The People Saving the Ocean Are Burning Out

0:00 A growing number of people working in ocean conservation, they're exhausted. They're burnt out and quietly leaving the field. This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, your weekday ocean news update. If you care about staying informed about the ocean news every weekday, hit that follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's story. Look, most people enter ocean conservation because they care deeply for the ocean. They love marine life. They want to protect ecosystems. They wanna make a difference. But behind the scenes, many conservation professionals are dealing with something much harder to talk about. That's burnout, emotional exhaustion, financial instability, to be honest, and the feeling that problems keep getting bigger.

0:41 So today's question is this: What is the emotional cost of trying to save the ocean? Ocean conservation is often crisis-driven. Scientists study declining coral reefs, fisheries collapse, marine heatwaves, plastic pollution, species decline, and many professionals spend years immersed in those realities. That takes a psychological toll, especially when progress feels extremely slow, or when funding just disappears, or when political decisions ignore scientific recommendations, hint, hint, Trump administration. And of course, there's also the financial reality of just not getting funding.

1:21 Many early career conservation jobs are temporary or contract-based. People move constantly between projects and move far for these projects. Some leave the field entirely because they can't build stable careers or even stable lifestyles. And despite the emotional intensity of the work, mental health conversations in conservation are still relatively limited. There's another challenge that we're seeing here. Conservation organizations often feel pressure to stay hopeful publicly. Everybody wants to be optimistic. And to be honest, that makes sense. People respond better to optimism than to doom. But internally, many professionals are carrying frustration, grief, and exhaustion, especially when ecosystems continue declining despite years of work, years of science communication.

2:08 And of course, social media adds another layer. Scientists and advocates are increasingly expected to communicate constantly online with no financial incentive, mind you. Right? We talked about it the other day, and that made sense. You should have a growing profile, and you should be talking about it. We always love to talk about it, but it's not necessarily part of our job, although it's starting to be more and more part of our job, which is nice and helpful. But it can create pressure to always appear productive, informed, and optimistic. Like, there are so many times as I was doing this podcast where I didn't want to share clips online because I wasn't near an ocean. I wasn't showing what it was like to be on a boat or doing field work like a lot of other people who are successful. I don't have access to go diving into a coral reef and look at this kind of beautiful thing. Right? I don't have access to see sea turtles or dolphins as I'm driving a boat around.

2:49 I sit in an office, and I talk about ocean conservation and science on this podcast. And it's great for me, but it's tough. It's a lot of pressure to share online because I'm like, "Is this actually gonna land? Is it gonna stick?" So even when people are overwhelmed, and because many conservation professionals care deeply about the ocean personally, work stress often becomes emotional stress. And the ocean is just not a job to them. It's part of their identity. I've explained this before, but as a marine biologist or ocean conservationist, when you do work in the ocean, it's really tough to turn that off. You're always thinking about what you can do for the ocean, what type of projects you can come up with. You gotta write those ideas down. You gotta do some scientific analysis if you're a data cruncher, and you're trying to figure out how to get across, like, this R code, and you haven't figured it out, and then all of a sudden, at two in the morning, you wake up, and you're like, "Eureka, I've figured it out."

3:40 And you go on your computer, like, from two to four in the morning because you haven't actually figured it out, and it just stresses you out, so you're not getting the sleep. It's like being a marine biologist, being in ocean conservation is part of our identity. And so, like, having that is really difficult. It's really difficult to deal with on a daily basis. You have to come up with boundaries. There's no doubt about that. Boundaries is a huge thing. But I think conservation organizations are slowly starting to recognize this issue. There's growing conversation around burnout, healthier workplaces, sustainable careers, and better support systems within that. Even at conservation conferences, we're starting to see more support for people so they feel more included, so they wanna come. If they're new parents and they wanna bring their kids, there's daycare at these places.

4:23 'Cause if it's really, really far, there's some scholarships that you can take or some grants that you can get or bursaries that you can get to fly across there. Or they're moving conferences from place to place or all around the world so that it's easily accessible to places where that normally can't go to like North America because they live in Asia, and it's expensive to go there. So we're starting to see things change in that way. But some organizations are also discussing like mental health resources, realistic workloads, long-term funding stability, and communication boundaries. That's really good. And to be honest, it actually matters because conservation requires people. If experienced scientists, communicators, educators, and advocates keep burning out, the entire movement loses knowledge and momentum.

5:06 And protecting the ocean, it's long-term work. It's a career thing. That means people who are doing the work need sustainable careers too. Enough of this paying by contract by contract. It's up to the conservation organizations to do more to get better sustainable funding. And to be honest, if you wanna get better sustainable funding, you can check out the sponsor of the show and the place that I work for, Pisces Oceans. We work to help with your communication for your organization to get out to the right people, speak to the right audiences, and get known for what you do and get funded for what you do and have that long-term stability, that financial stability so that you can get your workers, your staff long-term stability, financial stability, and be happier with those boundaries and with that stability.

5:47 So check that out, piscesoceans.ca. Love to work with you. Hit me up on LinkedIn or any of my socials in the show notes, and I'd love to have a conversation with that. So the future of ocean conservation really depends not just on protecting ecosystems, but on support for the people who are trying to protect them. I think that's a really important thing. It's really important to protect the people who are working on these systems 'cause they work hard, and they have a lot of passion for this, but they deserve better. We all deserve better for things that are happening in and around our ocean, and we're trying to protect them. So if you enjoyed this episode and you wanna check out the interview that I'm doing tomorrow with James Misner, who's a nonprofit consultant, he gave great tips with ocean consulting or ocean conservation, nonprofit like organization and business management and fundraising.

6:33 That's the episode you wanna hit. So hit that follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's episode. That's it for today's episode. I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.