Why Good Ocean Science Still Doesn’t Lead to Action

0:00 We may already know how to protect large parts of the ocean, but that knowledge often fails to reach the people making the decisions. This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, your weekday ocean news update. If you care about staying informed about the ocean every weekday, hit that follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's story. There's a common assumption in conservation. If scientists discover something important, governments and the public will eventually respond, right? That's how it always works, isn't it? But no, that's not always what happens. In fact, that rarely happens. There's growing evidence that one of the biggest platforms in conservation is not a lack of science. It's a communication gap, a gap between researchers, policymakers, industries, media systems, and the public.

0:47 And that gap can slow down real action. So today's question is this: Why does so much important ocean science struggle to reach the people who need to hear it? Now, this is one of the things that I love to talk about. It's all about communication, so we are going to get into it. Researchers often call this the science practice gap. Scientists may publish strong evidence about ecosystem decline, fisheries management, climate impacts, or even marine protection. But translating that science into policy is much harder because the problem is timing. Science research moves very slowly. Politics moves unpredictably, and social media moves instantly.

1:27 That creates a huge disconnect. By the time important findings reach public discussion, the online conservation may already be focused on something else. Like, even just think as an analogy. If some scandal happens on social media, say with an influencer. Say, you know, somebody from Love Island cheated on the partner that they won the Love Island with, and I don't know anything about Love Island, so I don't know if this happened worse. Just heard my daughters talking about earlier today. If that happens, if there's a scandal in real life, like after the show has been shot and aired, that becomes a scandal for like maybe twenty-four hours. If they're lucky, forty-eight hours. And then it just disappears, like nothing ever happened. That's the same thing that happens on social media with even ocean research. You see it pop up for maybe a day, maybe two, and then it just disappears.

2:08 But the research that's actually driving that took about three to four years. So that study happened, like the field work happened as early as like five years ago. It it takes so long to write, and then you have like two days, maybe maximum, of attention on it. And that could go to a lot of just different media outlets. It's going on social media, and people may or may not talk about it, and sometimes they talk negatively about it, even though they did a lot to have this wonderful campaign go out and then all of a sudden people just misinterpret it and just don't believe in it. Like, there's a lot of stuff going on, on social media. There's also that. So the timing really sucks. And of course, another problem is accessibility. Scientific papers are often written for specialists, and they're only available for specialists.

2:48 They use technical language. They're hidden behind paywalls. Like, it costs $40 probably around that US to access if you don't have a subscription, which are like tens of thousands of dollars, to a science magazine. It costs $40 per article just to get access to it. Now, there are ways around it. You can reach out to the researcher personally and be able to do that, but not every researcher's gonna be able to handle hundreds of people trying to get access to the data. And then there's the technical language. That it has to do it. And they may not clearly explain what everyday people should care about. Like when I went to school, I did a plant biology class right before I did my master's, because I remember I had to redo a semester just to show that I could get good marks, 'cause my undergrad marks weren't the best. But regardless, I had to do this.

3:29 I did this class, and it was great. There was only two people in the class. It was a fourth-year class. It was plant biology, which it wasn't my strong suit. But the great part about that class is every class we would have to read a paper. And then during that class, the professor would go through and ask us questions about the paper and then talk about how everything was set up, the methodology, what we thought about it, the interpretation, the introduction, all these different types of things, and you're just like, "Wow, this is really cool. I can actually do a lot with this." And I learned so much, and I was trained so well in learning how to interpret and how to read this type of paper. So for someone who hasn't done the training or spent the money to go to university to train how to read these papers or even write these papers, it can be a difficult thing to understand, right?

4:13 We're not used to this type of terminology. Don't forget the acronyms that we use in science, which is like sometimes I don't even understand what's going on. And then of course, there's the fact that misinformation spreads so quickly because it's simple, emotional, and easy to share. And then that really puts a damper on things. That puts conservation scientists in a difficult position. Because as scientists, we need an accuracy. We also need clarity, but we don't always get that. We can't always display it because science is not easy, and sometimes it's not gonna be good news. Oftentimes, it's not gonna be good news, and nobody wants to hear bad news. They wanna hear good news. And so when you start to go out or you start to clarify something, like, I remember when Seaspiracy came out as a documentary on Netflix, horrible, horrible documentary.

4:54 But when scientists came out to speak out on it, we were the bad people. We were the bad scientists who were ruining everybody's day. It said, "Don't eat fish ever again." So all the people who didn't like to eat fish or were all about environmentalism, they're like, "Don't eat fish, don't eat fish, Seaspiracy." But Seaspiracy is just chock-full of misinformation. It is horrible. Like, I remember that was when Clubhouse, the app, was out. I had rooms where I would be discussing this, and I was doing the discussion, telling people all the misinformation that was in it, and nobody believed me because it was so easy to believe the other part. It was so easy to believe the movie. So it's a very difficult position that we're put in when we're trying to do this type of communication because it's complex. But the thing is, is today's ocean issues compete with everything else online. It competes with politics.

5:36 It competes with entertainment, celebrity news, and of course, there's algorithms that change all the time because people don't wanna necessarily see scientists all the time, and the attention spans are extremely short. And that means communication style matters enormously. A strong story about whale recovery may spread widely. A detailed fisheries management update probably won't, even if the fishery story has a larger long-term consequence. This is one reason why podcasts, documentaries, and digital creators are becoming more important in conservation. They help translate complexity into stories people can understand. And that translation matters because public understanding affects policy pressure.

6:18 It affects funding. It affects voting. It affects consumer behavior. And honestly, some of the biggest ocean debates today are really communication battles. Think about deep sea mining, plastic pollution, offshore drilling, marine protected areas, seafood traceability. The science matters, but the public narrative matters, too. And I think that's what's really important when we're talking about communication. It's important to not just start social media for the sake of starting social media. You don't just start a TikTok account and you start posting and hopefully it goes the best. That's not always what's gonna happen. When you have to start communicating, which we're a position where communication is key, as we just documented this entire week.

7:00 You have to come out with a plan. You have to have a strategy. And sometimes it's difficult to come out with that strategy. And that's why the sponsor of this episode and this podcast, Pisces Oceans, which I work for, by the way, we're a consulting firm that works with nonprofit organizations, for-profit organization, academic projects that are collaborative. We work with these organizations and companies and projects to help amplify their message, to help come up with a strategy that will build them towards a better future, a stronger funding and long-term funding, but also getting their message to the right target audience so that it makes a difference, not just to the science community, not just to the policymakers, but to the people that will help drive the policy. So if you are interested and you have an organization or a company, whether you're trying to do something good for the ocean, check us out, piscesoceans.ca.

7:46 That's piscesoceans.ca. I'm gonna put the link in the show notes. I want you to have a conversation with us. We are always willing to help you and your organization do the good work of protecting the ocean, so piscesoceans.ca. If you wanna get a hold of me and talk to me directly, you can just hit me up on LinkedIn or any of the socials that I have in the show notes. Check that out. I'd love to have that conversation. Okay, so let's look at it. What's gonna happen next when we're talking about this type of communication? I think conservation organizations are starting to recognize the challenge more clearly because I've seen job postings for communication specialists, job posting for communication manager. You now see more investment in science communication, storytelling, public engagement, and digital outreach more than ever.

8:29 And some research projects are building communication strategies directly into their planning 'cause when you plan for funding, there's usually a piece, a percentage of that grant that is all dedicated to science communication. That's where Pisces can come in and come and help you do that. Others are partnering with journalists, educators, and creators, or they're looking at consultants like myself. And honestly, I think it's necessary because the ocean affects everybody. Food systems, climate regulations, jobs, coastal economies, extreme weather, like we just saw a super typhoon go through Saipan and just obliterate a lot of the buildings and cause flooding everywhere, and that is seven years or six years after their last super typhoon that took out schools where they never actually rebuilt it even before this super typhoon.

9:14 So extreme weather is a huge aspect in this. With all these other things I've talked about, ocean affects everybody. But if people don't understand those connections, the public urgency becomes much harder to build and conservation actually slows down. The goal is not to oversimplify science. The goal is to make it understandable enough that people can engage with it because people protect what they understand. And the challenge is no longer just discovering ocean problems and the trends that come with it. It's making sure the right people actually hear the science to stop a number of these ocean issues from actually happening. So if you find this interesting and you have any questions, you can hit me up in the links in the show notes below. But if you haven't followed this podcast, please follow How to Protect the Ocean podcast for your next weekday ocean update, which will be tomorrow.

10:01 We're gonna be talking more about nonprofits. And then on Friday, we're gonna be interviewing James Meissner. He's a nonprofit consultant, talks about how ocean nonprofits can succeed in today's world and what kind of strategies. He has a lot of great tips in there. We had a couple of problems with connection on my end with the interview, but hopefully I can edit that part out and it'll come out smoothly. You don't wanna miss that episode on Friday, so hit that follow button right now. And until tomorrow, this has been another exciting 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.