The Hard Truth About Working in Ocean Conservation

0:00 11 years ago to this day, I published the first ever, how to protect the ocean podcast episode. What is now known as the how to protect the ocean podcast episode, it was known as a different podcast back then. I will tell you all about it. Plus what that podcast has led me to become and how it's helped me in my career. So we're good today is not just about celebrating the fact that this is 11 years. Today I'm going to be talking about in this episode, what it's like to have a career in marine science and conservation, whether it's science, conservation policy, or that, and what it takes to have this and what to know before you get into this, or as you're going through it, we're going to talk about the hardships.

0:42 We're going to talk about what it takes. We're going to talk about how many times you have to volunteer with getting your own experience and the patience you need to get what you want. That's all on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast, because this is where you get your ocean, use update every weekday, Monday to Friday. If you want to find out what's on tomorrow's episode, all you have to do is hit that follow button and you will get all the episodes to your phone or to your device. However you listen to this each and every weekday, Monday to Friday, let's get into the episode. Cause look 11 years ago, I published my first episode. It was called speak up for the blue, speak up for blue. That's what it was called. Speak up for blue, not speak up for the blue, speak up for blue. That was the company I had.

1:25 I had created this company while I eventually created this company. But it started off as a hobby. It started off as for me, I wanted to create a podcast because I'd done YouTube before I had done blog posts before, but this podcast thing was something that I want to try. I had done in 2014, I had done a number of recordings for people where I had interviews because it was once a week and that's when I did my interviews. And I'll be honest after I published that episode, I did not realize at the time of my life would change in trajectory in terms of a career. Something I did not, did not expect was not ready for and it continues today. And I love it.

2:06 And it's the reason why I have the job that I have today as an ocean, as an ocean communications manager at Pisces oceans. And if you want to know more and work with us at Pisces oceans, if you want to know community strategy, all that kind of stuff, you can go to Piscesoceans.ca. But this is what it's, it's come to and me building a community, building a community where people can get access to me, talk about oceans, talk about careers, talk about whatever you want and support the work that I do each and every day. Cause I published five days a week. I went, I went from publishing one day a week to publishing five days a week, 11 years later to give you as much of as much as I can about the ocean that I know and that I know from others and I'm learning constantly to you.

2:49 And if you want to support me in any kind of way, you can do that by going to speakupforblue.com forward slash Patreon that speakupforblue.com forward slash Patreon. Now look, I did not expect that podcasting or any kind of content creation would help me to get a position as a job. There's no way I thought that was going to happen. I thought back in 2015, when I first published, I thought that I was going to create and become a content creator. And have a business through content creation, get sponsorships and all this kind of stuff. That didn't quite work out as a full-time gig, which is fine. But I spent and I've dedicated 11 years to trying to bring you the great information of the ocean, ocean conservation and the people that are working in ocean science and conservation and the wonderful things that are happening there and sometimes the not so wonderful things.

3:41 And that's been a huge pleasure for me to be able to bring to you. But during that time, I've had some absolutely incredible experiences and opportunities because I did this podcast. And look, the podcast and the science communication came out of me being a marine biologist in Ontario. And the reason why I was a marine biologist in Ontario is because when I met my now wife of 21 years, we decided to raise our kids and have our family in Ontario. And I said, what I expected when I grew up? Absolutely not. As I was growing up, I was expecting to probably live down in the US or live on the coast of Canada or live somewhere around the world.

4:23 Being on the water, being on a boat most of the time and enjoying and swimming with dolphins and whales and sharks and all these kinds of things. I had huge dreams of what I wanted to do when I grew up. I got to live a part of it for some time, but it was not easy by any means. And I want to dedicate this episode to what it's like to work and not work in marine science and conservation. Because I wanted to put out a warning to all of you who are just starting out their career. It is tough. It is one of the toughest things to get jobs, permanent jobs, and have a specific lifestyle that you and maybe your friends have or expect to have.

5:15 You know, permanent placements, a place to live, like a house or an apartment or a condo that you bought, family, like kids and things like that if you decide to do so. You know, being able to pay bills, being able to do that. It is not that easy, especially these days. And times have changed. There are more marine biologists and conservationists out there. There are more NGOs out there and there are more like private companies, nonprofit organizations that are out there, academic institutes that are out there. But there aren't as many jobs because the funding isn't as much to handle all of that. And so when you have nonprofits that are trying to hire, they're hiring people for very little money.

6:00 You know, oftentimes $50,000 a year, which sounds okay when you come out of school and you're starting to build, but that's not sustainable. If you want to have a family, you know, you and your partner may or may not be able to, if you're earning the same, if you're in the same kind of business, you know, may or may not be able to accommodate. You may have to have a different lifestyle, which is fine. If you want to have that lifestyle, you know, of, of, that's different from what sort of like, what's considered like the dream, the, the quote unquote American dream, white picket fences, that kind of stuff. You may or may not be able to attain that on if you're both earning 40 to $50,000 a year. So, so you have to start, you know, like I always, I always tell people, you have to look at what type of job you want, like in your career and what type of career you want.

6:46 And what does that lifestyle look like? And what kind of lifestyle do you want? Do you envision? Because your job and your lifestyle may not jive together. And I always say that to people and I understand like when I first came out, I just want to work. I just wanted, I would work for free. I would do all that, that stuff. But now I look back as a 47 year old turning 48 this year and all the stuff that I've been through and what I've seen friends go through some very successful, some, you know, successful in their own rights in terms of specific things they've been able to attain through their careers. But maybe not from a lifestyle perspective or maybe not where they expected to be when they first started and they just kind of live paycheck to paycheck or they, they live from place to place, renting different places or they, they travel so much that you may not have a place.

7:35 There's a lot of things that go on within the marine science and conservation. I know I'm talking more about lifestyle here instead of like what you actually want to do for a career because I think it's important. I think it's because it's something that we don't always think about when we first think about getting a job. Because with marine biology and even marine science and conservation, you can work anywhere in the world. But what's that lifestyle going to be? How far are you going to be away from your family? How far are you going to be away from what you know and love like your country? Are you going to be able to live in your country? Are you going to be living abroad? Which sounds cool, but it comes with a lot of sacrifice and a lot of hardships ahead, but some great opportunities and some great adventures and you might meet the person of your dreams and have a great partner in that new place and all that kind of stuff and have a different lifestyle than you may have expected.

8:23 The point is, is when it comes to lifestyle and it comes to jobs in this field or in this like plethora of fields within this, you know, sort of umbrella of marine science and conservation, you can have a lot of different things and you have to adapt to those different things. Right? And my best advice to you about the lifestyle that you would lead in those is talk to people who are doing the things that you want to be doing. If you see a creator who's doing some science and they're doing either PhD or postdoc or they're working for an organization or they're working in science communication or they're working as a policy person or they're working, you know, and you see them doing creative stuff and they're online and they're telling you about their jobs, reach out to them and ask them what's their lifestyle like? You don't have to ask them what they get paid and all that kind of stuff. But what's their lifestyle? Say, I want to have a very similar life like you. Can we sit down and chat? I'd love to hear what you did to get to attain this career and what to know about and what are the advantages and disadvantages because we always see the advantages, especially when we see, you know, stuff online. We see the fun stuff, but we don't see the behind the scenes stuff. And although there are very, there are a lot more creators who are very transparent with the type of work that they do and how much they not necessarily how much they are, but the lifestyle that they lead and everything and how difficult it is.

9:38 You know, there's still some people who make it look like everything's dreamy. And so I want people to really understand that attaining a job and attaining a career in marine science and conservation is very difficult, especially when you have a specific lifestyle that you want. And there are jobs that provide it that are more administrative and may managerial that will be able to get have great pay and or at least livable wages. But you know, there's a lot that aren't. And so knowing that I think it's important before you go into it. So it's just like a warning for all of you. I get a lot of parents who asked me, you know, high school students and things like that, that are are wondering, like, hey, I really did. My kid really wants to go into marine biology. Can you talk to them? I talked to them and they're very, you know, they're eager. They're ready to do whatever. But like, I don't know if they understand because like, how can you ask a high school kid to like say, hey, how do you want to live your life?

10:30 You're 35. It's very difficult to do, right? So a lot of times I talk to parents like, look, it's a very difficult thing to navigate because funding is not always constant. Changes all the time. A lot of the jobs are like within for months, not even years. So like it's very there's a high turnover rates with a lot of organizations. A lot of times there's volunteering involved. There's a lot of travel may not be that at the employees expense. Maybe at your own expense. You can get volunteering jobs and you can get internships where you pay people to get experience, but that's not always great for you and it costs a lot of money. So if you those who don't have a lot of money to do is kind of unfair for them, but they have to come up with that money to find that kind of that kind of experience, you know, so it's.

11:19 It's so hard. It is so hard to kind of figure that out. And I see a lot of a lot of people getting degrees from all over the world and then they travel to different parts of the world where is lower cost of living. They can work as a dive master. They can work in the eco tourism and still do science. There are some people who have become creators or consultants who have like almost like secondary jobs that help pay the bills so they can do their science and conservation work. And there's a lot of other people. We are in a very different stage than when I was 20 some odd years ago when I first started. Or you know, is really you needed a job to be to get money in this. You know, you couldn't just do a content creator and earn money from that and do the work that you want to do.

12:05 And you know, even with the content creation, if you get sponsored, you get people to pay you to do out science communication stuff. You have to be careful of who's paying you and why they're doing it. And if that's what you want and that's what you're ready to do. There's judgment that goes along with that. There's still a lot of myths that are involved with science communication, especially as quote unquote influencers or what I like to call content creators. Not a lot of people in science and conservation have a good experience or have a good outlook on people who are doing stuff online to make money and try and come up with their stuff, which that's their problem is not your problem. You do what you need to do to get your money and to be able to do what you want to do. I feel like we are in a time where we are in a good time to have like a separate kind of not necessarily a side hustle, but you can do both.

12:57 In content creation and really be able to push forward. But the real like the thing is what I want to cover today as well is like the work like so I have a job that so all my every time I do my podcasting has always come as a hobby. If you want to describe it as that. I always called it my full time job that I ever got paid for. I had sponsorships every once in a while, but nearly not nearly enough to go full time or not nearly enough to pay the bills. At one point I did quit one of my jobs, a very secure job to do this full time and to do some consulting as well on podcasting and the consulting didn't work out. I had to do full time and didn't know how to make money off of it.

13:42 You know, just didn't couldn't put it together. I went into big debt for about three years and then had to get a job in a very different fields in finance and public sector budgeting software and sass and all that kind of stuff. And I had to recoup from that. You know, you live in your learn right? And so, but now I have a job as an ocean communications manager. And if you go to the beyond jaws podcast a couple episodes ago, I did an episode where I talked about how I got this job, but I'll go into it here for those of you who haven't listened to that episode. I highly recommend you go there because I did talk a lot about it, but I had to put the work in and I had to be very patient.

14:27 You know, 16 years ago, I decided that I was going to go into science. I was going to do science communication. I eventually the all the thought was always to do it on my own and to do that as full time started off as a blog, did YouTube for those of you listening. You've you've heard the story before got into podcasting, start publishing, published my first episode 11 years ago and haven't stopped since. I'm almost at 2000 episodes. I've done interviews like well over 1000 interviews and the rest have been solo episodes. I've changed up my frequency. I've done all I've tried to get sponsors. I've done all I've done a lot within this content creation business. I love it. I will never regret it because it opened up a lot of opportunities for me. And the reason it did that is because I was doing this on my own.

15:11 And the first time I got a taste of it wasn't necessarily for myself, but I was doing I was doing this podcast. It was like my first year doing this podcast like the first couple of years and a friend of mine, Nathan Johnson, who I didn't know before this became a friend after forever friends. And he was working in like a for a conservation organization in Texas and he reached out to me, said, Hey, I want to get into more writing. I see that you're doing episodes. I would love to your show notes. Perfect. Let's do this. Okay. This is great. So we started to work together. Then we started to get on the podcast together. He worked with me for with me on for like a year and a half, two years, I think got to know each other. He was a great guy. Still is a great guy. And he got a job and I was one of his references because he asked me to be running his references because he dedicated a lot of his spare time to doing this podcast.

16:06 And I told the person in like the reference and hey, like this guy's does this for fun. You know, talking about science, we would do like an ocean talk Friday and we would do all this kind of stuff together. He did it for fun. He did it because he loved it. And he got better at communicating because of it. And he got a job that was partly internal communications with donors for a very big organization in ocean conservation. And look, the guy was amazing. Would he have gotten the job otherwise? Probably. But this was just icing on the cake. When the person is like, I really needed to know this. Like the person who asked me for the reference. She said, I really need to know that I really needed to know this is great to hear. Like he's very dedicated to what he does. And I said, absolutely. He's very dedicated. So that was the first taste I had of someone getting an opportunity from podcasting. Not to say that it brought him that, but it helped him solidify the job.

17:00 The guy was amazing anyway. He did amazing. He still does amazing and he would have done well whether he had my reference or not, but it helped because when employers see that you're willing to dedicate time outside of work, like for free as your hobby or doing something within the ocean conservation world. If you're trying to get an ocean conservation job, it helps. It helps to show that you have that initiative and that motivation to help you get to what you want to do in your life and in your job. Right. That's dedication. That's loyalty. And I started to get some of that as well through different opportunities. I went out to a couple of conferences over the years. I got flown out to one of them. I got a free stay. That was great. I got a job offer from it. Actually two job offers because then and I took both of them.

17:49 The first one didn't work out. This one worked out or is working out so far. I got TV show roles, multiple. Like I've done four or five now. If you count all the seasons and everything. So like all these opportunities over these years have really benefited me. Right. And it benefited me and some paying gigs. It benefited me and some like opportunities to be in a, in front of a wider audience. It just helped in a lot of ways. And that has continued through over time to build my name up and build what I've been able to do. I didn't know anything about science communication before I started. I knew nothing. I didn't know about storytelling. I didn't know about the technical aspects of like podcasting, YouTubing and all that kind of stuff. I didn't know any of that.

18:39 And now I'm at a point now where I'm working as an ocean communications manager. Now back then I wouldn't have like 16 years ago, I would not have been able to get a job in science communication. I just did not have the knowledge. I did not have the thing. I love talking about the ocean. Right. And I always had like some talent for it that I didn't even realize at that point. And even science communication wasn't like the biggest job back then. It was a lot of hobbyists. You know, you had deep sea news. You had Southern fried science. You had a couple of others. We had conferences and stuff like that. But people weren't really dedicated to that. They weren't getting paid for it full time. Now you're seeing more and more people getting paid for it. You had communications people, but they weren't like science communicators. And now we're starting to see more and more of that through organizations and stuff. And so when I started looking around my this new opportunity for me was was great because the person who hired me Natalie Gilson, who I work for.

19:26 with the people I work for she contacted me like three or four years ago through the podcast. She heard my podcast. We were both living in Ontario at the time. She reached out to me. Said, hey, you know I'm a marketer. I own my own business. I'm looking to get into oceans. It kind of had like I wanted to have more impact. And I would love to talk to you. Had her on the podcast. We talked about science communication. We talked about communication and conservation marketing and all that kind of stuff. We had a great conversation. We had a great conversation with a It went really well. We've been able to hit it off. Like we've done projects together. We've talked a lot and it's been great. And then when she approached me earlier this March to work for her, it was just like, it was an easy yes, to be honest.

20:12 It was an easy yes. Everything fell in line. And the work I do now is a dream. It's a dream job because I've been working at it for so long. And my point of all this is that I had to work for it for so long. I didn't know if an opportunity would show up. I didn't know if I would get paid to do something. I didn't know that I was going to get TV shows because of it or offers for TV shows because of it. I didn't know any of that. All I knew is I knew what I wanted to do. I knew that I love to talk about the ocean. For me, my personal life, like just personal choices had kept me in Ontario, which was very difficult to do ocean conservation.

20:52 And so I started this podcast to stay in connection with my colleagues and my friends. I also talk about the ocean all the time and stay up on the news and all the new research and everything like that. And almost two episodes later and three million downloads, I've been able to, you know, and a new job and a lot more friends that I had in like ocean conservation. I've been able to travel a lot more than I ever thought I would have. This has been a dream. It's hard work. There's no doubt about that. I did this long, long hours at night, you know, as a dad, I did coaching and all that kind of stuff, but this was always there and I always had to put episodes out and it was difficult, you know, and it's easier now, but it's still always, sometimes it's difficult to go through all this, the work that you have to go through to get everything out there and the money I've spent on this has just got ridiculous. You know, I'm definitely net negative in terms of the money, but it made it for me.

21:51 Personally, it was a fun thing. Like it was something that I enjoyed and something that I looked to, to, to build on, you know, I don't think I'll ever stop podcasting. There's, there's no way I'll ever stop. And, and although I go through changes in my storytelling and putting a script together or using different software to, to record and I have lights and I have camera and I try and do YouTube now and all that kind of stuff as things evolve, I'm in a great place. Cause I know what the content that I want to talk about and I know that people like it and I know that I love doing it and it's gotten me a job because of it. It's got me back into ocean communications where if I stayed in Ontario, I probably wouldn't have worked in ocean communications ever again, right?

22:38 Or anything ocean ever again. So this has allowed me to work in the dream scenario. I get to work from home. I get to be around the kids a lot. I get to be around my family. I get to work in oceans every single day, hours. I don't even care about how many hours I work anymore. Like I work more than eight hours a day, but I love it. It's like, it's, it's fun for me. And, and this is like the great opportunity, but it came with a lot of hard work. And, and the one of the major points of this episode is you might have to put in extra work, whether you're doing this, uh, paying to do that extra work or you're getting paid to do that extra work or you're doing it for free or with a net negative cause you have to invest in some equipment or anything like that.

23:24 I'm not saying you have to start a podcast or do content creation, but you have to show people who you are and what you do because resumes are not going to cut it as much anymore. Now a good resume for a good job that you apply for and that you qualify for that will work eventually. But the way resumes are going in the way we are applying for jobs and with AI and everything like that, the game has changed folks. It's harder to get through to get that interview than it has ever been. And so networking or putting your name out there to become a little bit more popular opportunities will come. They may not come in what you expect them to come in the form that you expect them to come in, but they will arrive at some point in time.

24:08 If you continue to put something out there that will really help you. And it might take a couple of people to recognize that like key people to recognize that, but I'm going to tell you it's going to be worth your while. And I, and it's hard work, but that's what's, that's what it takes to get there. And, and to do that as an analogy, to kind of come up with an analogy is, you know, when, when, um, blogging first started, uh, you know, when you, the first couple of people who did blogging, they were amazing. They were awesome because people listened to them all the time or read them all the time because they were the only ones that around it was new.

24:50 People were just getting onto it. And then over time, more and more people started blogging about everything. And, and so we had like thousands and even millions of blog sites because everybody had a blog, even now people start blogs. And, and, and so it got so congested with information. That it was harder to stand out. Same thing happened with YouTube. Same thing happened with podcasts. When first, when the first couple of people came up with podcasts, like Joe Rogan, as much as you might hate the content that he puts out and him himself, I guess, uh, when he, he was one of the first people who started podcasting in like 2006, 2007, 2008. And he's continued to do that. Now he has been quite successful for a lot of different reasons and we don't have to get into those.

25:36 But you know, he has been able to, like he started from the beginning. So he stood out and he has celebrities and stuff like, so he stands out even more when I first came out with my podcast in 2015, I was a little late to the party because it had started in 2018. There was a bit of a renaissance in 2014 and 2012, and then it started to really grow as I started to go, I had way more listeners and downloads than I ever did before now with algorithms and everything like that, they may not have been like the perfect, you know, this, the most accurate number. But over time I was accruing a lot of people because not a lot, there weren't a lot of ocean podcasts. Now I was going around professing, like people should start an ocean podcast and your own voice and your own way and discuss what you want. And more and more people started and more and more people just podcasts in general, just balloon, like there are over 4 million podcasts.

26:25 The last stat that I heard a few years ago. Now only 400,000 of those have put out episodes in the last 90 days, but there are 4 million. So there's so many podcasts, it's hard to compete with all those podcasts and all of the variety of topics that are out there. So, you know, the, the, it's difficult to get ahead, it's difficult to stand out and you, you have to continue to do it in consistency and get making sure your show is better and better and, and keep continue to work on it, continue to reach new audiences and everything like that. But the real thought of it is, is it was, you know, you eventually have to compete with everything and you have to, in the longevity of your podcast, you have to outwork everybody else that that's going to give up because they're not getting the traction that they want.

27:08 Because it's not about the listeners. I mean, I always do it for the listeners. Don't get me wrong. But it's not all about how many listeners you have. It's about the quality of listeners. Right. Now I have had people, sponsors who have come on this podcast, talked about their organizations and everything like that. They would pay me to come on to do regular, you know, series. And I said, look, I don't have like a huge numbers. And they said, Andrew, it's not about the numbers. It's about the type of people that are on the podcast. It's, it's your audience that makes up that are engaged listeners, right? Your audience, a lot of them are into the business themselves. Plus those who aren't and they want to know more. Your audience is just quality audience. And that's what we're willing to pay to get in front of. And that's great. Right. But it's, it's like the hard work that goes through it. And then it's the, it's not just about the listeners in the audience. It's about the opportunities that come from who's listening in the audience and who has that foresight to be like, Oh, like Andrew's great. We really like, we'd love him for him to do this kind of stuff. We'd love him to do this kind of stuff. Now I've talked to people about various projects here and there and doing all this kind of stuff. Great opportunities that never amount to anything because that happens, you know, things change and that's okay. But I've, I would never had those opportunities presented to me if I didn't get in front of this microphone and I didn't speak to you right now. And so if you're, if you're looking to get in to marine science and conservation, you have to be willing to put in the work, whether you want a job or not, or whether you think you deserve a job or not, or you have all the qualifications, get above and beyond,

28:39 make sure you stand out. Because there's a lot of different ways you can stand out. It doesn't have to be content creation. I'm using that as an example because I mean, look at the theme. It's my 11th year of publishing podcasts, but like that's the difference. Get out ahead and be careful what you talk about too, because if you get out ahead for the wrong reasons, nobody's going to want to hire you. So be careful of that. But if you do it properly and you get out ahead, whether you're doing a project or you do a couple of projects, like Andrew Thaler builds the open CTD, just released a new version of the open CTD. You know, like Angelo Villagomas had a blog that was, that was people were reading it from halfway across the world, standing out with great content.

29:23 You know, David Shippen was on Twitter and talking like about sharks and everything like that, you know, Melissa Marquez, social media, like Queen in terms of what the content was, you know, getting on National Geographic, getting on Shark Week, all that kind of stuff. All these, like Diva Amman, same thing, National Geographic and doing all these shows, they just, the talent they come with and the willing that they're willing to, the fact that they're willing to put themselves out there and put the work in to do all this kind of stuff allows them to get the opportunities, puts them in a place to get those opportunities.

30:04 So for a lot of people who are trying to get jobs out of university or they're trying to get jobs, like it's been a couple of years since they haven't been able to find anything, don't give up. Right. But come up with ways to stand out, network, invest in going to conferences. I know it's expensive. I know it can be expensive. Invest, go with a friend to make it cheaper, to stay in a place where you can both stay and go and invest in that time. Go meet people face to face, have conversations if you're looking for a job, you're looking for employers. Don't go asking for a job and asking, what do you do? What do you do? This is what I do and network your butt off and make those connections and build on those relationships when you get home.

30:44 Reach out to them on LinkedIn, on social media, via email, help them out with anything they have. Work some free projects every once in a while if you need to. I remember doing statistical analysis for people that they probably had no business doing statistical analysis for, but they needed the help and I would help them out. You have to set yourself apart from everybody else and you have to put yourself out there to show the work that you're going to do. And people just don't get it this time. You can't come out in university and think that you deserve a job. Yes, you have a professional degree and you should be paid for the work that you do. I don't want to get caught into scams about paying for, you know, for experience.

31:27 You know, that's a business model that predates on a lot of young students and it excludes a lot of young students who do not have the money, including myself. I did not have the money to do that kind of stuff. I dreamt about doing it, but I didn't have the money. But you should be able to do that type of work and get paid for it. It's as harder to compete for that those jobs. You have to be ready. You have to consult with other marine biologists and conservationists of how did you get a job? What the resume should look like? All this kind of stuff. But don't expect getting a job right out of school. I don't care what your university says. There's no like mass retirement. That was that's been said since I was a student. Everybody was supposed to retire. The baby moos are supposed to retire. Oh, hit a recession. Nobody's retiring. Right.

32:11 They need the money. You know, you got to go out and you got to work for that job. Your university career as much as it costs. Right. As much as hard of work you put in. Everybody's putting in the same amount of work. Everybody deserves that type of job. How much more are you willing to do? Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to put a little bit of investment into a content creation studio or something like that? There are people out there that I admire that I respect that are young scientists, young biologists, young conservationists who are on TikTok almost every day talking and talking about their jobs, talking about what they do, talking about what they want to do, doing education things on the beach, doing beach cleanups and showing their journey and being very transparent and very real.

32:54 And I admire respect the people. And when they get the opportunities, they may not have a huge following, but when they get the opportunities presented to them, they take them and they work at that and they build that experience. So this is a long episode, 30 minutes. I apologize, but it's the 11th anniversary of the podcast. It was actually yesterday, if you're listening to this on the 23rd, it was actually the 22nd. And I just realized it to be honest. Time goes fast. It's a busy time of year for me. But yeah, this is great. I want to thank you for coming. I want to thank you for listening to not only this episode, but all the episodes that you've listened to. This has been like a real treat to be able to do this. I'm going to continue for 11 plus more years. But this has been like a huge treat in being able to bring this information to you, to be able to for you to listen and with of my thoughts and my opinions and the work that I'm doing.

33:46 You know, I really appreciate that work. And if you appreciate it and you want to support it, you can do so by going to speak up for blue.com slash Patreon. I've revamped my Patreon page. There's a couple of different, there's only a couple of different tiers that you can do. There's one where you just want to support us as a producer, like for producing the content, just support us as a show. That's great. Or if you want to do more, we can get together. Once we get enough people, we can get together like once a month, have discussions, talk about what I'm going to be doing lately, all that kind of stuff. I'm going to be sharing some things to new episodes that I'm coming up for ocean decoded. Like I post on YouTube. I post on these podcast apps. I post, I do newsletters. I do tweets. I do TikToks. I do Instagram.

34:29 I got my content machine. And if you want to support that, that would be great. I really appreciate that. And of course, if you want to be a part of that, you can go a little higher, support a little higher rate. But but really the support that you give me by listening to this episode is absolutely phenomenal. If you want to do that more, you want to go higher. That's speak up for blue dot com slash Patreon. But I want to thank you so much for listening to this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.