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

Nearshore conservation is often overlooked in favor of flashy offshore marine protected areas. But a growing movement of community-led initiatives is showing that protecting coastal waters might be one of the smartest, most effective ways to safeguard ocean biodiversity and build climate resilience. This episode explores new insights from the Nearshore Ocean Progress report by the Center for American Progress, which highlights successful local conservation efforts across the U.S.

Community-driven ocean protection has the power to achieve more than top-down mandates. By focusing on the waters closest to home—estuaries, reefs, salt marshes, and seagrasses—coastal residents are preserving biodiversity, supporting livelihoods, and defending their homes against sea-level rise and extreme weather. Learn why investing in these initiatives may be the most impactful ocean action you can take.

Link to the document: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/nearshore-ocean-progress/

Follow a career in conservation: https://www.conservation-careers.com/online-training/ Use the code SUFB to get 33% off courses and the careers program.

 

Do you want to join my Ocean Community?
Sign Up for Updates on the process: www.speakupforblue.com/oceanapp

 

Sign up for our Newsletter: http://www.speakupforblue.com/newsletter

 

Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3NmYvsI

Connect with Speak Up For Blue:
Website: https://bit.ly/3fOF3Wf
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rIaJSG
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@speakupforblue
Twitter: https://bit.ly/3rHZxpc
YouTube: www.speakupforblue.com/youtube

 

Episode Transcript

(01:00:00):
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.

(01:00:20):
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

(01:00:41):
be talking about why it's important to
also focus on the near
shore as well as the offshore.
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.

(01:01:04):
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

(01:01:25):
conservation, ocean protection.
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

(01:01:47):
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

(01:02:07):
in the US and why it's important to
really focus on a local.
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

(01:02:27):
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

(01:02:48):
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.
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

(01:03:08):
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

(01:03:29):
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.
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.

(01:03:49):
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

(01:04:12):
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.
So a couple of years ago, made a pivot
into ocean policy, started

(01:04:35):
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

(01:04:55):
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.
I think like what when you think of like
kids, like what you want to do, like as a

(01:05:16):
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

(01:05:37):
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.
Science can help us understand them.
But we really need to bring people along

(01:05:58):
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

(01:06:19):
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

(01:06:39):
biology research
questions pivot to policy.
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.

(01:07:00):
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.

(01:07:22):
I think that's not
necessarily a bad thing.
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

(01:07:47):
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,

(01:08:08):
even if it doesn't look like what you
would imagine as a wildlife
biologist or a marine biologist.
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

(01:08:29):
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.

(01:08:53):
Like you.
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.

(01:09:14):
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

(01:09:34):
chemistry, physics or biology.
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

(01:09:55):
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.

(01:10:36):
And I was always stabbed by that mysterious

(01:11:06):
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.
So protecting 30% of
water and 30% of land by 2030.

(01:11:26):
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.

(01:11:49):
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.
Where is that at right now in the US with

(01:12:11):
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

(01:12:31):
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,

(01:12:52):
fix the save the ozone layer.
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

(01:13:13):
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

(01:13:33):
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.
So I helped draft that resolution and
recruited the other 20 sponsors
negotiated the language.

(01:13:54):
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,

(01:14:14):
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.
I think we're going to continue to use
area targets as a metric.

(01:14:36):
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

(01:14:57):
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.
The World Wildlife Foundation

(01:15:17):
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.

(01:15:38):
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.

(01:16:00):
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?

(01:16:21):
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.

(01:16:42):
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,

(01:17:04):
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

(01:17:24):
and you tend to get more area.
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

(01:17:46):
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.

(01:18:06):
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.

(01:18:26):
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

(01:18:46):
person says so or a
couple of people say so.
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.

(01:19:07):
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

(01:19:28):
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.
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

(01:19:49):
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,

(01:20:10):
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.
So I think one nice thing about moving
nearshore away from those really large,

(01:20:31):
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

(01:20:52):
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

(01:21:13):
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.
And so certain states, I'm not saying all
states, but certain states might be more

(01:21:34):
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

(01:21:55):
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.
30 by 30 is over at the federal level and

(01:22:16):
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

(01:22:38):
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

(01:22:59):
years. So less than half the time that
this country has been a country.
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

(01:23:20):
break down the barriers that keep
qualified people out of positions.

(01:23:50):
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']

(01:24:15):
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.
But it's in the double digits.
Yeah, it's insane.

(01:24:36):
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

(01:24:57):
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?
You know, these people have people, if
you want to get good

(01:25:17):
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

(01:25:37):
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

(01:25:58):
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

(01:26:19):
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

(01:26:39):
there's a reality that Trump is
president. And he's like just
undermining everything that we care
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

(01:27:02):
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

(01:27:23):
haven't even talked about the report yet.
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.

(01:27:44):
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

(01:28:06):
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.
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.

(01:28:27):
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

(01:28:48):
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

(01:29:11):
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.
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

(01:29:32):
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

(01:29:52):
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

(01:30:14):
lot of federal leadership this level.
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.

(01:30:34):
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. Andso 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

(01:30:55):
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?
Is there just no number? It's just, you

(01:31:17):
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

(01:31:38):
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.
So you have this sort of challenge, but
also a new opportunity to think of new

(01:31:59):
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

(01:32:20):
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

(01:32:41):
go be caught by fishermen and sold off
and support local economies?
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

(01:33:02):
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

(01:33:23):
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.
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

(01:33:44):
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

(01:34:05):
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.
I mean, I guess like the big question is
like we're asking the conservation
community to ask

(01:34:26):
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

(01:34:48):
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?

(01:35:12):
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

(01:35:33):
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

(01:35:54):
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.

(01:36:16):
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

(01:36:38):
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

(01:37:01):
to when the EZs, the exclusive economic
zones were designated versus to when the
marine protected areas were designated.
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

(01:37:22):
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,

(01:37:44):
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.
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

(01:38:06):
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.

(01:38:27):
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.
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

(01:38:48):
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

(01:39:09):
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.
Call me out, Angela. It's an assumption
that the ocean has always kind of been
managed like this. But the

(01:39:30):
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

(01:39:51):
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.
If you know anything about that.
And, you know, America is a young
country. We're still kind of figuring

(01:40:12):
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

(01:40:35):
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.
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.

(01:40:58):
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

(01:41:19):
conducted 50, sorry, we collected 50
survey responses or interviews in the
process of making this report.
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

(01:41:41):
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

(01:42:01):
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.

(01:42:23):
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

(01:42:43):
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

(01:43:04):
hard because it's going to change a lot
between different ecosystems.
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

(01:43:25):
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.

(01:43:45):
That's something that I would love to
make sure that that's protected and
that's that the water
quality stays nicely.
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

(01:44:07):
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

(01:44:28):
who sees the beautiful state park.
It's like that'd be a great place to put
my house. Yeah. True. True.
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

(01:44:49):
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.

(01:45:11):
Is it like is so I guess I'm sorry.
It's taking a step back just
for near short conservation.
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?

(01:45:34):
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

(01:45:54):
policy across six
different habitats across the US.
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

(01:46:15):
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.

(01:46:37):
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.
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.

(01:46:59):
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.

(01:47:21):
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.
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.

(01:47:42):
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.

(01:48:03):
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.
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.

(01:48:49):
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.
You know, we've got lots of things to
bring people in early, like an earth echo

(01:49:11):
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,

(01:49:33):
you're gonna learn a lot of lessons then.
So how do we bridge
you from junior person
to senior person?

(01:50:02):
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

(01:50:25):
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

(01:50:46):
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,

(01:51:06):
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?
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

(01:51:27):
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

(01:51:48):
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,

(01:52:09):
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

(01:52:29):
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

(01:52:50):
have been going on for a while
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

(01:53:11):
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

(01:53:31):
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

(01:53:52):
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

(01:54:13):
make sure that that succeeds.
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

(01:54:33):
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

(01:54:54):
conservation to look at those
stressors in addition to what's happening
at that sort of local area.
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

(01:55:14):
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

(01:55:35):
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.
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

(01:55:56):
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

(01:56:18):
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.
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

(01:56:38):
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

(01:57:01):
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

(01:57:22):
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

(01:57:44):
place. Like I live in a
temperate area, mud flats are
key ecosystems, but nobody wants to go
play in the mud anymore.
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

(01:58:04):
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

(01:58:26):
near shore conservation
document that can help those communities
and people who want to
become that near shore champion?
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.

(01:58:48):
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,

(01:59:11):
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.

(01:59:32):
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

(01:59:53):
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.

(02:00:13):
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

(02:00:35):
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,

(02:00:57):
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.
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

(02:01:18):
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

(02:01:40):
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

(02:02:02):
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

(02:02:23):
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,
of course, you're always welcome to come
back on. And I want to
thank you. Thank you very much.

(02:02:43):
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

(02:03:05):
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.
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

(02:03:25):
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

(02:03:46):
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

(02:04:07):
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.
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

(02:04:28):
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

(02:04:48):
next time and happy conservation.