Ontario Weakens Species Protections | Hawaii’s Climate Fee | Deep Sea Mining Clash | Frilled Shark Expansion

0:03 What's up everybody? Welcome back to the how to protect the ocean podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about four different types of stories. You're going to talk about a policy change in my home province of Ontario. I know it's not surrounded by oceans, but we've got a little bit of that connection to the oceans. We're going to be talking about a new policy for tourists in Hawaii, a place that I just went to and I love. We're also going to be talking about an interesting shark that's popped up in Chile, expanding its range. And then finally to cap it off, we're going to be talking about how the international seabed authority has clapped back to the US in terms of talking about or even trying to do deep sea mining. All that on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Trying something new today.

0:51 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 can find out how to pull the I mess it up. It's always messing me up. I'm just going to continue going. I'm going to start all over. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. This is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action on today's episode. We're going to be trying something new. I am getting ready or practicing to go live. Now, this is something that I've been wanting to do for a long time. I even bought the software called Ecamm. It's a great software. It takes a little while to get used to and also doing stuff live. I'm used to recording this. You know, I went from just doing audio to now doing video podcasting and now doing live video that will eventually turn into the audio podcast every once in a while and adding some new stuff to the YouTube channel. So this is going to be all new. I'm just going to go in it and act like it's live.

1:54 So if I make a mistake, I make a mistake. No starting over, no editing. It's just going to go straight into it. I'm going to try not to make any mistakes, but I can't promise anything. So we're going to get started with the show because this is something that's really special to me. This is something that I want to bring you more information to you. We've got four stories that I'm going to go through and I want to make sure that we're going through them nicely, but I'm going to kind of quickly and quickly. I want to kind of quicken the pace so it's not going to take forever. So let's get to it today. We're going to be talking about four different things changing the endangered species act in the province of Ontario, my home province. I'm a little miffed about this. This is pissing me off quite a bit that we've seen this time and time again. I know the federal government in Canada tried to do this in the past. I know the state of Florida has done this in the past with manatees taking either species off early or not listing them in time and making sure that they're not taking sure and just basically degrading their habitat around them. We're going to talk all about that. We're also going to be talking about a new policy in Hawaii about tourism. There's a climate tax essentially that'll be interesting to see how that's going to go ahead. But we have a video from TikTok from a Chris a career who is talking about it because she's been working on that policy with her partners for about five years and it's finally going in. So congratulations to her. So we'll talk. We'll hear from her.

3:13 We're also going to be talking about a new article that Melissa Marquez wrote for Forbes magazine talking about the frill shark how it's showing up in Chile and why that's important for its range. We're going to talk about that. And of course, the clap back. I say fights back the International seabed authority fights back on US deep sea mining and saying, hey, you know what? You may not actually be able to do this. So we're going to talk all about that. But first we're going to start it off changing the endangered species act. This is something where I just don't get it. It's just one of those things where it happens every time there's a conservative government. That comes in. We see the fact that it's it's it. They want to take an act that stops or slows down economic growth and by economic growth. I mean development.

3:58 There's a lot of things that are going on in this article here on the narwhal at narwhal.ca. It looks at how Ontario is killing this endangered species act. Here's what you need to know and it gives you a whole thing. And I'm going to I'm going to link to it in the show notes. But this is something that's really interesting because they kind of snuck it in. It's Bill five. And it's essentially it's going to make it easier to build minds. It's going to make it easier to build infrastructure like a highway for 13. And the reason why they're doing this is because they want to build in green space and actually a green zone that's been designated north of Toronto called the green belt. And that's been an important part of preserving a lot of the ecosystem activity that happens in wetlands around Toronto, just north of Toronto and through Toronto. You gotta remember Toronto is a big city here in Canada.

4:47 It's made a lot of changes to its river systems. A lot of times it's actually it's actually buried its rivers as it gets closer to the lake causing a lot of problems in terms of ecosystem function. But it also you know they they realize this. They said you know what north of Toronto we really have to start protecting us. We're going to have this green belt. It's a zone that you can't build in. Well, that's what we thought. Now it looks like they're going to try and build it and try and put another highway because if you live in Toronto or you're near Toronto, you see the 401 which is the major highway that goes through Toronto. It's always busy. The gardener, which is downtown Toronto. It's always busy. There's this. It's always traffic around all the highways have it. So they said, you know what? We're going to build another one, even though they have one for seven. It's a toll highway that not many people want to pay for. So it's always open. It's very rarely that you get you get traffic and then but now nobody wants to pay for it because it's expensive. So people are like, okay, let's you know, governments like let's make it for 13 north of the city to have a lot of people go through.

5:47 There will it work. I don't know. There's been a lot of scandal around it and now they're trying to make it easier for them to develop by taking away a lot of the things that will slow them down in terms of regulations. It'll just slow them down to do that. And one of that is the endangered species act. These are species that have seen a like a very fast decline in their population and they, you know, they need specialized things. So they need like to protect their homes. They protect where they sleep to protect where they eat to protect their habitat that they actually use and also have recovery plan. So I actually have a plan for each of these species and each of the populations and each of the areas where they occur to make sure that they start to grow in numbers for that population.

6:34 And so that's a very important part of the species at risk or the endangered species act. The there's a federal species at risk act and that will also protect it. But it's protect different species at different levels. And of course, province and federal government have different jurisdictions. So there have to have a different act like an endangered species act or species at risk act. So this is a really interesting thing because here are the changes to the acts. They want to repeal. So essentially they're going to repeal the endangered species act and replace it with a species conservation act. Now the shift of focus is from recovery and stewardship to a balance between conservation and economic development. Now that sounds normal. That sounds like actually that's not that bad. You want to balance, you know, the species protection with economic development. The problem is, is that's not how it works. So they want to redefine under the species conservation act what habitat means. So they're actually narrowing it down. So previously, habitat encompassed areas essential for species life processes, which, which, you know, such as like feeding, breeding and migration, just like I mentioned earlier. So the new definition limits habitat specifically to the dwelling places like dens or nests. So this is usually online.

7:52 It's not aquatic species. We'll talk about quite species in a bit. So it's potentially excluding critical areas used for forging and migration. This is a really, I feel like it's a political way of looking at how we're defining protecting species, especially endangered species. We are just saying, you know, wherever they live, wherever they sleep, that's what we're going to protect. But we're not going to protect their food sources. We're not going to protect where they have to migrate if they have to migrate over a certain period of time or during certain seasons, we're just going to protect where they sleep. And that's it. And hopefully, that will work out. This tells me that they just do not care about these species. There's also a shift in permits to registration. So the current endangered species act requires permits for activities that might harm species at risk, or their habitats that the specific permits and those are really, really hard to get. But under the new act, the species conservation act, there's a registration first approach allowing proponents to proceed with activities after registering them online.

8:54 So without a prior environmental review. So this change could expedite development. So development of houses or are like highways or infrastructure, but raises concerns about reduced oversight. So essentially, they just have to say, I'm going to do this in this area. And they're going to say, yeah, okay, you get pre approved because you've already planned to do this. It does not make sense to protect these endangered species. Then, of course, there's these the government discretion over a species listing. So while the committee on the status of species at risk in Ontario, Cassaro will continue to assess species, the final decision to list or deal a species under the CSA, which is a species conservation act is rest with the provincial government. So the provincial government decides, you know what, we're actually not going to worry about that because we really want this highway to go through. So these salamanders that are in the green belt, we're not going to worry about them.

9:45 We're going to just worry about we want this highway to go through because you know what with the scandal that they had my buddy over here is going to stand to make about $2 billion from this housing project in the highways and all this kind of stuff. And I want him to him or her to benefit. And that's really what's going to happen. So he allows more political scandals to happen and less species at risk protection. We're also going to eliminate recovery of strategy. So remember, I said that, you know, in the endangered species act, you have a recovery plan, which is really going to be really important. And you can go through that with us. But we're going to look at the, you know, healthcare there's a kind of a business plan in there. And we're going to look at, if you'll like, with us, it's going to be a business plan. And we're going to look at the, you know, a lot of the, what we're going to do next. It's going to be a business plan. A lot important to have a recovery plan to make sure that we know how to monitor the species, how to put it all together, and all of a sudden now we're not going to have a recovery plan. That's just the way we're going to do it.

10:25 We're just not going to have this recovery plan to aid the recovery of the threatened species. It just makes no sense whatsoever. There's exemptions for federally protected species. So species already protected under the federal legislation, such as migratory birds and aquatic species would be excluded from the CSA's provisions. This aims to reduce regulatory duplication, but may leave gaps in protection on provincial lands. So in other words, if there is a species at risk that's registered with the federal species at risk, but not in the Endangered Species Act, this province isn't going to worry about it. Ontario's not going to worry about it. But when it's on provincial lands, they have to worry about it and they may just get overlooked.

11:07 So that's something that they worry about. So the creation of special economic zones, this is going to be an interesting one. Bill five, which is the bill that's going to change all this, introduces the Special Economic Zone Act of 2025, allowing the government to designate areas where certain provincial regulations, including environmental protections, may not apply. This could facilitate development projects, but raises concerns about the protection or the potential bypassing of environmental safeguards. In other words, if the government wants a particular area to be developed, they're going to get it developed because they're just want it to be developed. They don't care what species at risk are there. They're not going to care. And this is the problem. Here are the implications.

11:47 So environmental organizations, we have the Environmental Defense Fund, we have the David Suzuki Foundation. We have pretty much everything that you can say, any type of protection. So Wildlife Conservation Society, we have all these different places that different organizations that are hating this bill. They are saying this is not good at all. Eco justice as well. Ontario Nature as well. They've expressed strong opposition, arguing that it undermines species conservation or species protection and prioritizes economic development over ecological sustainability. Critics highlight that the bill could lead to increased habitat destruction and a decline in biodiversity. So now here's the thing is the public has the opportunity to provide feedback to the proposed changes through the environmental registry of Ontario until May 17th, 2025.

12:38 So whether you live in Ontario or you do not live in Ontario, if you do not want to see species at risk decline even more, this is your chance to say something. I'm going to put a link into the, uh, like a, there's an environmental registry listing for the law. So you can do that and you can have your say. And there's some, if you look at this, uh, this org, this organization, there's a lot of organization. I'm going to put a link to it where you can actually find out what you can do and what you can say to your MPP or your ministry of, uh, your was it ministry of provincial parliament. You can actually say, Hey, you know what? I don't like this at all. I think this is awful. You have like, they have to listen, they have to listen to you.

13:19 And so the more people speak up, the better it is. So there are organizations like environmental defense fund, um, or yeah, the environmental defense Alliance, I think, or whatever it's called. They are trying to get people to speak up and this is your chance to speak up not only for the ocean, but this is just for Ontario as well. And for the great lakes and for anything that is around in and around Ontario, this is going to be really important. Okay. So this is, this is something that we have to, we have to really worry about. Um, the big thing to do, like when you, when you actually speak out against it is to demand retention of the endangered species act. The one that was, that was put into place in 2007, it was actually one of the, like the world renowned, uh, endangered species acts.

14:02 So this is something that's really important. So really under like emphasize that the endangered species act, scientific foundations and mandatory recovery strategies are critical for effective conservation. You can highlight concerns about habitat redefinition. The fact that, look, arguing the narrowing of the definition of habitat to just the dens, uh, where we'll leave, you know, essential feeding, breeding and migratory areas unprotected. You can cite how this change weakens real world protections of real world protections of the ground on the ground. Um, and so, you know, also you can object to the deregulation via registration first approach, which I talked about. We can reject politicization of species listings, which is basically saying, look, if there's a species that's in trouble and it's been highlighted as being in trouble and should be listed or considered listed under the endangered species act, politicians may like, yeah, but we really want to develop in that area.

14:53 So we don't really care about the species. That's going to really delay the process. Um, and that's, that's, that's going to be a real problem. Now I wanted to know, I did a little bit of in for, uh, of research on what has happened in the past, like real world, you know, things of weakening in the endangered species act. The United States actually weakened the U S endangered species act under, guess what? The Trump era rollbacks in 2019, the U S government rolled back key provisions of the S A, including allowing economic factors and decisions to list species. Have you noticed a pattern here? Economic factors is a huge thing in, uh, when we make these changes to the endangered species acts, uh, they also made it harder to designate critical habitat and they removed automatic protections for newly listed threatened species.

15:36 So this is, that's not a good thing. The impact was it led to the delays and listing of several declining species, such as the Wolverine and the great sage grouse, despite a strong scientific evidence showing that they should be listed. Also habitat development projects like pipelines mining proceeded in areas formerly under stronger federal protection, especially in Western states like Alaska and Utah. So that was one of the examples and also Ontario did some amendments in 2019 to the endangered species act under bill 108, the Ford government, which is the same government previously weakened the endangered species act, um, by allowing developers to pay into a fund instead of protecting species on site. So essentially you can destroy an area, a habitat, but you had to pay into a fund that may have gone into something that was a different project.

16:23 That's a normal thing or that's not a normal thing. That's something that's happened before with species at risk or even just fish habitat. When we look at federal regulations, they also let the cabinet delay protections of newly listed species. Again, have you seen the, the, uh, the pattern here and then they reduced the independence of the cassera, which is scientific committee, uh, that designates these, uh, species. So according to Ontario nature species, like the woodland caribou and bats at risk of extinction saw little meaningful protection and the offsetting fund has been criticized for lacking transparency, surprise, surprise and effectiveness in achieving conservation outcomes. This also happened in Australia and a lot of other places.

17:03 And so the common themes and delaying the protections, weakening deaf habitat definitions and scientific being basically science being sidelined, which is a lot of times happening when we talk about, uh, you know, taking away a rolling back environmental protections for, uh, for basically increasing the, the potential of development, the potential for building the economy and, and, and now in Canada and Ontario, especially we have seen a big focus and a big shift on environmental protection. Um, you know, being independent, growing our economy and how do we grow our economy? We develop and we build and we expand and all this kind of stuff. And unfortunately, this is what I was worried about.

17:43 Um, you know, it's all happened. It has to happen at the consequence of environment basically, which, which really sucks. In this case, it's endangered species and their habitat, their critical habitat, if you will. So that is the story for this just getting started on here. I know we're taking a little bit longer. This is going to be a longer episode, but that's okay. Let's get into the next episode. Now this is something or the next story. Now this is something that is interesting because, um, we're going to be talking about a new policy, actually a good policy that's going into Hawaii. It's got a video it's on TikTok is from Chris or Cabara friend of the podcast. She's been on the podcast before. She has an organization called future swell where she partners with different people to talk, uh, to do conservation, whether it be coral restoration within Hawaii, whether it be talking about or creating storytelling opportunities for their partners or even doing storytelling for certain projects.

18:38 It's a great organization. Future swell. Check that out. Um, but also here is, I'm just going to hit up the scene here. We're going to be talking about what is important and why it's been important to Carissa to get this. And we're going to be, she talks a little bit about it, uh, more about the completion of five years of work. So give me a sec here. I'm going to cue it up and take a listen. Hopefully you can hear this. No fricking idea how good it feels to do this. This is my 2025 impact calendar. Pass transformational policy. You have no fricking idea how good it feels.

19:19 So I'm just going to, I'm just going to pause it here. So she doesn't tell a lot about it. She goes into a little bit more detail here. I think she's enjoying the fact that she's been able to do it. Um, delusion. A nice, a nice trend on TikTok using, using a sound. I love Chris's video is really great, but she basically, you know, is proud of herself of working with partners for just past landmark climate legislation and first visitor, visitor green fee in the nation after five years of organizing. So essentially she goes into a little bit more detail here where she said, uh, oh no, sorry, it goes, go back to the other, uh, Andrew, go back to the other video and just going to pause it.

20:02 Uh, so basically, uh, it says here, so for every tourist in Hawaii to Hawaii who books a $400 hotel room per night, $3 of that will go to climate solutions. Still a small portion, but $3 of that will go to common decision. Doesn't look like it's a tax on top of it. Um, but it does look like it's going to be included. We'll go towards climate solutions because of our tourism industry that adds up to a hundred million dollars a year for climate forever. So this is a policy that's really important for Hawaii. If you think about it, there's so many people that traveled to a place like Hawaii for a lot of different reasons. Hawaii is a gorgeous place. Uh, I just visited a couple of, but a couple of months ago now feels like it was forever ago on the Island of Hawaii, Oahu, where Carissa lives and it's beautiful, but you've got to think about, you know, the travel there, the amount of planes that go there, the amount of boats, the amount of gas that's being used, uh, the amount of people that are just going in there and be honest, like kind of ruining some of the essence of the culture and the environment as they are just being there.

21:04 And you need to have somewhere or a pot of money and funds to be able to, uh, help and make sure that the corals are in good shape, make sure that there's no cumulative effect, like development, tourism in terms of people like hitting the coral. So, yeah, I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good question. You know, there's a lot of people that don't know that they're not allowed to wear a certain sunscreen. And you know, I mean, I think it's really good to have a person who's wearing a certain sunscreen. You know, if you're wearing a bad sunscreen, you can kill the corals or you can damage the corals further. So, uh, having a fun that helps restore not only the marine environment, but the land environment for the people of Hawaii who are inviting people to come. They're not saying that they don't want people to come or most of them don't want people to come. But you know, there's a, there's a cost at that and that's to the environment which they live in and survive off of and they need.

21:51 And so having this, this, this fund or this climate solutions cost will be really important for the island of Hawaii, the islands of Hawaii. And I think that's, that's a, that's something that I feel is going to be, we're going to see that more and more locally. Niagara Falls is a huge tourist spot. They actually have a tourist tax and not a lot of people like to pay it, but we pay it. And because they need to, you know, revitalize Niagara Falls, they need to make sure that it's, they can continue to, um, you know, basically the tourists who enjoy it will have to pay for it. So that enjoyment and pay for that revitalization, pay for restoration and all that kind of stuff and making sure that it's protected.

22:32 So that it was a quick, I just wanted to go through that because that's a quick thing because I think it's really important that we, we look at that. Now let's go to the next thing. And this is just, I'm going to go quickly over this because I don't want to do too long of an episode, but frill shark. This I saw today as I was looking at it and I think it's something that's of interest because Melissa Marquez, a good friend of mine, she is a contributor for Forbes magazine among that. She's an author. She's a social media influencer. She's been on shark week, a TV personality, national geographic. She's done a lot of things, even taking a bite from a crocodile on the leg. I've told that story a number of times. I still can't believe that actually happened. However, we are going to be talking about something that's really important here.

23:15 A bit of a discovery really, uh, the first male frilled shark found in Chilean waters. This is kind of a cool. So you can read it here. I'll put the link in the show notes. Um, but it just basically says, you know, the, this, this, this frilled shark was first described in 1884. Uh, it's one of the deepest sea creatures. Uh, it looks like a, a, a, like it swam straight out of prehistoric times. It says here. And, and to be honest, it, it scares a lot of people when they see it. It's, it's a very long shark. It almost looks like a big snake. Um, it's got like these white eyes, which is kind of interesting. Um, and it's got, you can really see the frilled gills here. And I think it's a, it's a really interesting species, but they haven't been seen many, uh, despite wide, but scattered distribution, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

24:00 Very few frilled sharks have ever been observed or collected fewer than 40 specimens actually have been documented since it is for, it was first described making each new find scientifically valuable. So in a recent study, researchers reported a rare discovery, a male frilled shark caught off Chilo island is in Southern Chile. Uh, not only is it the first time first confirmed male of the species recorded in Chilean waters. It also extends the known range of the frilled shark in the South, the Southeast Pacific by roughly 530 miles. So 850 kilometers, uh, southward. So that's really cool. Um, and so this is just, it goes on to talk about, you know, some of the, the, the depth.

24:40 So it was actually at a depth of about 500 meters. Um, so that's 1640 feet for my American friends. Um, and so it, it, they were caught in 2015. They were actually granted access to look at in 2023. Hence why it's taken so long to publish on it. Um, in total 48 body measures were taken to compare this male to the previously known female specimen that was collected as well as filled sharks documented in other parts of the world. Now, so there's been a couple of different things. So the two Chilean species shared no significant morphological features, but the researchers did find some anatomical variation when comparing to them to specimens from other regions. So they noticed that the Chilean sharks had longer heads and smaller pelvic fins relative to their total body length.

25:26 These differences fall within known range of variation of the species, but could also be influenced by the sexual dimorphism or the preservation method. So essentially the sexual dimorphism is that males are different size than females. This has been a very interesting process. And females, this happens in a lot of fish in the ocean. So in males, for example, the pelvic fins can be proportionally larger than the females, but still the sample size is too small to really draw any, any firm conclusions. And the research team noted that further studies would be needed and more specimens would be needed to determine whether these differences are typical of the regions filled shark population. Now, what's interesting too is that when you have such a length and in the geography, like a difference in geography of where these are collected and maybe even just a difference in the morphology. If there are enough species to tell maybe this becomes two different species, we don't know. We can't even tell right now, this is a complete assumption, a complete guess, but that'd be something that I would be interested in seeing what's going to happen. But they need more specimens. I just thought this was kind of cool because it always makes the news.

26:23 If there's a video of a frilled shark, it always does well on the internet. If you look at this, it looks really weird. A lot of people call it a monster. It's in the deep sea. It doesn't come up often when it does come up usually. It's not alive and that's just the way it goes. But I thought it was interesting. I thought I want to share that with you. Hope you enjoy it. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Let me know in the comments below. But let's get back to the rest of the show. So here we go. We're looking, you know, I covered this on Wednesday's episode where I talked to Dr. Andrew Thaler. We talked about the International Seabed Authority and how the metal company, which is a Canadian company decided, hey, you know, you can do this. I'm going to actually talk to the US because there's a guy, President Donald Trump, who might want to be interested in deep sea mining in the US waters and maybe he'll sponsor me to go to the high seas. Talked a lot about that. Check out that episode with Andrew Thaler. But there was a there was really two big things that came out of that interview that I got from that interview. Essentially one that they could go ahead and do deep sea mining within the US waters.

27:34 Going outside of those waters and going into the high seas, that's going to be something different because they are not part of unclos, which is the law of the sea. And so that means they are basically disobeying that law. There's no enforcement of that law. But what might happen as Andrew Thaler mentioned, he's like, hey, you know what? If they start to disobey that law, what's to say that China does like start to disobeying that water? And it just starts a really bad precedence and that's something that we don't want to do. So there is a little bit more to the story. It was developing. I saw this right before I recorded and I want to talk about it today. So we are going to talk about it's going back to Chris's tiktok. And I think it's pretty interesting because I'm going to let you listen to the story. But it's something that I feel is going to be something that we need to we need to talk about. So I'm just going to hook it up or set it up here. So just give me a second. And here we go.

29:29 That's why it's such a big deal that Trump issued the executive order because he went around this huge international governing body and they clapped back. The first way they clapped back is they put this FAQ on the International Seabed Authority website and look at it says, "Due to recent developments with the U.S. Executive Order and the metal company and with the corporation that wants to buy the DC." This is actually really good for any of you who want to dive more into the issue, but then they issued a direct statement to the U.S. And it is so spicy. It basically just reminds the U.S. that no state can exercise any rights over the seabed and the mineral resources that are found within it because it is the common heritage of all mankind.

30:10 And then she goes on to say that this executive order could destabilize the entire global system of ocean governance. That's what Trump's trying to do. Now, this is an attack on global agreements, geopolitical relationships, and it's also going against the fact that all of these countries have agreed that the seabed is the common heritage of all humankind. And so that cannot be changed just because one president or dictator decides what it should be. So, yeah, the backpack was strong and team was easy. Yeah. OK, so there's a bit. OK, so this is an interesting thing here. I'm just going to turn down the music here, trying to get some back-bone music to go with the vibes. This is an interesting development.

30:53 So the ISA actually comes out as as Chris says and says, hey, you know what? If you do this, if you go like if you go beyond your exclusive economic zone, you go into international waters into the high seas, you are going to take away everything that people have agreed for decades, you know, multiple decades that all these countries, which is hard to get everybody to agree, but all these countries who have signed on, even the ones that haven't signed on have agreed that this area is kind of off marks other than a couple of other, you know, couple of players like that do some illegal activities, which is another problem. But once countries start to do this on purpose, like Donald Trump is trying to do with the U.S. and saying, hey, you know what? If we want to deep sea mine in the high seas, nobody's really going to stop us.

31:37 True. Nobody's really going to stop them. But what it's going to do is when they want something done or not done in the high seas or something else done in another U.N. proposition, then maybe those countries like, well, if you don't abide by it, why should we abide by it? And to be honest, they're kind of right. This is these international agreements, although there's no police force to enforce them, they're kind of enforced on themselves where, you know, if some if a country does something that goes against it, they get shamed. You know, for a long time, the International Whale Commission, the IWC, you know, banned whaling. And when the Japanese started whaling in international waters, they were, you know, they were they were embarrassed, basically, they were they were told like, hey, what are you doing?

32:18 You're going against all these agreements. You're doing this, you're doing that. And eventually, you know, with some pressure from some nonprofit organizations like Sea Shepherd and others, they eventually went back and said, you know what? This is too much of a headache. We're putting too many people in danger for a number of reasons and of our own of our own citizens. So we're going to going to wail in our own exclusive economic zone. When you start to end, the sanctions can happen if they start going into high seas and so forth. And so that could be a huge problem for countries. And, you know, we've never really seen this from a country like the U.S. before. Obviously, the president doesn't really care about international agreements. He just cares for what he thinks is good for the U.S., which a lot of people disagree, especially in this case. And so it's ruffling a lot of feathers around the world.

33:05 It's not making a huge deal because there's so many other things that, you know, like tariffs and other things that people are worried about. But it is going to be a problem if if, you know, the president decides, you know, we're just going to go ahead and do it anyway. And as Dr. Andrew Thaler said in my interview, the metal company that's Canadian company that's doing this, that's kind of perpetrate or like kind of pushing this is it could be almost out of money and needs to do this deep sea mine. They've been doing this for 10 years. They've been doing this for a long time. And, you know, they are a company that wants to move quickly. They're a company that wants to be able to deep sea mine. And I get it from a business perspective, but also from a perspective of we don't know what's going to happen to the deep sea if we stop mining or if we start mining. And that is a dangerous situation. If we screw up the deep sea, we could be screwing up a lot of long term processes that we just have no idea and understanding of from a scientific level and from a nature level and what we're doing to the balance of nature.

34:01 The ocean covers over 70% of our planet. The deep sea is a big portion of that. And we know virtually nothing about it. So this is it could be very dangerous in the way that we play. But again, the fact that there's a big push economically to develop this is always the driving force behind trying to mess up the environment. I wish there's a point where we could actually figure out how to develop economically and develop and protect environmentally. I think if we could meld those two together, we can really do some good. But it doesn't seem to happen all the time. But regardless, that's what's been happening. The ISA is like, hey, you know what? We need to say something about this. We're not going to take this lying down, which I'm glad. I'm glad they're putting it out into in the open into the public.

34:45 Other countries are obviously part of this international seabed authority. And this is something that we need to talk about from a world perspective. This is very dangerous in terms of not only just just deep sea mining, but just governance, international governance in itself. So that's what we're going to that's how we're going to end off the show. Really interesting thing here. So I'm just going to get my last little closer here. I think it's this one here. There we go. That's it for today's episode. You know, I want to thank you so much for the patience. I know this is a 35 minute episode plus. And so I'm going to divide these up into little chunks over the weekend so you can take a look or maybe over the day, you can take a look at each of these individual stories. But I want to thank you so much. I'd love to hear what you think of this format. If you would attend live, when would you attend?

35:32 I'd love to hear that. Hit me up in the comments below. If you're watching this on YouTube, and if you want to hit me up, you can do so at how to protect the ocean on Instagram. Just DM me. And if you go to the web, our website, speak up for blue.com. For slash contact, you can fill out the form. You can get right access into to me. It goes right to my personal email once you fill out the form. And I would love to hear you. If you want to hear the audio version and you're not not into the visual version, which is fine. That's where I started on this. That's where I'll probably always be posting. And this there will be an audio version of this. This is these lives as well. So you're not going to miss any kind of these these episodes. The reason why I'm doing the lives is because there's so many stories that are coming out lately that I want to cover. Them as soon as possible. And I don't want to wait like a couple of days before it gets going. So that's why I'm doing these lives. But if you want to go, if you want to search up the podcast is how to protect the ocean on your favorite podcast app. 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. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.