In today's episode, I speak with Dr. Alex Hearn, a marine ecologist at the Universidad de San Francisco in Quito, Ecuador.
Alex's work is focused on marine conservation in and around the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of South America, which is part of Ecuador. Alex is one of the scientists working to establish the Galapagos Marine Reserve, one of the world's largest underwater areas dedicated to protecting migratory pathways through the deep ocean.
This oceanic highway for marine life, as it's sometimes called, creates a corridor where endangered migratory species such as sharks, whales, turtles, and manta rays can travel without fear of illegal fishing.
So, unsurprisingly, I found Alex to be very down to earth and rooted in a deep love for the ocean, and we discussed how he first connected to the ocean a remarkable personal connection to a deceased friend while tagging lobsters, and where he finds meanings in the oceans off the Galapagos.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jason Elias (00:08):
Hi and welcome to the Big Deep podcast.
Big Deep is a podcast aboutpeople who have a connection to
the ocean, people for whom thatconnection is so strong it
defines some aspect of theirlife.
Over the course of this series,we'll talk to all sorts of
people and in each episode we'llexplore the deeper meaning of
(00:29):
that connection.
Today, I speak with a marineecologist in Ecuador whose work
has been seminal in protectingthe waters around the Galapagos
Islands.
Hello, this is your host, jasonElias.
Welcome to the Big Deep podcast.
(00:51):
In today's episode, I speak withDr Alex Hearn, a marine
ecologist at the Universidad deSan Francisco in Quito, ecuador.
Alex's work is focused onmarine conservation in and
around the Galapagos Islands,off the coast of South America,
which is part of Ecuador.
Alex is one of the scientistsworking to establish the
Galapagos Marine Reserve, one ofthe world's largest underwater
(01:13):
areas dedicated to protectingmigratory pathways through the
deep ocean.
This oceanic highway for marinelife, as it's sometimes called,
creates a corridor thatendangered migratory species
such as sharks, whales, turtlesand manta rays can travel
without fear of illegal fishing.
So, unsurprisingly, I foundAlex to be very down to earth
and rooted in a deep love forthe ocean, and we discussed how
(01:35):
he first connected to the oceana remarkable personal connection
to a deceased friend whiletagging lobsters, and where he
finds meanings in the oceans offthe Galapagos.
Alex Hearn (01:47):
My name is Alex Hearn.
I am a professor of marinebiology at Universidad San
Francisco de Quito in Ecuador,and I work mostly in the
Galapagos Islands, studying themovements and behavior of sharks
and other marine migratoryspecies.
Jason Elias (02:01):
So, alex, can you talk a bit about when you first
remember your connection to thewater?
Alex Hearn (02:06):
I grew up in Madrid and just before I was 16, we
went on a biology field trip tothe north of Spain, the Galicia,
and we spent a week there doingintertidal surveys, went out on
boats and that just did it forme.
The some reason, when I was outthere on the shore, there was a
(02:32):
clear path forward.
There were questions whoseanswers came quite naturally to
me and I realized somethingswitched and now I miss not
being close to the ocean.
I need to be near it, closeenough to sense it Right.
Jason Elias (02:57):
So you found this connection to the ocean and, of
course, all you have to say isGalapagos to an ocean person and
they immediately go into areverential space is one of the
most incredible places on theplanet, even with most of us,
including me, not having beenthere.
But to you it's now, you're ahome, and I'm wondering what
about Galapagos drew you thereand now, having come to know it
(03:19):
so well, what is it that makesit so special?
Alex Hearn (03:23):
Galapagos is a challenge Environmentally.
It's one of the mostspectacular places I've ever
been to, both on land and sea.
But from a human perspective,it's almost like a microcosm of
what's happening to our planettoday.
It's not an easy place to workand it's not an easy place to
(03:44):
live.
Back in the 80s there's only4,000 people living there.
Now there's over 30,000.
So it's grown a lot in terms ofhuman impact over the years and
that poses a lot of challengesto an oceanic archipelago that
is extremely fragile.
When I see carallels how thehuman population on Earth has
(04:06):
grown and how fragile Earth is Ifeel that there's challenges in
Galapagos and if we're able torise to meet them, then they may
be scalable to the future ofthe planet.
And then, of course, thebiodiversity is just beyond
(04:27):
belief.
Biologists don't earn that muchmoney, but last month we
stopped in the middle of theocean because a broody's whale
and her calf were swimmingalongside the boat and we jumped
in and took photos of her.
How much do people pay for thatexperience?
That was just a day in theoffice, so those moments,
(04:49):
they're intangible.
And yet Galapagos after 20years.
There's always something thatwill surprise you and delight
you in a way that you cannotimagine.
Jason Elias (05:03):
Right, that is incredible and in some ways it
must feel great to have such aprofound impact on an
environment you care so muchabout personally.
But one of the things I'vediscovered about doing this
podcast is that everyone whodoes great things in the ocean
bases that on a much moreintimate private connection that
they have to the water.
And I know you had a deeplytouching moment off an island in
(05:27):
the Galapagos that camesurprisingly well, tagging
lobsters, and I'm wondering ifyou could tell us that story.
Alex Hearn (05:35):
When I first arrived in Galapagos, my first project
was a mark recapture project forlobsters and that meant that
we'd go out across the entiremarine reserve, we'd catch
lobsters, we'd measure them,we'd put a tag on them and we'd
(05:57):
release them.
And the idea was that if thatlobster was recaptured we could
measure it and we could see howmuch it had grown.
When I first arrived inGalapagos I was living in the
volunteer area.
It was a castle actually.
It belonged to a crookedpolitician and he'd fled.
(06:18):
My bed was a heart-shapedconcrete bed very bizarre.
But my roommate, a guy calledHamish Saunders he was a
terrestrial person, he was abiologist, but we became very
good friends and he used to comeout with me sometimes to dive
and to catch lobsters.
When he finished up inGalapagos he went back to New
(06:44):
Zealand, where he came from, andhe ended up volunteering down
in Tasmania.
They were doing some surveysthere and there was a huge storm
and a freak wave came andHamish was lost.
(07:07):
One of the last emails he saidto me was had coming back to
Galapagos to work with me as avolunteer over the summer.
Of course, he never made it.
Well, his older brother cameafter Hamish died and I took him
(07:33):
out on one of my researchexpeditions and that trip was
insane.
We had Galapagos Hawks sittingon the rocks right where we were
swimming.
You could almost reach out.
We came across an albino seacucumber.
(07:54):
I mean, galapagos really showedher best side on that trip and
I just got the feeling thatthere was a reason for that.
One evening we were out in thewest of the islands, in
(08:16):
Fernandina, which is one of themost pristine islands on the
planet, and we went diving tocatch lobsters.
And when we came up, hamishshowed me what he'd caught and
one of the lobsters that he'dcaught had a tag on it.
(08:39):
When I looked up when thatlobster had been tagged it had
been caught and tagged by Hamishthe year before I just felt
like that was a moment that theocean was giving us some kind of
(09:06):
message of coming full circle,if you like, a reassuring sense
that the ocean is there, thatthere's something beyond the
physical, and I got the feelingthat Galapagos wanted to show
(09:33):
Andy its best side.
Jason Elias (09:43):
Well, that's beautiful, but I think
epitomizes the underlyingmessage of what this entire show
is about.
What I also think isinteresting is that, like most
everything in life, in order tolove something you must first
know it, and in to know it, youhave to engage with it and
(10:04):
understand it, and that's what Ifeel like you do with Galapagos
, and that recently led to amajor ocean victory for ocean
conservation with the GalapagosMarine Reserve Swimway, which
made major headlines around theworld.
Can you tell us how that cameabout and what it is?
Alex Hearn (10:24):
When I came to Galapagos, I came to work in
fisheries and, of course, I wasdiving with sharks, and it's not
often you get to have aclose-up experience with the top
predator tiger sharks and silkysharks, as well as the
hammerheads of whale sharks inGalapagos.
There is a visceral connectionwhen you're down among them.
But more than that is fishermenin Galapagos were pushing to
(10:47):
allow longlining inside theGalapagos Marine Reserve and,
from the fisheries perspective,I was trying to put together a
white paper on why that mightnot be a good idea, and I
realized there was noinformation at all on the
behavior and ecology of sharksin Galapagos.
No one was doing anything, andso I contacted some specialists.
(11:09):
Galapagos is a name that has athree-digit pool, so it wasn't
hard to persuade people to come,and we started tagging several
species of sharks, and what wefound was that hammerhead sharks
in particular were moving fromGalapagos to Cocos Island.
Cocos Island is 700 kilometersnortheast of Galapagos.
(11:30):
It actually belongs to CostaRica, and in order to get from
the Galapagos Marine Reserve tothe Cocos Marine Reserve,
they've got to travel across 600kilometers of ocean.
But it's not protected, and sothat means that Ecuadorian and
Costa Rican fishing fleets canharvest sharks in those areas.
So we began to think maybe weneed connecting marine reserves
(11:55):
in the region, and we foundseveral of these species of
sharks and turtles seem to use achain of underwater mountains
as a reference, using themagnetic signal of those
underwater seamounts to navigate.
It's called the Cocos Ridge.
So we started talking aboutcreating a swimway, a protected
(12:16):
corridor that leads to marinereserves across boundaries, and
we started talking about thisabout seven years ago, and that
is what resulted, in December,in the declaration of this new
marine reserve that extendsprotection from Galapagos all
the way to the border of CostaRican waters.
Jason Elias (12:36):
Well, that is an incredible victory and I have to
say I have tremendous respectfor someone who dedicates
themselves completely tosomething they're passionate
about, as you have.
But, dropping beneath whatyou've done, I'm curious if
there are deeper, more personalmotivations for why you have
devoted yourself to the world'soceans.
Alex Hearn (12:56):
It's several things, I think.
I think it's the mystery.
You have that layer that yousee when you're standing on the
beach or the cliff and thenthere's so much going on
underneath.
I always wanted to do somethingas a career that wouldn't just
(13:17):
be a job and then go and havefun.
I wanted to have a richexperience in my life 24 hours a
day, not just before and afterwork, and finally, I love it In
(13:38):
retrospect.
I wanted to work on somethingthat would make some kind of
difference when I move on, tobeing able to look back and say,
well, I tried to make theplanet a little bit better than
(14:01):
it was when I was on it.
I tried to clean up a littlebit that idea that we're
stewards and so we need to lookafter it.
If we can leave it just thatlittle bit better, then good on
us.
So I think that's what reallymotivated me.
I got a feel for the first timeof the link between humans and
(14:25):
the ocean.
That really opened my eyes tothe idea that we do need to have
some management, someregulation, and I just thought,
well, I need to get working then.
Jason Elias (14:49):
Finally, we end every interview and every
episode with a single open-endedquestion.
We ask everyone we talk to whatdoes the ocean mean to you?
Alex Hearn (15:01):
It's provided me with my purpose here in this
short time that I have.
It's provided me with fear andpain.
Provides me with joy.
I've taken my kids outsnorkeling.
My eldest has even helped meout with some research.
I think that provides me with aconnection to my kids that will
(15:24):
outlast me.
It's just a part of my lifethat I cannot turn my back on,
even if I wanted to.
Jason Elias (15:34):
Thanks for listening to the Big Deep
podcast.
Next time on Big Deep therewere about 30 lemon sharks and
some bull sharks down at thebottom of the school and being
in the water with them, I knew Ihad to save those sharks.
We really appreciate you beingon this journey into the Big
Deep as we explore an ocean ofstories.
(15:57):
If you like what we're doing,please make sure to subscribe
wherever you listen to podcasts.
Also, please find us on thesocials where you can like and
comment, because thosesubscribes, likes and comments
really make a difference.
For more content from ourinterviews in our series, photos
of every guest or just to getin touch, please reach out at
our website, bigdeakcom Plus.
If you know someone you thinkwe should talk to, please let us
(16:19):
know at our Big Deep website,as we are always looking to hear
more stories from interestingpeople who are deeply connected
to our world's oceans.
Thanks again for joining us.
Hi and welcome to the Big Deep podcast.
Big Deep is a podcast aboutpeople who have a connection to
the ocean, people for whom thatconnection is so strong it
defines some aspect of theirlife.
Over the course of this series,we'll talk to all sorts of
people and in each episode we'llexplore the deeper meaning of
(00:29):
that connection.
Today, I speak with a marineecologist in Ecuador whose work
has been seminal in protectingthe waters around the Galapagos
Islands.
Hello, this is your host, jasonElias.
Welcome to the Big Deep podcast.
(00:51):
In today's episode, I speak withDr Alex Hearn, a marine
ecologist at the Universidad deSan Francisco in Quito, ecuador.
Alex's work is focused onmarine conservation in and
around the Galapagos Islands,off the coast of South America,
which is part of Ecuador.
Alex is one of the scientistsworking to establish the
Galapagos Marine Reserve, one ofthe world's largest underwater
(01:13):
areas dedicated to protectingmigratory pathways through the
deep ocean.
This oceanic highway for marinelife, as it's sometimes called,
creates a corridor thatendangered migratory species
such as sharks, whales, turtlesand manta rays can travel
without fear of illegal fishing.
So, unsurprisingly, I foundAlex to be very down to earth
and rooted in a deep love forthe ocean, and we discussed how
(01:35):
he first connected to the oceana remarkable personal connection
to a deceased friend whiletagging lobsters, and where he
finds meanings in the oceans offthe Galapagos.
Alex Hearn (01:47):
My name is Alex Hearn.
I am a professor of marinebiology at Universidad San
Francisco de Quito in Ecuador,and I work mostly in the
Galapagos Islands, studying themovements and behavior of sharks
and other marine migratoryspecies.
Jason Elias (02:01):
So, alex, can you talk a bit about when you first
remember your connection to thewater?
Alex Hearn (02:06):
I grew up in Madrid and just before I was 16, we
went on a biology field trip tothe north of Spain, the Galicia,
and we spent a week there doingintertidal surveys, went out on
boats and that just did it forme.
The some reason, when I was outthere on the shore, there was a
(02:32):
clear path forward.
There were questions whoseanswers came quite naturally to
me and I realized somethingswitched and now I miss not
being close to the ocean.
I need to be near it, closeenough to sense it Right.
Jason Elias (02:57):
So you found this connection to the ocean and, of
course, all you have to say isGalapagos to an ocean person and
they immediately go into areverential space is one of the
most incredible places on theplanet, even with most of us,
including me, not having beenthere.
But to you it's now, you're ahome, and I'm wondering what
about Galapagos drew you thereand now, having come to know it
(03:19):
so well, what is it that makesit so special?
Alex Hearn (03:23):
Galapagos is a challenge Environmentally.
It's one of the mostspectacular places I've ever
been to, both on land and sea.
But from a human perspective,it's almost like a microcosm of
what's happening to our planettoday.
It's not an easy place to workand it's not an easy place to
(03:44):
live.
Back in the 80s there's only4,000 people living there.
Now there's over 30,000.
So it's grown a lot in terms ofhuman impact over the years and
that poses a lot of challengesto an oceanic archipelago that
is extremely fragile.
When I see carallels how thehuman population on Earth has
(04:06):
grown and how fragile Earth is Ifeel that there's challenges in
Galapagos and if we're able torise to meet them, then they may
be scalable to the future ofthe planet.
And then, of course, thebiodiversity is just beyond
(04:27):
belief.
Biologists don't earn that muchmoney, but last month we
stopped in the middle of theocean because a broody's whale
and her calf were swimmingalongside the boat and we jumped
in and took photos of her.
How much do people pay for thatexperience?
That was just a day in theoffice, so those moments,
(04:49):
they're intangible.
And yet Galapagos after 20years.
There's always something thatwill surprise you and delight
you in a way that you cannotimagine.
Jason Elias (05:03):
Right, that is incredible and in some ways it
must feel great to have such aprofound impact on an
environment you care so muchabout personally.
But one of the things I'vediscovered about doing this
podcast is that everyone whodoes great things in the ocean
bases that on a much moreintimate private connection that
they have to the water.
And I know you had a deeplytouching moment off an island in
(05:27):
the Galapagos that camesurprisingly well, tagging
lobsters, and I'm wondering ifyou could tell us that story.
Alex Hearn (05:35):
When I first arrived in Galapagos, my first project
was a mark recapture project forlobsters and that meant that
we'd go out across the entiremarine reserve, we'd catch
lobsters, we'd measure them,we'd put a tag on them and we'd
(05:57):
release them.
And the idea was that if thatlobster was recaptured we could
measure it and we could see howmuch it had grown.
When I first arrived inGalapagos I was living in the
volunteer area.
It was a castle actually.
It belonged to a crookedpolitician and he'd fled.
(06:18):
My bed was a heart-shapedconcrete bed very bizarre.
But my roommate, a guy calledHamish Saunders he was a
terrestrial person, he was abiologist, but we became very
good friends and he used to comeout with me sometimes to dive
and to catch lobsters.
When he finished up inGalapagos he went back to New
(06:44):
Zealand, where he came from, andhe ended up volunteering down
in Tasmania.
They were doing some surveysthere and there was a huge storm
and a freak wave came andHamish was lost.
(07:07):
One of the last emails he saidto me was had coming back to
Galapagos to work with me as avolunteer over the summer.
Of course, he never made it.
Well, his older brother cameafter Hamish died and I took him
(07:33):
out on one of my researchexpeditions and that trip was
insane.
We had Galapagos Hawks sittingon the rocks right where we were
swimming.
You could almost reach out.
We came across an albino seacucumber.
(07:54):
I mean, galapagos really showedher best side on that trip and
I just got the feeling thatthere was a reason for that.
One evening we were out in thewest of the islands, in
(08:16):
Fernandina, which is one of themost pristine islands on the
planet, and we went diving tocatch lobsters.
And when we came up, hamishshowed me what he'd caught and
one of the lobsters that he'dcaught had a tag on it.
(08:39):
When I looked up when thatlobster had been tagged it had
been caught and tagged by Hamishthe year before I just felt
like that was a moment that theocean was giving us some kind of
(09:06):
message of coming full circle,if you like, a reassuring sense
that the ocean is there, thatthere's something beyond the
physical, and I got the feelingthat Galapagos wanted to show
(09:33):
Andy its best side.
Jason Elias (09:43):
Well, that's beautiful, but I think
epitomizes the underlyingmessage of what this entire show
is about.
What I also think isinteresting is that, like most
everything in life, in order tolove something you must first
know it, and in to know it, youhave to engage with it and
(10:04):
understand it, and that's what Ifeel like you do with Galapagos
, and that recently led to amajor ocean victory for ocean
conservation with the GalapagosMarine Reserve Swimway, which
made major headlines around theworld.
Can you tell us how that cameabout and what it is?
Alex Hearn (10:24):
When I came to Galapagos, I came to work in
fisheries and, of course, I wasdiving with sharks, and it's not
often you get to have aclose-up experience with the top
predator tiger sharks and silkysharks, as well as the
hammerheads of whale sharks inGalapagos.
There is a visceral connectionwhen you're down among them.
But more than that is fishermenin Galapagos were pushing to
(10:47):
allow longlining inside theGalapagos Marine Reserve and,
from the fisheries perspective,I was trying to put together a
white paper on why that mightnot be a good idea, and I
realized there was noinformation at all on the
behavior and ecology of sharksin Galapagos.
No one was doing anything, andso I contacted some specialists.
(11:09):
Galapagos is a name that has athree-digit pool, so it wasn't
hard to persuade people to come,and we started tagging several
species of sharks, and what wefound was that hammerhead sharks
in particular were moving fromGalapagos to Cocos Island.
Cocos Island is 700 kilometersnortheast of Galapagos.
(11:30):
It actually belongs to CostaRica, and in order to get from
the Galapagos Marine Reserve tothe Cocos Marine Reserve,
they've got to travel across 600kilometers of ocean.
But it's not protected, and sothat means that Ecuadorian and
Costa Rican fishing fleets canharvest sharks in those areas.
So we began to think maybe weneed connecting marine reserves
(11:55):
in the region, and we foundseveral of these species of
sharks and turtles seem to use achain of underwater mountains
as a reference, using themagnetic signal of those
underwater seamounts to navigate.
It's called the Cocos Ridge.
So we started talking aboutcreating a swimway, a protected
(12:16):
corridor that leads to marinereserves across boundaries, and
we started talking about thisabout seven years ago, and that
is what resulted, in December,in the declaration of this new
marine reserve that extendsprotection from Galapagos all
the way to the border of CostaRican waters.
Jason Elias (12:36):
Well, that is an incredible victory and I have to
say I have tremendous respectfor someone who dedicates
themselves completely tosomething they're passionate
about, as you have.
But, dropping beneath whatyou've done, I'm curious if
there are deeper, more personalmotivations for why you have
devoted yourself to the world'soceans.
Alex Hearn (12:56):
It's several things, I think.
I think it's the mystery.
You have that layer that yousee when you're standing on the
beach or the cliff and thenthere's so much going on
underneath.
I always wanted to do somethingas a career that wouldn't just
(13:17):
be a job and then go and havefun.
I wanted to have a richexperience in my life 24 hours a
day, not just before and afterwork, and finally, I love it In
(13:38):
retrospect.
I wanted to work on somethingthat would make some kind of
difference when I move on, tobeing able to look back and say,
well, I tried to make theplanet a little bit better than
(14:01):
it was when I was on it.
I tried to clean up a littlebit that idea that we're
stewards and so we need to lookafter it.
If we can leave it just thatlittle bit better, then good on
us.
So I think that's what reallymotivated me.
I got a feel for the first timeof the link between humans and
(14:25):
the ocean.
That really opened my eyes tothe idea that we do need to have
some management, someregulation, and I just thought,
well, I need to get working then.
Jason Elias (14:49):
Finally, we end every interview and every
episode with a single open-endedquestion.
We ask everyone we talk to whatdoes the ocean mean to you?
Alex Hearn (15:01):
It's provided me with my purpose here in this
short time that I have.
It's provided me with fear andpain.
Provides me with joy.
I've taken my kids outsnorkeling.
My eldest has even helped meout with some research.
I think that provides me with aconnection to my kids that will
(15:24):
outlast me.
It's just a part of my lifethat I cannot turn my back on,
even if I wanted to.
Jason Elias (15:34):
Thanks for listening to the Big Deep
podcast.
Next time on Big Deep therewere about 30 lemon sharks and
some bull sharks down at thebottom of the school and being
in the water with them, I knew Ihad to save those sharks.
We really appreciate you beingon this journey into the Big
Deep as we explore an ocean ofstories.
(15:57):
If you like what we're doing,please make sure to subscribe
wherever you listen to podcasts.
Also, please find us on thesocials where you can like and
comment, because thosesubscribes, likes and comments
really make a difference.
For more content from ourinterviews in our series, photos
of every guest or just to getin touch, please reach out at
our website, bigdeakcom Plus.
If you know someone you thinkwe should talk to, please let us
(16:19):
know at our Big Deep website,as we are always looking to hear
more stories from interestingpeople who are deeply connected
to our world's oceans.
Thanks again for joining us.
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