeah. So hopefully I don't know if there will be another debate. Hopefully it gets covered there more, but we'll be covering it here. So if people want to listen, they could listen to that. So I think that's important. If people want to get access to your book, um, I'll put the links in the show. But where can they go, uh, to buy your book? Um, I would encourage them to go to their local bookstore and tell them to stock it. Nice. Go to their local library, just get them to stock it. They could also go to the Oxford University Press website and put in, you know, marine pollution, what everyone needs to know. Second edition. Gotcha. Um, and I'm not going to recommend, although some people will probably go to Amazon, I don't recommend Amazon. Okay. We'll do the, we'll put the Oxford link in and, uh, we'll have, uh, we'll have people buy it from there. And like you said, let's, let's try and get people to ask for it in the library and their local bookstore. I think that's, uh, that's fantastic. Judith, this has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast. Um, looking for, hopefully it won't be another 10 years before we have you on, but yeah, I'm not doing any more books, but that's okay. Come on again. We'll have you on because you have such a wealth of knowledge to share with us tonight. And we definitely appreciate your time to spend with us for this last hour. It's been absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much. And we'll continue promoting this book because I think it's going to be really important for people to get to know. So thank you. I've had a good time with you too. He's so wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Judith, for joining me here on the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. It was great to have you. I told you she comes in and talks facts and talks fun. Uh, it's just a fun way to listen to this type of thing. She's such a fun person. I've got to meet her in person as we mentioned in Borneo in Malaysia at the International Marine Conservation Congress. A number of years ago, we haven't seen each other since, uh, but it's been 10 years since which she's been on the podcast. And I'm so happy that she's back on. However, I want to have her on more often, but it's, it's really invigorating to talk to somebody who's done so much work in and around like the Northeast US and the US. Uh, she's done work in the Pacific. She's done, she don't work all over the place. Even in her retirement, she is working. And I think that is something that is, is really fun to see and really fun to watch. You know, just seeing someone who's so passionate and cares so, so much. It does such great work. So really happy to have her on. Uh, and I will put the link to the Oxford bookstore so you can see it. And as she said, you know, as Judith mentioned, go to your library, go to your local bookstore, ask for marine pollution to be in those stores in that library so that other people can take it out. Other people can read it. Not everybody can afford to buy books, totally understandable. Um, but we'll highly recommend that you go to your library to see it. And if it's not there, ask them for them to carry it. So they might actually do it by a couple of copies. Okay. So thank you so much for joining me. That's it for today's episode. I'll put all the links to, to where Judith wants you to buy the books. If you want to buy it. Um, and I'll put all the links to get in touch with me as well. But I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host, Angela. And have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.
