A big part of conservation is how we get the message out when we identify a particular issue, or when we identify something that's really great in the world of oceans, is how do we get that message out? And what the effect on people who are receiving that message is and how, you know, all the parts that go into putting a message together. And I'm really excited today to talk to Marcus Reimer, who's a PhD candidate at the University of Miami. He's studying environmental communication, especially when it comes down to North Atlantic right whales. We're going to be talking about all the things that happen over the last two decades in terms of communication, the types of communication that happen, especially within media around the North Atlantic right whales. And it's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to be talking about sort of how journalism, the way it could go compared to the way it does go in terms of when they cover conservation stories and conflict. So we're going to talk about a lot of really cool things. I can't wait for you to listen. Let's start the show with Marcus Reimer talking about environmental communication. Let's start that 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 can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And I have to tell you, I am extremely excited to be talking to Marcus Reimer today, not just because Marcus is doing his PhD on environmental communication, which is something that I've always wanted to do, or especially lately wanting to do, but it's and we're just going to get down and dirty into this topic because communication, especially science communication, is not talked about enough in my opinion. I know I like to talk about it because it's something that I'm really, really interested in. But it's something that I feel like we all need to learn about because it's not just communicators like Marcus and I that are going to be talking about oceans or direct, you know, directors of communications of different organizations, but it's going to be you, you and I, as you know, just people who are interested in protecting the ocean, how we are going to get those messages across to our family members, our friends, you know, our colleagues, and to make sure that people are thinking and feeling connected to that ocean. And I think that is where we need to go, not only with this podcast, but a lot of other different types of communication styles, to get people to really understand the significance of protecting the ocean. So today, you know, I had, I had Marcus on because I want to talk to him about, you know, doing his PhD. And so we talked about all the different types of degrees he has, he has two masters, one PhD, an undergraduate degree, of course. And well, he's about to get a PhD, knock on wood, hopefully about to get his PhD in about seven weeks of this recording. But, you know, I wanted to talk about that process, especially when it came to environmental communication, his thought process on that. But we also, like at the end of like the last half of the episode, we really talk about communication, we really talk about that focus and how there are different stakeholders involved and how maybe in a, when an issue comes up, like northern, northern Atlantic right whales and like lobster fishers, that they're not the only two, you know, people involved or organisms involved in this conflict. There are other people that are involved that will benefit from having these whales around. There are people who benefit from fishing with different gear. These are complex issues that need to be talked about, but it's really difficult to talk about all the complexities to an audience that just wants to know, hey, how do we fix this? How do we fix this quickly? It's never quickly, especially when it comes to marine science and conservation. And that's what we're going to get into with Marcus. So here is Marcus Reamer talking about his dissertation and how we can communicate over issues such as, you know, the critically endangered and protecting the critically endangered northern Atlantic right whale. We're going to talk about that on this interview, enjoy the interview, and I will talk to you after. Hey, Marcus, welcome to The How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about environmental communication? Andrew, I'm always ready to talk about environmental communication. Are you ready to hear about it? Oh, I am ready. I have been looking forward to this episode ever since we met over LinkedIn. You know, you share one of your, I believe it was one of your chapters of your dissertation that you're currently doing on environmental communications surrounding the oceans. And I think the post was, if I remember correctly, I've seen a lot of post since, but I think it was about the North Atlantic right whale and then sort of how communication was done around the management around that. And obviously, we've covered that on the podcast. So we're familiar with the situation in terms of entanglements and, you know, obviously the critically endangered status of these whales and how shipping is related and all the challenges that they face. But we never, I've never really talked about the communication and how communication plays such an important role in not only, you know, looking at a dangerous species, but other aspects of the ocean. And, you know, it's always, it's always great when I can connect with somebody who's also in communications, who's formally learning about communications at a university. I've just kind of flown by the seat of my pants and just kind of done it that way. But it's great to see and to be able to engage with somebody who's studying it right now and doing, you know, a PhD on it. And then when we looked into, we started talking before we press record, there's a lot of stuff to you in terms of like, you have two masters, you know, you have a bachelor of science. And so we're going to talk all about that and sort of like how you see communication fitting in, not only for like your career in the future, but just sort of in the environmental movement or, you know, whether it has to do with climate change or oceans, especially, and where that kind of fits in in the future for either yourself as well as just sort of the movement in general and the conservation in general. So before we get to that, we're going to get to know you a little bit. So Marcus, why don't you just let us know who you are and what you do. Sure, I am currently a PhD candidate at the University of Miami's Rosenseel School. I'm in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, and I'm an ABAS fellow at the ABAS Center, which is an interdisciplinary PhD program. I'm currently studying the role of communication and media in the context of whale and dolphin conservation. And that won't be true for much longer. We're recording this today exactly seven weeks before my defense, which is pretty exciting. So hopefully, by that time, yeah, hopefully, a couple months from now, I'll be able to say I am a PhD instead of candidate, but I am really fortunate to say that I've spent my entire career in ocean conservation. I started about 12 years ago in animal care and training where I spent a few years where I really found my interest in science and environmental communication when I was, you know, talking to visitors from all over the world and sharing stories about our animals and how that relates to animals out in the ocean and what people can do to care for all of them. So a few years into that career, I decided to go back to school. As you mentioned, I have a couple of master's degrees. Got my master of professional science from the University of Miami in marine conservation, where I really started to explore the idea of science communication about the ocean and graduated after the 2016 election. It was kind of an uncertain time for a lot of people and a weird time to be searching for a job. So I wanted to expand my skill set and I found a really great program at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in public administration with a focus on nonprofit management. So that's where that second master's comes in around the same time that I started that degree. I started working at a job in DC and did those two things together. So I've since I left animal care and training, I've worked in communication capacities for organizations like Seven Seas Media, the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation outside of DC and a consulting firm. And I also work part-time here at the Rosenstiel School, where I share my own career story and experiences with students in our master of professional science program, where I sort of help them explore different career paths, sort of like you were saying before, for people who might not know all that's out there or might want to try different things and figure out sort of where they want to land. So help them explore career paths and prepare for their required internships and postgraduate careers. So a lot to work with here, but currently a PhD candidate, currently helping our master's students in one of our programs across 14 tracks. And just really grateful to be here today and to be able to share my perspective and what I've seen with your audience as well. Yeah, and I just love the beginning of the story too, where you're working a little bit and you kind of figure, okay, this is what I really like to do. Before that, let's go back a little bit before that. Did you have a bachelor of science at that point or an undergraduate degree before you worked with sort of the communications, like the animal communications, where are the animal care, sorry? So I got my Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with the intent of working with animals. I kind of wanted to live out every four-year-old's dream and work with marine mammals and was really fortunate to land a job right out of college and did that for four or five years. So that was sort of always the plan was ocean animals. I grew up in Central Maryland. My parents own a seafood restaurant and I remember distinctly from a very young age getting in trouble for trying to bring live blue crabs home to keep his pets. And we traveled a lot to the eastern shore of Maryland and the Delaware beaches. So the ocean's really just always been part of my life and when I was eight years old, a family friend took me to the national aquarium in Baltimore and we were supposed to feed the sharks that day. That tour got canceled and I was kind of salty about it and the backup plan was to go meet and interact with one of the dolphins during the show and I can tell you pretty much everything about it to this day. So that was my inspiration. I was eight putting on the rubber boots and you know meeting a dolphin and giving hand signals, smelling fish in front of a stadium full of people which was pretty cool. The dolphin was, yeah, the dolphin was also eight. Her name was Chesapeake and it's really cool. I like that. Everything and what's really cool is that when I was in animal care and training, I actually went back to the national aquarium to work with Chesapeake and her daughter in the marine mammal pavilion. So it was really cool. Yeah, really cool like full circle. That's so cool. That's the same dolphin who inspired me to really pursue that career path, who led me to the University of Miami to do all of these things. You know, I got to go back and really get to know her and see how she had grown as well. So a lot of background there. That is so cool. I love that. I love hearing stories like that. Now, when you were working at the animal care and you're telling these stories and you said you love sharing stories about some of these animals to connect with people, we are a storytelling species. We like to hear stories. We like to tell stories. What about that aspect said, hey, you know what, I want to start looking at more of a communications role within the oceans or within ocean conservation because it's not something a lot of people think of right off the bat. I know for me to start doing podcasting, it kind of came around and about way. But what was it for you that said, hey, you know what, this is where I want to go with this. I think it was two things. Like I said, I was really fortunate to just land that dream job straight out of college. So I started really early. I worked down in the Keys, went and worked in Baltimore, had this full circle moment and was really saying is this something I can imagine myself doing for, you know, 30 or more years and you know, a lot of internal dialogue on that one. But at that same time, you know, I met some really incredible people from all over the world who had an interest in not only animals in our care, but the animals out in the ocean as well and being able to, you know, teach people the most basic things. Dolphins are not fish. They're mammals, right? I'm an ocean expert. You're knowledgeable about the ocean, right? But there are just a lot of people who don't know things that feel very simple. So being able to empower people with knowledge and they leave more educated than they arrived with was really inspiring. But really it was those more individual interactions, whether it was kids during a poolside meet and greet, who I saw a lot of my eight year old self in them and saw that twinkle in their eye or if it was kids from Baltimore City Public Schools coming in for straight A night, if they wouldn't otherwise be able to come to the aquarium and show them dolphins and really share my love with them through story. And so sort of as I got to the tail end and I was saying, is this something that I could do for another few decades? Like what does growth look like? I'm a person who really loves to learn and explore and challenge myself. Everyday working with animals is an adventure. But thinking about that fulfillment, I was like, you know what? I'm a storyteller. I have, you know, used the animals that were either behind me or in front of me or next to me, wherever I was sort of standing in that amphitheater to inspire people to care a little bit more about the ocean than when they woke up that day. So that's when I was like, you know what? I kind of want to go back to school and I want to start exploring science and environmental communication, whatever that means. Yeah. So it was sort of those two things converging and it was it's all history from there. So was it difficult finding? You went back, is that where you went back to? Was that where you went back to? No, you went back to Miami for that one, right? I went back to Miami for that one. They have a Master of Professional Science program. So it's, it's kind of a choose your own adventure. You can treat it like a traditional Master of Science where you complete a hypothesis-based research project or you can do more professional-based non-hypothesis work. And so I enrolled in the Marine Conservation Program, which is very flexible and sort of took coursework that I would have never really thought to take during my undergrad years. Of course, I threw a bunch of marine mammal classes in there to feed my passion for that and was able to explore science communication through my project, which I did with Cetency's media, which at that time was called. Nice. Cetency's Marine Conservation and Travel Magazine. Yes, I remember that. Yeah, so sort of charted my own course there, but had the kind of expert support that I needed in our faculty to really work through that, knowing that I was not in a traditional communication program. Right, right. There's a lot of more hands-on communication roles too, right. I mean, that's what, I think that's what it provided. It was like that professional science. Like, let's get, I love these programs. I feel like programs like this, we don't advertise enough. I think people think that if you want to go into marine conservation, I've seen this a lot where people are trying to, you know, they work for a bit, they may not have thought about going into marine biology or marine conservation. And then all of a sudden, they're like, I really like this. It's really fulfilling. And they're not getting the fulfillment in the current, you know, stream that they're at. So they kind of come back and like, well, I need to become a marine biologist now. And I always tell them, like, you don't necessarily need to become a marine biologist. You might be able to take the degree that you have and then use that to get into, you know, like a master's of, you know, professional science or something similar at a different university and just to be like, hey, like, this is what I can use now. And you don't have to go back to do another four-year degree to, you know, restart. And that's, that's expensive one. Plus, it may not give you what you want, you know, it may not give you what you like. There's a lot of us who have gone through the science program that don't end up in in science all the time. And so I think for a lot of people, you know, this is these these these programs are really ideal. And I know the master of professional science has been a huge hit in University of Miami. So that's that's always great to hear. Now coming out of that, that was one right before the 2016 election. Was that it? Was that word? Right after I just I graduated December 2016. So right in the aftermath, when everybody was sort of, yeah, wondering what happened next. Yeah, because we knew at that point, you know, you know, Trump became president. He wasn't the most administration wasn't. I'll say this politely, the most environmentally focused. Let's just say a lot of environmental programs federally got cut. And that that and and funding as well got cut, which which put a damper on a lot of environmental organizations and their ability to hire and ability to do projects and so forth. So you decide to go back for that masters of, I believe it was, it was at Chapel Hill, the public administration. So you kind of saw like a different skill set that you might be able to use in the first place. So what was that skill set that you really wanted to get out of that? I think it's a great point. And I should say that the last quarter of every year it can be a challenging time to look for a job. Right, because, you know, end of budget year, people are taking off for the holidays. It doesn't really start back until January. So that compounded with waiting for the new president elect to take office and see what was going to happen. You know, made it a bit of a challenging job search. And one of the things that I knew I wanted to do was work for nonprofit organizations. What were the skills that I did not get coursework in during my professional science master's degree? There were courses that just weren't offered when I was there that had previously been offered things like grant writing or leadership. And so I was like, you know what? If I'm going to be looking for a job anyway, let's see about gaining some new skills and really focusing on the nuts and bolts of being not just a good employee, but you know, somebody who could lead organizations or understand organizations and be a really effective team member wherever I ended up. And so I thought I was applying to a certificate program. It ended up being an online master's program. So happy accident there as Bob Ross would call it. And around the same time that I was accepted, which I guess was March of that year, I had found my job at the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. And I started those two things about the same time. So it was really cool to step into a new job, which is a senior level role, under new leadership, lots of big challenges to tackle, and then also sort of learn about those things through this public administration program and apply them as I went. So just a really, really incredible secondary experience. And I'm so grateful for that opportunity. And while it was an online program, you know, Chapel Hill's just so good at what they do on that front. I was able to go to the campus two years in a row for what are called Immersion's and it's online in-person students. We all come together for special topics. It was just a really special experience. Yeah. So I call that like the third leg of my three-legged stool. I've got the science, I've got the communication, and then I've got that sort of organizational management or administration skill set because one of the things that I often tell students or people that I mentor, no matter what you want to do, you're going to work for an organization or with other people. Even if you want to be a consultant and work for yourself, even if you want to be quote-unquote just a shark scientist, off on a remote island somewhere, you're going to be affiliated with an organization so you should understand what they are, how they work effectively, and how you should into all that. So I was really grateful for that experience as well. Yeah. This is something I've been discovering even recently. I mean, you know, I've just turned 46 and this over this past year, I've discovered like there's a lot of jobs where they're like program coordinators or program managers and this and that. And you require a skill set that you may not learn in university through like a marine biology degree, maybe in the professional science, depending on the track that you use, but it's not easy to find a program that has, it's a pretty diverse set of skills that you can develop. So having something like in public administration or nonprofit, you know, work or something like that, that you can gain that experience is really great. Project management experience is so helpful. It just keeps you organized. It allows you to have maybe those senior type roles, manager, supervisors, and so forth. So it must have been great to be able to learn that alongside that marine sanctuary program, because you're just basically like, here's what I'm learning and here's how I'm implying it. And I'm already applying in real time. And I think that's such a, like you said, enriching experience. You don't get that often. It couldn't have been easy to do, though, like work a full time job and then do an online masters. How did you juggle that? Carefully. I'm really thankful that, you know, my boss at the Sanctuary Foundation was super supportive. And, you know, the program was designed for working professionals. That online format is really for people who either have a job or, you know, are in the middle of their search. And so it's a lot of evening coursework asynchronous. So I would be watching my asynchronous lectures. I shouldn't say watching because I was listening to them, you know, on my commute into work, for example. Yeah, right. You know, so carefully. But the really cool thing was that, like, in my Master of Professional Science experience, I was around a lot of really knowledgeable and really exciting people who were tackling diverse topics in ocean science, conservation, you know, all kinds of stuff like that. The Master of Professional Science, it's just so much broader because local government, there are thousands of them in the US, right? So people working on veterans issues and human health and housing. I could learn new perspectives and apply it to my own work in a really different way that I didn't get in the professional science. So in that experience, where I brought the communications interest and had to figure out how to work with that. In public administration, I brought the environmental science and had to figure out sort of how that fits with what we were talking about. And my colleagues were so diverse and just so interesting that it never really felt like work. So it didn't feel like an extra lift because I found it exciting and fun. So while it was, you know, finally was never fun for anybody, but it was that combo of enjoying it and just having a really supportive employer and team and just a program that was run really, really well allowed me to thrive. And I credit a lot of my success to that program as well because it informed a lot of my my work moving forward into the PhD and actually inspired me to pursue the PhD to begin with. Awesome. That's great to hear. And so that's what so that's what made you do the PhD as I was going to my next question. You know, going back to University of Miami to do the PhD, why there? And again, going into communications like what did you have the idea of what you want to do going into the PhD? Or was this something you had an idea of who you want to work with and they had some ideas? It's an interesting question because I my parents bring this up all the time. I said I would never go to graduate school and then I went and then I went again and then I went a third time. So it's sort of been it's evolved as we've gone, I should say. Of course. Yeah, that's true. You know, coming out of the public administration program, I was like, man, I still just don't quite feel finished. And the things that I was seeing, I was the communications director for the Sanctuary Foundation. I had, you know, just an incredible front row seat to what was going on in ocean science and conservation across the country. At the time there were 14 sites from American Samoa to the Florida Keys to Massachusetts, different communities, you know, different topics. I could be talking about hills in one meeting and then shipwrecks in another, working to support fundraising, talking about grants we were making. So just that incredible diversity of topics that I could talk about was really fulfilling to me. But I think it was in that role that I was really just noticing this gap between ocean communication and terrestrial conservation communication, climate communication. And that really inspired me to pause and be like, you know, I'm thinking about a PhD. I think I would want it to be about ocean communication and really how that fits the ocean conservation movement. And this was before the UN ocean decade and things like that. So I was like, you know what, let's just try and let's find a program that's interdisciplinary and let's people get weird with what they want to try out. And I didn't have to look much further than the University of Miami for the program here at our ABBA Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. It's a little bit different from a traditional PhD because you don't have to work with any one faculty member in a particular school or college. So ending up there was definitely a match. I was familiar with the University and with the Rosenstiel School already. And so I was able to come back and jump right in. So I didn't go in with this proposal to do communication and media about right whales, but it sort of just naturally fell into place because I started six months before COVID. I had these big dreams to go out and do community engaged work and tackle all these topics, wanted to work on some of the stuff with the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary expansion. And a lot of that got just curbed by COVID. And we obviously had to adjust course. And I give all the credit in the world to my co-advisors who were so patient during that time when I was like, well, can't go out and do that. So what are we going to do instead? Here's a million bad ideas that I'm just throwing out. What do we think could work? So I not only came into the PhD with an open mind and an open question, but the world altering sort of change that was COVID also forced me to think on my feet and brought me to this moment as well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's great. Like, the one interesting, I mean, there were a lot of interesting things that happened during COVID with graduate students. Some good, some bad, you know, a lot of people had to pivot and switch the focus of their, you know, some people couldn't do field work anymore. So they had to, you know, take the data they had and make the best of what they could and maybe elaborate on some of the things or, like I said, pivot their dissertations on in ways that they never thought of before. So it definitely, you definitely built the skill set as a graduate student during COVID where you had to be really resilient, you know, and I'm sure it tested the mind body with all of that. But to do this, so what did you decide when you did your PhD, you know, as that change where you couldn't do as much community engagement, if at all, word, what line did you want to go towards? Like, well, what line did you want to follow in terms of those bad ideas that you said before? Yeah. Well, and I shouldn't call them bad ideas. Yeah. When you brainstorm, there's just so much that ends up on the cutting room floor. And that's if I looked back at my idea sheets from your one versus now, I would wonder what the heck I was thinking. But I think that's all of us when we look back at our past work. So one, you know, the fact that I had the experience as an online student at UNC really helped me learn to work effectively online and in a virtual environment. So that's when I said, you know, it's at least for the foreseeable future, we're going to need to look into things that don't require interacting with people. So what is that? Yeah. Exploring media, whatever that looks like. And, you know, I tried my hardest coming into this PhD to try to branch out and do other topics and whales and dolphins. They always just called back to me. And so I was like, you know what, whale and dolphin conservation, my advisor at the time agreed, she said, this is your wheelhouse. There's no need to try to branch outside that. So let's just follow that where you think it'll lead. And around that same time, two documentaries came out about right whales. And I said, well, this is ripe. This is prime for the exploring. And this is the kind of work that we can do. This is something that's timely. It's, you know, not around people. So what if we did right whales? And that's sort of how we ended up on that one. I had been familiar with it, done, obviously learned about it in courses, done projects. I did like my GIS course in the MPS program. I did a paper about right whales, supported some of that work while I was with the Sanctuary Foundation. And I was like, this is where we'll land. I think we can do something pretty interesting with this. And look at right whale conservation from a different angle, which also kept me motivated going back to what you said about needing resilience and, you know, to be able to make it through a graduate program, that was something that was going to keep my attention and keep me motivated, not all day every day. But, you know, having an interest and feeling like I was doing something interesting definitely helped. So that's how we landed on right whale communication, right whale, media education. Yeah, not communicating with right whales, like talking to them or getting there. It's, it's about the media. And to be honest, like, there were a lot of, there were a lot of things that went on, not only in the past, but even during COVID in regards to North Atlantic right whales. I mean, we've seen like in the early 2000s, they weren't critically endangered, or maybe even before that, then all of a sudden they plummeted. And then, you know, there was that disastrous year of fatalities in 2017, where they started to come up to the Gulf of St. Lawrence here in Canada. There's been a lot of stuff that went on pre COVID, but even with COVID during COVID, even up to like last year, there were a lot of things going on, especially around, you know, a lot of the sustainable seafood programs that were supporting, you know, lobster fishing and crab fishing and shrimp fishing and anything that had to do with a pot that was on the ground and a line that would go up where these these whales would would kind of swim through because it couldn't see it. And then they would end up getting hurt, you know, could die of infection or what have you, plus, you know, shipping channels and so forth. Like with climate change kind of rearing its ugly head, especially nowadays, and seeing the different patterns that we're seeing of distribution with North Atlantic right whales, it wasn't a bad time to start looking at how the media was portraying this from a conservation standpoint, as well as probably from a bit of a controversial standpoint with how different organizations and governments were taking a stance on protecting these animals from, you know, from a fisheries perspective, as well as from a conservation perspective. So there's a lot that was going on, you know, in the last 20 years or more, 24 years to say, hey, like, there's, there's a lot that you can, that you can go here. Now, when you look at media, were you looking at how the media was portraying, like, looking at the different size? And if there's one that was being, you know, more biased towards, like, one way or another, like the conservation or not, what was that the, the question that you had, the overall question that you had? There's a lot there. So maybe what I'll do, I'll walk you through the sort of order of my dissertation projects and we can follow the thread lines that we're interested in. So the, the first paper as part of the core of my, my body of research right now is not actually about communication or media, but it was a really important chapter. And that was a law and policy case study related to the Eastern North Pacific Great Whale. And I chose that. That was a project that I started looking into while I was a master's student. And it, it's a really incredible conservation story because that was the first marine mammal ever removed from the US endangered species list for a successful recovery rather than extinction. And that was done in 1994. And so what I did with that paper was look at this sort of historic context of how we went from industrial whaling, where we decimated nearly all whale stocks globally, to a place where whales are almost celebrities out in the ocean. And so really looked at the, the law and policy decisions, the, the cultural movement, the, I should say movements, that took place over a span of about 40 years. And then the law and policy framework under which we were able to help that population of gray whales not only recover but thrive, where they're now in these sort of boom and bust cycles. So walking through that helped me explore the complexities of marine mammal conservation and management, not just under US law, but under international law and all these different agreements. And it introduced me to some of the cultural movements and the conservation marketing that helped whales become those celebrities they are today. And, and that actually has come up in subsequent projects. So that was chapter one, it's really chapter two, but the first project, you know, law and policy case study, we did it before. Can we do it again with these same laws, these same frameworks for animals like the right whale, the rice's whale, other endangered species. And then I moved on to the next project, which was a content analysis of whale watching operator websites in the US. And if I were to ask you what you thought environmental media was, you would probably say things like documentaries, presentations, displays of zoos and aquariums, you probably wouldn't go for a whale watching operator website. But, you know, coming out of the whaling era, when whale watching really blew up, and we, as a global community on the whole, changed the way that we consume whales from for meat and oil, and, you know, other materials to visual experience and consuming them for, you know, that spectacle of nature, you know, whale watching is one of the only ways that most people will ever experience these animals in their habitat for real. And the messaging that we receive from things like advertisements interact with things like podcasts or, you know, science talks that we go to or, you know, exhibits that we engage with at aquariums to create meaning about what whales are and what their plight is. So we looked at whale watching operator websites in six regions. So Massachusetts, Northern Southern California, Washington State, Hawaii, and Alaska. And really just wanted to understand what is it that whale watching operators are selling to people during that pre-tour experience? What are the expectations they're creating? And what do people think they're buying? And that's a really important thing to consider because we don't always actively engage with environmental media, but we experience environmental messages in passing all the time. It's almost like a pinball machine where we're sort of just bouncing around. You know, even Lisa Frank drawings of whales and dolphins, like that helped shape the things that we think they are and what those animals mean. So looked into whale watching operator websites, and Massachusetts was obviously one of the focal areas. And they on the whole promote right whales as one of the top species that you can see for the operators who listed, you know, specific species. So they're obviously something of interest up there. We didn't really see, you know, specific right whale tours, but they were mentioned fairly frequently. So they're at least known and something that people want to see. So that sort of told us what operators we're focusing on. It's what we found was that it's more about the things that they can control. Are there bathrooms on board? Are you going to be able to learn if you want to? Who is the captain and what's the boat? Can you bring food? And conservation and education, we're a little bit lower on the list of priorities. And we saw lots of stereotypic images, what we called the whale watching imaginary. So the imagery is pretty standard across regions and across websites. You've got whale jumping on a scenic backdrop, whale tail, people leaning over the side of the boat with their cameras to take pictures of a part of the whale that's up close. You know, so it's not all that diverse, but also you're trying to get people on the boat so that you can educate them and give them this incredible experience. So you don't want to show a picture of a whale logging 300 meters away. You know, that's just not all that inspirational. So some interesting stuff came out of that one, but it wasn't traditional environmental media as you might think of it. So we have the lawn policy analysis with the whale watching operators, and then we get into the right whale stuff. Started by looking at 13 years of news coverage in larger US newspapers from 2010 when the population started to decline from its moderate peak, all the way through March 15th, 2023. And where that project came from, you know, I got a news alert one day through like Apple News or something that had said, as part of the federal spending bill, the US Congress had blocked certain provisions with right whale conservation and the federal agency's ability to manage that. And I said, well, that's interesting. Let's look into that. Yeah. Saw some follow up stories. And I said, you know what, I want to know how we got here. And so went through and chose six large US newspapers, sampled everything they had done for about 13 years. Which ended up being 356 texts, which include letters to the editor and really just set out to figure out what those stories they were telling were, what was the focus and how they were presenting it. So to your earlier point about a lot happening over the last few decades, yeah, saw it firsthand. And what came out of that project, because we went in and just coded for, you know, which publications are publishing about right whales most, which authors, what are the themes they're talking about. We found that one publication and one author were really driving the narrative. And that started in 2017, that that summer that you mentioned where at least a dozen whales were found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where they didn't at the time have legal protections. And that started what we call an issue attention cycle. We're quite familiar with those as consumers of media. But, you know, I really looked at all of that coverage through the lens of issue attention cycle, which says media will follow predictable patterns to focus on what's problematic or what they can dramatize to maintain consumer interests until they grow bored and move on to something else. Right. And we can talk more about that if you want. But we found that there is an issue attention cycle surrounding entanglements in fishing gear, specifically as it related to the New England lobster fishery, where everybody sort of focused in on that. They focused on the drama, the conflict, disagreements. And it was huge. And it was contentious. And it's a really interesting, but tangled web. And it was really interesting to see what came out of that. And so, followed that more than decade of news media to say, what were the important events? Who were the featured actors? So who were the human stakeholders that the journalists went to or who engaged with journalists to co-create the story? And what would that story be, you know, for people who are following along? Most people, they read stories here and there, but we looked at the full, what's called media discourse to make sense of sort of not news media as an outside actor looking in and showing people what is, but really as participants in environmental politics who, you know, serve as this political arena for different interests to try to shape public discussions and inform policy decisions. So some really interesting stuff came out of that. And as part of that issue, attention cycle came the two documentaries that I mentioned earlier. So the next project was to do a critical examination of those two documentaries. It's really rare to get two movies about the same topic by different filmmakers within a year of each other, you know, that take such different approaches to storytelling. And so I wanted to take advantage of that opportunity to compare and contrast. So I looked at both of those films. I've seen both more times than I can count. I'm sure my dog can recite it in his sleep at this point. But really looked at the different angles that they took, the storytelling devices that they used, and then expanded on that project with the final chapter of the dissertation, which is really where we took it to real people. So where we looked at the contents of the media in the study before, we wanted to look at the media effects. And so I did focus groups where people saw one of two films. And, you know, we talked through their experiences of viewer, what they thought the filmmaker was trying to do with it, what they understood the issue to be after seeing that film. And so that was a pretty interesting way to not only compare and contrast, you know, the critical reading that I did with the way that people experienced it, but also helps offer some informed insights about messaging surrounding right whale conservation, moving forward, and then the use of wildlife film in support of conservation. And what was interesting about this project is that I was able to do the focus group work in southern Delaware and Maryland's eastern shore, which is along the right whale's migratory pattern, but it's not near critical habitat. You know, these are not people who are probably tuned in to all the drama in the newspapers and things like that. They may have heard of right whales, so they weren't involved in the films. They probably hadn't seen them. So being able to talk to people with relationships to the ocean and an interest in conservation, show them these films and talk to them about it was a really cool experience. So those are the projects that I've worked on that are going into the dissertation a lot there. So happy to follow what peeks your interest. Well, I mean, you know, when you do, when you're working on a project, obviously, you're still working on your probably your writing phase. And I don't know if you've submitted yet. Have you submitted yet? No, not yet. So you're still probably putting the finishing touches on over the next few weeks. But overall, like when you look at media, because, you know, I, one of the reasons why I started this podcast is because when I start looking at articles, when I was looking for article during that time, I was like, it seems to be talking about the same thing over and over again. Obviously, whales are big, are big topics. Sharks, usually it has to do with shark quote unquote attacks, right? And the negative that comes around that. When it came to North Atlantic right whales, was it like, what were the types of when when different types of media started talking about it? Say like, like mainstream media, like newspaper articles or digital newspaper articles and things like that. What was the content? Was it more of, oh, another North Atlantic white whale was discovered dead? You know, here's it. Or were there any coverages on any potential? And if there were available optimistic articles or optimistic stories of right whales have survived or like, you know, new caps coming through or what have you like? What was the tone of those types of stories that you found? So looking at 13 years of news coverage, I saw pretty much everything right under the gamut that you just mentioned. From 2010 to 2017, it was fairly rare to see stories about right whales in the publications that we sampled other than, you know, Noah is urging vessels to slow down, right whales had been cited in this area or right whale was was found dead here or right whale calf was spotted here. There were some talk of like naval bases in Georgia, Jacksonville at that time, a couple stories bubbled up there, some stuff about energy development, but it was lots of like one-offs. Yeah. Then 2017 happened and things started to intensify a little bit. And so in an issue attention cycle, this theoretical framework that I used, step one is that you have this issue that's known by the people it affects most and probably some experts who are working on it, but it's not really something commonly known by the public. And then there's this period of intense enthusiasm or what they call alarm, right? And so that's when there's a huge problem and it becomes sort of prevalent or more prevalent in the coverage that people start seeing. And that was 2017. That's when you started to hear right whale dead, right whale dead, right whale dead, you know, they're in this place that we don't expect them. Yeah. And then along with that is this enthusiasm that, you know, we're going to fix this. We have this problem, we can all do it. And then you move into this third stage, which is where you have to grapple with reality. It's you realize the cost of significant progress. And that's where things start to fall apart a little bit. And then it decreases from there, right? And so there's a gradual decline in public interest at stage four. And then at stage five, the person who coined the issue attention cycle framework talks about the fact that it's kind of in limbo. The topic will remain something that people are interested in. Maybe it'll pop up here and there again, but it's probably not going to be as intense as it had been earlier in the cycle. We saw the same thing with COVID, right? It was this unknown thing that started, you know, in a far off place. And then it made its way over here. You know, we were all going to do this. All we need is a vaccine cost of significant progress. Oh, here's what closures mean debates over vaccines. And now where are we people all but forget about COVID. So this is a fairly predictable way of looking at media and to take it back to right whales. During that third stage, realizing the cost of significant progress, it really focused in on fishing gear and tanglements. And so what did that mean for science communication? What did it mean, you know, for the overall discourse? There's lots of issues facing the right whale. They're all integrated. You brought up earlier climate change. There's vessel strikes. There are, you know, there's ocean noise. There's entanglement. And so what I saw was really excellent science communication focusing on the biggest issue that's causing the greatest harm, where there was an opportunity for the greatest conservation game, which happened to be reducing the risk of entanglement for whales. Yeah. What came with that was this perception that environmental groups or whoever was singling out lobster fishermen and trying to do these nefarious things. And what that did was increase the representation of lobster fishing voices, who then in collaboration with journalists, and that's not like a thing that happens actively, it's just sort of how the reporting shook out, really focused on what harms further regulation on the fishing industry would do to them in their communities. And so it then became this debate between, I call it the clash of the Titans, between protecting right whales, or protecting lobster fishing rights, and only one side could win. And so that's really the thing that the media coverage overall focused on for the remainder of the time. You heard things about vessel strikes, some stuff about, you know, during the Trump administration, offshore oil exploration permits and undoing environmental regulations, that was mentioned. Biden took office in 2021. That's when the fishery service started to really explore new rules. There were a bunch of lawsuits, so it really just focused in on the fights. And even in stories that were focused on solutions, where there were stories that talked about fishermen, who were really invested in, you know, so-called "ropeless fishing gear" technology and trying it out and were really committed to participating for the benefit of right whales, even those stories included some kind of conflict, whether it was certain fishermen are calling these fishermen "traders," or the state government denied special permits to try out "ropeless fishing gear," and that created a new conflict to consume. So like even those solution stories focused on a conflict, because that's what people read. And then we got to this inflection point, where as you mentioned earlier, seafood sustainability labels changed the designation of American lobster from US and Canadian fisheries to an unsustainable source citing right whales is the cause. That caught a lot of people's attention. Blue apron, the meal kit company stopped carrying lobster, Whole Foods, Walmart, like pretty wide. Yeah, pretty recognized organizations took notice and said as part of our sustainability commitments, we're not going to carry lobster. That caught Congress's attention, right? And then in an unrelated federal spending bill, all these things happened. Right whale provisions were written in, took everybody by surprise where the fishery services basically not allowed to impose any new regulations until 2029. We came out of that period and into 2023 with lobstermen suing the Monterey Bay Aquarium for their seafood watch decision. So to answer your question in short, after all of that detail work, is really to say the coverage focused on conflict and disagreements and, you know, the problem and scientists and environmental groups sort of stayed the course and they really tried to focus on rope as the issue, not fishing, not fishermen. It's rope that we want to address. You know, this is where our greatest gain is and this is where we think our expectations are realistic. And then, you know, when you heard people talking from the lobster fishery, whether it was individuals or groups, you know, they talked about themselves as this sort of small-scale fishery that was being villainized when in fact they have a great deal of power and influence in that region. But they also compared themselves to right whales and called themselves endangered and said any regulations would cause them economic harm, it would harm their communities. And so it really became this story of we're stuck between a rock and a hard place and we have to pick one. And that doesn't necessarily reflect the scientific reality, it doesn't necessarily reflect where things had been, but it's what was presented to people. So this is the interesting thing that I always have, you know, like obviously, you know, in stories we like to have conflict, right? That makes a good story, you know. And that conflict happens, but at what cost? You know, from a journalistic perspective, you think you want to stay in the middle. Here's the one side, you know, especially when it came to small-scale fishers who are using, you know, the lobster pots. And then here's the other side of a lot of NGOs, government workers, and so forth, who want to protect these, you know, wonderful animals, these northern right whales. You know, at what point do we just kind of say, hey, look, like a story is a great story and that's wonderful, but at what point do we kind of hold journalists accountable to be like, where do we want to go from here? You know, like, what do we want to do? We understand that there are two sides to this conflict. You know, we want fishers to continue to fish, we want these animals to grow in population and be healthy. And so from a from a media perspective, from a communication perspective, where do we be like, okay, we understand both sides. What's the best way forward? Oh, there's there's this new technology that allows ropeless crab pots and lobster pots. How about we invest? Like, how about we say, hey, let's invest in this more so that we can decrease the amount of instances or the risk that these animals will get entangled because there'll be less pots. Now, I know the fishing community was not necessarily happy about the first iterations of these ropeless pots, but the if you can have more significant investment, that means the technology could in theory could move through faster. So like, at what point, you know, do the the journalists be like, what's the instead of getting the story and make the like the most conflicting story or the, you know, along with the most conflict, and then get clicks or get, you know, papers to read, at what point do you just be like, let's move forward with like the best option for both sides? I wish I had a simple answer for that. But I'm going to give the stock academic answer that we don't really know yet because this is so challenging. I think generally with science and environmental journalism, there's just changes in the news industry where you don't have specialists covering a specific beat the way that you use to. So science and environment is now very broad, right? And going back to the graywell paper that I mentioned earlier, like marine mammal conservation is a special kind of complex. Yes, right? There's just so many overlapping laws, these animals travel through jurisdictions. They intersects with lots of different human uses of the ocean. And there's just really robust conservation marketing behind them. So they, they are especially complicated to communicate. And I think right well conservation is extra complicated in that because you have these interrelated issues. Climate is driving changes in their prey, which is leading whales to new and unexpected places in different aggregations. And there are lots of things that are threatening them. The math is bad, right? The population can't afford to lose a single individual each year and we need to almost triple the birth rate. And what's the way to do that? Stop injuring and killing them. How do you do that? Well, they're shipping and then there's fishing and then, you know, yeah, there's noise and all kinds of stuff. So at some point, if you're a reporter or you're an editor trying to find the story that you want to include in your upcoming paper, you have to frame something and you have to exclude almost all of the other things to be able to tell a simple and clear journalistic story when the science behind it is very complex. And, you know, climate is a big factor here. That's the overarching like mega boss that's touching all of this. And the thing that we need to do is decarbonize and and slow climate change and ocean warming and things like that. But in the meantime, this particular species doesn't have decades where, you know, figuring that out. So it's kind of like the science and the reality has boxed things into a point where you have to make tough decisions. And that emphasis on conservation technology, it's probably where the most conservation gains are. But focusing on technology as a solution, there's other research out there about this. It's just a really limiting strategy because it convinces non experts that there's nothing that they can do to be part of that. That's for the engineers, that's for the experts, that's for the government to pay for, I'm good, right? When you actually need that public pressure to create the kind of demand for the industry to adopt the technology, right? Yeah. If and when it's ready. And so I think this is this is why it's so interesting to me to look at is because you see all of these things sort of intersecting and it's like, okay, well, what if we did this? Well, that comes with its challenges to or that doesn't line up just right. And so I am not at a point where I have great suggestions moving forward because what I've done so far is just look at the landscape and the landscape really complicated. Yeah. And it's true. And then one thing I was thinking as you were saying that when you're talking is if you start to throw all the complexities to people to an audience, then they can get really down on the situation and like, well, there's no way out. You know, you got climate change, you got ocean noise, you know, we're not going to stop shipping from happening. We're not going to stop fishing from happening. These these animals are doomed. Let's just forget about it. I remember when I first started a YouTube channel a number of years ago, like early 2012s, 11s, you know, one of the things that I focused on was all the issues. Like, I'll talk about the issues and we'll just, you know, if I talk about them, then people will listen to them more. And I remember talking to somebody. I was out at dinner with the owner of my gym and we were and, you know, it was a group of us and she was like, oh, yeah, I watch your videos and then I had to stop. And I was like, I really liked it. But then I had to stop. I'm like, what do you mean yet to stop? She's like, I kept hearing. It was just negative and negative and negative. And I just felt helpless. And I was like, oh, oh, interesting. Oh, okay. And so I started to really think about that and be like, I've got to be careful of how many negative stories that I cover. You know, you still have to, you know, you still have to cover those stories, but you have to show that optimism. And I went to a conference, International Marine Conservation Congress in 2014. And the theme was ocean optimism. You know, I spoke to a lot of people about that theme that weekend and just being like, or that week and just being like, it's important for us as scientists, as communicators to put forth that hope where we can see, you know, people adapting like with climate change, a lot of times, you know, I'll talk about climate change, like, yeah, there's really no way out of it, right? And I'm like, well, I'm like, you can look at this, you know, country down here, like in the Philippines, and you got these fishing villages who have like, you know, they know that there's going to be typhoons. They know they have marine protected areas. They've installed them. But then when a typhoon comes in and then it kind of disrupts everything and they have no money, then they have to fish everything. But now they've got a savings account that they've put together so that when they do have these typhoons, well, they can come in, they can use that money in the meantime. And then that holds them over until that marine protected area kind of gets back to normal, you know, gets out of the thing. There's just not added pressure to that. And people like, oh, wow, I didn't really, I didn't know that. That's really cool. And so it's like, it's talking, it's like me trying to get all these little stories that may not be huge on, you know, the global market of media, but it kind of gives people a little bit of hope here and there and kind of piecing those together. But it would be interesting to hear, you know, I've always, and I've always thought about this as like having focus groups and getting their responses to certain episodes that I do to be like, what were your thoughts on this, on this type of messaging? And what was your thoughts on this type of messaging? You know, like, what if we throw all of the gambit against the North Atlantic right well and just be like, what are your thoughts after we talk about this, you know, and the fact that the hey, they still have calves, you know, there's still some calves, what are your thoughts? And then just talk about one issue, because I feel as though some people will think, and some audience members may think that if we just cover like, you know, I did a story when, when they, when seafood watch pulled Monterey Bay's aquarium seafood watch pulled their support for the lobster fishery, the marine, the main lobster fishery. And, and I remember I covered that. And so I'm sure some audience members are like, well, if we can get rid of the fishing, then we can get the whales back on track, potentially, but then there's a lot of other things that go like shipping is that like they're notorious for being hit by ships because they don't move very well when that the surface or they sit just below the surface that they're really hard to see. So there's that aspect. So it's, it's interesting in the way to go about it. But there are solutions, it's just you have to throw the whole gambit of solutions to that face. And it's just, like you said, it gets more and more complex. And I think that's the challenge for communicating in the future is how can we try and simplify the problem, or do we just talk about the complexities and how we're addressing that complexity, right? Well, and I think going back to your point about wanting to do focus groups on your own podcast, I did focus groups with the two films that are out there that focus on right whales. And I heard a lot of the same stuff, right? The two versions of the film, not versions, but two distinct films. Yeah. You've got one that is by a reporter who reflects his reporting that he did throughout that period that I researched. So it was about lobster fishing in New England, the policy processes the conflict and it doesn't leave with the resolution. And the other is by a Canadian filmmaker, focuses more on Canada, Florida throughout its range, doesn't talk about policy. And there's only one fisherman in it and he's a participant in, you know, whale research and rescue and also trying out this gear. So you've got one conflict and one solution story, showed people and had these conversations. And just like you were saying, like a lot of the feedback, the opening question that I started every focus group with finished this statement, when the credits rolled, I felt blank. And I heard a lot of negative emotions for both films, hopeless, defeated. I feel angry. And so through conversation and probing that, what it comes down to, and this is not unique to these two films, like I should lead with the fact that both of these films won awards. They are well done, high quality. This is not unique to these two films. This is something that people who study environmental film ask often, which is what are they supposed to do? Right? How are they supposed to play into conservation and policy? And a lot of what I heard from people really just boils down to, they spent so much time describing the problem, which I probably could have understood in a couple scenes. But then they left me with these big feelings and I don't know what to do with them. So I'm just going to pack them away. And these are people who hear about right whales in their local news, when they pass by twice a year. These are people who live by the ocean because they appreciate the ocean. And I've heard from people, you know, all kinds of political ideologies, different age groups where it's like, sure, I care about this issue, but the government has to solve it. I don't know what I can do because I don't lobster fish in New England. I don't have a boat. Right? And so some other things I've heard too, people when I would ask, okay, the film didn't tell you what you're supposed to do. What do you think you could do? Almost everybody went to boycotting certain types of seafood, which the films never mentioned. And so the fact that we just jumped to boycotts, it has some interesting implications. But then I heard from people who were like, okay, I could boycott the seafood, but I don't eat lobster and crab regularly. I'm not that wealthy. Or I heard from a couple of people who say, okay, well, I'm not supposed to eat beef because of climate. I'm not supposed to eat chicken because of climate. I'm not supposed to eat soybeans because of water. Right. And now I'm not supposed to eat seafood because of whales. What the heck can I eat? And so that's where we talk about every day. I mean, this is where we start to hear from people that like outside messages do matter because it places this context. And so the focus on the problem is something that not just these two films, but the reporting that I looked at really focused on, but it didn't really do the follow through. Whereas lobster fishermen could tell you what happens if there are more regulations. Right. Or at least that's their argument. So I think in a situation that is so uncertain, we don't know what happens to the ecosystems if right whales disappear. They've been depleted for so long. You know, maybe it's some localized effects or maybe it's part of a larger cascade, we don't know. And so people recognize after seeing these films, they know extinction is bad. They know we need to avoid it, but they don't quite see how they can get involved and that left them feeling stuck and angry and hopeless. And even when I did hear positive emotions, it was in response to seeing this incredible footage of right whales and not the story. And so going back to your point, like there has to be some kind of agency, but also some of the things that we really need to do are kind of boring. When we're talking about conservation, technology and hopeless gear, I heard from a lot of people, oh, well, the federal government should just fund that. But they didn't put that together with the fact that federal agencies took budget cuts last year or that every time you vote, that has implications for right whales or each year during congressional appropriations, you should reach out and tell your members of Congress that you want to see funding for right whales. Because if it's not in that bill, there's no guarantee it gets done. And then when you pose the question, okay, if we're paying for conservation technology, what are we not paying for? What are we giving up? Those are tough conversations, but that civic engagement is really important. And I'll go back just one more quick point about the conservation technology. A lot of what I heard from people is like, well, the solution's right there. It's this fishing gear. Everybody wins. Lobsterman can keep fishing. Whales stop getting entangled. Hopefully these whale disentanglement people are out of a job and happy about it. But nobody's really brought up the perspective of the lobsterman either. What does it mean to be a fisherman? There's a huge sense of identity there. There's cultural importance of fishing the way that their grandfathers or great grandfathers fished. And that's missing from the conversation so that it's not just no, I should pay for this technology to be developed and implemented. It's also how do you persuade an entire industry that this can work and that this is worth doing? And so I think it's really hard to simplify the story and you have to make decisions because there's no way one movie, one news article can capture four plus decades of science and conservation or nearly a century of the right whale being endangered. But future movies and future communications should explore some of these other topics. Especially because it's not just whale conservationists and experts and lobster fishermen who are affected if we lose the right whale. There are indigenous communities who had no part in hunting the right whale to near extinction, who would have to grapple with their losses. What does that do for conservation morale? What does it do in the ecosystem? So what does it do for tourism? I looked at whale watching websites in another project. I didn't hear from whale watching operators in news coverage or these films or anything like that. So when we focus in on these two just titans, we sort of miss out on all the other color around that for this black and white story and then it just leaves people feeling like, well, that's a big bummer. I have to focus on the cost of living right now or my job or parenting. So I'm going to forget about the right whale. Yeah, that's too complicated. I can't figure it out on my own. Yeah, I think it's really interesting too. You mentioned a couple things. One, looking at documentaries in general, the one that when you mentioned, they talked, they focused mostly on the problem and then they don't really give time for all the time for the solution. Well, the same thing happened. I remember watching chasing coral. That's another one where they focus too much or they focus so much on the problem, which cool technology, really interesting to see, but you felt depressed at the end. You even see scientists like crying as they're looking at the Great Barrier Reef at a conference that's bleached by 90%. Then after that, their only solution was to go into kids classrooms and tell kids about corals and how important they are in this night. You're just sitting here. I remember seeing on Twitter and on social media, the reactions to the movies and just being like, I feel like, well, there go corals. That's it for them too bad. Dive while you can. It was disheartening after a while to look at that and just be like, oh, man, that's how people see these when we do these videos. It's it's so important to do what you talked about and start talking about look like you may. Yeah, you can't avoid seafood if you if you that's what you choose to do. Everybody makes their own choices, but it's also like talking about the policy and being like, if you vote for this type of candidate, they're more likely to fund, you know, environmental legislation or environmental for for environmental policies or put in environmental policies and regulations to help these animals. So now you're doing it just by putting a vote, you're helping them in that respect. And yes, you can still avoid, you know, plastics, you can still avoid, you know, seafood, if you if you choose to do that, but at least you're giving you're hitting it for like a multifaceted solutions are multifaceted just as much as as the as the issues that hit us. So I think that's that's a really interesting thing to point out when we talk about these types of stories is focusing on all the things that we can do from small to tall just by voting, you know, and I asked one thing I focus on here is it's always voting, you know, there's a very important election coming up, you know, for for the US. It seems like Canada is not far behind in terms of our federal government, but it's it's it's so important to to highlight that, you know, especially with these days when the parties are so, you know, black and white in terms of their differences and what they're going to fund and what they're not going to fund. It seems like one party is more apt to fund environmental legislation and put in environmental legislation than others. And I think that's I feel I feel that's really interesting. And trying to get out of the whole, let's put environment to the side because we have all these other issues to deal with and try to bring it in and be like, yeah, well, we can deal with all of them together. I think is really important. But Marcus, this has been a riveting discussion. I'd love to invite you back on. We're coming up on time, but I'd love to invite you back on to talk more about this maybe after once you become a doctor, I'll be able to call you Dr. Marcus Reimer, which I'm looking forward to doing. But I want to thank you for coming on and discussing this with us. It's not often we get to really dive deep into communications. And I want more and more people on that I'm starting to meet more communications communicators out here in this, you know, digital universe and being able to discuss it more because one of the things I tell our audience is we need to talk about this, you know, one of the one thing is to be aware and learn, but we need to continue to discuss this on multiple levels. And the more we can learn how to do it, the better. So, so I think that's, it's great to have you on. And I'm looking forward to having you back on after after your PhD and after you relax a little bit. I'm sure you'll want to relax. But who knows what it is to relax in a life like mine and you know, I do another masters at some point, you know, my parents joke that my only option, you know, I'm squeamish, so I can't go to med school. So I might just go get an MFA or a JD. But if there's one message that I want to leave off on with hopes that we can speak again in the future, you know, I would love to come back. A lot of what I found, not just in my experience with PhD research, but but throughout my career, is that we tend to think of communication as a thing that just happens. And that's changing, you know, for climate communication, for other forms of environmental communication, but for ocean topics specifically, there are certain barriers to public engagement that we have to learn how to do really well. We have to understand them and we have to put money behind that. Funders have to incorporate that into research. We need more people to take an interest in researching ocean communication because, you know, things that I've heard from people who walk on the beach every single day, whether it's in Florida or whether it's here in Maryland and Delaware, is that it feels far away. Right. So there's a perceived distance, but then you have to think most of the world does not live next to the ocean and experience it every day. So there is a real distance too. And so the thing that I find to be important, yeah, the stuff that I've done with right whales, I hope will be helpful not just to that cause, but to figuring out how we can incorporate communication into comprehensive conservation strategies, whether that's research or practice, to make the most of this ocean decade and beyond. So how can funders do more to support social science that incorporates communication? How can we support more interdisciplinary work, you know, with the limited funding that we have for all the big challenges that we need to address. So ocean communication is certainly something that I am interested in. I've gotten good at, but there are just barriers that are in the way that we need an all hands on deck approach to to help achieve a lot of those sustainability goals. So yeah, I think that's my closing message if there is one. It's one of hope and optimism and a call for action, which is we got to put money behind it and bring people like you and I into the fold to help make sense of some of this stuff, not just for non-expert audiences, but for the people who are directly involved as well. Filmmakers, journalists, nature writers, you name it, communication scholars and practitioners are really valuable resources to helping achieve conservation or organizational goals. Absolutely, absolutely. Marcus, this was wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Looking forward to having you back. Looking forward to hearing that you have successfully achieved that PhD and that doctor status, and I can't wait to see what you're up to next. It's going to be a lot of fun, whether it's another graduate degree or working in the rest of us. It's going to be a lot of fun, but I want to thank you again for coming on the podcast and I can't wait to have you back on. Yeah, thanks again for having me else. I'll see you next time. Thank you, Marcus, for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. This was an episode I went a little longer than normal. I apologize for that. You know, we're getting in, we're geeking out about it. I really appreciated Marcus's time, of course. Thank you, Marcus. But this is something that, you know, we're going to have more conversations on. He's got to prepare for his PhD and he's willing to talk all the time about this and I'm sure we could have gone on for another couple of hours, but we're not Joe Rogan. We don't have the three hour podcast, so I want to kind of keep it a little tight and make sure that we were talking about, you know, the issues that we want to talk about and the topics that we want to talk about, but we're going to talk about more about environmental conservation and communication when he comes back on and I'm looking forward to that happening. Hopefully, I will be talking to him as a doctor at that point. But I want to thank Marcus for joining us and I want to thank you for listening because like I said before at the beginning of this episode, this is a way for all of us to learn about communication because we all have to communicate that message. Whether we're communicating to our politicians, whether communicating to our family members, our friends, our colleagues, getting people connected to the ocean is really important when we talk about protecting the ocean. Whether you live in Ontario like me surrounded by the Great Lakes and beautiful rivers and watersheds, that's how I feel connected to the ocean. Every time I look at water, I think about the ocean. That's me personally, not everybody feels that way. You know, I remember, you know, just a quick anecdote, I remember being at a conference in PEI and they were talking about how people who live in Toronto, you know, when they, when you sit at Bloor Street, you know, and young and you look down towards the water or you look south towards the water, you can't see the water from there. Obviously, it's a big way. There's a lot of, a lot of land in between that, but there are buildings in between that and, you know, the lake shore now is just covered and peppered with condos and not necessarily a good thing. And so you're not seeing the lake, you're not seeing that water body, you're not seeing the shoreline. And that could affect the way, you know, you feel connected to a big body of water like Lake Ontario or like any of the other Great Lakes or like an ocean body or major river like the St. Lawrence River. That matters. And so planning a city, making sure that we all feel connected, make sure that we talk about the benefits of water, the benefits of being close to water and seeing water on a regular basis, whether it's any body of water, that's really important. And being able to talk about it and being able to make sure that we get that message across is critical to protecting the ocean and protecting our water bodies on this planet, which covers most of the planet. So, you know, we need to talk about it more. We need to learn that. And so I want to thank Marcus for coming on the podcast again to be able to help us talk about that and teach us about what he learned through his dissertation and what we can learn from him in this podcast. So I want to thank him again. I want to thank you for listening and you for putting in the time and the effort to help protect the ocean the way that you do. And I'd love to hear your questions or comments about this episode. You can hit me up on Spotify. You can comment there. You can comment on a YouTube channel where this will be put it. And you can also, you know, reach out to me on Instagram at how to protect the ocean if you're listening to your favorite podcast app and they don't have the comments. I don't understand why podcasts don't have comments right on the episodes. That would be so cool. I like the way it spotifies going about it in the way that they have interaction. So that would be cool. Let's see what we can conjure up in this episode and the questions that come in the comments that come in. I'd love to hear your comments later on. So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.
