Ocean Conservation Disconnect with People: Straws, Sharks, and Science Barriers

0:00 why do so many people care about the ocean but they don't feel connected to ocean conservation there's a serious disconnect between ocean conservation and the people we want to help conserve the ocean we're gonna be talking about the plastic straw campaign ocean ramses upcoming netflix documentary and how science communication gaps can really play a better role in filling in people for the ocean inspire them to help protect the ocean on this episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast 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 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.

0:41 If you want to take action, you can join the Undertow. It's a community that I'm building with two co-founders. We are here to build a community for the ocean to protect the ocean. No algorithms, nothing like no blocking or no trying to put one over the other. we are showing you the true wave makers people who are trying to do well for the ocean inspired you to protect the ocean as well and guide you to buying products and services that are good for the ocean and good for the planet all you have to do is go to speak up for blue dot com forward slash join the undertow that speak up for blue dot com forward slash join the undertow now you probably love the ocean if i asked you Hey, do you love the ocean? You're probably going to say, yeah, of course I do.

1:22 Why wouldn't I love the ocean? Some people love it. Most people I talk to love it. A lot of times when I introduce myself and I say, they say, what do you do, Andrew? I say, I'm a marine biologist or a marine ecologist or a marine scientist, ocean conservationist. People like, I love the ocean. At one time when I was a kid, I wanted to be a marine biologist. They get that all the time. So people love the ocean. When you go away, you go away by the lakes or you go away by an ocean and you get to be on a beach and you get to enjoy the ocean. So we know. you love the ocean why is it so hard to connect to ocean conservation why is it so hard to take that action There's really three things that I want to go to today to really talk about how we are not very well connected with ocean conservation and certain campaigns have missed the point and what scientists and ocean conservationists need to do to really understand how people tick.

2:15 The first thing is the Plastic Straw campaign is a symbol over substance. The recap is really there was a viral video that went around. There were some scientists, friends of mine that I actually met after the video came out they pulled a straw out of a sea turtles nose that video went viral like when i mean viral i mean the ultimate viral millions upon millions of use tens of millions maybe even a hundred million by this time and people were concerned they were generally like holy cow this plastic straw ended up in this auto all of ridley endangered sea turtle how the heck does that happen i remember when i interviewed dr nathan robinson he was like this gotta be a million one i have no idea what the odds are doing that four months later he calls me up he's like a andrew guess what actually found a plastic fork in all the really see to it on those insane like the amount of plastic that can harm these particular species of turtle with plastic forks getting stuck in their nose is unimaginable at this point that we really don't know so once we saw that we saw a huge campaign like all around the world of plastic straws it became the symbol of the decrease marine plastics in the ocean right that was the big thing was a huge huge global movement it was easy to understand it was really easy like straws are bad because it ends up in sea turtles nose and you don't want to have sea turtles have straws up their nose so we need to ban the plastic straws that was the big thing is ban the straw ban the plastic straw easy to understand it's accessible because there were alternatives that were creative there was a bit of debate between different communities so for instance

3:51 There were certain communities who still need plastic straws because of some sort of disability that they may have and they require plastic straws to have. Obviously that's an exception to the rule, but for the most people don't need plastic straws. We really don't need it. And then of course it sparked an emotional reaction later on. So as this campaign built, companies were created to just sell plastic straws. They eventually dove into other different types of eco-friendly products like bamboo utensils or bamboo straws, metal straws, all these different types, paper straws, all these different types. And then of course that movement built and built where restaurants started to change to paper straws.

4:32 And then people started to present paper straws. said it would blow up. They said it would fall apart after a while and so forth, but they were recyclable. They could break down a little easier for the most part if they were created properly. And it was a simple solution, but people really didn't like it. The thing is it focused on an individual behavior change with minimal impact on ocean plastic. This is the problem is people focus so much on plastic straws instead of using it as the gateway plastic as I like to call it. You know when you have the gateway drug like people use marijuana as the gateway drug to lead to other things. you have this plastic straw. It's a gateway to really understanding our influence and how much we're influenced by using single use plastics.

5:17 That's how it should have been done, but there was so much focus on the plastic straw that it got out of hand. And people were getting tired with plastic straws. I remember Clubhouse was an app that I was on. was a digital app that you could bring in and brought communities together to have conversations. And I was covering the movie documentary Netflix, which we'll talk about Netflix in a second, called Seaspiracy. Didn't like sea spirit sea, had a lot of misinformation in it. We're going to talk about that in a second as well. But people were debating and I remember one comment, it's etched in my mind and people were like, I'm done with the plastic straws. We need to move on to something bigger. To say that single use plastic and plastic pollution is not as big as say overfishing is not doing it justice, doing the problem justice.

6:01 And yes, people get tired. about thinking of the same old item where it could have been moved to single-use plastics in general and how we can really change our behavior around that. It distracted from the bigger system, the system issues, know, corporate plastic production, fishing gear, all these types of stuff. It really distracted to what we really wanted was cleanup of single-use plastics, whether it's fishing gear, whether it's corporate creation of this, like chemical companies and fossil fuel companies, I think it's like 33 % of the revenue the fossil fuel companies is generated by plastics and by creating plastics as a petroleum product so just imagine how much difficulty it is to get that banner to get that reduced just in the creation they want you to use plastic products single use especially because it's a good moneymaker for them but it left people like switching to metal straws wasn't doing enough like it just not enough that we could really get there so what ocean conservation has boiled down to a symbol it risks oversimplifying the fight and disengaging people from deeper action.

7:05 That's really what it comes down to. Let's take one item, oversimplify it, and let's say if you take away the plastic straw, our plastic pollutions are gone. That's not true. You can't do that. That's not what the campaign was really about. The campaign was more about our use of single use plastics rather than the plastic straw. In fact, if that other video that Nathan recorded as he was taking the plastic straw out of the nose, if that went as viral, that might've changed the narrative in the long run because, you know, this happens all the time. Like we're seeing multiple plastic items. be stuck in turtles. So if we saw two within four months within a span of 70 kilometers on a coastline, there's probably more.

7:46 You can probably estimate that there's more. I don't know how many. I mean, you still have to do a lot of studies for that. You have to find them. this happens, you know, and there's something that we need to correct, not just in sea turtles, not just plastic utensils or plastic straws, but just single-use plastics in general. That was just more of a close-up feel. And you really got the pain that sea turtle was in. The video did what it needed to do, showed that animals are suffering from plastic pollution. Unfortunately, the campaigns that came from it didn't do it justice and it just didn't connect with people. Second thing I want to talk about is documentaries. In fact, Netflix documentaries. Now Netflix, as I mentioned, released a documentary called Sea Spearsea a number of years ago. during the pandemic.

8:27 People talked about it. There was a lot of misinformation. Scientists didn't like it. Conservationists didn't like it. They did a lot of people dirty, let's just say. It wasn't really well done. They use really bad journalistic ethical problems in that they just use bad practices. know, a lot of times manipulating the conversation, leading them on to say that we're doing something but doing something else and making them look like fools. Not a good signed by this movie maker there's an upcoming netflix documentary and i think is being released in either june or july there's july fourth or something like that it's a june or july it's coming up and it's about a influencer an ocean influencer named ocean ramsey now ocean ramsey is based out of hawaii and she runs an outfit that has interactions with marine animals mostly shark she's known for diving sharks in fact you may know her if you don't recognize it by the name you may know her of the woman who swam with the great white shark and actually you know kinda hooked onto her with her hand hooked onto the dorsal fin and just kinda rode with this shark now her intention is to show that the sharks are not the crazy eating monsters that you would expect to see from a movie like Jaws or the Megalodon or the Meg, you know, that type of shark or it's just an eating machine.

9:43 It's a monster. It wants to kill everything in its path. No, Ocean Ramsey wants to show that it's gentle and we know that sharks are not just animals. have behaviors. They have characteristics. Each species is different. However, they are dangerous, right? So you have to be careful of how you act around that. Ocean Ramsey. is a professional shark diver she dives with ocean white tips tiger sharks and so forth she's probably had some close calls like you can see in some of her videos that she's had some close calls with a tiger shark was one of them that i can just think off the top of my head but she is a professional diver she remains calm she knows what she's doing a lot of the diving that i've seen is free diving but she knows what she's doing whether we think she knows a lot or not i don't know but it looks like she knows what she's doing she's been doing it for years And she has a mission that she wants to protect sharks.

10:33 It's beautiful storytelling, which can inspire, but sometimes misrepresent science or oversimplifying conservation efforts. So she's actually been attached to campaigns that are misrepresentation, misinformation. She's known as someone who says, Hey, you know what? Everybody should be swimming with sharks or most people should be swimming with sharks. You have to be careful there. And an unintended consequence when somebody sees heard you know diving like this somebody else who does free diving or scuba diving things like a probably do that to she can do it so i'm gonna do it not realizing that there's training involved there it is a dangerous thing and these animals you have to know the signs animals irritated especially shark is irritated or doesn't want to be bothered or else you can't go near but if you don't know those signs you try and go near that could be life and death situation and here's the problem with that no isn't hurt you but it hurts sharks because once somebody gets bitten by a shark that's swimming with sharks, that means people are gonna go out and just in the past what we've seen is like, oh, well gotta kill that shark or any of how we know it's that shark.

11:36 Well, we're gonna take any shark that's three meters or more and we're gonna just kill it. If it's a tiger shark, we're gonna kill all tiger sharks that are three meters more for a certain amount of time and then we'll just leave it be and let's help it. That's the management that a lot of countries are taking. Not a very good management. It doesn't happen everywhere, but that's something that you don't wanna see, right? The problem is, The reputation of sharks is just starting to climb and people are starting to feel sorry for sharks, but if they start to see people swimming with sharks getting bitten or worse dying from those bites, that could be a problem. So while we need more accessible and diverse and community-granted ocean stories, not just influencer style branding, which could cause problems for other people, right? Also, the rule of thumb when you dive is you don't touch, you observe.

12:19 You are a guest in the ocean and you observe, you do not touch. touching could actually cause the animal harm depending on what you have on your hands and this is not necessarily just for ocean ramsey i don't want to send any hate towards ocean ramsey i respect what she's trying to do i don't respect the way she does it let's just say that or i don't agree with the way she does it and i think that's an important distinction right there are people who are trying to do good for the ocean and there's no agreement sometimes we just don't agree with the way it should be done the lesson any hate i don't see any malintent to her i hope that she's safe i hope nothing ever bad happens to her but you playing with fire in this situation and then you're teaching other people to play with fire not that she intends to bush teaches that mind you she does teach people out on her boats when she goes on a ride to swim with sharks that's a guided tour maybe she's there she can probably you know help them a little bit more and it'd be safer, but still you just never know what could happen there.

13:14 So there's that influencer's type. And then so far we talked about a campaign that gone wrong, that's just not connecting with people. We talk about influencer type documentaries, which is not focusing on what other people should be doing. Like, you know what I would love to see? I would love to see a documentary on Minority and Shark Science Organization, MISS. They are doing phenomenal things, teaching kids from all different types of backgrounds and women from all different types of backgrounds. to go out and do ocean conservation, do shark tagging in a safe environment and be able to inspire them to continue on their journey if they want to continue being scientists, marine scientists, doctors, whatever that might be, the trips that they hold and these educational trips that they hold and these experiences allow these women, these young women to connect with the ocean and also inspire them to do more for the ocean and be able to follow and be inspired to follow a very difficult path.

14:06 to becoming a marine science and marine biologist. It's not easy for anybody, let alone a minority woman or someone from the LGBTQ community. The MIST does that. I would love to see Netflix do a documentary on this organization because it's a wonderful organization. Okay, so we've talked about those documentaries and what should be done. Now let's talk about just access to science. The way we do science and the way we share science among each other, like among scientists, is through peer-reviewed journals. These peer-reviewed journals are a long-standing tradition of sharing information across the science world. So if I have a study that I'm doing, I do all the work to come up with a hypothesis, the methods, I do the study, I go in the field or I'm in the lab or whatever, I'm doing the data analysis, I've come up with the results, I come up with the conclusion, and then I basically take that and put it into a manuscript and I send it in.

15:00 to the journal articles that I think would be best suited for this paper that I've done. And then it gets reviewed, like the magazine gets it or the journal gets it. They send it to two to three reviewers. They review it, they send it back with their comments. You change based on those comments and then you resubmit and then it gets published. The only problem is these are not free. They're not freely available. They may be freely available for students who are in universities or part of academic institutions who pay the hundreds and thousands of dollars for access to these journal articles. But other than that, it's basically $40 US a paper if I wanted to buy it. I'm not associated with any academic institution. So if I wanted a paper, I could go to the author directly and say, hey, can I get access to this paper?

15:40 doing a story. A lot of times they do, authors always wanna share their papers. But other than that, if I didn't know how to contact the author and they weren't able to share it with me, I would have to pay 30 or 40 bucks US. to just get access to one paper. Now think about all the stuff that I cover. It's just not in my budget to be able to do this, right? So imagine a fellow scientist can't get access to normal articles. Now imagine somebody who wants to protect the ocean. Not only is it difficult for them to read because they're not a trained scientist, so some of the jargon, some of the statistical analysis, they may or may not understand, but also it's not really available because it costs money to get access to it. So... Not only is it just not available to the general populations, but it's also not available to most managers.

16:21 And that's why preprints are a thing, and that's why open access is a thing, which I'll go into another time. But again, it just goes to show that it's really difficult to get access to cutting edge research. And it's really difficult to get it to the people, just furthering that disconnect between ocean conservation and science and the general public. right we want the general public to engage with us you know there's a lot of science involved in engaging the general public to change their behavior or to get on this thought process or theory to say hey we need to support this and to talk to their government representative in this but it's so disconnected that we need people in the middle of the scientists to translated to get access to it to translate and get it to the public in their own type away and there are full degrees on this like talk about behavioral marketing, you talk about conservation marketing and marketing in general, psychology and all this kind of stuff where there are professionals who do this, but just the raw access, so if somebody wanted access to these papers, it's very difficult to get a hold of, which doesn't help in the connection to conservation.

17:24 So just like, why does this exist? Why does this disconnect exist? And the system just wasn't built for public engagement. It was built for research policy and academic credit, right? Ocean conservation often speaks to people but not with people, right? It's always telling you what you need to do, but doesn't tell you how to help. And the public is expected to care without being equipped to understand or act meaningfully. I talk to people all the time about ocean conservation. People ask me like, Andrew, where are we at with ocean conservation? And a lot of times we are in a difficult spot. And I tell them ways that they can participate, ways that they can do things. And it makes them feel a little hopeful. But if I don't tell them that part, if I just tell them like, hey, this research said this, this is what's happening here, and this is what's happening here, they get pretty depressed after they talk to me.

18:10 It's not fun after people talk to me for certain things. But that's why I try and bring that hope. I'm like, wait, but there's this like, citizens of the reef and the Great Barrier Reef. that are contributing towards and you can help they're contributing towards data management in the Great Barrier Reef or we have you know a company like follow where you can buy a bracelet I don't have them on right now but you can buy a bracelet and you can track a whale shark or you can track a dolphin or you can track a manatee or even a sloth if you want if you want to do wild things which I think is crazy to track a sloth because they're so slow but it'd be really interesting to see where they go or a penguin and things like that and it's ways to engage people and those are the companies and those are the people and the organizations that really do well because they offer a form of citizen science to get people involved.

18:52 They can track an animal, they can really care for that animal, they get profiles and so forth. They can look at a reef and look at different parts of the Great Barrier Reef through citizens of the reef and be able to participate in gathering data for them and making sure that it's accurate. right and during that time they can see different parts of the great barry that they will probably never be able to see on a regular basis unless they live near or go diving on even then i'd bet you not many people have seen the entire great barry even the researchers that work there are the turists that work there so there's a lot of things that go into it is a lot of hope there are a lot of solutions to this we really need to stop this disconnect just on the rob basis right we start connecting more understand what people want try not to oversimplify things but try and make it so it's interesting to the people.

19:38 Allow them to participate. Right? Involve them in the process. It's just like when we do conservation for marine protectors or we have to bring in people, bring people in from the beginning. Follow them along. There's some great scientists out there who are posting on social media who are showing the work that they've done either through their PhD or they're doing a study and they're out in the field and they're showing what they're doing, they're explaining what they've done. And then once the study is done and they're published and everything like that, they go through another campaign of what they're able to accomplish. And people are interested, they're vested in watching that. It's like edutainment at its best. I want to see more of that. feel like professors and supervisors should be not just on the academic side, but supervisors on the government side or even on the nonprofit organizations.

20:20 I should be encouraging people to talk about their work on a podcast or in a video or on a TikTok or an Instagram reel, whatever that might be. Share your information. It's time that we stop hiding everything. It's time that we be transparent like we should have been from the beginning and connect. with people about the ocean conservation that they can help with that they can take part in That is what we really need to do. We need to get people to support open science. need to get people to demand better storytelling and don't settle for feel good symbols. Get curious about the bigger picture. That's what we need. I want to thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you want to participate in something, you want to learn more about the ocean and know the ocean, hit us up.

21:06 Go to speakupforblue.com forward slash join the undertow. It's a community that we're building. haven't released it yet, but it's coming and I promise you, you are going to love it. We're going to do talks a couple times a month like a virtual talks we're going to do in-person talks we're to have connection service it's going to be amazing it's all going to be about the ocean. Speak up for blue.com forward slash join the undertow I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast I'm your host Andrew Lewin from the true north strong and free have a great day we'll talk to you next time and happy conservation