Why Nearshore Ocean Conservation Is Critical for Climate, Biodiversity, and Communities

1:00:00 Protection of the ocean for the last couple of decades has really focused on area based protection. So how much of an area can we protect? What is the percentage? And over the last decade or so, we've been really focusing on protecting 30% of ocean and land by 2030. So 30 by 30, commonly known as 30 by 30. This is something that's been a big focus, area based focus. But a lot of the times it's focused on the offshore area, not the near shore area. And there's a new paper that was published by the Center of American Progress called the near shore ocean progress. It's a document that really highlights people who have been in communities who have been doing more near shore local conservation. And that's going to be the subject of today's podcast, because we're going to be talking about why it's important to also focus on the near shore as well as the offshore.

1:00:46 Some of the challenges, some of the successes have come through it. And we're going to talk about some of the projects that have been going on in there and some of the reasons why we should go more locally these days and not always depend on federal resources. And we're going to talk about some of the things that we should do in that regard. So we're going to talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. And this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you 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've got a special one for you today because we have guests from the Center of American Progress. We've had some of these people on before from this organization, like a think thing that talks a lot about ocean conservation, ocean protection.

1:01:27 We're going to be going from 30 by 30 and into the near shore and why protecting the near shore is really important. We have Dr. Alia Hadiat, who's here to talk about the document as well as Angelo Villagomez, friend of the podcast. And Alia is going to be here a number of times as well. I've invited her back a couple of times to talk to us in the future about not only near shore, but stuff that's coming out of the Center of American Progress. You're going to love both of them and how they are talking about this stuff. We're going to talk a lot about why it's important to protect the near shore, who's involved in protecting the near shore, some of the challenges, some of the successes that we've seen before in protecting the near shore, and a lot of other stuff that talks about, you know, new federal policies that are coming out in the US and why it's important to really focus on a local.

1:02:10 But not always. That's the reason is we've always had to focus on local. So we're going to be talking about a document that's been worked on for the last two years and where it's going to go in the future. So I want you to listen to this interview carefully. It's not going to be the last time we talk about this. Here is Dr. Alia Hadiat and Angelo Villagomez talking about near shore ocean progress. Enjoy the interview and I'll talk to you after. Hey, Alia. Hey, Angelo. Welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I almost messed it up there. Are you ready to talk about near shore conservation? Yeah, let's do it. Why I'm here, man. All right. I'm excited for this because this is something that's been it's very close to my heart. It's very close to all of our hearts because when we look out at a lake or at the ocean, we look out a lot of times, not necessarily from a boat, but we look out from the coast and you always want to see a nice coastline.

1:03:00 You always want to you don't want to see green water. You don't want it to smell. You don't want to see pollution. You want to see beautiful water, but that hasn't been the focus for the last little bit. We've we've heard the 30 by 30 rule, you know, protect 30 percent of the ocean and land by 2030. But we haven't really talked a lot about the coastal area, the near shore area. And it seems to always get more into the deep, which is fine. Obviously, it's needed, but we always need to protect the near shore where we are and where we have the most disturbance. So I'm looking forward to getting into this. Why such a shift? There's a there's a new paper out that that's on your website as well. People can download it and people go in. From my understanding, you've been talking about it at conferences and so forth.

1:03:43 So we're here to talk about it today. But before we do, I want to get to know all the ideas the first time you're on the podcast. Angel's been on the podcast. We'll remind that we'll get Angela to remind people who he is and what he does. But I want you to let us know who you are and what you do. All right. Thanks, Andrew. This is really exciting. This is I think my first podcast recording. I love it. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm Ali. I'm a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress with Angelo working on conservation policy and ocean conservation. Before this, I actually got a PhD in ocean science in the impacts of climate on human health and then ended up coming to policy after realizing that, hey, a lot of ocean problems are not science problems or research problems.

1:04:29 So a couple of years ago, made a pivot into ocean policy, started move to D.C. and started here. So I have to ask this question because my daughter is in grade 12. She is going to university for wildlife biology. She wants to be a biologist and I've talked to her about policy and the importance of policy, but she's on like one track mind. I want to work with animals. So for you going into science, what was your like, what was this type of science? What were you doing? Were you were like, were you doing science on specific animals or was it like habitats or like oceanography? What was it about? Yeah, no, I think that's sort of the I think bringing marine biologists is a very glamorous position.

1:05:12 I think like what when you think of like kids, like what you want to do, like as a child, I feel like it's marine biologists or astronaut. They actually caught that bug early. And I imagine sort of the science and research career to be. And so during my PhD, I worked with zebrafish and looked at the effects of our flowers. So red tide by other types of purple algae on the brain. So it's still extremely fun. I love science, but it's also really difficult work. And it's a lot of being able to troubleshoot and run into all again and again and again and solve problems. I think I really enjoyed the research aspect of it. But again, as I mentioned, so much of the problems that we're facing right now are not research problems.

1:05:54 Science can help us understand them. But we really need to bring people along and convince our policymakers and the community that they represent to get on board with these solutions. So made a clear pivot towards that. I think your daughter definitely like has like I love that interest. That's really exciting. Yeah. Just increasing that hate like the ocean and the animals that live in it and all that ecosystems are really exciting. Think about what are the most effective ways that we as people can help support them and keep them safe. And a lot of those solutions that are policy solutions. Yeah, especially when you're talking about harmful algal blooms to write it kind of hits you right in the face of what you need to do to get over that. And I find a lot of people who come up through the ranks of academia and they and they do marine biology or wildlife biology or more research on on specific biology research questions pivot to policy.

1:06:43 But was that a difficult thing for you to do? Like, you know, you're always when you're a kid, were you imagining always working with animals? And then as you as you mature through the academic process and you start to see and you start to kind of get enlightened. I always called it when I got it when I started to get into conservation. Was it a hard to pivot to that or was it something like, no, I this is where I need it. Yeah, I think it was definitely a learning process. I think I definitely had that image of my head of working on a boat diving being out in nature a lot more and you don't realize that, hey, I'm a couple years into my PhD and I'm spending most of my time in a lab or working in Python. I think that's not necessarily a bad thing.

1:07:25 I think all those skills are really important. And that's that's how real science works. But yeah, I think there is definitely a transition into what what does this actually look like? What is a science career in science actually look like in the day to day? And that's different than what you might imagine as a kid. And I think it's where from my position now it's I think it was definitely took a little bit to see how being I work in office nine to five and in in DC far away from the ocean. But I still think that the work that we do is really important even if we're not interacting with that every day. And so, yeah, I think there's definitely like a little bit of a switch to see that type of job is still really important, even if it doesn't look like what you would imagine as a wildlife biologist or a marine biologist.

1:08:14 It's important work. It's probably one of the most important works we do as conservationists and as scientists really is to make sure that we can enact the stuff that we identify as the problems in science to make sure we get through. Angela, you've been doing this for quite some time now and working a lot of policy and and working with different groups and working in offices and also being out and traveling the world and stuff. What are your when you first started your career? Let's go way back. You and I were about the same. We're the same age going way back. I'm not sure if you remember when you first started and then coming into policy, like, how do you find your career shifting and going into more. I mean, you were you were always into conservation. Right. Like you.

1:08:54 And so where you're at now with some of the things that you're kind of leading and pushing in terms of policy, how do you find your work now, like at this stage of your career? Well, I'm a large marine mammal. I don't know if you knew that. So to a certain degree, Alia does work with animals every single day. It's in an office and it's with a boat. But I also you know, when I was in high school, I wanted I like the only thing I thought I could be was a scientist like the other things just did not excite me. And in the 1990s, the things that were offered to me were either chemistry, physics or biology.

1:09:36 You kind of had to pick between those three. And I gravitated. I started with physics, which I hated because it was all math. And then I I'm actually good at math. I just didn't want to do it for my entire life. But then I pivoted into biology. And that's kind of where I discovered conservation because I learned that you know, you could you could spend your entire life studying beetles, naming them and learning what they do. But then a multinational, a multinational corporation could come in and cut down your rank for the weekend. And your life's work would be over. So that kind of made me think about what I was going to do. And I started knocking on doors for political campaigns in college.

1:10:36 And I was always stabbed by that mysterious I love, which is you guys are on this podcast today to talk about, you know, how policies need to switch. Now for the last, I would say good, like five, six years even, we've been really focusing on 30 by 30.

1:11:20 So protecting 30% of water and 30% of land by 2030. Regimes shift, you know, administration shift, they change. There's still a focus on that, still talking about that. Whether we're going to be able to get that from a, from an international perspective, like a worldwide perspective, that's still to be debated. And it seems like as we get closer and closer to the 2030 time, it doesn't look like we'll get there, but we'll get better than what we were before. But, you know, now with everything that's happening in the US, you know, there's, there's a shift away from conservation. You know, Angela, where is the 30 by 30 sort of, I guess, not activism or advocacy, but the trying to push 30 by 30.

1:12:08 Where is that at right now in the US with these changes with the government? So first of all, I think you're absolutely right. This shift in conservation priorities has always happened, you know, for the last hundred years, you know, back in Teddy Roosevelt days, and he was the American president in the early 1900s. He created all these national parks because he wanted scenic landscapes. And we still love scenic landscapes, and we love to go there and take our Instagram photos. But it's not the driving reason why we do conservation today. And the conservation movement has always changed every 10 or 15 years with Rachel Carson's book in the 1960s. Aldo Leopold before that. And then like when you and I were growing up was all about save the whales, you know, fix the save the ozone layer.

1:12:55 Save the rainforest. And then, you know, climate change kind of became much more important in the 2000s. And then after 2020, it was equity and justice because of the murder of George Floyd. So I, you know, before I even answer that question, this change is good. And we the conservation community has talked about these area targets for literally decades. If you look back at David Brower, who led the Sierra Club in the 1960s and 70s, the Sierra Club was talking about protecting 10% of the land back in the 1960s. So it's not a new idea, but what changed is it became the primary, it became the bumper sticker slogan for about, I would say about 10 years, because when I worked for the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2016, we were actually the ones who sponsored that resolution at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

1:13:48 So I helped draft that resolution and recruited the other 20 sponsors negotiated the language. So like for a good decade, 30 by 30 has been it. And if you if you if you browse people's websites today, they talk about we have to achieve 30 by 30, which is 30% of lands and oceans by 2030. But if you really start to pick apart some of these, like the arguments for 20, the arguments for 30 by 30, at its core, what it really means is we need more conservation we need better conservation and we need faster conservation. And then I would add in there in the last five years, it's we need more equitable and just conservation. So I don't think that 30 by 30 is coming to the coming to an end.

1:14:32 I think we're going to continue to use area targets as a metric. You know, you're still going to want to know we're going to talk about kelp, right? You're going to want to know how much kelp is protected because that's going to help managers with their their decisions on how to manage it. But it's not going to be the goal. It's not going to be it's not going to be the thing at the top of your paper. It's and you know, the funny thing about this paper that we just proposed is that we haven't come to agreement around what that thing is. Like there's these all of these targets and in 2030, and in 2031, we're going to need a new bumper sticker. And I don't think there's agreement yet as to what that bumper sticker is. And I think different different organizations are kind of hovering around what it might be.

1:15:16 The World Wildlife Foundation talks about nature positive. I just went to the Tiyaki Moana conference with Tiyaki in sort of like guardian and Moana means ocean. So I think there's this combination of people and nature and equity and justice, but also strong and good conservation that is that is well designed and implemented. And I've literally just spent like several minutes talking about what could go down on a bumper sticker and you know, and some brilliant person is going to offer something at some moment. And that's what the 2030s will be about. And so that that's what I hope this report helps begin that discussion of, you know, 30 by 30 has been great. It's raised ambitions.

1:16:00 More money is pouring into the conservation movement than ever. It's inspired people. You've got presidents, you know, Joe Biden talked about 30 by 30 in his state of the union. When has that ever happened in the United States? So like it's been incredibly great. You know, so but what have we learned? You know, post most of the science for 30 by 30 is from the 2000s and the 2010s. And it doesn't really take into account everything that happened after George Floyd. So, you know, so much science and so much learning and experience has happened in the 2020s. How do we take that and come up with the next thing? And that's the question that we're asking.

1:16:42 And I think it's great because I think, you know, one of the concerns I remember when all this was happening when the 2030 was being proposed. I remember here in Canada, the federal government under Trudeau was like, we're going to increase ours. And we were at like 1% at the time or 1.5% and he increased it or his government increased it to like 15% within a few years. And so the big the big worry was like, are these going to be like properly protected or are they just picking random areas like the low hanging fruit? Like, you know, we picked Arctic areas, which, you know, Angela, you've talked about this on huge stages before where we we tend to go to indigenous places to be able to protect those places because there there tend to be larger coverages and you tend to get more area.

1:17:26 But are they really, you know, talking about justice and equity and equitability in in their equity in these areas? Are they really where we need to focus or do we need to focus in areas where there's a little bit more controversy, a little bit more action in terms of disturbance in terms of really where we need to get that conservation. So I really like that sort of the evolution of conservation, how it's going. It's not to say that 30 by 30 sucked into it. It didn't do anything. It obviously did a lot and it made us learn a lot. And then with all these things that happened, such as, you know, the unfortunate events of what happened to George Floyd and then what happened after that, we started to really push on this. Now, I have to ask this.

1:18:06 I'm in Canada. You know, I'm here sitting sitting above you, sitting above you guys geographically and looking down and and, you know, the the the definite focus has been, you know, when we look at conservation is is justice, equity, inclusion. But then, of course, you know, this administration comes in in the U.S. And it says, yeah, well, well, D.I. is gone. It's over like everybody. And here in Canada is kind of resonated with a lot of people. It's like we're not doing that anymore. This is this is all B.S. And we're not doing this. But we've really found a good thing in conservation. Like, obviously, I'm not saying that D.I. was was worth nothing. It's obviously it's still there. It's not disappeared just because one person says so or a couple of people say so.

1:18:48 And it's still needed. It's still it's still good for us. In conservation, especially, because now we're really starting to dive into community management and so forth. How is is that being met in the conservation community when you have an ally? Maybe you can comment on this. And when you have such of like a controversy here or like a conflict between what the federal government is saying and then what the conservation community is saying, what we need to move forward with. Yeah, that's a really good question. A really hard question. I'd say that one of the cool things about the nearshore framework and the concept of moving nearshore in general with our conservation focus is that it's like you mentioned a really fundamental shift in what our goals are for conservation, what it's getting to do.

1:19:38 I think to go back to what Angela was saying, there was a time period for Teddy Roosevelt where a lot of the focus was on putting nature and protecting it and safeguarding it away from where people are and nature is something that you go and visit. And today with this report, we want to really encourage people to see nature as something that works for people, works for coastal communities in addition to ecosystems. So this means helping protect coastal communities from effects of storms and flooding, helping provide livelihoods, economic benefits, important part of culture or religious connection for some communities. All of these are aspects of nature and coastal communities that are really important and I think our focus as conservation professionals should focus there.

1:20:26 So I think one nice thing about moving nearshore away from those really large, tragic protected areas is that you're putting nature within reach of people and make putting your protections where people can see them and experience them and benefit from them. So even though for my frustration, a lot of people are walking away from DEI promises and interest in equity, I think that there's still a lot of benefits that can be provided to communities that have historically not been able to access nature who have not been able to benefit from nature. I just shifting our focus conservation. So while I would love to be a place where there's a strong federal commitment to the AI and saying this principle is out loud, I think one of the benefits of shifting focus is that there's going to be benefits for sort of underserved communities, even if you have to fly under the radar a little bit. Does it also help that when you start to talk about nearshore, you're starting to talk about state jurisdiction instead of federal jurisdiction.

1:21:29 And so certain states, I'm not saying all states, but certain states might be more likable and more agreeable with this type of equity justice, sort of DEI type of work that will really focus conservation in the nearshore. Angela, do you find that is a benefit in this situation when the federal government may not be willing to work as hard to do these conservation goals? I mean, the real answer is we were going to do this regardless who won the president election. Trump didn't win and we said, oh, we need to pivot to nearshore. We've been working on this for two years. Now, it would have looked slightly different under Biden and Trump has ended 30 by 30. So let's not get ourselves. That's true.

1:22:12 30 by 30 is over at the federal level and then many DEI initiatives while may not overturned or under attack by Trump. And Trump is a guy who loves to build walls. He loves to build walls between peoples. And right now what they're doing is they're building walls to keep women and people of color who are qualified to participate in these positions. And he's building those walls back up. And America has always had those walls. You know, we've only allowed white women to vote in this country for 100 years. And America turns 250 next year. So it's for 150 years. White women were not allowed to vote and then only for 100 years. So less than half the time that this country has been a country.

1:23:03 And so, you know, indigenous peoples have been able to vote for less than 100 years. The territories are still considered savages like officially by the Supreme Court. So like there's the Biden administration had done a lot of work to break down the barriers that keep qualified people out of positions.

1:23:50 And so, you know, I think that's what we're going to look at. I think what's going on there is an Nightmare's Day this year. I actually saw he was in a group of brown faces and I thought I knew what Miles'] Everybody is going to be the king and I know you can say this what Miles' mom person said. going to work there. You know, with these doge cuts that are happening, I think NOAA has already lost 28% of its staff that worked there in December. And then the number for the Department of Interior was in my head. But in the last 60 seconds, it departed my head.

1:24:32 But it's in the double digits. Yeah, it's insane. And they're not done like they're more cuts are coming to our federal government. And you just think about the people who work there. And the literal the centuries of experience that these hundreds and thousands of people who had, and like, just imagine you worked at a restaurant, you know, if you work at a restaurant, and you know, so what they've already done is they fired all of the young waiters and all of the young cooks who are doing, you know, chopping the vegetables, right? Or they're doing the side work. And then they forced all of your senior waiters, your senior managers and your senior cooks to retire. Like who's left? And what has that done to the culture of your business, right?

1:25:14 You know, these people have people, if you want to get good stuff out of your employees, they have to they have to like to work there. And so just sort of like at, at all angles, conservation is being attacked, the federal government is cutting the funding, they're cutting the staff, they're destroying the culture of some of these places, they're deleting databases of information, you know, wiping it off so that people can't even access this kind of stuff. So we have to work with the states because of Trump. Yeah, but at the same time, I do think a lot of work had already gone into thinking about this. And, you know, hopefully Trump is just a temporary thing, you know, three to four years. But but I do think we will, this will be a big part of the conversation in the 2030s. Like how, how do we capture the bio biodiversity that is near shore, the cultures that have emerged and live with this nature near shore. And Lenfest did a has this thing called the biodiversity dialogues that they did with Smithsonian. And they published a paper last year and found that if you look at the United States network of marine protected areas, and compared it to where all the biodiversity is, there's almost a complete mismatch. And you know, that that paper was published a year ago. And again, several years of work went into getting it to publication. So this is there's a reality that Trump is president. And he's like just undermining everything that we care

1:26:44 about. At the same time, this work has been ongoing for many, many years now. And, you know, I think the thing that take off your listeners is that America is being forced to deal with this five years ahead of everybody else. So what lessons are we going to learn? And what lessons can we share with the rest of the world? Because it was forced on us, whereas the rest of the world is going to hopefully be able to deal with it more on their own timelines. But this is a thing. This is something that the conservation movement has been discussing for many, many years. And what we've done, and we've been on the phone for like 25 minutes, and we haven't even talked about the report yet.

1:27:27 So let's go ahead and start that recording right now. This is all pretext is there's all of this work happening all across the country in the United States. And what we've tried to do is just highlight some of that to give people some hope. Yeah, because it's not over. Ocean conservation has not ended. We're still thousands of people out there doing great work. And here are some examples. And what can we learn from each other? And what can we do on what's working well on the West Coast? How can we adopt it on the East Coast and vice versa? And that's basically what we hope the crux of this report will contribute to the national conversation. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like how did this all begin with this near shore focus? Like, you know, Angela mentioned, you guys have been working on this for two years.

1:28:16 Where did all this, where did it all start from and getting into that purpose? Yeah, I'd say to answer that and to build off what Angela was. There's so much great work already being done at the state and local level that doesn't rise to the same level attention as some of the federal sort of large and more glamorous conservation actions. And we thought that that was a challenge one because we don't want to reinvent the wheel. We want to learn from these successes that are being happening at a smaller level. And I think there's a lot of important lessons that can be learned from there. So I think that the desire to one, not reinvent the wheel and to take those lessons and try and replicate them on a larger scale and figure out how we can better support states and local organizations in this really great conservation work that they're doing was the motivating factor. And at the same time, recognizing that a lot of this work is paving the way for how we can build on top of 30 by 30. So like we discussed earlier, there are blind 30 by 30 does a lot of things well.

1:29:23 It does have some blind spots and a lot of those blind spots are in the near short areas that are within state jurisdictions. So I think as Angelo said, even if Trump was not elected president, those waters are still within the control of states. And you have to work with them and have to understand how things are working at a much smaller level in order to be able to functionally do conservation at that scale. So I think we always knew that that was the direction that we had to head in. I think the presidency really just put some of that into focus. And I was trying to focus like prep for this answer. I was Angelo was talking, but also like getting mad. I started going into the judge cuts and all this because there's a real human impact of a lot of this. And as we were saying, hey, these states are doing great things and they can continue to do leadership in a time when there isn't a lot of federal leadership this level.

1:30:15 And so many of these projects rely on federal funding. They rely on support from NOAA staff who are now getting cut. And as well as at the same time as we can point to this as a place for hope and a place where leadership can still happen. I think it's also important to step back and see that even when you're looking at the state level, it's hard to avoid some of these federal impacts. And so I think it's important for the state to be able to be able to get a sense of this. And so I think it's important for the state to be able to be able to get a sense of this. And I think that that's something that we really ripple throughout this entire ecosystem. For sure. Absolutely. It's something that, you know, obviously has to get addressed. But to keep up with that hope of, you know, seeing areas conserved in the nearshore, how is it different from the area based conservation targets that we looked at with the 30 by 30?

1:31:14 Is there just no number? It's just, you know, whatever that local community wants to protect as what they define as what is important to them? Yeah, I think the interesting thing is that when you move near shore, you run into a whole different set of challenges, right? Instead of looking at certain these project remote areas, you're looking at, for example, we talked about the Chesapeake Bay in our report, which is 18 million people living in a much smaller area. And so you have to contend with the political context, the social context, and a lot of those impacts. So a lot of the strategy that works for larger, sort of more plastic areas won't work when you move in nearshore.

1:31:55 So you have this sort of challenge, but also a new opportunity to think of new metrics outside of acreage alone. So that's we've highlighted a couple of different things are a lot of different things in this report. But that looks like water quality measures, looks like individual, let's say, looking at the amount of certain habitat forming species like oysters or seagrass, really trying to get more creative with the metrics that we use. And part of that will be community input. So for example, how much of the simple, if we restore this seagrass meadow or the seagrass bed, how does that impact the production of crabs or fish that can then go be caught by fishermen and sold off and support local economies?

1:32:45 So there's definitely an interplay between coastal conservation and local communities. And I think the metrics will have to shift in order to sort of incorporate a larger set of benefits. I think what's great too, when you're looking at nearshore and a community that's been there for a long time compared to offshore is offshore, you may not have the history of what it looked like before you started to conserve it. You might have a little bit from say users that were using it, whether it be fishing or oil and gas or whatever. But near here, you have a coastal community that's probably been there for centuries, if more, knowing what was there before, why it disappeared. And so you know the benefits of having that seagrass meadow, that kelp forest or that oyster bed and knowing that, hey, there could be those stories are still around and people know that history.

1:33:34 There's a reason to put this back, not only from an ecological perspective, but also from a cultural perspective. But when you have that, when you have people in there, there tends to be a little bit more conflict in terms of how things should be done. So how with some of the examples that they've talked that that the report talked about, there's the Hawaii's and I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing this, Halamua Marine Initiative and there's Florida Track Rescue Project, Guam Green Growth Initiative. Is there a lot when it comes to near shore where more people are active and responding to it? Is there a lot more conflict at the beginning of this process when you bring all the stakeholders together or did that happen with some of these projects? Maybe just highlighting one or two, if you know more of that.

1:34:21 I mean, I guess like the big question is like we're asking the conservation community to ask themselves two questions. The first question is, what do you mean by conservation success? And Ali, I brought up this idea of like just different metrics and for a long time, success meant is it big? And I was a funder for a couple of years. And one of the most important metrics was is it big? And given the opportunity between funding something that was big and meaningless, meaning like there were no protections or tiny, but amazing. Most of the funders would pick big and meaningless. I have real world experience with that. The second question that we're asking them to reexamine is, who is this success for?

1:35:12 Right. So I was on a I was on a paper with Beth Pike last year. We looked at the hundred largest marine protected areas around the world. And two thirds of the highly to fully marine protected areas are in overseas territories and un-polite company. We call these colonies. And so most of the progress towards 30 by 30 has been in these colonies where the people are disenfranchised, but not disenfranchised, meaning like you're left out disenfranchised, meaning you don't vote. You don't have a vote on this. You don't vote for your president. You don't vote for the people who represent you in the national government. And most of the protected areas around the world, the big ones that contribute to the coverage, for the most part, have benefited the people in the capitals who asked for these things, the people who fly to international conferences to gloat about some of these big changes.

1:36:16 And so I think that's a really great question. And I think that's a really great question. And I think that's a really great question. And I think a number of people going back more than 10 years have asked the question, is that ethical? And then you point out, do we even know what's happening offshore? In a certain degree, we kind of do. The University of British Columbia has the Sea Around Us project where they have most of the fishing capture data from the last 60 or 70 years. So we actually know what type of fishing was taking place in most places around the world. And oh my gosh, I'm going to blank on this scientist's name. Veronica something, but she was at UBC under Daniel Polly. And she compared some of the fisheries data to when the EZs, the exclusive economic zones were designated versus to when the marine protected areas were designated.

1:37:09 And actually for a lot of these overseas territories in the 1980s and 1990s, international waters started at three miles. Right. So like around Guam, international waters started at three miles. And then when Ronald Reagan declared the EZ, it went out to 200 miles, which you can't even see the screen isn't that big. But there used to be lots of Japanese squid fishing happening in the Marianas. But when the US claimed that waters, all of the fishing was pushed out. And so and then 10, 20, 30 years later, when France had done the same thing in England and New Zealand and Mexico had done the same thing, these politicians came along and said, oh, here's an area with no fishing.

1:37:54 This is a place that's good for a protected area. Now, in the United States, this actually models the same story on land. In the 1920s, President Jackson forced all of the native people living on the east coast of the United States to move to Oklahoma. And that's the lots of American lands were deep people were forcibly removed in the 1820s. But then by the time John Muir came around in the 1870s and 1890s, these places were wilderness. Right. Nobody lives there. It's empty. And that's how we got most of our national parks is that these places where nobody lived, something got protected.

1:38:38 But the reality is is that something earlier had happened to force out the human connection. And, you know, there just aren't going to be there aren't many places in the world where you can create large land protected areas because people live there now and you would never think about for you. I mean, some people do think about it. But, you know, it's considered unethical to do that. Yeah. And on the water, you know, a lot of people don't know that the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea was ratified in 1994. I was in high school in 1994. But a lot of the people I work with were not alive in 1994. So, you know, they just kind of assume that it may be somebody on this call.

1:39:23 Call me out, Angela. It's an assumption that the ocean has always kind of been managed like this. But the point of it is that it wasn't. And, you know, other older cultures and again, you and I, American Canadian, we have a very American Canadian worldview, other cultures like France and Japan that have lived in landscapes for a lot longer have a very different relationship with nature when it comes to nature where people are. Right. You have a French countryside, which protects nature to a certain degree in a certain way. You have the Japanese park like Ken Rokowen is the great Japanese park.

1:40:05 If you know anything about that. And, you know, America is a young country. We're still kind of figuring some of these things out. And, you know, just as we've learned the importance of green spaces in cities, this is a report we're saying blue spaces on coastal areas are also critically important. And, you know, just as we had a period of time where we created these large protected areas on land, it just, you know, logically, it makes sense that there would be a period of time where we created these large spaces on the water. And for many years, I've postulated that that moment is coming to an end.

1:40:47 We've run out of colonies to protect. They're all protected. So now we need to work on blue spaces, blue spaces in coastal areas. How much more talent? I would love to jump in on that. I think Angela did a really good job of laying out what sort of the status quo was or the history of this very top down approach to conservation. So to flip it, one thing that we're really excited is the fact that moving your shore, it has to necessarily be bottom up. We talked to, I think, over 50, or we conducted 50, sorry, we collected 50 survey responses or interviews in the process of making this report.

1:41:27 And one thing that sort of a repeated theme throughout is that these projects are successful because they have buy in from the community. And there's no way to be successful if you don't have that. One, because that's what you're asking people to participate in the community and change their behavior, but also because people in the community know those ecosystems the best, as you said, they're because they're near it and experiencing it. They have a better sense of what will work and what won't. So I think that's one of the cool things that it's very democratic. And one of the things that gave me hope in doing this report is that even red states, blue states, when you're working at a more local level and people can experience, hey, if we preserve this ecosystem, this means a better catch for me or better tourism or I can enjoy the speech better. It's very personal to people and they're more willing to engage in those major changes.

1:42:23 So I think in addition to what you said about people can see sort of the historical record about what that habitat used to be. They know why it's important and that gives them like a personal stake about why they should be invested. So in. So I think rather than this really top down like coming from as Angela said the capital is people say, hey, we're going to draw this line and this is our new protected area, stay out of it. This is a strategy that says, hey, we understand that you live here and have lived here for a long time of experience this ecosystem and its benefits to you. How can we build on that knowledge in order to create a conservation strategy that works better. And that's definitely hard because it's going to change a lot between different ecosystems.

1:43:08 If you move between different towns or cities or states, it's all going to look a little bit different. But I think one thing that we really try to stress is that you really need to look towards those local leaders in order to have any chance of success there. When do you find to as you get sort of lower more to that local level, you get less. You get more into who really loves the environment who really wants stands up for their environment and less of that political divide. You start to strip the parties down a little bit into just like I like I live 20 minutes a walk from from my lakefront like Lake Ontario. I love going down by the lake. That's something that I would love to make sure that that's protected and that's that the water quality stays nicely.

1:43:51 There's and it's less more of a political situation that you would get at the federal level and more of a I really want to preserve this place because it's near and dear to me. I see it every day. Whereas I may not see something offshore. So it's just a little bit more you get you get really down into people's personal choices in terms of what they want to protect and what they love to see if they live along coastline. They're going to want to go by the coastline. There's always a waterfront of some sort and they want to protect that area so that they get to enjoy it and their kids get to enjoy it as well. Right. Angel, it looks like you have something to. Yes. But you don't want to be too idealistic about all of this. There's always there's always that guy who sees the beautiful state park. It's like that'd be a great place to put my house. Yeah. True. True.

1:44:33 So yeah, I think all politics are local and talking about these things. People are invested in some of these near short places like it's as you said, it's their backyard or home. But yeah, I don't want to be too idealistic about how difficult or how easy this is. You know, if if governments listen to science, none of us would have jobs. We have to we have to force governments to listen to science. That's never been truer than today. Well, and with near short conservation to get people to speak up about a specific item. Is it like is so I guess I'm sorry. It's taking a step back just for near short conservation.

1:45:15 Is it better to. Like is it better to other frameworks involved in this? Is there like a national framework that that can be put in like on the west coast of say the US or the east coast of the US or Alaska or Hawaii? Is there a general framework that's followed or is it very much piecemeal to everybody's trying to figure out their own way of doing near short conservation? Who wants to answer that? Oh, yeah, maybe I can I can give it a stab. I think as Angela mentioned, we highlight a ton of different examples of good policy across six different habitats across the US.

1:45:59 And I'd say it is definitely more piecemeal. It varies based on habitat. Every say is doing this one thing. There is some really cool regional efforts where we have a lot of different types of habitats. And I think that's one of the challenges is when you're working on a local level and focusing on these really hyper local issues, how do you make sure that you still have a sense of the larger picture that people are working together and coordinating at the same time? And all of that. As far as regulations go to every state does something different when it comes to each of these habitats and that can be challenging to understand.

1:46:45 I think just for us, honestly, just to go through and understand the landscape of what exists out there because it can vary a lot between the state and the state. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity to coordinate between these different groups. And honestly, this is where having some sort of federal overarching structure would be really helpful to help make sure that everyone's on the same page and can learn from each other. That's why some of these these federal interventions can seem so exciting for funders, though, because they love to say the word scalable and scalable and for coast. None of this is scalable. Like just because something works, you know, you pass a law in Florida and it works great does not mean it's going to work in Washington.

1:47:29 And just because people in Washington support something does not mean that people in Oregon are going to support something. And I love quoting one of my favorite scientists is Dr. Ashita Voss from Sri Lanka. She's a whale scientist. And she says every coastline needs a hero and the world's largest habitat is going to need the world's largest team. And so rather than thinking about scaling the protections, we need to think about scaling the workforce because we have to find we have to find the person who's going to be the chief of the world. And so we need to be the champion for this. And we need a we need a violet sage walker for every 50 kilometers of the East Coast and every 50 kilometers of the West Coast.

1:48:14 We're not going to get and violet sage walker just won an award last night. So did, you know, Don and Chairman Chair Mallory, you know, we need more ocean heroes. And I think that's where the investment has to happen. And so you know, the ocean community doesn't have a pipeline to support people through their entire career.

1:49:07 You know, we've got lots of things to bring people in early, like an earth echo or a Sustainable Ocean Alliance and Airstore Ocean. or Sustainable Ocean Alliance and Airstore Ocean. There's a lot of things for a junior person to do for a year or two, and you go in and you get that when you're 22, 23, 24, but what happens when you're 29? What's that next step? And how do I keep you in the movement? Because when you're in your late 20s and you're late early 30s, you're gonna learn a lot of lessons then. So how do we bridge you from junior person to senior person?

1:50:02 And just there's not a lot of money to go around. The reason why it happens is they're more delusional. You can't sell offitz that you've beenpopled off on TV because you're signed up and you had to tell them to pay lead. For example, if one of the major things they receive is the hungerronics. But then after that, when they want to grow and they want to have a family and they want to have, you know, you know, a house and live like everybody else, oh, we don't, we can't pay you more because the funding won't allow it to happen. I feel like there needs to be a switch in this paradigm to just be like, we need to invest more in the people, not only like individually, but also within the organization so that we can grow that experience and get better and better and better as we go through. I would love to see that. I think that's a really great point, Angela. And I don't know how it's done. I really don't know how it's done. If that's done at a community level, or it's like, if you see someone who's willing to stand up, does the community back it financially or does like, was it the region or county or however, how would you propose, either of you propose that to be done?

1:51:20 Yeah, I was a beneficiary of that, to be honest. So back when I was living on the island of a nature Conservancy, had this thing called Micronesians and Island Conservation and TNC was led by Bill Rayner, who passed away several years ago, but Bill was a mentor to a dozen of us, of the Micronesian Conservation leaders. And TNC created learning spaces for us where we could learn from one another and you know, advance our career and gain skills. So it's not that nobody is doing this. Right. I think there, you know, there are, I love the SACNIS conference, the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos, Native Americans and Science. If you are under 30 and you are a person of color, get your butt to SACNIS. It will, it'll be one of the most fulfilling conferences that you'll ever see. Again, it can be a little bit expensive, right? So I admit that. I find that IMCC is also one of the, one of the better places for helping early career folks sort of learn skills to keep them in the space and feel wanted and needed. So it's not that none of this is happening, but you know, when the, when the millions and the billions are discussed, a lot of times the people themselves are left out. Yeah. So, you know, we're talking about near shore and although that's been going on for a while and these projects have been going on for a while

1:52:52 with this paper that's coming out, where do you want, where does this paper want to see near shore conservation go over the next five to 10 years in terms of the focus of this? How is that going to proceed or like the, like where do you see it going in the future or hope to see it go in the future? I think there's a lot of different ways and I think as Angela mentioned, we are still looking for that bumper sticker that will replace 30 by 30. It's hard to wrap up into one concise measure and I think you can tell we had a hard time summing it up because our report has like 50 different recommendations and places that this could go. I think to like sum up into a couple of big themes that looking for metrics outside of acreage. So again, looking towards how can we make this ecosystem work better for people as well as preserve biodiversity and then in order to support that, have that long-term funding and monitoring and really invest in a place rather than sort of setting it and walking away, how do we continue to invest in making sure that this conservation succeeds because conservation restoration is happens across a decade or more rather than just a couple of years and what we found is that we really have to keep investing in a community to make sure that that succeeds.

1:54:15 And then I guess if I had to pick a third thing also, looking to things in order to ensure success in ocean conservation, making sure that we're looking towards what's happening on land first because we know that there are a lot of things that even if you draw from a marine protected area, there are things outside of those boundaries that can really impact the success of it. So looking at things like development, pollution, climate change, all of those really diffuse effects, which really have an impact on biodiversity and start outside of those boundaries. So try and rethinking conservation to look at those stressors in addition to what's happening at that sort of local area.

1:55:00 Well, it's also it's interesting when you get to the near shore, because like how far inland do you go? You know, like we went through an exercise here in the Great Lakes when I was working for Environment Canada, now Environment Canada Climate Change, but we were asking that question all the time. It's like, where do we go? How far up the watershed do you go where it's going to impact the coastline? You know, like where do you get into land management as well as near shore management? Because there's that intersection, and it's so highly influenced, it's so connected, it's like how far up you go. And then like, there's almost like you needed to do as the top of the watershed, and then you look down, and that's what it is for. Because they're all delineated, like there's a lot of research within that.

1:55:43 It's just how, but there's not a lot of research and how it interacts with the bigger body of water, whether it be a lake or in this situation, an ocean, and how that that's managed. Because now you're looking at, you know, realms that we never really, we always treated separately. And I think that's one of the challenges that can be overcome, it could be addressed, it's just that you need to bring other people in that are not just ocean people, but other people in. Yeah, for sure. That are land people, not only from a science perspective, but from a steward perspective, right? So there's a lot of things that complicate the process, but make it better in the end, and probably better for ocean, just in general, right? Yeah, there's a lot of siloing between the sort of the land and ocean and world.

1:56:26 And I think it makes it harder to do the things that we need to do. One of our sort of like, kill your darlings moments for this report is we originally had included, we would love to include salmon and rivers and freshwater impacts as well. And so we ended up saving that for something else, maybe down the line, but it was difficult because everything that happens in freshwater and rivers and streams ends up affecting the ocean. So it's all very sort of a gray area in terms of where does that conservation focus stop. And so I think we try and make a note of that in this report. And again, say that if you really care about what happens to the ocean, you need to care about what happens on land. But again, it's a difficult space because it really the focus is so large. Yeah, but I think also too, you can get probably more people involved because they can actually see the results. It's almost like a beach cleanup, right? When you do a beach kind of a community together, you can clean up the beaches, you see that the beaches are clean, people want to go more on the beach and as they get more connected. I feel almost the same way with with a near shore habitat, you can get people from land going towards the coast, maybe do a cleanup in a wetland or something like that, and really understand and get to know that area that they may not have gotten to know in the first place. Like I live in a temperate area, mud flats are key ecosystems, but nobody wants to go play in the mud anymore.

1:57:50 They don't want to get dirty when that's probably one of the best places to go or salt marsh and things like that. It could be hard to get into. But once you start getting kids in and youth programs and stuff like that, and even adult programs to get into there, then maybe it can help. So there could be a way to really get more people interested because they can see the results based on this. But like, if someone is listening to this right now and they're in a coastal community, and they want to be that champion, whether it be now or in the future, they want to build up to that. How can a document like this or what comes out of the documents, like this near shore conservation document that can help those communities and people who want to become that near shore champion?

1:58:35 Every coastline needs a hero, man. I mean, as individuals, we are more effective in the place we live than these other places that are far off. And not only that, you have expertise in relationships that an outsider will never have. And so I think for this report, it's meant as a resource. We kind of the way it's there's six habitats in the paper. And we considered others, but they didn't make the report. I didn't see mudflats in that report. Yeah, we found we'll do a separate report on mangroves mudflats and sand. But we, you know, we made it on these six because there's people all around the country who care about kelp.

1:59:32 And like, kelp is just a great example. The largest habitat for kelp is in the United States and Canada. So if we're going to, if we protect the kelp in Canada and the United States, it is going to be a globally significant action. But only 2% of US waters have kelp. And it tends to be near shore, like it tends to be a water shallower than 130 feet, which is like 30 meters. And so it's just you don't, if you care, if your metric of success is 30 by 30, you don't capture kelp, right? It's just, it's not a part of it. So we're trying to change a narrative and just showing that there's all this great work happening all across the country.

2:00:13 So if you're just a person living somewhere, you know what you care about. You know, if there's coral reefs off your water, you know, if it's kelp, you know, if you're surrounded by seagrasses, because all of all across the country, these habitats dominate in different places. And this is a resource for you to understand some of the more successful interventions that are happening all across the United States. And it can be a starting place for you. So, you know, maybe you're in the US Virgin Islands, and they have a really good watershed plan. But other things that you can learn from Guam, you know, like how, what are the things that they can learn from one another? But the big picture is, we're trying to change this narrative of, you know, nobody has ever stood in front of the Grand Canyon and said, I bet you didn't know how many acres in here. You know, it's the Grand freaking Canyon.

2:01:08 That's grand. That's the grand. It's great. You know, I think Ron Swanson said crying is allowed when looking at the grain. I didn't get this exactly right. This is crying is allowed when you're in front of the Grand Canyon because it's a magnificent, beautiful place. And I feel that way about coral reefs. These are magnificent, beautiful places. And they do not get enough attention in the national conservation discussion. And we're hoping to help change that narrative and, you know, deliver a hero for every coastline. Well, this I love this. This is something that's that I've been behind for a while now. And I'm really glad both of you were able to come on to the podcast and be able to talk about this. I think this will be the first of many conversations we have about near shore conservation and, you know, highlighting leaders, highlighting these coastal champions, these community champions, and help others and inspire others to do the same. You know, like you said, every community has one. It's just a matter of prying with the resources to get them to get to the level that they need to get and to be able to get to the the results that they want and their community wants. So I want to thank both the Aliyah and Angela for coming on the podcast sharing this report. We'll link to the report in the show notes and other resources that you might have. And then, yeah, we want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast again. And Aliyah, we'd love to have you back on to be able to discuss more about this near shore frameworks and conservation. And Angela,

2:02:38 of course, you're always welcome to come back on. And I want to thank you. Thank you very much. Awesome. Thanks for having us. Thank you, Alia and Angelo for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. It was great to have you on to be able to talk about near shore conservation, something that has been always near and dear to me. I always found that when you're living along the coast, somebody told me this a while ago, and I always go by this. When you live along the coastline, you want to look out onto a lake, onto a river, onto an ocean, and you want to say, "This looks pretty cool." You don't want to see green water. You don't want to smell nastiness in the water. You want to see intact and natural areas, not all just concrete barriers and seawalls and things like that. You want to see natural areas.

2:03:20 And I think we are getting to that point now where the focus starts to go onto near shore conservation. I really thought it was interesting how the conversation really started from the evolution of the different focuses of conservation as from like 70s and 80s when Angelo and I were young kids in the 80s and then seeing how that's evolved over time and even to now from 30 by 32 near shore and justice and equity within conservation in that focus. And I think even doing this type of conservation, no matter what happens in different countries and how different government administrations change their ways and change the way they see things, but also being able to work with ocean heroes, ocean communities, and just any type of coastal community to be able to champion the idea and support and lead the idea of coastal conservation. So I just thought it was a really good interview and a really good topic to discuss something that we'll be discussing a lot more in the future. I'd love to hear your thoughts though on it.

2:04:14 Let us know in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube or you can DM me at how to protect the ocean on Instagram. That's at how to protect the ocean or you can go to speakupforblue.com forward slash contact and just fill out the form. Let me know how you feel. It goes right to my inbox. I'll answer you as soon as I can. Again, thank you to Alia. Thank you to Angela for coming on the podcast and sharing this knowledge with us. Love to have you back on in the future to talk more about near shore conservation as well as other types of conservation. And I want to thank you, the audience for listening to this episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host, Angela from the true north, strong and free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.