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May 28, 2025 42 mins

Tide gauges are a critical yet often overlooked tool in our fight to understand and respond to climate change. In this episode, Dr. Andrew Thaler returns to the podcast to share a powerful story about installing a tide gauge in his hometown of St. Michaels, Maryland. He breaks down how this simple device provides crucial data for flood risk, sea level rise, and community resilience, bringing science closer to home.

Community science is at the heart of Dr. Thaler’s work. We explore how grassroots efforts, low-cost technology, and open-source tools empower residents to monitor and respond to environmental changes themselves. Whether you’re a policymaker, scientist, or citizen concerned about the impacts of coastal flooding, this episode will deepen your understanding of how data can drive change from the bottom up.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:00:00):
I'm very happy to tell you that we have
Dr. Andrew Taylor back
on the episode today.
He's almost become like a
correspondent on this show.
He's been around so many times this year,
but it's great because he's doing so many
cool projects and emailed me the other
day and he's like, Hey, you know what?
You want to talk about tide gauges, put
in a tide gauge in his
own town, town of St.
Michael's in Maryland to look at how
flooding is affected or

(01:00:21):
how often it happens and how
they can predict and how they can manage,
especially when they
look at compared to other
tide gauges around the Chesapeake Bay
where they're in or
just off the Chesapeake Bay
where they're in. And so we're going to
talk about the process,
why he's doing this for
his town, you know, the time it takes all
that kind of stuff
that's going in to doing
that so that you can become a local hero
to your community and

(01:00:42):
do something similar or
just do something that will be helpful
and feel inspired. 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, what you can
do to live for a better

(01:01:03):
ocean by taking action. If you haven't
noticed by the last few
episodes, we've been talking
a lot about local heroes, local people
who stand up in their
community and say, you know
what? We need information or we need to
ban single use
plastics or we need to do this
because they're observing stuff in their
communities and saying
something's wrong here or we need
to do something in order to predict or in

(01:01:24):
order to better manage our
community. And one of those
people, and I know he doesn't like to be
called an ocean hero or a
local hero, is Dr. Andrew
Thayer. He's a local hero to me. He's an
inspiration to me and a lot
of our other colleagues and
friends that we have in our circles. And
he just does some great
things. He has OpenCTD,
which is his own personal project where
he helps build
instrumentation that is available
for a lot of people. And that is

(01:01:44):
crowdfunded on his Patreon,
which I'll link to the show
notes if you want to take part in that
and support him on
that. But he also does a lot
of things. He's a consultant. He's a
contractor. He does deep
sea ecology. He does a lot of
science communication. He runs Southern
Fried Science. He does a lot of
everything. And I'll put
links to his episodes that he's been on
not only this year, but
before talking about all those

(01:02:04):
things on this episode, even talked about
D and D this year, running D and D games,
Dungeons and Dragons games for forest
ecology. So we talk a lot
about things. Andrew's a good
friend of mine. He's always welcome on
this podcast. He's a
good friend of the podcast.
And today we're talking about him putting
a tide gauge into their coastal area to
start to detect, you know, all this
different stuff that's going on, you
know, over a 24 hour period or over a

(01:02:26):
number of like over a year, essentially
what he's going to do in this area. And
he's going to switch it to a different
area within St. Michael's area.
Because some areas get flooded and they
need to know how often they need to know,
you know, what's the implications of
that? And they need to know data. They
need to get data to do better management.
And that's what we're going to be talking
about today. And Andrew's always great.
So I wanted you to get to know him even
more and his project on the tide gauge in

(01:02:48):
St. Michael's Harbor in Maryland. So
here's the interview with Dr. Andrew
Taylor. Enjoy and I
will talk to you after.
Hey, Andrew, welcome back to the How to
Protect the Ocean podcast. It seems like
you're a correspondent now, but you are
back again. Are you ready
to talk about tide gauges?
Absolutely. I am
ready to talk tide gauges.
Love it. I love this. This is awesome
because it's very rare that I like I get

(01:03:10):
I get emails from people, you know, a lot
of times is get like people who represent
guests and be like, hey, would you want
this person to be on their guests? A lot
of times they miss like completely miss.
Obviously you and I know each other.
We're good friends. You know, we we we
kind of chat on a fairly regular basis
through email and
through social media stuff.
And you email me like, hey, you want to

(01:03:32):
talk about tide gauges? I've got like, I
think it's like over a month of day. I'm
like, yes, yes, please. Let's let's talk
about this because I think it's
important. And there's a lot of things I
think it's important. This is your
project that you've kind of headed up
for. And what we just discussed for two
years, it's been in the making. And now
you finally got data from it and you
deployed it this year. You got data and

(01:03:52):
you wanted to share. And I want to share
the whole journey. Just what people can
do in their own towns for the sake of
their own towns, whether they live along, they live in the town.
And whether they live along the coastline
or they don't live along the coastline.
There's things that we need to do to make
changes to ensure those changes are done.
So I'm looking forward to being able to
do that. But Andrew, if people haven't
heard of you before, you just let us
remind us of who you are and what you do.

(01:04:13):
Absolutely. And thank you for having me
back on. One of these days you're going
to get sick of me. Never, never, my
friend. I think one day we're just going
to have to call at the Andrew and Andrew
podcast. I feel like at some point
because you're on it so many times. I
love it. But anyway,
I'll see you, my friend.
So I am Dr. Andrew Thaler. I am a deep
sea ecologist. I'm a conservation
technologist. I'm an ocean educator. And

(01:04:35):
because I am a man who wears many, many
hats, I am also a climate change
commissioner for the town of St.
Michael's. And that's sort of where this
bit of the story begins.
So almost five years ago now, more than
five years ago, because I'm on my second
term, I joined the St. Michael's time
climate change commission and it is an
infrastructure commission for our town to

(01:04:56):
examine the impacts of chronic sea level
rise induced flooding on the town
infrastructure, develop strategies for
how to mitigate that flooding and then
put into practice major infrastructure
projects for the most part in order to
see our vision of a resilient,
town that can survive into the next

(01:05:17):
century. I have a couple questions before
you go on. Sorry, with this commission,
was this already being put in place
before you joined or has already been put
in place for you? Or was this something
that you tried to push to be put in
place? So I was not one of the people
campaigning for the creation of the
commission that happened before I moved
to town, but I was one of the founding

(01:05:38):
commissioners. So I have been on the commission since its inception. But I was on the commission.
But I was not part of the
push to create the commission.
Gotcha. And you are a deep sea ecologist
and oceanographer. What made you decide
like this is what I want to do? Because a
lot of times is what's discussing your
you'll discuss it in just a second is,
you know, a lot of engineering projects

(01:05:59):
and like, you know, balance and making
sure roads are not going to
get flooded on a regular basis.
What made you decide like, you know what,
this is something that I would be good
for, like, a lot of people are like, am I
really qualified if I if I'm educated in
this specific aspect? Like, what made you
think, you know what, I could
actually do a pretty good job.
So, you know, I've done a lot of climate

(01:06:20):
change outreach throughout my career,
spanning almost 20 years now. And it
became very clear about five years ago
that we weren't getting the job done.
That this idea that we could use science
communication and science outreach to
convince lawmakers to convince
legislators to make the right decisions

(01:06:41):
regarding climate change wasn't working.
Right. And so there's the alternative to
if you cannot convince a lawmaker to
adopt scientifically sound principles,
then the only thing you
can do is become a lawmaker.
So I set out to figure out where I could
be the most impactful in my community and
where my specific set of skills, I have a

(01:07:03):
particular set of skills and where my
particular set of skills could be the
most use to my community.
And, you know, I am a deep sea ecologist,
but I also have done a lot of coastal
work and I've done a lot of sea level
rise modeling. And many, many years ago,
I ran a little program
called Drown Your Town.
So I am very familiar with modeling sea
level rise and changing communities. And

(01:07:25):
so, you know, I it's not like an open
election. It's you get
nominated by the town commission.
So I put in my application with the
commissioners of town and they accepted
it. And I joined the town of St.
Michael's climate change commission for
the inaugural commission.
And we have been doing a lot of studies
to determine where the critical areas are

(01:07:47):
a lot of grant making and grant writing
to get the funds to do more studies
because a lot of infrastructure work is
just more and more studies.
And slowly now beginning to put in the
funding to actually do some of the
heavier lifts. So we have roads in town
that need to be raised because they
currently flood at high tide.

(01:08:09):
We have critical areas where major
tourist venues are underwater half of the
year. And that's obviously not acceptable
if you want to have a town that's going
to survive into the century.
We have a power station, a power
substation that handles power
transmission for the rest of our
peninsula. And in a big storm, the road

(01:08:29):
to that substation is inaccessible.
And so we're looking at ways to mitigate
the impact on that road. And so it's
really, it's a nuts and bolts commission.
It's roads. It's stormwater management.
It's critical areas. It's putting in
reinforced bulkheads or putting in new
living shorelines, which we have a living
shoreline project that we're in the

(01:08:50):
building phase right now,
which is really exciting.
So we're actually going to have like a
tangible thing. That's not just a report
coming up really soon,
which is very, very exciting.
But part of all of that is you have to
know what the ocean is doing around your
town. And we have, you know, the
Chesapeake Bay is a very well researched

(01:09:11):
area. We have the University of Maryland.
We have several other
universities. We've got multiple.
You know, no one is headquartered on the
Chesapeake Bay. Yeah, Maryland, Maryland
Department of Natural Resources done us
trying to set up a amount of work. But
tides are weird. And I don't think we
appreciate just how strange tides are,

(01:09:34):
especially in like the Chesapeake Bay is
the largest estuary and
ecosystem in the continental US.
It's the largest water. It might be the
largest watershed, not the largest
estuary, but I think
it's the largest estuary.
You know, even bigger than Mississippi.
Yeah, really? Wow, I didn't know that.

(01:09:55):
Estuarian watershed. Estuarian watershed.
Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. I gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Cool.
And, you know, it takes 12 hours for a
tide to promulgate up the Chesapeake Bay.
So if you have high tide in Norfolk,
you're going to have another, you know,

(01:10:16):
11 12 hours before you see
a high tide in Baltimore.
And that changes depending on where you
are in the town of St. Michael is not
right in the Chesapeake Bay. We're on the
Miles River, which is part of the
Chesapeake Bay and is influenced by the
Chesapeake Bay. But there's a lot of
weird hydrodynamic phenomena that
happened between the tide going up in the
ocean and that wave

(01:10:36):
promulgating into our area.
And so one of the questions we had is
like, so we're dealing with nuisance
flooding. We're dealing with high tide
flooding. Our mandate is not planning for
the next big hurricane. Our mandate is
dealing with the chronic flooding that
the town has to handle every day.
It's, you know, what I like to say is
we're here to handle the flooding that

(01:10:58):
you have to live with, not the flooding
that you have to run from.
Because in a big hurricane, the answer
the answer to managing a big hurricane
coming through is get out of town, you
know, go have some fun in the mountains
for the weekend and
then come back and rebuild.
But with the chronic flooding, the
flooding we see every day, you have to be
able to live with it or the town can't
survive. And so one of my very early on

(01:11:19):
initiatives that I started with the
climate commission is I want to know
what's happening with our
tides in town right now.
We have a tide gauge in Annapolis. We
have a tide gauge in Cambridge. Those are
both very far away from our town. We have
a tide on the other side of the river on
the other side of the
bay on the bay. Sorry.
Yeah, we have a tide gauge in Claiborne,
which is a town slightly north of us that

(01:11:42):
was installed in such a way that it
bottoms out at low tide. So
you don't get accurate readings.
And so we really pushed to find a
solution that would get us tide readings
in our town. And that was like not
particularly expensive. We didn't, you
know, part of part of working with with
small town government is like, you know,

(01:12:02):
you can do almost anything you want as
long as it's at no cost to the town.
Yeah.
And so as you know, I have this little
program called the open CTD. The open CTD
is a low cost open source oceanographic
instrument that gives you salinity,
temperature and depth.
And one of the things I was thinking of

(01:12:24):
doing is, okay, we can measure depth.
Depth is tied if you have a fixed gauge.
So can we convert the open CTD to a long
term fixed mooring and use the data
coming out of that device to then infer
what the tides are
doing in our town locally.
And fortunately, I'm very good friends
with the folks at so far ocean who make

(01:12:45):
those amazing spotter buoys. And they had
opened up a program called the
bristlemouth program, the bristlemouth
pioneer program and bristlemouth is their
attempt at a universal standard connector
for ocean equipment.
So that like, you know, right now, you
know, if I have an open CTD and someone
has like a ysi castaway and someone has
like a big adcp and someone's got a bunch

(01:13:08):
of other data sans every single one of
those has a different kind of connector.
And if you want those to talk to each
other, it's basically impossible. So the
idea behind bristlemouth is if there's
one universal full ocean capable
connector, that's relatively cheap, that
every device can talk to, then we can
start integrating these ocean systems.
And so the town of St. Michael's was
accepted into the bristlemouth pioneer

(01:13:29):
program. And then I got to have the joy
of integrating the open CTD with with the
bristlemouth standard. And I don't know
if you know the joke in software
standards, but like, you know, if you go
into a program, you're like, oh, there's
like 15 different language standards, we
should normalize this so that we can like
make it easy for all these different
codes to talk to each other.

(01:13:49):
Then all of a sudden you have 16
different software standards. And then
the next person comes in is like, oh, we
should normalize this. And then you have
17 different standards. So it took about
a year for me to get the open CTD
integrated with with the spotter buoy.
And then finally, this December, we
deployed our buoy out in St. Michael's
Harbor and began logging the tides. Okay,

(01:14:11):
so now, so you've, you know, you spent a
year coding this thing to make sure that
it speaks to the open CTD, which is which
is awesome, because that's something that
was necessary to make sure that, you
know, you can get your information in
there, like, you know, from
from the CTD that you had.
But this is a lot of stuff, you know,
like, did the commission know about all

(01:14:33):
this, these plans, or is this a program
that you looked up and you knew about it,
you know, and then shared it with the
commission? Like, how did it how was this
program made available or
made known to the commission?
So I knew from so far when they put out
the announcement that they were looking
for bristlemouth pioneers. And then
because municipal municipal government is

(01:14:54):
always about meetings, right? You know,
there, there is a long process of having
meetings and holding meetings. And kind
of the joke I was making with so far is
that I had the hardware ready to go.
Well, well ahead of when we actually
deploy it, but I had to wait for a town
council meeting so that I could then
petition the town for permission to put
this buoy in this particular spot. And

(01:15:14):
then the town had to vote on where the
buoy would go. And, you know, there's a
municipal process
because we're a community.
So, you know, the coding and the hardware
was maybe not even the most logistically
complicated part of it. It's the getting
people on board and talking to everyone
and then getting, you know, the actual
live feed up on the website. So website.

(01:15:34):
So part of all this is we launched St.
Michael's flood watch, which is St.
Michael flood watch.com. And it just
redirects to an ArcGIS story map because
as re is great for stuff like that.
The story maps have really have really
taken by a lot of people. I know a lot of
people do that. What's that website
again? Can you just say that again? So
it's st. Michael's flood watch.com and
that's St. Abbreviated just ST.

(01:15:56):
Yeah, Michael's flood watch. And so on
that website, you see the sea level rise
projections that we're working with as
part of the commission. So when we do all
of our planning, we're planning for five
feet of flooding above mean sea level.
We have a lot of projections about what
that flooding looks like in reality over
the years. So like in 2020, we saw 35 two

(01:16:19):
foot floods by 2036. We expect to see 118
per tide. So that's, you know, two tides
a day. By 2075, we expect every high tide
to be above two feet.
So that gives you kind of a projection of
what we're really looking for. And it
also emphasizes that sea level rise is a
process. You know, we talk about, oh,
what's it going to look like in 2050 or

(01:16:41):
2100? But in reality, we should be
talking about like, how much is going to
change over the next five years, over the
next 10 years, you know, what is chronic
flooding going to actually look like to
the people who have to live with it.
And like, how does that impact things
like the businesses that are on the
waterfront there over time? So, you know,
a five foot flood may not be particularly

(01:17:03):
catastrophic, because we only see it once
or twice in the next 50 years. But, you
know, a four foot, a four foot flood
isn't that much less than five feet. And,
you know, by 2075, we'll be seeing that
every sixth high tide.
So things like that, I think really
matter. And then if you keep going down
the website, you get to the real time

(01:17:24):
feed from the buoy. And this is where all
the this is real time data. This is
coming directly from our buoy.
Last 24 hours that
I'm reading here, right?
The last 24 hours. And you can see,
unfortunately, if we had done this
yesterday, you would have seen three two
foot floods in a row. So we had three
flood tides in a row over the last week,
which was the first set of flood tides

(01:17:45):
we've documented with the
buoy since we put it out.
And I just want to clarify, too, when we
talk about flood tides, we're talking a
little bit about the height, but also the
distance that it goes, right? Like how
far in does it go? Like so
you have your regular shoreline.
And if you if people go, I highly
recommend if you're if you're watching
this or you're listening to this, I
highly recommend that you actually it's

(01:18:07):
easier if you follow along if you go to
say Michael's flood watch.
I'll put the link in the in the show
notes so people can follow along. But
because you see the first picture of I
think was May 9th, it looks like you can
see that there's like bridges that are
pretty much flooded rows
that are pretty much flooded.
And it looks like a typical day. You know
what I mean? Like it's it's kind of it's

(01:18:29):
it's a little scary to think that this is
a normal thing that happened. So going
back to that when we talk about height.
So when I look at this tide gauge, it's
saying depth from mean sea level, I
assume is MSL. Yes. And, you know, we're
looking at zero to what seems to be
between 1.6 and 1.8 feet,
just a little over 1.6 feet.

(01:18:50):
And you can actually interact with the
map and you can actually it'll give you
what it was. It's yes, six, seven, I
think was the highest in the last 24
hours, just last 20. And what you'll
notice from this one is that none of the
low tides go below mean sea level.
They don't. So that's crazy. Cool. That's
because we've had a bunch of storms
recently. And that's another issue is
that rainfall highly mediates. Like we
don't have your sides like a tidal

(01:19:12):
variance around here should be about a
foot. And so, you know, a big rainstorm
can completely change the tidal cycle for
several, several cycles.
Yeah. So when we just go back to that,
when we talk about like the depth, is
that the so you have the mean sea level,
say at zero, like which is where you
would see on average, the sea level. Are

(01:19:33):
we talking about this is
1.6 feet above above means.
So it's not. But with it going higher,
it'll actually it will also go further up
the coastline. Is that like the like the
further into town and yeah, it goes
further and further into town.
So the higher goes the further goes into
town. Yeah. The other thing I want to
make, I want to note is that St.

(01:19:56):
Michael's is not necessarily like I was
just looking up a map of St. Michael's
because as much as long as we've known
each other, I've never actually looked
up, you know, where you
actually live within the bay.
Right. It's a it's it seems like it's
protected from the bay itself and from
where the ocean comes in. Almost on the
other side of the land mass that comes

(01:20:17):
in. So the fact that it's flooding and
it's still protected in a way, you know,
from like actual ways
coming in from the ocean proper.
That's kind of scary too, right? Because
now it's just a matter of the volume of
water filling up into this into the bay
that you're into, like the river that you
go into. It's just sheer volume of coming

(01:20:38):
up plus rain that comes in from the top.
Does that play a role in how scary this
is for you? Like or for the town?
So yes, no, I wouldn't use the term
scary, right? Because we're looking about
building a resilient community. And one
of the reasons I'm committed to the
climate change commission is because St.
Michael's is actually very well
positioned to be resilient to climate

(01:20:59):
change. If you look at our flood maps,
it's not, you know, it's got enough
elevation to it that most
of the town isn't flooding.
Right.
It's a lot of the businesses tend to be
the ones that are affected right now. And
of course, that has major implications
for the survivability of the town. But
the town itself is relatively well
protected. It's got great potential for

(01:21:20):
building resilient infrastructure.
There are communities on the US, on the
on the Maryland Eastern Shore that are,
there's nothing you can do. You're like,
like, they are so low lying. Parts of
them are already below sea level. Like,
there isn't really, there is no
resilience building for some communities.
Some communities are just going to have
to move. St. Michael's is not one of
them. So I you know, I look at all this

(01:21:42):
stuff and I look at them and it's hopeful
because it's, you know, it's a community
that has the potential to build for
resilient future and it's a
community that's doing that.
So it's a town that decided they wanted a
climate change commission. I think we
were the first town on the Maryland
Eastern Shore to say we want a specific
municipal body that is

(01:22:02):
there to address climate change.
We have, you know, the topology of the
town is right to build resilient
infrastructure. You can see there's a lot
of towns further down the peninsula from
us that have to you have to go through
St. Michael's to get to.
So, you know, St. Michael's is kind of
the gateway to the rest of the Bay
hundred, which is what our area is

(01:22:22):
called, because a hundred is a colonial
term for an amount of land that has
enough population that you can raise a
hundred able bodied men for a militia.
Oh, the Maryland Eastern Shore was
separated into hundreds back in the day.
We're we're one of the last areas that

(01:22:43):
still refers to ourselves as the bay
hundred as the bay
hundred. Okay, interesting.
So that's that's why it's called the bay
hundred. But the rest of the bay hundred
depends on St. Michael's for access. So
if St. Michael's goes down, then a lot of
other communities fail to. So it's a very
kind of critical area to address.
Now, when going through the climate
commission and doing the studies and, you

(01:23:05):
know, doing a project like this, was
there much resistance to from from other
citizens who maybe are not always for
doing work in climate change?
Or was this, hey, we're actually getting
flooded here. This is something that's
concerning whether we call it what we can
call it whatever we want. This is just
concerning. I'm just curious in terms of

(01:23:26):
like the feedback that you and the
commission got and the government got.
Yeah. So just to give you some context,
you know, Maryland is a very progressive
state in general. The Maryland Eastern
Shore is generally not. We're sort of the
red district in a sea of blue.
But we're also a coastal community and

(01:23:47):
we're a community that relies on the
water and, you know, people are not blind
to what's actually
happening in front of them.
So, you know, there are a few
constituents who say, hey, we don't want
to deal with climate change. We don't
want to think about it. For the most
part, we have an incredible amount of
support from the town, from the town
commission and from
the community at large.

(01:24:07):
And, you know, what I like to say when
people say, all right, well, why do we
need to worry about this is like, look,
you know, my job is not to convince you
that climate change is real. My job is to
make sure that an ambulance can get to
your house at the middle
of high tide on a sunny day.
And right now we had three high tides in
a row where that was not possible. So,
you know, regardless of what your

(01:24:31):
personal beliefs are regarding the
science of climate change, which climate
change is real and is happening in itself.

(01:25:00):
And so to get into start a new seems and a filler for the long time starts to happen. And because climate changeis you know? I racism is what the future. Something like that to us. Was Whiskey called challenged over a bug
looking at really ELEac's
Why are areas like the people we check wanting to meet run state like freestyle field and then Internalenzie Conway who's also' information, you know, we're looking at
this story map, which
kind of gives us enlightens us in terms
of, you know, what it is
like, I'm looking at, or it
looks like what a what a great
crab and steakhouse that's
pretty much underwater or the
rounded it's underwater. So the crab,
crab and steak, steak,
crab claw, there is a, oh, actually, I

(01:25:20):
think the picture of
this crab and steak claw,
they've changed the name. But
one of them is a restaurant called the
crab claw. Okay. And
they, at one point, their
front, their lower level was
underwater. So consistently that they
made it like an experience.
So you could go have crabs in the bay,
you know, sit at the picnic
table and the bay would be coming up with

(01:25:41):
the high tide while you're
eating your crabs and you can just toss
your refuse right into the
water. That's that's adaptation, I guess.
I mean, you know, it's
adaptation, it's resilience hits. Yeah,
it's a declaration that
like, we're acknowledging the problem,
we're going to deal with
it as we can. They are in the
process of raising their lower
deck and doing a whole retrofit to make
it passable again. Yeah,

(01:26:03):
there were a lot of venues that were
underwater. One of former
climate change commissioner ran one of
the tour boats out of town.
And he did a very good job of keeping
records of how often his
dock was inaccessible. And it went from
in 2010, his dock was
inaccessible because of flooding four

(01:26:24):
days a year, five days a
year, I think it's back in 2010. Yeah, so
I've got let me make sure I'm
got the right numbers.
Yeah, so in 2010, it was obstructed six
times during the year. And in
2022, his dock was obstructed 44 times.
So these are, you know,
these are business owners who are keeping

(01:26:44):
track of what's happening
and are noticing that like that impacts
his bottom line that 44 times a
year, customers could
not get to his business.
That's unreal. Now it's kind of
interesting because it's data that
matters to his business. So he's looking
at it. He's trying to figure out ways to
adapt to it to figure out ways to change.
It's really interesting how the story map

(01:27:06):
is laid out here because you know, you've
got, I think it's like nine different
sites here that are different
streets and talking about how
frequently, you know, they're, they're
underwater and you see the pictures that
come up of them underwater, you know, a
San Domingo Creek, you've got Chester
Park Lane to North Street, so you've got
you've got it like pretty much laid out

(01:27:26):
of what is what could happen and and the
people who are from St. Michael's have
probably seen this and they probably know
about it's probably a topic of discussion
in terms of roads are out or so forth. So
it becomes really important. Now, the
time going back to the tide gauge in
that, you know, that's an
exciting project to have.
And I think it's really important to get
the data, but obviously data feeds into

(01:27:47):
better management at the end. So you have
this in there. It's been in there since
December 2024. What do you want or what
are you hoping and what is the commission
hoping to get out of it?
So there's really three key things that
we want to learn from the tide gauge. And
I will say that this is not a permanent
structure. The ultimate goal is to prove
that the town of St. Michael's needs its

(01:28:08):
own dedicated title station that's
supported by NOAA or the USGS.
And that's that's an expensive
proposition. That's a proposition that
requires a lot of grant making. And so
having that data ahead of time is key to
that. So part of that is demonstrating
that our tides are out of cycle enough
that we need our own tide station.
We want to have documentation of each

(01:28:28):
flooding event so that we can say as the
years progress like in 2025 we had X
number of two foot floods and an X number
of five foot floods. Hopefully we only
have one but you know, we usually get at
least one five foot flood a year.
So we can actually show the community
like, hey, look, we're tracking this in

(01:28:49):
real time now, like we've got the data
and we can show the accumulation of more
and more flooding because, you know, the
infrastructure projects we're working on
are not short projects. These all have
five, 10, 15 year time horizons.
And I think one of the big projects we're
working on that's that's going to get a
good bit of resilience to 2050 is
probably a 20 year project. So we'll be

(01:29:11):
done just in time for 2050. But it's a
major infrastructure build and has a
tremendous amount of potential.
And I think one of the things that we want to know, we want to know how often
the floods are happening and we want to
have those documented. We also want to
know how out of phase St. Michael's is
with the other tide stations in our area
because that has major ramifications for
planning. If we know storm is coming, if

(01:29:34):
we know there's a big surge, if we know
we're about to get a ton of rainfall, we
are as of now and I haven't done the full
cycle analysis for the data we have.
Because I'm waiting on just getting a few
more months before we do that because
title cycles are also seasonal. But at
the moment, we are anywhere from 20

(01:29:56):
minutes ahead to 40 minutes behind the
tide station up the bay from us, which
means we're I mean,
that that is an hour range.
That is the difference between saying a
flood is going to arrive at six or flood
is going to arrive at seven. And so
knowing exactly how out of phase we are
with with those other tide stations
really helps for things like emergency

(01:30:19):
planning. It helps for things like
knowing when to launch your boat.
It helps for things like knowing when to
maintain the buoy because I maintain the
buoy by going in in chest waders. And if
the tide is 1.6 feet above mean sea
level, I am going to be swamped and if
it's 0.4 feet above mean sea
level, I can tend to the buoy.

(01:30:40):
Yeah, yeah. If it's 1.6 that
you have you have water in your.
So this is super interesting that the
data here helps you make better
management decisions from the commission
sake and from the city
sake or the town sake.
And then are people interested now? Like,
are they looking at the map? Like, are

(01:31:01):
they looking online? Are
they talking to you about it?
You know, obviously, I know you have kids
programs around it, too. There's a
there's a picture view with and a couple
of adults that with with
like some kids and stuff.
Is this something that people are are
interested in and interested in the data?
Yeah, so the town is very involved.
They're working on getting the tide

(01:31:21):
charts up on the official town website as
well. Nice. That is also a process
because usable governance is always a
process and process is important.
We do do a lot of work with kids. So the
the St. Michael's Girl Scout troop 799
has been very involved in this process.
They were out there
for the first deployment.
The buoy is actually also a time capsule.

(01:31:43):
So they all made little bits of art and
wrote letters to the buoy and put it
inside. So when we pull the buoy in a
year, they'll get to see all their stuff.
Oh, that's really hopefully won't be all
soggy. They were they were they were out
there for the deployment. And I will say
that in the true spirit of rogue marine
science, we decided before I realized you

(01:32:05):
could just walk out in chest waiters.
Yeah.
Because I didn't have a buoy out there to
tell me how deep it was. Right.
We decided to do the initial deployment
in a canoe. Okay. And so all of the the
dads of the scout troop piled into I had
one of those big aluminum grumman commute
canoes loaded up the buoy with 50 pounds

(01:32:28):
of ballast because that's what's weighing
it down at the bottom.
Right.
And then we paddled out to the middle of
honeymoon lagoon and then proceeded to
completely flip the canoe. Well, all the
girl scouts were watching their dads just
get soaked. And I think that's important.
I think it is important for kids to see
their parents make big
mistakes and laugh it off.

(01:32:50):
Yeah, 100%. That's fun. That was fun.
There's video online if you can find it.
I think I said it to the tune of Yaketty
Saxe of us doing the buoy deployment and
flipping the canoe at the same time. I'll
send you a link to that
because that is the real story.
That's the real story. You know what?
That might have to be the next clip. Your
clips do well. I feel like that's going
to be the next clip. You know, of you

(01:33:11):
talking in the background and doing that.
I think that'll be that'll be great.
Now, one thing that's that's always great
about projects like this is that you can
almost duplicate it or do similar studies
elsewhere, not necessarily in your well,
actually, I should ask first, do you plan
on putting more buoys out there or is it
just this one here is going to be the one
that gives you the

(01:33:31):
information that you need.
Yeah, this is this is my buoy and the
plan is for it to stay out there for a
year. And then we're going to move it to
other priority sites and do similar
analysis at other priority sites.
However, because it is built on the open
CTD, which is 100% open source platform
and is built on the bristlemouth

(01:33:52):
communication standard, which is 100%
open source communication standard.
So it's very easy to integrate your own
buoy with one of these tide gauges
anywhere that you want on the on the
website. You'll find a link to the GitHub
repository. If you're the kind of person
that likes GitHub repositories. Yeah,

(01:34:12):
yeah, yeah. And we've got all the source
code there for the the tide gauge itself
for the communication protocol to get it
talking to bristlemouth.
And we have to rebuild some libraries for
the microcontroller that we're using. And
we have the source code up for the tide
chart too. So if you want to implement
this in your own town, it is ready to go.

(01:34:34):
It is plug and play. I say plug and play.
It is plug and play if you know how to
use a soldering iron. So the opposite of
plug and play. But it is the main
implementation challenges have been
handled. So if you want to do this in
your own town and you have access to a so
far spotter buoy, which is kind of the
limiting factor there because the spotter is not a
factor there because the spotter buoys
aren't particularly cheap, but they're

(01:34:55):
not super expensive either for a town. We
can really put these anywhere. And the
spotter platform is tough. I mean, I'm
sure you've seen the videos of them
dropping spotter buoys into Hurricane
Helene. Yes. So they are they are
durable. They take a beating up minus
currently very biofouled. So I'm gonna
have to go out this weekend and give this

(01:35:16):
scrub. But other than that, it is, it is
a robust little little buoy.
And we're hoping that the gauge holds for
the entire year. I may have to go out and
do some repairs because of course I'm
also testing some experimental hardware
with it as well. But of course you are.
Everything is as one as one. Andrew
Thaler does as one does if you're Andrew

(01:35:37):
Thaler. Yeah, for sure. So this is
interesting that, you know, a couple of
weeks ago I had on the people from the
Center of American American Progress.
You know, a good friend of ours, Angela
Villa Gomez, Dalia Haddia, came on the
podcast, talked about near shore
conservation. And this is really a form
of near shore conservation like looking
at where you live in your local

(01:35:58):
community, helping lead it, you know,
providing information, providing
connections and your expertise as well as
along with along with other people within
the commission and working with
government. But essentially being like
this, I know you probably don't like
being called this, but like this ocean
hero for that community to just be like, look, I'm gonna have to do this.
I love where people are. It's a tool I set out here to bed, but it's it's a tool I set out. Let's feel good. Anyway, this is the sort of community who I listen to that, here, I happened to be doing this live on the podcast.

(01:36:44):
They may not have a PhD, they may not
have a master's, they
may not have a degree in
marine biology or any
kind of aquatic biology.
What would you recommend they do to maybe
not take on a
particular project like this
or maybe do take on a particular project,
but kind of lead or help lead these types
of initiatives in their own area, their

(01:37:05):
own local community?
I mean, you know, the line I've been
saying for a while now
is local government, local
government, local government.
If you care about how your community is
developing, if you care
about the future of your town
or your neighborhood or your city, right
now the best thing you
can do is to figure out
where in the municipal structure of your

(01:37:25):
government that your
skills and your passions can be
applied and run for positions.
You know, towns have waterways boards,
towns have wetlands
commissions, towns have planning
and zoning commissions.
Most of them don't require a ton of
expertise and a lot of
them you'll go and you'll look
at the people who are actually making
decisions and being like,

(01:37:46):
how did they end up there?
Yeah.
You know, so finding roles to play in
your local government,
because that's really where
the rubber hits the road
for a lot of these things.
You know, you hear about big federal
initiatives to address climate change.
And when you look at what those actually
entail, those entail
giving grants to states, which
then give grants to counties, which then

(01:38:08):
give grants to local
projects and local municipalities.
And so getting on the ground in your
local government,
getting involved in your local
community, it doesn't have to be formal
government, it can be kind
of the informal government
as well.
You can join an NGO, you can, you know, I
serve on our county's
library board as well.
So it can be things like that.
But, you know, at this point, at this

(01:38:28):
moment in history, you
know, the best thing you can
do is get yourself into a position where
you can make decisions.
Yeah.
Yeah, I love it.
I think it's great.
I think it's a perfect
way to end this podcast.
Andrew, this has always
been a pleasure to have you on.
Love how you're taking a lead.
I love how you're helping out your town
and yourself learning

(01:38:48):
more and more every day.
And I think it's really important,
though, to set up
something like this for a local
action, doing all the work.
I know it doesn't.
It's not as if it's done overnight.
It takes a long time.
It takes a lot of time to dedicate and a
lot of thought process.
And so really do appreciate what you're
doing for for the town of St. Michael's,
but also for our community here on.

(01:39:09):
I really appreciate it.
And of course, love to have you back on.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm sure I'll be back.
Absolutely. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Andrew, for joining me on
today's episode of the How
to Protect the Ocean podcast.
It was always great to have you on.
Can't wait to have you back, which you
never know might be next week.
I don't know.

(01:39:30):
Every time he comes up, he's like, you
want to talk about this?
I'm like, absolutely.
I do want to talk about this.
And you can tell he doesn't like being
called Ocean Hero,
but he is a local hero.
He does things because he executes.
That's the one thing that's the
difference between a lot of people.
I was talking to him after we recorded
and I said, hey, you know what?
Like there's all these times where you
can jump on commissions.
You can jump on meetings and local
meetings and government and all this kind

(01:39:51):
of stuff, even just extra critters stuff
like, hey, we should talk
about this kind of stuff.
And you can talk and talk and talk.
But until you execute, you
don't really get stuff done.
And that happens a lot within our field.
That happens in any field.
Any business or anything like that.
And the fact is, Andrew executes and he
likes to share what he's done and what
he's been able to do and hopefully
inspire you to stand up for your local
community and be like, hey, we need this

(01:40:12):
either a tide gauge or we need something
else that's important or we need to ban
something or we need to talk to our
people about something.
It's important to feel that inspiration
and to watch other people go through what
they've done and you can learn from their
challenges and how they overcame them and
from their successes
and how they got there.
This was obviously a
long term thing for Andrew.
It's something that took two years to

(01:40:32):
just put the gauge in the
water and get it all approved.
You know, government, especially
municipal government,
work slow as it should.
That's the way it does.
They make sure they dot their eyes and
cross their T's, but it does take a while
and you have to be patient.
And once you get it, you have to just
continue and be persistent.
And then now you've got data and you've
got this nice story map and you've got
information as great way of communicating

(01:40:53):
to the local town of St.
Michael's as well as other places.
So let's use this as a model of what you
can do in your own area.
I'd love to hear from you.
Just go to speak up for blue dot com

(01:41:15):
forward slash contact
and fill out the form.
Let me know what
project you're working on.
That format, it goes
right to my personal email.
I'll answer you back and plan something
if you want to come on the
podcast and talk about it.
Not no worries.
You don't have to just want
to hear about your project.
But I want to thank you, Andrew, again.

(01:41:37):
And I want to thank
you guys for listening.
This is always great to help support and
projects, but also to help support the
podcast by listening and sharing with
friends and family that you think will
get a lot of value out of this.
So I really do appreciate if you want to
get a hold of me, go to the website,
speak up blue dot com
forward slash contact.
Leave a comment in the YouTube video for
watching this on YouTube.
And if you're listening to this on Apple
podcast or your favorite podcast app,

(01:41:58):
just hit me up on Instagram
at how to protect the ocean.
That's at how to protect the ocean.
I want to thank you so much for joining
me on today's episode of the how to
protect the ocean podcast
from the true North strong free.
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
Have a great day.
We'll talk to you next
time and happy conservation.
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