In this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, host Andrew Lewin provides updates on the Florida National Park developments and a swim with whales story. The episode also includes reflections on the host's birthday and upcoming goals for the podcast. Tune in for a mishmash of updates and insights on ocean conservation efforts.
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Timestamps
[00:01:02] Updates on Ocean Conservation.
[00:04:03] National park development controversy.
[00:09:12] Swim with whales operator update.
[00:11:50] Conservation efforts for marine mammals.
[00:15:02] Original conservation stories.
[00:18:20] A social media app for ocean lovers.
Updates on Florida National Park Development
The podcast episode provided updates on the controversial Florida National Park development plan. Initially, the Florida government proposed developing resorts, golf courses, pickleball courses, and disc golf courses on National Park land, sparking outrage among environmentalists and conservationists. However, a GIS analyst working for the state government leaked information about the plan, revealing that the government was trying to keep the details hidden from the public. This led to public awareness and opposition to the development plan.
The delay in the decision-making process was seen as a tactic to avoid public scrutiny, but the efforts of individuals like the GIS analyst and environmental activists have helped in further delaying the project. The episode highlighted the importance of protecting natural areas like state parks in Florida and the need for public involvement in decision-making processes that impact the environment.
Swim with Whales Story Update
The podcast also discussed an incident where a swim with whales operator in Queensland, Australia, was lifted out of the water by a humpback whale. This dangerous interaction highlighted the risks associated with such activities and the need for stricter regulations to protect both humans and marine mammals. The potential consequences of such incidents, including harm to the operator or the whale, were emphasized.
The episode mentioned ongoing efforts to address safety concerns and enforce better protections for both tourists and humpback whales during these interactions. The importance of raising awareness about responsible wildlife tourism practices and the potential impacts on marine ecosystems was underscored. The host expressed a commitment to further investigating the story and exploring ways to promote safer and more sustainable wildlife tourism practices.
Focusing on Original Conservation Stories
In the podcast episode, the host, Andrew Lewin, discussed his goals for the next four months. One of the key objectives he highlighted was the intention to focus on bringing more original conservation stories to the forefront. Andrew expressed his desire to delve deeper into stories that are not typically covered in mainstream news or existing conservation platforms. By amplifying these lesser-known narratives, he aims to shed light on important conservation challenges and issues that may not receive adequate attention.
Andrew emphasized the importance of building a community around these original stories. He mentioned his plans to collaborate with organizations, activists, scientists, and conservationists to ensure that these narratives reach a wider audience. By engaging with these stakeholders, Andrew hopes to spark conversations, raise awareness, and potentially drive action towards addressing pressing conservation issues.
Launching a Community App
Another significant goal outlined by Andrew in the episode was the development and launch of a community app. This app is envisioned as a platform where individuals passionate about ocean conservation can come together, share information, and engage with like-minded individuals. Andrew highlighted the app's potential to create a more intimate and connected community, free from the constraints of social media algorithms.
The community app is expected to serve as a hub for ocean lovers, supporters of the podcast, and individuals interested in protecting the ocean. It will offer a range of features, including access to original content, opportunities for group coaching on careers, and interactions with scientists through Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions. Additionally, the app will provide avenues for individuals to support the podcast and participate in community-driven initiatives aimed at advancing ocean conservation efforts.
By launching this community app, Andrew aims to foster a sense of belonging among individuals passionate about ocean conservation, facilitate knowledge sharing, and empower community members to take collective action towards protecting the ocean.
The community app mentioned in the podcast episode will serve as a platform to unite ocean lovers and provide them with valuable resources. One of the key features of the app is the opportunity for users to engage with scientists through Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions. This direct interaction with scientists will allow users to ask questions, gain insights, and deepen their understanding of ocean-related topics.
Additionally, the app will offer group coaching sessions for individuals interested in pursuing careers in conservation. This feature is particularly beneficial for those looking to enter the field of conservation but may not know where to start or how to navigate the industry. The group coaching sessions will provide guidance, advice, and support to help individuals kickstart their careers in conservation.
Overall, the community app aims to create a space where ocean enthusiasts can come together, learn from experts, and receive support in their conservation journey. By offering access to scientists for AMAs and providing group coaching for conservation careers, the app will empower users to make a positive impact on ocean conservation efforts.
it's my birthday. Actually, it was yesterday, but every year for my birthday, I go over things to evaluate how things have gone so far this year in terms of my goals. And then I look at the next four months and say, Hey, have I really accomplished goals in my personal and in my business life in my work life? I tend not to worry about that too much. It's more of my business life. In other words, this podcast. So I want to talk about sort of the goals I want for the next four months and how things have gone so far. But I also wanted to give you a couple of updates on two of the stories that I've been covering. One was the National Parks in Florida update and with the developments that were going on there, literally and figuratively, as well as the swim with Wales story that I covered a couple of episodes ago. So we're going to talk about a lot of just updates. It's going to be a random kind of episode, but I hope you enjoy it. 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. On today's episode, it's going to be a little bit of a mishmash of episodes. We're going to first talk about a couple of updates of some of the past episodes that I've done. The first one is the National the Florida National Park developing in the Florida National Park update, as well as some updates with or one update with the swim with Wales story, kind of an update, but kind of something that I want to do that I may not have mentioned in the past. So we're going to be talking about those two episodes and sort of some updates with that, as well as it's my birthday or it was my birthday yesterday, I'm 46 years old. And I have some ideas that I want to be putting forward and I want to be working on for the next four months before the next end of the year. And also for the next year, it's almost like my New Year's resolutions, I guess, in a way. But we're going to be talking about all that today. So I'm super, super excited. But before we get to that, I just want to remind people, if you are looking for ways to get access to more information on the ocean, you can do that through our newsletter. I put it on newsletter Monday to Friday. And the idea is to let people know of all these different articles that I find on the ocean that I may not be able to cover in three episodes a week with the podcast. So I put those up. I put three articles per day, as well as three job postings per day. I try not to repeat myself if I can. And I send that out every, every day, Monday to Friday. And then I also will add sort of a summary of the podcast that comes out. So today there'll be a summary of this podcast if you get it in your inbox. So to go to there to get that into your inbox, all you do is go to speakupforblue.com/newsletter. That's speakupforblue.com/newsletter. The link is in the show notes or in the description depending on where you're watching this. Just to remind you, we are a video podcast on Spotify, as well as on YouTube. And of course, you can listen to this audio in the auto version in Spotify, in Apple podcast, as well as your favorite podcast app. So we're available almost everywhere. And if we're not available in a podcast app that you like, please let me know. I'd love to hear which one we're not a part of. Okay, let's get started with the show. So the first update is the National Park update in Florida. So the story I cover was a couple weeks ago. Essentially, the Florida government wanted to put together a plan to develop a certain number of resorts, as well as golf courses, pickleball courses, and disc golf courses on National Park land. Now, these national parks are supposed to be natural. They're supposed to be kept natural, untouched, make sure that all the ecosystem functions are there and not developed within that. Now, a couple of updates that were made it really, really interesting. One, the idea for them to put it through actually ended up being a little scandalous. There was a GIS analyst that worked for a cartographer that worked for the state government in Florida. He found out about this, this sort of movement and this way of developing on the on the National Parks back in the beginning of August and found out from the meetings that he wasn't going to talk to about and to any of his colleagues about it, nor the public, and it was going to be released a day before the public meeting. So they didn't want anybody coming to the public meetings. They were very worried about that. He ended up leaking it, getting fired for leaking it, but leaking in time for people to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on here? We need to stop this right away because it's ridiculous. It doesn't make sense. And so he got fired for that. Unfortunately, there is a GoFundMe to fund it. I'll put that link in the show notes so that people can support him because you know what, as environmentalists, as conservationists, whether it's land or water and a lot of these national parks are by the ocean, so that makes it really important, we don't have a lot of options for jobs. And so when we put our neck out there and you end up getting fired for maybe disobeying an order or disobeying what your boss is saying for the good of the environment, it's really hard to get a job. It's really hard to support yourself. It's hard to get a job in this industry in the first place. So imagine you getting fired for doing what's right. Now, should he have been fired? I don't think so. He did he disobeyed an order. It's not the military, but you know, when your boss says that, it's unfortunate. That's what that that's what happens. Even though if you think about it, he was doing us a service. You should have ample time to you know, get ready for public comment. I'm sure there were a lot of organizations that were out there that could have put something together, you know, gotten a lot of people together to join those public comment periods as well as if there was in-person meetings, but they didn't want to do that. They did that as a tactic to stop it from going through and they can just have it go through without without having any problems. That didn't happen though. So at the last episode, it was delayed until September. Now I've heard it was delayed until the new year and they're hoping that we forget about it, but we're not going to forget about it because I've got some people who are going to help remind me. We're going to do another episode in the new year, maybe even before that as a reminder to let you know that national parks, ours or not, it's not state parks, any park is important. I've been saying national parks this whole time. It's Florida state parks. These parks are important, right? Keeping natural areas natural is important. Developing on these areas is the counterproductive. And yes, it might provide money, but for what? What like what is the cause of this? Why are we just we're put lining the pockets of private owners, lining the pockets of business people? We know that's not necessary. We know that protecting natural areas is necessary. So protecting the state parks, not national parks, state parks in Florida is very important. So we're going to be on this and we're going to stay on this. So that's the first update, and I want to thank, uh, I want to thank Courtney, uh, I'm going to thank. I just want to make sure I get to live right because I've been talking to a lot of people. Uh, it is Courtney. One second here. Courtney Dobberton, sorry. Thank you, Courtney Dobberton for your help in keeping me updated on this story. Really appreciate it. What they're doing by sneaking this and delaying these their tactics that the government uses when they want to put something by. Whether it's for good or for bad, they use it. It shouldn't be. It should always be the same. There should be the same amount of time like you announce something. There should be a certain amount of time that passes and then they have public comments or public meetings or both so that the public can comment. This is these are, you know, the lands of the citizens. So of the citizens of Florida, these are their lands. They should have ample time to prepare and comment whether they want certain things or they don't want certain things. So Courtney, thank you so much for keeping us updated on that. She sent me a couple messages over the last week to be able to talk about that. So I really do appreciate that. Bring me to the next thing is the. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] There's another update with the story that I covered a couple of episodes ago on Monday where I talked about the swim with whales operators. The story was that in one of the swim with whale operations in Queensland, Australia, just off the coast, there was an operator that was actually lifted out of the water. A lot of people use launched out of the water. I think I use that as well. Lifted out of the water by a humpback whale, which is dangerous, right? We know that humpback whales are huge. Any interaction or touching of the whales should not happen, but this one, the whale came into that person, lifted them out of the water, brought it back in. He was okay, but that could have been a lot worse. And if he got injured, who knows what they would have done to the whale or who knows what that would have done to the operators, looking at a business opportunity or a lack or a misbusiness opportunity where the operations may have been, the operas may have been shut down because of the incident. If somebody got hurt or the whale could have gotten hurt or they would have tried to kill the whale just like they do with sharks when sharks bite, there's a lot of things that could have happened didn't happen. Thank God, but it could have happened. So what are the things that I want to do is I want to proceed with this story and look into it a little bit deeper. A lot of the times what happens is you'll get operators who come together and they are like, okay, we've got to go above and beyond what the research says and say, let's enforce protections. Even if the government has certain protections and they're not very good or they're not what is necessary, there's some science out here that says, hey, you know what, we need to do a little bit better and we need to hone in on these regulations, make them a little stricter. It may impede the viewing capabilities, but it's better for the whales as well as the safety of the tourists that are in the water while these humpback whales are swimming around, right? You just never know what's going to happen, how a whale is going to come in. You don't know how fast they're traveling. It could be a disaster. If that fluke comes down, that tail comes down, they do a tail slap and they hit you in the head, it could be knocked out, right? That's a big tail coming down or even a fin coming down and smacking the water. You just never know. Plus, it's not good for them. We know that from research that Stephanie Stack did. She's doing her PhD out there, wrote a paper on it. I linked to it in the last episode or two episodes ago, so you can check that out. The update here is not really an update. I'm going to try and get an interview with one of the operators from Herview Bay, which was part of the research that did the work, but it's still not like perfect. A lot of times when we do these types of episodes, we try and tap into the already existing efforts that are going on to bring in more regulations. There are a few people who are speaking up. Stephanie is one of them, but it's not enough. It's very frustrating. As Stephanie says, sometimes screaming into the vastness of the universe and nobody really hearing her or being able to do any kind of protection. It comes with numbers. That's why in that episode, I put in the link to contact the Queensland government around looking at marine mammal sightings and saying, hey, look, we need to do better when we're in the water with these humpback whales to make sure that the people don't get hurt and the humpback whales don't get hurt. It doesn't alter or disturb their path and their resting areas as well. That is important. I'm going to tell you that I'm going to continue to look into this story. I'm going to try and get maybe a couple of the operators or at least one of the operators to talk about what they're doing to go above and beyond. If not, just to talk about what they think they can do or what they want to do and maybe talk to somebody who maybe doesn't want to do anything and just see the dichotomy around this issue and where this issue is going to go and where it needs to go. I'm going to look into those more. That brings me to the final thing I want to cover. It'll be a quick episode today. I'm already at 13 minutes and I'm halfway through. It was my birthday yesterday. Like I said at the beginning of the episode, I like to look at things of what I want to do from now on, whether it's until the end of the year or from now on. I had some ideas of what I wanted to do at the beginning of January. Part of that was post more YouTube videos, do video podcasting, which has been up and down in terms of timing. Although the last number of episodes I've been able to put out a YouTube video, including this one, I've been able to do video podcasting on Spotify with some help and push and motivation from a group that I'm part of. It's like nature podcasters. It's really fun and shout out to them. But it's been really interesting to be able to put that effort and get into that workflow. For me, who's doing it by himself and the effort started going by myself, I do the newsletter. I do these episodes, three episodes a week. It's a lot of work. As you know, I have a full-time job. I have my girls. One of them is in grade 12, so it's an important year for her in her last year of high school. The other one is in grade 10, still an important year. I want to be there to help them out with schooling. I've stopped coaching for a little bit, a football coaching because it's taken up too much time because I want to focus more on this podcast. What I want to do now is I've been covering a lot of news that's been out to help spread the awareness on different sites like manga bay news, hack eye news. And hack eye, unfortunately, is shutting down, which is really disappointing to hear. Hopefully, it'll be saved by somebody. But there's a lot of news that I try and share, fizz.org. I try and share the ocean stories and a number of stories from the cool down stuff that I've already been written, and I'm just kind of re-amplifying it through this platform. However, what I've been trying to do over the last little bit, especially with the interviews, is get into more stories that are not being covered in that type of news or even in the mainstream news arena. And so if you have stories or you have issues that you're trying to work on, similar to the swim with whales, similar to the state park issue that's happening in Florida, please hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the ocean, or you can email me, Andrew@speakupforblue.com. If you're part of an organization, you're trying to get something at work, I would love to cover it and re-amplify that for you and just kind of have these stories being told. Because if they're not out in ink or on a digital website or on a podcast or in a video, I want to help you get that out. I want to cover more original stories so that we can look and build upon these conservation movements and these campaign movements to help you out. So that's sort of really what I want to do going forward. And it's going to take a little bit because they're not easy to happen. And I'm really relying on you to help me out. Like the community that we've been building for the last 10 years, I want to kind of take this and pivot into more original stories. We're going to lose potentially HackEye Magazine, which brought a lot of original stories. I want to be that resource to bring more original stories. There's still Manga Bay, which is doing a fantastic job. Fizz.org, which is doing a number of articles and stuff. Scientific America and the conversation, they do a lot. But I want to bring in some stuff that we may not see covered before. Because we know there's a lot of efforts going out there. We know there's a lot of conservation challenges and issues. And I would like to bring those more to the forefront for you and so that you can help amplify them just as we're doing it on this platform. So that's really, you know, a quick and dirty of what I want to do going forward in my 46th year around the sun. I guess it'll be 47th year around the sun because I've just finished my 46th. But that's essentially what I want to do is get more into the conservation and to build it as a community of trying to, you know, figure out how we can make more of these conservation stories popular and get people to talk about them. So that's what we're going to be focusing on. The other thing that I that will be coming out and I still have to get an update from the developer. But I have been working on a community app. This is an app that will help build the community. A lot of you are following me on various social media or you're just subscribed or following this podcast, which by the way, really appreciate or you subscribe to our YouTube channel or Spotify or Apple or whatever. However, you're listening to this episode. But what I want to do, you know, since everybody's on social media, everybody's sort of disconnected and disparate across platforms, what I want to do is bring all everybody into one platform because you know with social media, they just bring stuff that's different. You know, they have algorithms that's supposed to help you focus on one thing. But if you're interested in birds or you're interested in like what's happening in your local area, then you're going to get served up information on that. And you may not get served up information on what's happening globally in the oceans, which which we cover. And so you may not get all my stories or all my posts or anything like that. And sometimes it's really hard to post all across these different pieces of the platforms of social media. So what I want to do is what I'm going to be doing is putting an app together. And I'm in the process of doing that. It should come out, hopefully this month, if not next month. And I can put together stuff where everybody's in the same area. There's no algorithm. When I post something, you all get it. And it just comes off of your an app on your phone. It's almost like a social media app just for ocean lovers and speak up for blue people and how to protect the ocean people and beyond jobs people. And you can just check it out. We'll have scientists on there doing like AMAs. Ask me anything. I have a lot of plans for this. You know, there's going to be some, you know, group coaching for careers. There's going to be ways that if you I've had a few people reach out to me and be like, Hey, Andrew, I want to support your podcast. You don't have to do anything extra. You do enough. I want to support it. You're there's going to be ways to do that as well through that app. But the general idea is it's going to be a free app. There's going to be some paid options in certain areas. But the whole thing is the most of the information 90% of the information is going to be free just like you're getting it now but all in one spot. So I want to be I want to be upfront with you and just kind of build that community, leave even more and make it a little bit more intimate. So I think that's going to be a lot of fun. So those are the two major things. Bring more original stories and more conservation challenges and issues to the forefront and maybe get some call to action on it. Work with organizations, work with different people and activists and scientists and conservationists as well as bringing the community together so that we can get to know each other and we can share information as well. So it's going to be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to it. I hope you are too. If you want to if you want to see something from this podcast or from the videos or from the app, love to hear from you. Hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the ocean or leave a comment on Spotify, which you can do now or YouTube where this is posted Apple podcasts. If you can do it, there's apparently a way to do it. I don't know how you can do it. But if not, just hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the ocean before this app comes out and then we'll get the app and then you can sign up for that app. It's free to sign up and I can't wait for you to check it out. But that's it for me for today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I want to thank you so much for supporting me in another year around the sun with this podcast as well as all the efforts that we're trying to do to protect the ocean because you're trying to protect the ocean as well and we're doing it together. Well, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time in happy conservation.
