Oceans Day: A Message of Hope and Action for Ocean Conservation

0:00 This is an Ocean's Day episode. Now you're probably going to watch this after Ocean's Day because Ocean's Day 2025 is on the 8th. I publish on the 9th and you're probably going to see this at some point. But I hope that this resonates with you at any point in time you watch this, whether it's June 8, 2025 or December 25, 2025, or even 2026, 2027 and further down the road. We see a lot of problems with our oceans. We see a lot of problems with nature and a lot of the times and most of the time it's due to us, the humans. We are in a wasteful world and we continue to perpetuate that world through politics, through policies, through actions and through promises. And whether we want to do it or not, or we're just a victim of circumstances in this whole game we call ocean conservation and then we call world, we need to have hope.

0:49 And that's going to be the message I want to drive home today is the message of hope. There's been a number of different things that have brought me to this lately that I've seen lately on TV, including the Star Wars, which is all about hope, but it speaks to everything that we are facing as a world population, everything that we need to do. And we need to feel hopeful to get inspired and inspire others to take action to do better for our oceans, for nature and for our planet. So we're going to talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I promise you you're going to feel better after this. So watch the entire episode. Let's start the show.

1:30 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 could do to live for better ocean by taking actions. It is June 9th. Now, when I record this, well, actually, I recorded a week early, but when I published is going to be June 9th. I am getting ready to go to Nice, France for the UN Ocean Decade Conference. The UN Ocean Decade is 10 years, a decade between 2020 and 2030, where we are dedicating towards the ocean. There's a lot of action that is happening. There are a lot of promises that are being made by government as we speak because the conference goes from, I think, it's June 5th to the June 15th. It's a long conference. I'm going to be there from the 11th to the 15th. I'm going to bring you more episodes later on next week to be able to provide you with my experience in one of these conferences, the people I met. Hopefully, I'll get some interviews as well, but there'll be a lot of content driven around this. But it's one of those days where I always have trouble talking about it because this podcast, every day we live, Ocean's Day, right? Every day, June, Ocean's Week, Ocean's Month, whatever you want to say it, it's always over.

2:41 It's Ocean's Day here at this podcast. Every time you tune in, it's Ocean's Day because we live for the ocean every time I either record or publish and every time you listen and hopefully get inspired by a lot of the guests by some of the stories that I talk about and some of the motivational stuff that we do. And that's what today is going to be because look, we're facing a world that sucks right now, especially when it comes to ocean conservation. We have politicians in place that are either causing problems for everybody else like Donald Trump or you're in a country where the politicians have to react to certain politicians like Donald Trump to be able to say, hey, we need to divest our necessities or requirements to depend on a place like the US and we need to build something with other countries, especially when it comes to oil and gas.

3:26 That means we may need to build more pipelines. We need to get more oil and gas out of the country, which means we're not going to reduce our footprint with oil and gas, which is what we've been wanting to do for the last decade or so. And the actions have led towards that, which is disappointing. I guess I'm talking about Canada, which is it's disappointing to me and there's a lot of worry that happens with that. You have oil and gas, which is a huge fossil fuel. It's dirty, especially when you take it out of the ground like the tar sands in Alberta and Saskatchewan, but it's also a necessity for our economy because our economy is essentially based on oil and gas. So we're in a bit of a pickle, a big pickle, to be honest. It's not something that I like, but because of what's happening south of the border, we have to free up our dependence on the US for selling oil because we sell 95% of the oil to the US and we have to go to the different markets, whether it be European, whether it be Asian markets.

4:17 And now it's starting to say, okay, well, what are we going to be doing with that oil and gas? How is that going to affect our environment as well as the world environment? Is that going to increase our greenhouse gas contribution or are we going to find ways to decrease it in other places? I don't really know. And it's giving me a little bit of anxiety when I start to think about it. In addition to that, we have provincial governments like the Ontario government here in Canada who are putting forth, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, a bill five that will replace the endangered species act with the species conservation act. Species conservation act, which essentially takes away recovery plans, which is a huge part of species at risk or endangered species act. They're going to take away protecting the areas where they could feed the areas where they forage.

4:59 They're only going to protect areas where they actually sleep. So they're dense, essentially, which is not good. They're going to put together special economic zones, which essentially we can do whatever we want in these zones. We can develop, we can destroy whatever we want to do. It's taken away a lot of great recovery and actions that have happened in the past and that will happen in the future to protect these species, to protect biodiversity, which helps protect the planet, which helps protect the environment. And of course, like the Ontario environment and habitats, and as well as will be prosperous for us and will stop with flooding and all this kind of stuff will increase without it. It builds on the anxiety. We have these politicians in place and they're saying they're using what's happening down.

5:40 So as a way to do all these moves, they'll say like the Ford government, the provincial government, Ontario saying, Hey, you know what? You gave us a mandate. We said that there was a threat from the south that we have to do this. And this is something he's wanted to do for a long time. He's just using what's happening down south as an excuse. And it just sucks. It really does sucks to see that. And so what I wanted to do today with all of this stuff is really talk about hope. I've seen two things over the last couple of weeks that have really brought me back into that hopeful feeling with all the crappy stuff that's happening in our world.

6:25 We have seen examples of that and it was shown in the ocean documentary, the movie, so that we can see firsthand, not only the destruction that's in this case, the trawl fishering takes, but also the recovery that it can have when we allow things to recover, right? So we get this type of stuff and that makes me feel better because even though someone who sees the destruction and sees the policies and the politicians make all these crappy choices, having a video like that, having a movie like that and being able to get that distributed widely because Sir David Attenborough is pretty much the king of documentaries right now, seeing him speak like that with his passion and his voice and just as a way to do that, with his passion and his voice and just everything about him really resonates with a lot of people and people love watching documentaries by them, whether they're sad, whether they're happy, it doesn't matter. They love watching this and to watch a movie like the oceans, I feel will really inspire people to take action and I feel as though like looking at stuff with oceans and Oceans Day and Oceans Month will help inspire people to take action.

7:37 That's the whole point of these Oceans Day weeks month. That's the point of why we're doing this is to say, Hey, you know what? We can still save the ocean. We just have to make a few changes. Some of them are big and some of them are small, but we have to make changes. It could be in your personal life and your behavior, or it could be on a wider scale, provincial, national, even local government scale and international scale, right? There's all these different ways that we can protect the ocean from a human side. And so today what I want to do is I want to go over some of those. I want to go over and say, Hey, you know what? There are certain things that you can do, not only to decrease your ocean anxiety or your climate anxiety, but also really help out with the movement.

8:20 Help out with data analysis, help out with data gathering. There's so many things that we can do. And I'm going to talk about a few of those today to help inspire you to take action, to say, Hey, you know what? Some of these are really doable. They won't take that much change. It's just a matter of a little bit of change behavior, which I know can be tough on all of us, but something that we can do that may actually save us money in some places, but also make us feel better about the environment because we're doing something. That's part of it. Talking about it, listening about it and doing something about it really helps. So here's some of the things you can take, like personally actions that you can take, like our personal lifestyle changes. So we got eat sustainable seafood. There are guides like seafood watch and ocean wise in Canada and they have apps that help you make more informed decisions. Now, are they perfect? No, but they're better than just going blindly and just assuming that everybody is buying sustainable seafood.

9:12 Go and look at these apps. Make sure you cover. You can look at multiple if you want, but make sure that you are covered. And say, look, if the person behind the counter or the waiter can't tell me if this is sustainable, because of where it's caught and how it was caught, then don't eat it. That's the action that you can take. That's the power that you can have and tell them that's why I'm not eating because you guys don't know. And you can't tell me. Okay. So that's one thing. The other thing you can do is reduce single use plastics might be a little hard at first. When you start to realize how many single use plastics are in our life, but you can carry reasonable water bottles, bag utensils and say no to straws. Use those paper straws. As much as people don't like them, they pretty much at the point now where you can actually drink out of one drink and you'll be fine. You have a metal straw that costs like two bucks. You can have straws. However you want. When we talk about straws, we're talking about people with disabilities that need those plastic straws. I completely understand. Do what you need to do, but these are the choices you could make if this works out for your lifestyle. But it's not just about straws, but all single use plastics all around. So like, for instance, I always go when I'm out in the air, I don't know how to do it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

10:16 So I'm in the office or I'm in the office. We go out for lunch once a week or so. I'll go to a place where I'll go buy food or get takeout for the office now I tend to go to a place that will have the reasonable containers that are compostable that tends to help me out. I know they're composed. We'll have done the research. I go to that place a lot more than I normally do. I don't use or compostable or environmentally friendly utensils. utensils. So I'm able to make those better decisions. Now, if we go to a different place and they don't serve environmentally safe or protected or non single use plastics, if they sell single use plastics, then I'll be careful in terms of how I'll use it. I'll say no to a plastic bag, no to plastic utensils, and I'll just bring the container even though that's plastic. You can't get away from all of it. I don't want people reducing what you eat or where you eat from, but that's a power that you have if that's important to you.

11:13 You can avoid those places because that is something that you want to avoid. You don't want to have single use plastics. You can even talk to the owner or the people behind the counter and say, Hey, you know what? Like I would love to get that. I would love for you to get like environmentally friendly containers and it's supposed to happen like in Canada anyway, it's supposed to happen. So just reduce single use plastics to a point where you can not have to have them at all. Not depend on them at all is always great. Use reef safe sunscreen. This is basically the non-enzene benzene type of sunscreens. They have harmful chemicals like oxybenzone that bleach reef. So anything that's mixed with zinc is usually pretty good. It's harder to put on. It's not the best, but they're getting better at making ones that are easy to put on.

11:56 They don't feel like when you put them on and you can still see the sunscreen. It could be a pain in the butt. I use it as much as possible. It's also better for your skin. So there's always a secondary benefit when using those. Now, of course, you can also reduce carbon emissions. You can bike, you can walk, you can take public transit and you can eat more plant-based foods. Those are some of the things that you can do that will immediately reduce your footprint on the planet. That's something that's really important. Pick up litter, even if it's not yours. So a beach on the street in your own neighborhood, it all flows downstream. Wherever it goes, it will find a waterway and it will flow downstream. So the more you can pick up, the better. Sometimes like when I'm on a walk, I'll even bring like gloves or something in a bag and I'll just pick them up and walk in the dogs or something. And I feel like the dogs like it when I pick up that plastic.

12:40 Because I don't know about you, but I have one dog who likes to eat everything. It takes away from her and especially hurting her stomach when she eats it. I don't catch it at her eating it. So picking up that stuff, picking up litter off the ground is always helpful. And it takes care of your neighborhood, right? It takes care of your city or town that you live in. And it allows you to be like, you know what? I help keep this clean. This is something that's really important. Now, some of the mental and emotional actions that you can take to turn your anxiety down is join a community or an online forum. You can join the undertow community by going to speakupforblue.com forward slash the undertow that speakupforblue.com forward slash the undertow to join our community where you can talk about this stuff. Get it off your chest. Read stories that are a positive stories about the oceans.

13:22 Hear people talk about the oceans and be like, Oh, I want to get in on this action. You can do a lot of that. That'll be really great. Many of us have social media and we have these fees that we could actually curate because the fees, the algorithms based on what you interact with and what you watch or what you read. And that's going to be important. If you want to read more about the ocean and positive stories, start engaging with those stories, share them, like them, love them, whatever you have to do and comment on them to say, hey, thanks for sharing this positive stuff. Then you could start to be like, Hey, you know what? Like I'm starting to get really interesting information on my newsfeed and use it for what it's supposed to be. Not just like Karen's getting people arrested or people complaining about everything.

14:04 You could find very good positive environmental news on whether it be TikTok or Facebook or Instagram or whatever you're watching Snapchat, whatever you're watching, you can find out. But you have to curate that a little bit. You have to do that for yourself. You can practice ocean gratitude. So take moments and reflect on the ocean's beauty and importance and not just the ocean lakes and streams as well. I was talking to a friend of mine when I went away to Vancouver last week. We were walking in Stanley Park, which is a very famous park in Vancouver and it's right along the ocean. We were walking along the ocean and we're just smelling the air, looking at the ocean, looking at the mountains in the background and just enjoying the moment. In fact, even when my buddy went in, he went in swimming even though it was like 54 degrees Fahrenheit or something like that. It was crazy cold. He went in and had a nice swim because it was a nice day. He wanted to cool off. He definitely cooled off, but he enjoyed the moment.

14:52 Right? And then next, you know, about five minutes later after he got out of the water, we see some seals. We enjoy the ocean. And I told him, I said, you know what? We probably take it for granted that he grew up in an ocean. We don't get to be around or we don't take in the moment when we're around Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, all the different great lakes that are here, the five different great lakes and just like enjoy the view, enjoy what they represent, enjoy what we see each and every day that like I have a 20 minutes away. I have a beautiful walk like a beautiful lakefront and I could walk that every day and I don't. I don't even though I should every time I do it. I'm like, I should do this more. So don't take it for granted. If you really want to do this, I'm going to take it for granted. If you live around a lake or even you can walk by a stream or something, enjoy nature, enjoy the moment, enjoy the green space, the more you enjoy it, the more politicians keep it around. So and the more you'll enjoy that gratitude. Okay?

15:44 So now you can also share the ocean wind. So talk about successful conservation stories in your social circles, especially when somebody tries to bring you down. There's somebody in your group that's trying to bring you down by bringing down like, Oh, it's so sucks that we have climate change and there's flooding and this and that's like, Oh, you know what? There's actually somebody who prevented flooding and one of their cities and talk about those stories have like a roster of stories to be like, Yeah, this is what I want to do. That's really important. And then limit doom scrolling. This is what my therapist tells me all the time. Like there's a lot of crappy things going on in the world and they're shown on TikTok, on Instagram, on social media in general. Stay away from that stuff, right? Limit that type of scrolling, go out and enjoy nature. Go for a walk. If you have pets, take them for a walk. If you can take them for a walk. If you go out and you're near a water body and you can go swimming, go kayaking, go whatever. Just even walk along the side. Just take in the breath of fresh air, enjoy it. And that will help you recover from all this doom scrolling. It'll help you really enjoy nature and understand how nature functions just by being in and watching.

16:47 Watch the birds and listen to the birds and watch the animals and see what they do. And look at their behaviors is so much better for you. Let's talk about using your voice, speaking up for the ocean, speaking up for the blue. You can host or join a World's Day event. Like I'm going to nice. I'm not expecting everybody to go to Europe, but there's always an event on June 8th. I attended this in the past. Of course I attended. I know doing this. It's it'll be in the future. This week I'm attending and I attended an Ocean's Day event in a library in Milton, which is just the city beside me. And I got to talk to a lot of people who are interested about the ocean, whether it's careers, whether it's just about the ocean in general, talking about the ocean, even podcasting, talking about speaking up for the blue is really important. And so speaking up for that blue and hosting a day event or being a part of that attending one is always great in the future when you can do so.

17:35 Right to elected officials emails, letters, write stories, personal stories of why you think the ocean important, why you think your lakes and rivers are important and the environment important. I'm sure they cannot ignore that. They have to read everything that you put. They have to listen to everything you say. They may not agree with you and they may do something different, but you can force them to listen to it. Read it because that is your power. You elected them there. They are there to answer for you. Some politicians are better than others. Those are not very good. You don't elect them the next time and you tell people about. I was like, hey, I wrote to this person never responded or he never said he said the opposite of what's being done. He understood my plight, but I'd said my piece and this is how he treated me or she treated me or they treated me and I don't like it. And so you can talk about that as well. And then you can support indigenous ocean stewardship amplifying the indigenous voices that are important.

18:25 And they're on social media that are on the internet and initiatives in your area can really help in terms of managing the environment. So lifting those voices up is really important. Nobody protects the environment like indigenous people and their culture. It's so important. And now we're just starting to scratch the surface of collaborating with and having indigenous communities lead conservation in and around their area. Start ocean conversation. Talk with friends, family, or even coworkers about what they can do to like how they can be in conservation. Some of them will be very negative because people don't want to change, but it's very important that you talk to them because there's going to be those few. They're like, oh, I could do that. And they might do that. They might respect you enough to do that. So that's always good.

19:06 And then of course, post educational and hopeful ocean content, you can share the stuff in my podcast. We can look at beyond jaws and all the stuff that's going on there. There's a lot of hopeful and great projects that we're talking about. And you can share those clips that I send out on social media. You know, the ones you've probably seen them quite a bit. There's a lot of different things that you can do that will help you share these types of stories. Let's get into like the hands on action so you can support and volunteer or even provide financial help. You can donate to ocean conservation organizations, even $5 a month to the ocean Conservancy or any kind of local organizations will really help them a lot, especially that monthly spend is what a cup of coffee, maybe even less than a cup of coffee that could help out.

19:47 And if more and more people donate the same amount, then you can really get something moving and support these organizations, especially local organizations that need your help. You can volunteer for beach cleanup or river cleanups or any kind of cleanup. Anything that helps the environment, even going on walks and stuff like that. Nature walks is always a great thing and doing it yourself. You can support ocean focused businesses. This is a huge thing. Look up B Corps. These are corporations that have a social enterprise twist to them. These are for profit purposes. These are for profit businesses that want to protect and help their employees. They want to protect and help the environment and they want to protect and help society. These are great businesses that you can support very easy by just buying their products and or services. You can adopt a sea creature or you can adopt a tag like follow FA hlo. You can actually go on their app and their website. I've talked about this before. I actually have their bracelets have two other bracelets.

20:40 Their shark, their regular shark and whale shark where they actually team up with organizations that tag and animals, whether they be in aquatic or marine or even on land and they tag animals that you can watch them. You can actually get an animal and you can watch them forever. If that tag falls off, you get another animal. You can see where they go. It's really cool what you can see. It's all on an app. So really great thing that you can do there. You can offer your skills so you can write you can design you can code you can market all those can help nonprofit organizations and citizen science projects who don't have the people with those skills in their organization because they might just be a one-off project. that just is very tight on budgets. Everybody's tight on budgets. So the more you can volunteer, the better.

21:20 You can also go on a board of directors, that would help as well. Now you can look at taking more action and be curious and contribute. So you can participate in marine citizen science projects, apps like iNaturalist, eBird for shorebirds, or ReefCheck, or even citizens of the reef. If you go on their website, they have a way that you can, we talked about with Andy Ridley a couple of weeks ago, where we talked about identifying boulder corals, plate corals, branching corals, all these different types of formations and helping the AI be as accurate as possible. It's really kind of fun. I've done it before and it's a lot of fun. It's really easy. You can just do it with your hand. You can do it with a couple of clicks of the mouse. It's really great. You can do that. I'll put a link in the show notes to get access to that, but citizen science of the reef.

22:02 It's basically being able to gather data for the Great Barrier Reef. But you can also take in a free ocean course or a webinar. The MOOCs, these are, I forget what it stands for, but there's a shark one, Shark MOOC, that's available. These are massive online courses, I think, ocean courses. And it's all about sharks. You get to learn all about sharks and help identify them and stuff like that. It's really cool. You can read ocean conservation books. We have lots of books. There's some books behind me. I've talked about books. I've had authors on. You can read lots of ocean books and conservation books and learn about the oceans and the heroes, like Dr. Sylvia Earle, Dr. Ariana Elizabeth Johnson, Octavia Bell, Jasmine Graham, Dr. David Schiffman. There's so many people, Dr. David Ebert, who's my co-host on Beyond Jaws, that you can get to know by their books and their ocean stories and share those ocean stories.

22:49 You can watch ocean documentaries with family and friends and talk about those movies with other people. Just had Oceans, Sir David Attenborough, which is always great. There's so many out there. Just be careful which ones you go for, because some of the messages aren't always the best, but most of them are pretty good. And you can follow local marine projects or any kind of environmental projects. It doesn't matter if you're on the coast or outside the coast, you can follow them on. You can stay informed and engaged with what's happening near your coast. That's the list, but of course, there's so many other things that you can do. That was a list of 25 of them that we went through in about almost 25 minutes. And so these are things that you can do just on today's Ocean Day. The next year, you can start to focus. You don't have to do all of them. You can pick one, you can pick half of one, you can do whatever you'd like.

23:30 But the more you act, the better you feel about the ocean, the better you feel your contribution, the more you lower your anxiety, which is always great. Now, I'm not a therapist by any means, but I am somebody who worries about the ocean on a daily basis. Sometimes I get really worried based on what people say and some of the policies that are put in place and laws are put in place or even worse taken away. But the ocean always wins out, whether we're here or not, the ocean will always win out. And it's better that we're here and we protect it and we reduce our negative influence on it and start to benefit the ocean. So that's my message for you today with all the crap that's going on with the ocean, with the environment, with the world today, there are ways to find hope and that could include education, that can include action, whatever you might do.

24:16 And to get both of those all in one shot, you can go and join the undertow community by going to speakupforblue.com forward slash the undertow. We're going to be launching soon. And I'd love to see you part of it. I'd love to see you in there and I'd love to interact with you. That's the best part of the undertow communities that we actually get to interact with people virtually on video, on audio, whatever that might be. And also written. So it's a great online community. Highly recommend that you join us speakupforblue.com forward slash the undertow. And I also want to say thank you so much for what you do already. Just by getting education, if you're acting for the ocean, I'd love to hear more about it. You can hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the ocean or you can go to speakupforblue.com forward slash contact.

25:00 Fill out the form goes right to my email, but you can also see me in the undertow community. So speakupforblue.com forward slash 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.