Healthy Waters

0:01 This program is designed to provide general information with regards to the subject matters covered. This information is given with the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors or station are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas. Hello and thank you for tuning in to A Sharp Outlook on pay for HD radio and Talk or TV. I am Angela Sharp, your host. Our arm chair discussions with industry experts will give you the steps, tools and information to be successful in business and to prepare you to be your best self. Hello and welcome back to A Sharp Outlook Today. Our podcast is dedicated to exploring the critical issues being we're facing with our oceans and the innovative solutions being developed to protect them. I'm your host, Angelas Sharp, and today we'll be diving deep into the complex world of ocean policy, exploring the key challenges and emerging opportunities, and what it takes to create effective and sustainable solutions for our oceans. Our oceans cover seventy percent

1:31 of the Earth and are vital for climate regulation, biodiversity and human livelihoods. Climate change such as ocean acidification and warming, overfishing, pollution, plastics and chemical habitats destruction are threats to the health of our ocean waters. Policy is essential for sustainable management, conservation, and equitable access to ocean resources. It highlights interconnectedness of ocean health and human well being. Why ocean policy matters?

2:15 How can we overcome the challenges to effective international cooperation on ocean policy. Many ocean issues are trans boundary and require coordinated actions, such as UN Convention on the Law of the Sea provides a framework for cooperation. Differing national interests, lack of enforcement mechanisms geopolitical tensions have an impact, but strengthening existing agreements, creating new partnerships, sharing best practices, and understanding the importance of multilateralism and diplomacy in addressing ocean challenges is important. Today we have a very special guest us joining us, Stuart Sarcosy Bonyxy. He's here to talk to us about this wonderful, wonderful topic of how we can have healthy waters and protect our oceans. Stuart is the co founder of Octopus and ceo AI for World Ocean Council. He is Ocean Fellow at the Citter Center of Ocean Policy and Economics at Northeast Maritime Institute and mentor for Sea Ahead Blue Swell. Stuart has global Director Policy and Investments as Resilient Cities Network and was founder of for Bands Community Fund. In other words, Stuart is a leading expert in ocean policy with extensive experience in

3:47 areas of management and being able to just get cooperation and collaboration in international ocean and governance, sustain fisheries, marine protected areas, and climate change impacts on oceans, as well as the urban and coastal intersections that are so important. He's worked with governments, NGOs, international bodies such as the Ocean Council, and presently with startups and corporations. Stewart, Welcome to the show.

4:28 Thanks very much, Angel, It's great to be here. Well, it's great to have you here. You know, every day I see the problems that are going on with our oceans and the pollutions and the plastics and the destruction of the you know, the coral reefs and things like that, and I thought, we've got to get informed, We've got to do something about it. We've got to lift our voices and make some changes. And you get enough people screaming about it, we can get some action. We can get something to happen. We can make something happen. That's why I was like, we're going to have this topic. Well, before we get into specifics, can you paint a picture for our listeners of why ocean policy is so critical right now?

5:14 Sure, And I think it comes from two different directions. For me, on the one hand, it is rising in its interest and popularity in the sense that people are starting to notice a little bit of the kind of threats that come from not taking care of what we should be taken care of for some time. But I think also from my and our point of view and the work that we do, it's an ocean planet. As you said, it's seventy percent of the ocean, it's sixty to seventy percent of us. We are water. We are salt water. And so for both the tensions and passions and frustrations, demands and effort we have to make, mixed with also the sort of place we are as an ocean planet, in combination direct us towards something that is much more applicable now as we start to see some of the negative cascading effects from various problems or various shocks and stresses. So for me, on the one hand, it's passion because I've been a long, a lifelong ocean and water lever and engage with it. But at the same time, it also comes from the fact that I personally began to get more and more worried and have more frustration. So an ocean policy really is a planetary policy, and I think that's part of back to what you said.

6:45 To some extent, people don't understand the role of the ocean, the role of the ocean in the hydrological cycle that makes our planet possible. Our breath, every other breath is because of the ocean, the way that our system works, and I think that's in some ways it's understandable people don't pay attention to the full kind of ecosystem. And I mean that in the sense of like the systemic connectivity yeah of the planet. Right, So an ocean policy is a planetary policy. You know. I mean, when you think about it, we take advantage of some of the things that we have the pleasures of using until we can't use it anymore, and The thing is, if we were caring for it, it would go on for generations and generations. But I'm concerned about the generations ahead. What are the biggest threats facing our oceans and why do we need robust policies to address them.

7:51 I think in some of this we hear a little more regularly, even if you're not really an ocean advocate or follower. And that comes back to what you said about us sort of abusing. And there's just this kind of general sense that the ocean is so vast, right, one giant ocean that covers the planet, and it's all interconnected, that we can't do it harm. But that, as we've seen, is not true. So we've got coral bleaching because of warming, acidification, and current changes temperature changes that affect both the species and sort of general fisheries, but also ecotourism. And the latest news that starts to make the headlines a little bit is not the greatest when it comes to things like coral die off and the acidification and the warming.

8:47 So and then of that of course relates to the warming that leads to greater storms with more moisture content. We saw what just happened in Jamaica there at this discussion point of whether we have to give hurricanes like that a six rather than a five and some unusual amount of convection and water moisture in the system that did what it did and the wind speed. So what's facing the oceans comes from us to some extent and then or exacerbated by us because there's also plastics and microplastics, and in our waterways the pfast chemicals that then end up in the ocean, algae blooms and dead zones and things like that from agriculture runoffs. So we have abused all of our systems. And that's not just in the water or the ocean. But I think what really is sort of a little out of sight, out of mind is the water and what's below water. And I think that's part of what this conversation is great for important for people to understand that if they live in Des Moines, Iowa, or they're in you know, the middle of the UK or in the dead center of Central Europe, things they do on a day to day basis have an effect on the ocean, whether it's plastics and recycling, or whether it's

10:19 certain kinds of plastic materials purchases, they make things, they drink stuff that goes into the water. Mm hmm. Yeah. I even saw where you had an article out there where what is it the sunscreen? Having a water friendly sunscreen instead of some of these ones. And because of the chemicals are coming off of your body when you're getting into the water and it's killing the coral and affecting the marine light. I mean, you know, like I said, we take so many things for granted. We don't realize there's supposed to be custodians of the earth, not you know, just devour. You know, we need to be more conscious of what we really are doing because there are generations coming after us. Think about them. Think about the ones that are coming after us. You know, it doesn't hurt to read the bottle to see if it has damaging chemicals in it, put it on the shelf, and in fact even report it to the store. Stop selling this and pick the one that is going to be friendly to the water. I mean, that was so fascinating when I saw that. That's what me to say, we got to get this out. We have to get this out so that you know, we can you know, be able to have the waters therefore the next generations.

11:43 What are key challenges in ocean policy? I think right now getting alignment from countries, from nation states, and in the case a lot of work that I do corporations and financiers and others on the same path. And there's a bunch of there's a bunch of negotiations and treaties. There's a whole slew people who are at the UNF Triple C. The Conference of Party is the COP in Brazil right now. I'm not there. It's rare that I'm not at one of those COP gatherings, and that's where some of these negotiations take place. But we're talking everything from the International Plastics Treaty which has stalled, to the High Seas Treaty, which they got enough signatures for come three weeks ago, which is a great, great advancement.

12:39 Because part of the problem with the ocean as well is. That it's a commons, right, Gianic commons, other than up to certain zones, right, we all have to play nice, and not everybody does. So there's treaties like those. There's the negotiations that the International Maritime Organization two weeks ago halted or paused until next year, it's conversations around quotas and new fuels shipping, because that shipping, where we get most of our goods and where great pollution takes place, is all kind of tied together. So there are and plastics in the water and microplastics in our bodies. I mean, at this point, you can't eat a oyster and not have microplastics in it, I hate to say it. So we have real recovery activities we need to do where those challenges lie and where the treaties need to surround. But there's also sort of enforcement and financing to sort of write to do some of the precovery and recovery at the same time make sure that we're preventing what we can at this point, not to mention that if we don't close the gap in terms of temperature rise, I think it's one of those things where people think of it as just warming, and that's not actually what climate change is. Climate changes affects both deep cold spells, water and lack of water,

14:12 and other kinds of activities. So what we're going to see is a bit more of a wackier set of symptoms from that fact, as opposed to just pure sort of global warming, and that's partially why the kind of naysayers, it gets confusing when people kind of are putting in an alternative narrative to it. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that, you know, with the fragmentation of governance and multiple agencies and international bodies and overlapping jurisdictions has a big effect on policy, for sure, I'm sure. But that's where we as citizens of these countries, in these areas, this is where we can help. We can stand up and start you know, marching about the waters and letting people know we're not voting if you're not you know, planning, you know, some kind of healthy water planning or something like that. We have a voice, and we can actually you know, have have minds change because we're out there making enough noise about it. Remember, we're going to need this water. This is a life or death situation. This is not just oh I want to go to the beach. This is why for death situation and we really you know, have to do about it.

15:33 And and then the lack of what about the lack of law, you know, lack of enforcement and weak enforcement mechanisms and limited resources for monitoring and compliance. You know, how can you how can we help, you know, when these governments are so fractured. Yeah, I mean it's a great This isn't just in one country or another, but globally, country by country where the rules aren't pass and then enforced, whether it's a marine protected area or it's wetlands and water pollution, in water sourcing, or air quality for that matter, right, because in lots of places where there are air quality problems, you also have poisoned waters. So it really is a struggle if there isn't a good national mandate. I think corporations in cities and regional governments have much more of a role to play, and they've gotten a bit more used to doing so over the last say ten years, and part of that comes from the fact that there's been this disengagement by some national governments. True funding and policy and regulation breakdown, enforcement breakdown. But you know, having we talk about this a lot with marine protected areas, because marine protected areas are not as good as those that have enforcement and have funding behind them. The saying can be said with the environmental protection laws because in

17:09 almost every country in the world there are still problems with things like combined sewer overflow, which causes discharge of sewage into actual water bodies. Right. Part of the problem also is that we're talking about groundwater depletionment, freshwater depletion, and the hydrological Society's cycle as a whole. So to your point, it's ocean, the contributing waterways fresh water, including in the United States the Great Lakes, which is twenty percent of the twenty percent of the fresh water. And you can imagine that saving that with as important as that is, becomes just as important, just as important as the ocean and all that it provides. And part of this gets down to things like do we have enough food to feed people, because it's a source of protein globally for billions of people, right, And not to mention that if we have water scarcity and that's groundwater, surface water, or everything in between, then you're getting into very expensive things like plants for desalinization just take a lot of power and also have discharge that has to be dealt with.

18:23 So it's a little bit, like you said, going back to the basics and sort of making sure we don't damage what we have in the first place and recovering enough of the things that we've had. It is however, really important that we're monitoring and forcing, not just creating laws. And I think that's where the rub is right, You've got to have the funding to support that. Yeah, you know, And I was just even thinking these microplastics personally. It has affected me and I, you know, I'm taking some medications to kind of repair some of the brain cells that are affected by microplastics, some of the nerves that are affected by microplastics. I mean, this is affecting our actual health. And that's that's also very important if we realize how much those microplastics and all of those pollutions that are in the water that we're just drinking every day, and it's even in the air, it's in the soil, I mean everything, And they get into the body and they clog up your your veins, they clog up the near nerves, blood system, and they're causing you know, memory loss, They're causing you know, your inability for your nerves to function well, and and and

19:53 the the uh, the information from from the brain to the nerve not connected, and it's such just a lot of different things. And I thought to myself, what is how in the world did that happen to me? Every day that you eat, every day that you drink. Oh my goodness. So it's really important for us to really be serious about this. This isn't about some political thing or we're going to fight it because we don't want, you know, this particular party to win. So we're going to fight you know, clean water, and we're going to fight environmental things, and we're going to you know, instead of getting informed and understanding it's affecting you in your personal home every day, and it's you know, what can we do? How can we you know, I know it's a major hurdle. It's the lack of political commitment and prioritization of ocean issues. But like I said, we the people can can encourage that. What can we do first off, to stay informed and what can we do to you know, get this participation in order to energize participation?

21:11 Yeah, I think. I think the public campaigns that I've seen and I've been involved with some organizations, I mean, believe it or not. I mean there's tons of research that's going on right now about microplastics and microfibers and pfesta forever chemicals and all of them and their effect. Because there are definitely people who like yourself, have seen those effects. And at the same time it's so shocking when they crack open every you know, oyster or muscle and find microplastics or recent studies in Japan have found microplastics in clouds before the rainfall, which means of course that as it falls, it's coming down and going into the soil. So I think at this point evidentially without like knowing exactly the effects afterwards, it is indeed in us, in plants, in animals, in the soil and in the water.

22:09 It's in the air and in the clouds, right, so there could kind of can be no denying about that. But that soup of all those things that are coming down and affecting us really need the kind of testing that good governance and good dollars and research institutions, whether it's whether it's you know, the European Union here where I'm sitting now or in the United States, and some of those funds have been have been cut, and so I think part of what's important for general public is you can make personal choices about things you buy and eat and what you wear and all kinds of things.

22:50 Because because there's a whole microfiber microplastic problem with clothing as well. So pick your poison if you will, and no pun intended, because in some ways they really are. But you know, there's lots of ways that people can make individual choices about what they purchase and what they eat, et cetera. Then there's the kind of regulation side, which is more difficult, because I think good data and good evidence allows people to be informed and go to their city council and say, is our local water treatment plant doing the right thing by us? What's happening with X, where's our water coming from? How is it filtered right? Because these microplastics are so small, you have to have a fine filtration at a point, which we had not previously.

23:37 And then it comes back to what we were talking about a second ago, which is if there's laws there for clean air, clean water, clean soil, et cetera, are they enforced? And if not, that's an because they're already on the books. That's an easier thing to go to your whatever your elected leadership is and say, look this not right. The ocean and its kind of vastness and depth are more difficult, but as soon as it affects somebody's ability to go to the beach because there's a combined sewer overflow from rains and the beach is dirty, or there's plastics on the beach when you're there, or whatever it might be. Then it becomes more of an activation.

24:27 You can really kind of like activate people. And I think part of the problem too is, and I mentioned this just a second ago, you can do things in the middle of your country wherever your country is, to better the situation because you're not buying certain types of clothes, plastic packaging materials, et cetera, and or allowing certain things to go in the water, right, because that still goes down into groundwater which we need to live from, or it goes into a system which eventually ends up in the ocean. Right. So that's why I have a giant kind of dead zone off the coast of on the Gulf Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, because it comes out of the Mississippi full of all of the ag runoff and everything else pollution wise, right, And so it's creating this kind of like blanket. And then you have algae blooms in Lake Erie in the United States, or you have the recent algae blooms that took place in parts of Europe in the summer. Is everything warms because that's the combination, right, you get a soup where it's super warm, you get red tides, or you get other types of effects because you got the warming, plus you've got the chemicals or basically too much nutrition. Right, that allows stuff to grow. And so it's a way for humans to get involved, but it's also something you have to take to elective leadership.

25:53 What are some innovative approaches to improving enforcement of ocean policies like technologlogy? Can technology play a combating role in illegal fishing and things like that? I mean, we've got it everywhere, gets some drawing something. How can it? No? No, yeah, yeah, it definitely is. I think. I think in the kind of climate and blue tech space, there's definitely been an advancement. And you mentioned one of them, and that's tracking fishing, fishing fleets and fishing boats and where they are or where they should not be in many cases, which is where the tracking comes in. But there's also incredible sets of innovators, some of whom we're working with in various ways, who are doing recovery and precovery resilience building and finding ways with sensors or more nature based solutions as we call them, to make changes right there at the coast or in the water, whether it's upriver or it's or it's deep sea. So technology definitely has its place. Last week was the big Smart City Expo here in Barcelona, and our events were part of that under the Tomorrow Blue Economy, the Sustainable Ocean Summit and the Global Blue Finance Summit. So technology, large scale technology and small scale innovators and startups and the funding to get to those individuals, organizations and startups is

27:26 super key because there's all kinds of things that we can measure, and if you can measure it, then you can management. Basically, that was the first part of a waterside chat we did with her name is Christina Hill. She's the head of the engagement for the Global Reporting Initiative, and part of this comes down to what we just mentioned. Technology can help us with data. Data can help us with measuring, measuring helps us manage. So all of these different technologies for cent for tracking and satellite imagery that actually is really great at ocean and marine spatial planning, those are helping us because we can very clearly see what we need to do in various places now, unlike everybody that wants to go to Mars or go further than Mars, we still have a lot of mapping and knowledge we have to do on the ocean, and an incredible, incredible thousands of species are discovered all the time, and that's because we only have mapped a very small part of the ocean, and that means we need even more data and more technology to help us be able to do that, and we're getting better and better at it because we're able to go to deeper depths and do more and use these technological systems. So I would say, yes, there's very much a case for technology in preventative measures,

28:57 in data and mapping and recovery as well. Some of those devices that I've seen come around over the last years, they're also now being used for things like quick mapping and tracking after hurricanes. So the same remote operated vehicles autonomous vehicles can be used in ways that are more emergency like and speed up figuring out what has happened after an emergency, right, So we can use it in a number of different ways, and I think that's that's the beauty of the good side of technology. Mm hmm. Oh that's well. I'm glad that we have it so that we can at least use it to be able to see what's going on. You know, how can we better balance economic development with the need to protect marine ecosystem. I mean it should be included in economic development or thought about or in part of the policy.

30:00 Yeah, it's interesting. Last week we had a panel and it's it's rare to see, but we had a very successful for profit company in the Netherlands and they created an entire separate business line focused on ocean health. And this is a very traditional maritime dredging, vessel port kind of company, and they made a very specific choice to create a separate business line that focused on ocean rehabilitation and ocean health. And it pays right, Yeah, we can we can monetize the good work. Now we can monetize the good work too, So I think that's that's what's interesting.

30:47 And then this gets back to the regulation a little bit. Say all fixed offshore wind has to have regenerative adaptive systems built in to the fixed locations that they're doing the wind turbines. If that was already policy and the company's already invested in it. You can build reefs basically and offshore living biospheres off of those fixed placements while you're still doing the energy piece, right, So some of this people see these things too much in pillars. Right. It's great that we have the sustainable develement goals, but sometimes you know STG six for water and water health and STG fourteen for life underwater are not talking to each other, and you're fresh and your salt aren't necessarily mixed in terms of those policy conversations. So I believe very strongly that we can still do regenerative activities and do them in a way that ends up being monetized and at the same time is just included. So why build why build a base a fixed base for for wind power? If you don't automatically include the attachments and devices that create res out of the bottom of those right, then you can also then monitor and there's more technology comes in because there's sound monitoring and there's actually AI

32:17 that's used for visual monitoring. We have some great companies we work with who do this work. It's incredible what can be done, but you have to have sort of that foresight. You have to build it in. You have to build it into the budgets, and you got to you got to plan early for it because we've done so many things that are detrimental that we're now you know, we're trying to recover that as well as trying to do this new stuff. Yeah, but seeing we have such new technology out there, I think it's time to start using it. You know, what are some emerging opportunities and innovative solutions that you're seeing. So we have we have a member client who has this amazing I think I think it's okay if I mentioned company names, right, I mean, I'm I'm not making any recommendations necessarily. I'm just saying that, like one really great innovation we've seen is with this company we work with called Ocean Ecostructures, and they've developed a patented device set of devices that go down in the water and both by their structure and what they're made of and a kind of like sound vibration thing they do to it.

33:32 In fact, there's some sitting right below me here as the sunsets on the pier where my offices are located in Barcelona, and basically you can watch via time lapse the way species come back to an area that may not have had anything because concrete, traditional concrete in particular, does not allow for the kind of life building that's necessary. So Ocean Ecostructures has these structures that go in the water. But the really cool thing about their work, which we love, is that they then monitor it with ROVs with cameras that have AI connected to it, and that artificial intelligence can every three months collect numbers of new species, collect the increase in biomass, increase in biodiversity reduction, and nitrogen increase in oxygen, et cetera. And then their clients and their clients clients have dashboards where they can see the change and that the curve is like this usually right, like from left to right. The curve in all of those factors, or if it's something that's negative, is quite pronounced every three months over time. And I don't think they can claim, or I wouldn't claim that that's why there's dolphins all the time now right in the Inner Harbor.

34:58 But we know from New York City and the rebirth of the oyster beds the whales and dolphins, and this comes from regulation, decrease in pollution, but increasing in things like the oyster beds. So nature based solutions where connected technology have made those kinds of changes. So I love what ocean Ecostructures is doing because they can also do it way offshore, which they are doing in offshore wind oil rigs, et cetera, where they're creating basically reefs that they monitor and they can monitor them such that that data also helps with things like climate credits, biodiversity credits and so on. Right, so there is a kind of both impact side and a monetary side. But then there are, as I said, nature based solutions. There's another group we work with called the Great Bubble Barrier. They have an amazing system that goes into rivers in cities that are even inland, that create this curtain of bubbles that's put in an angle in the river bed with a catchment system.

36:11 And because it's completely non evasive to fish and other species or traffic of any kind, it separates plastics and pushes it into this catchment system and so with little to no sort of human involvement except for when the catchment area gets full. Great Bubble Barrier has figured out this way to push plastics and catch it before it goes in the ocean basically, right, which is half the battle in some cases, because we've got so much of it, you know, we've got so much of it in the environment already. And at the same time, I can think of a super high tech one where there's a group called Blue IQ who's doing sound monitoring. Their systems are so sophisticated that imagine that you can tell exactly what's happening underwater and buy species. They did a demo for demo for us that was just incredible, and it was a set of a set of microphones off the coast of in the Gulf of Mexico, off of Mobile, Alabama, and you could hear the shrimp talking wow, And you could hear a boat approaching from a long way away, and as the boat got closer, the shrimp stopped talking and you could hear the boat go by. If you've ever been underwater, you know that sense of a boat, kind of the propeller of noise, right, You hear the boat go by, and immediately the shrimps start talking again.

37:41 So imagine what that would mean for like sound monitoring for work that's being done underground, monitoring for ships and whale strikes, being able to hear what's happening underwater with such a sophistication that you can tell exactly what's happening, right, And I could go on. I mean, there's all kinds. And then there are of course larger corporations that are doing incredible work and attempting to change the course of the kinds of things that we're doing, whether it's data collections, or it's shipping, or it's ports. We work super closely with the Port of Barcelona in the City of Barcelona who have a whole blue economy plan that is super advanced. And there are other parts of the world where they're doing things like this too, where we're working that in combination, I think is what really starts to sort of from the small innovator on up to these big companies and then the cooperation between these other types of entities. It can be done. Sometimes it's more expensive, but in the end, just like building resilience allion dollar now save thirteen later right, insurance companies like this, you can start to do the precovery work rather than always being in recovery.

38:50 Absolutely, what role can individuals and the general public play in supporting better ocean policy? So I think it's interesting, right, Because because I've done policy work in various ways, it's very clear that if you capture and I'll say this in a storytelling way, if you capture the human eimation, human imagination, and you get people interested in the changes negative and positive, that they can be a part of, whether it's their purchasing power, you have power advocacy with their elected leaders. You know, we see this. We see this here in Barcelona, but I see it back in New York and in Washington, d C. And wherever you might wherever you might be when there's a connection to the water. And I brought brought up previously right that one of my one of my you know, go to books is a book called Blue Mind by doctor Wallace Nichols, and that book is a scientific, cultural, social, et cetera review of our connection to water, both in on near and under and what it does for us. Well, it's obvious that we're sustained from it because you can go without food a lot longer than you can go without liquida. We are water.

40:19 We are water literally, right, as is the planet. So getting people's imagination, getting connection because the ocean is far away, right, I think there are better and better storytelling, documentary films, young youth spokespeople, people I work with who are doing incredible work eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, and there has to be more of that and connected to the ocean. It's very hard. I remember I was with my son at an ocean series at a film festival and there was a series of films and then they stopped, and everybody was talking about why don't people understand more? And here he is ten years old, and he sort of loudly said, and you know, you know Rowan or you knew him when he was at the time he was ten, and he said, Papa, it's so obvious. It's because we don't live in Atlantis. And I said what he said, We don't live underwater, so we don't think about what it means when these things go into the water. And there were a couple of people sitting around because it was an outdoor film festival in the mall in Washington, d C. And they were like, exactly took a ten year old kid to kind of say it, but you know, out of the mouth of babes. To some extent, it is that simple because there is a disconnect forests land.

41:45 We live on it. We're here, we know where our cities are built. But anyone that lives in a coastal city and knows the wrath of the ocean, or or a great lake, for that matter, a great sea inland, the sea knows to respect it. Right. But I think that further connection to the species, to its well being is still something we have to work on. So for individuals to be connected, it's kind of personal, But it's also that sort of Not everybody's going to go be a marine biologist, right, Not everybody's that lucky, I would say, But also also not everybody knows the same thing about terrestrial ecosystems either. Right. You've watched the bison, the buffalo come back in the Great Plains. That would not have happened without indigenous people, without native tribes, that very very early.

42:37 Right now, it seems obvious because they interact with the land, same thing with the ocean. Right. It's like getting people to understand my joke about it is you can't see the you can't see the ocean for the fish, because it's the same thing as on land. Right. In some ways, we're very concentrated on the turtle with the straw stuck in his nose. Meanwhile, there's a problem right with plastics, with governance. Hence the importance of like the Plastic Treaty and even the I Seize Treaty to get everyone engaged. So building education and awareness is really important about ocean issues. What materials or websites would you recommend? How can consumers become more aware so they are making informed choices and about seafood, plastics and other products that.

43:30 Are Yeah, you just have some that I was going to say, because you know, if you're a seafood eater, know where your food comes from. There are ways, there are ways to track that, and you'd be surprised where it's coming from. You might even be surprised. And I can give you a couple of hints, like look up, you know, do a quick google on some of the studies that were done by going to secret shop at various fish and chips places and things like that, and then taking that fish into the laboratory and discovering what was supposed to be cod was not cod, or some other whitefish was not that whitefish might have even been an endangered species of some kind or shark or you name it. I think there's a real human element to this as well, because the high seas is a dangerous place.

44:27 So for seafarers, whether they're doing cargo shipping or they're doing fishing, there's an element of danger, and there's an element of human rights, diversity, gender, all kinds of things that come into play. So I think, if people have a real interest in their food, that's an angle. If they have real interest in plastics and what plastics are where and what's happening with it, that's an angle. If people are interested in the court of human rights aspect and like what happens at sea, whatever industry that might be. Some are much better than others, but it's pretty scary when you look at when you take a deep dive into it. So I think, almost again, pick your journey, pick your adventure, and decide what means a lot to you. Obviously, for a lot of people, seeing a good documentary or going to an aquarium is the life changing for some people.

45:24 Right you can find thousands and thousands of reports literally weekly on things like ocean sewage in wastewater. There's a couple that I was just involved with over the last couple of years on plastics and microplastics on fisheries. If you really care about species, right, you might find a whole track of things that are around biodiversity or things like coraal loss. So you know, not everybody even gets to go to an aquarium, right. Your city or small town may not have an quarium wherever you are in the world, and you definitely may not even get in the water to scoop over, right. So I think part of this really is how do we get people to that or get that to them? And there is I think a movement in that direction, and seeing youth take charge of this is just really incredible. There's there are there are people that we can you know, we can even supply afterwards that people should follow on Instagram. There's a young woman who actually lives here in Barcelona who I'm connected to through through work and through family. Her name is Olivia Mondel Novao Olivia Mondel. She has an incredible Instagram feed. She wrote a book when she was sixteen, she is now eighteen. She is out there advocating on behalf of the ocean and ocean speech and the surrounding kind of activities. So I think you can find sources

46:59 like that, not just use, but all along the age spectrum. And and I think if you need to stay informed, that's the way to do it because it's very Obviously you get on LinkedIn and you follow me, you're going to see this stuff as you do every day practically, right. Yes, yes, you have good information. I mean it's excellent information. That's how I I, you know, learned about some of the things that will protect me. And believe me, I have to have my seafood shipped in because I don't trust you know what's in the store because I did some research. So and we should demand better. But if you're not absoluteble, you can't demand what you don't know.

47:45 And that's you know, some of the problem people don't know. Well, we have this new little tricky little uh tool that is out there called a I. All you have to do is type it in and it will answer and pull up anything you ever wanted to know, who's involved in it, you know how you can be involved in it and everything else. If you want to know about the oceans, that's a place to start getting information. And like I said, go ahead and follow Stuart on LinkedIn. He's always you know, has wonderful articles about what's going on and different things like that that will make.

48:33 I would encourage you like you they can they can, they can follow it. Sorry, they can follow they can follow me, but certainly follow these organizations. I've been mentioning my own World Ocean Council and Octopus, but Ocean Sewage Alliance, There's an Ocean of Certification Alliance, the Nature Conservancy, and and lots of those big NGOs are doing amazing work ww F and others, but also smaller local groups. There's an amazing organization called Native Conservancy in Alaska. It's an indigenous group, incredible work on everything from kelp to traditional boat building and everything in between. There's these amazing groups in the Great Lakes, including those based in Traverse City that are doing all this work and building a new incubator there. So there's a group called Sea Ahead that I have worked with, the Northeast Maritime Institute. I mean, I can go on and on, but like, do that research, get on Instagram and follow them because they almost all have Instagram and LinkedIn groups. But you know you can you can find in lots of other places as well.

49:37 But and then you're really following the people doing the work for sure. Yeah, Stuart, this has been really incredible. I've enjoyed this. I know people have become very informed and excited to get involved. So when they're out there trying to tap into these organizations, consider donating volunteering with organizations that are working on ocean conservation. Thank you so much Stewart for coming today and just letting us know the different things that are happening with the oceans. And yes, we do want healthy waters, don't you, And so people are going to be jumping on board and doing what's necessary to make this happen. I just want to say thank you to everyone who tuned in today. A Sharp Outlook is here every Monday at eleven am Eastern time eight am Pacific time. Let's stay informed about all of these different things that benefit you health wise and the environment and generations to come. So whatever you do this week, stay informed.

50:55 I want to thank you for joining us on a Sharp Outlook. We have been in formed and energized to take the next steps. We have posted links to websites and videos to learn more on today's topic. Please join us again next week for another thought provoking conversation right here on Key for HD Radio and Talk for TV. Listen to the podcast on all the podcast apps, and until next week, stay informed.