Dr Nicole Miller is a Wellington scuba diver who cares deeply about our underwater kelp forests and marine life. She's the Chair of the Friends of Taputeranga Marine Reserve Trust, the former President of Wellington Underwater Club, and the founder of Explore Your Coast, with the goal of filming 70km of Wellington Harbour, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, and documenting changes to our coastal ecosystems.
In this marine conservation episode we talk about giant kelp, octopuses, creative ways of showing people what's below the surface to raise awareness, protecting what we love, and Nicole's new documentary called Seaweed, a Love Story.
Watch the trailer for Seaweed, a Love Story and keep up to date with the latest news and events. Nicole is also looking for partners and sponsors to bring the film to different parts of NZ. To find out more, contact her at exploreyourcoast@gmail.com.
Visit Explore Your Coast for more about Nicole's project to film and document 70km of Wellington's coastline.
Visit Taputeranga Marine Reserve on Wellington's South Coast.
Watch a video about kina/sea urchin grazing in Wellington Harbour (2021 and 2022 comparisons), then learn about kelp forest recovery after kina removal and community action.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Welcome to the Swim Chats podcast.
I'm Shona Riddell, a writer, former journalist and ocean
swimmer from Wellington, Altiro and New Zealand.
For each episode, I'll feature adifferent guest from our swim
community. They'll be dippers, adventure
swimmers, coaches and conservationists with one thing
in common. They all love being in the sea.
(00:26):
So whether you're a swimmer yourself or just interested in
stories about the ocean and people expanding their comfort
zones, I hope you enjoy these Swim chats.
Please hit, follow or subscribe so you don't miss an episode.
So Nicole, welcome to Swim Chatsthis morning.
Thank you for your time. It's lovely talking to you,
Shona. And you do so much.
(00:47):
So I was making a list of thingsthat you do so I could read them
out. So I thought I'll, I'll just
quickly list them and then we can talk about them in more
detail. Is that all right?
Yeah. Cool.
That sounds perfect. All right, so first of all,
you're the chair of the Friends of Tapu Taranga Marine Reserve
Trust, which for listeners who don't know, Tapu Taranga Reserve
(01:08):
is a fully protected marine reserve on Wellington South
Coast. It was founded in 2008, and it's
about four kilometers, I think. Nicole, you're also the
president of the Wellington. No longer the president, OK,
Former president of the Wellington Underwater Club.
(01:30):
You're the founder of Explore Your Coast, a project which is
documenting changes to our coastal ecosystem by diving 70
kilometers of coastline in Tefanga Nuya Tada or Wellington
Harbour. And you also have a new seaweed
documentary which has just come out which we will talk about in
(01:50):
more detail. So to sum all of that up, you're
a scuba diver, you live in Wellington and you care deeply
about our underwater kelp forests and marine life.
Is that is that a fair summary? That's really that's that's
bring it right to the point. Really it's all about me trying
like I'm so passionate about themarine environment because I
(02:11):
spend a lot of time there and I see how beautiful it is and how
important it is to us, you know,providing seafood and all the
other things. And it's really, it's created
this passion in me to bring the underwater bird to the surface
and shared in different ways andbe really innovative about how
we can try to get the underwaterbird into town, into a bar, into
(02:34):
people's homes, through arts, through virtual reality,
immersive experiences, all of that and connect people.
And then you mentioned the documentation as well.
That's the other thing is we because we can't see under the
surface, we really need to know what's happening underwater and
the information has to go to to local decision maker.
(02:55):
So one is we need better information about what's
happening right in our coastal areas.
And then it's about communicating all those
findings. And that's not necessarily the
science, it's just also the beauty as well of our underwater
world and the diversity with, with people back on shore.
Because we're an island nation, we, we very much depend on our
(03:18):
ocean, as you know, global citizens, but in New Zealand
particularly. Yeah, that's right.
And as you say, we're surroundedby the ocean, but not many
people can or want to necessarily get in depending on
the water temperature. And so don't see all the amazing
life that's underneath and the beauty.
(03:39):
And yeah. So I love that you come up with
creative ways to show people on land what's under the the
surface of the water. But I I thought maybe we should
start chronologically. I'm really interested to know
because you're from Germany. I'd love to know how you got
started with scuba diving. Like how old were you when you
first went for a dive? Oh, that was in my midst.
(04:04):
Early 30s, late 20s, early 30s. Need to do the math in my head.
Let's just say latest 20s soundsbetter.
Yeah, it's been it's been about 15-16 years really.
So right at at the time. And I was always keen Bavaria.
When I grew up in Bavaria, I wasreally lucky because I always
(04:27):
managed to get out. I had a really wild backyard
behind my parents place. There's mountains.
I could go skiing, climbing, mountain biking and really right
next to to my parents place was was a river and and we spend a
lot of time as kids in the border there in in the Bush next
to it really. And every time that was pretty
(04:48):
cold and there was, you know, lots of freshwater fish, but not
like that exciting, colorful marine life.
So when I got my got a chance and my parents spent on family
holidays and anywhere that was like the ocean, I was always
keen, you know, to see something.
And it was as a kid, you know, you get excited about like
really anything, really little little fish and other things.
(05:09):
And it didn't have to be too colorful to really impress me
back in the day because freshwater environment is
interesting but also not that colorful.
And I always thought it'll be great to go and start scuba
diving. And when I had an opportunity to
to come to New Zealand for, for my postdoc at Auckland
(05:30):
University, one of the things I had in my suitcase was actually
a diving mask because always thought I'll do that.
And you know, when you come, youjust have like once you case and
gear and yeah, right there, the diving mask was in it.
And then Auckland was really fabulous place to to get started
and get hooked on on scuba diving because the Auckland
(05:53):
University Underwater Dive Club was really active or still is.
And they offered lots of opportunities.
And I was really lucky because Ihad the opportunity to do my
first open border scuba dives atthe Poor Knights.
And the Poor Knights are this amazing marine reserve
subtropical fish species up off the Fungal Guy Coast in the
north of New Zealand. And as soon as you put your head
(06:16):
underwater, even just on the surface, you see fish life, you
see lush underwater forests and it's just something else.
So it really blew me away straight away.
And even on my first scuba dive,you can't take a Kamada onto the
training dive. But I had a little point and
shoot 24 disposable Kamada and Iwas just, we were waiting on the
(06:37):
surface until everybody else gotin.
So I just pulled it out of my pocket and I took a few photos
and I was like thinking, oh, there's a big fish.
And then the the fish came closer and closer.
I was like, that's probably not quite a fish.
Oh, it's a shark. So the first underwater photo on
this 24 camera image film was actually a bronze whaler shark
(06:59):
at the poor nights, which was amazing.
And then we put the camel of course away and then we all
started diving. And it was really weird because
we got circled by three bronze whaler sharks for both of the
open water dives and they got really close.
And of course the scuba instructor at the time was like,
this is weird. You know, they tried to shush
(07:19):
them away. We thought it's great because we
didn't know any better and I've never seen anything like it
again on scuba because sharks are actually, it's quite
skittish. And I had many occasions where I
went up to the pool nights, evenfree diving, trying to see the
similar experience and it's it'sreally rare.
So you really do treasure those exciting moments.
(07:43):
That's really amazing, of course.
And then was not turning back anymore.
Yeah, well, I was going to say what an incredible introduction.
Like, no wonder you're hooked. You're saying that like the best
of the best on day one. I would.
So you've obviously spent a lot of time scuba diving since then.
So here's a here's a question for you.
Do you actually prefer being underwater to being on land?
(08:06):
Well, if I had the chance to spend more time underwater, I
definitely do. It's in New Zealand.
It's, it's involves a lot of effort because the water of
course, as you know, is a bit cooler.
And so you do wear a lot more stuff and, and the, the time is
limited also by water temperature to some extent, but
(08:27):
it doesn't really matter becauseeven, you know, I had short
dives that were amazing, shallowdives, deep dives.
And it's, it's just going to, it's really about trying to see
the diversity and go different places as well.
I do a little bit of cave diving.
That's like a different, different thing.
Again, you know, it's, there's ahole for me.
(08:51):
It's the curiosity about seeing different places and I find it
quite impressive if you think about New Zealand as a long
country and we all know how how diverse the country is.
Between Capering Tonga, Rio, thecentral Plateau and then going
down South Island, Fiordland, the Alps and you get the same
(09:14):
diversity underwater. There's the topography
underwater in in New Zealand andsome places it's just mind
blowing. You know, you dive along steep
cliffs or you get Kevin and caves and then you get all this
marine life. It's not always very colorful,
but sometimes you get these big schools of fish coming along and
it's, it's just really impressive.
(09:35):
And then you then start looking under all of those seaweeds and
other things. You get this amazing colourful
and vertebra life that just blows your mind and that is
really cool. And you'd never quite know what
you see underwater as well because you just don't know what
swims past or what gets drifted by and the current, which is
amazing too. And the every time every.
(09:58):
Time is different, doesn't it? Yeah, exactly.
And also, you know, it's not just like the the being in the
water or looking underwater. It's also sometimes you have
this lovely experience on the coastline as well.
You've got sunset. Sunrise is dramatic.
You, you see wildlife. And yesterday I stopped on, on
the way along Tapataranga MarineReserve because I, there was
(10:20):
this amazing flock of sea guys and they were all like digging
through CV that was washed up close to Houghton Bay.
And it was less all going on, you know, the old ones, the
young ones with the different feathers, the, the oyster
catchers. And it was like all this
cacophony of that was incredible.
(10:42):
And that one I saw Penguin chasing bait fish in, in the
project site where we did the cat forest restoration.
That was so cool to see. So there's a whole lot of things
and, and the other thing that I really like about diving and the
ocean and the passion. I guess like in any other hobby
you find people with a similar passion and I think the CV
(11:04):
people are quite special. That's right, you find your
community. Yes, exactly I.
Was going to ask what's tapituranga because for people
who haven't been snorkeling or diving there what what would you
expect to see? Taranga Marine Reserve is
amazing. Well, for one, it's the only
fully protected marine reserve along the coast of a capital
(11:25):
city. So we've got something really
special here in Wellington. And when you put your head in in
the water Taputaranga, you very quickly see crayfish power
straight off the coastline. And that is incredible because
you can't really see that outside the reserve.
Outside the reserve you spend a lot of time looking and you're
lucky along the coastline. We're lucky because we still get
(11:48):
juvenile species in outside the reserve and inside this reserve.
You see then how these species grow up to the abundance and
size and I I guess probably backin the old days there was even
more fish and and power like trayfish around.
But the marine reserves really show how different it could be
(12:11):
between protected areas and not.And because it's on Wellington
South Coast, that's a really, really dynamic marine
environment if you think about how crazy the waves can get.
And we just recently had this massive storm with six 7m waves
coming on shore. And I always wonder how marine
(12:32):
life manages to survive and the really shallows.
But a couple of days after the storm has gone and the water's
cleared up, you go back to the coast and everything seems to be
so happy. Fish, a little fish are back in
the in their place. But then you see how rocks are
torn apart and how the seaweed grows sideways because they have
topped it over. It's incredible.
(12:54):
So the marine life along the coast is just so cool.
And it's same as we've got all the diversity of species because
we we are in in the confluence between different currents and
different water bodies. So we get often the southernmost
species in New Zealand and the northernmost species as well.
So we've got that and yeah, it'sjust just incredible.
(13:16):
And if you're really lucky, you know, I know I missed out on
that, but I know that on one of the days we had groups of orcas
and they stopped by with each single dive group.
It's incredible. If you think that they come and
check you out, you're not so cool.
So. Close.
So amazing and I know you encounters with octopuses as
(13:36):
well. Yes.
I love it. Octopus are always good.
That's the other thing. They're also in the harbour.
So everywhere we get like these thriving seaweed forests, we get
a lot of marine life octopus in between.
They're chasing all the little crabs and other things that that
also called the seaweed forest their home.
(13:57):
And it's always nice because notevery octopus, but some when you
stick around and you keep a bit of distance and you watch them
for a while, they then go like, oh, what are you?
Particularly if you go to video light or something shiny right
in front and then you see like 1tentacle coming up and then it's
usually more than one and then you've got the octopus right
(14:18):
over your camera. And that's, that's quite a neat
experience as well. And the other thing we get in
seaweed forest and we are reallylucky and Wellington as well as
with our seaweed forest in around the harbour and they're
home to sea horses and sea horses that came of flesh in
them. They sort of put their tail
around them and then they wait for for the crustaceans.
(14:41):
And particularly when you go night diving, which is also
super exciting because you see another, another, yeah, total
different mix of marine lives. They are out and they are on top
of the seaweed and they're looking for prey.
And that's so nice to watch. And that's the other thing.
There's so many species that people, you know, by chance take
(15:05):
photos of. So one of my dive buddies took a
photo of a fish, and it turns out he was either the 1st or the
second one ever in New Zealand to take a photo of that fish.
You know, that's incredible. That's.
Amazing. And that's.
Here in Wellington Harbor, you know, it's right in front of the
Beehive Central city. That's incredible and.
When you say seaweed, it's some giant kelp, isn't it, that we
(15:27):
have in Wellington and that's the northernmost limit in New
Zealand? Exactly.
So Wellington, because of those different water currents and and
influences, we've got this massive diversity overall in New
Zealand. We've got over 1000 different
species of seaweeds, like from the little ones that at the
bottom, often red and green, right up to the really large
(15:50):
ones that we see where you wherepeople often go, oh, touch me or
I got entangled in it. And up north we get mostly the
lush golden Cape, which is really interesting as well and
nice to dive through. And in Wellington, as you said,
we're really lucky that we are at the northernmost boundary of
(16:10):
Giant Cape. And you can really think about
it. Giant Cape was called Giant Cape
because it gets really tall and it can grow around the
Wellington coastline. I've seen it in up to 16 meters
of water depth and then it growsfrom 16 meter.
Often you don't quite see it on the surface because it doesn't
come up in in the really deep areas.
But if the conditions are good for it to grow in, particularly
(16:33):
now going into winter, it's often you see it in in big
floats on the surface. And it's the same like we get in
California where you think aboutthe otters putting like building
rafts and tying themselves onto the seaweed.
So it's quite cool. And it's a real, it's when you
dive into those trying cake forests, it feels like you're
(16:55):
diving in underwater rainforestsbecause you're diving down along
like pretty much like going downa tree from the canopy down to
the forest floor. The fish come in often.
It's like birds flashing throughthe forest.
We've got fish and then you start looking in the yeah,
smaller fish are hiding in the sort of understory and then you
(17:17):
see all the marine life at the forest, flow of which is then
often power tray fish and particularly the juvenile ones
as well. So they're real nursery grounds
and all these little fishing critters, they attract, of
course, bigger fish. So we'll, we don't only get the
bait fish cruising around, that's where the Penguins and
(17:38):
the shakes are after, but then also we get larger fish as well
that are attracted to it as well.
And then you get this whole thriving food web and then you
get dolphins coming in to chase fish and all that sort of stuff.
So, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's areal ecosystem and the more you
sort of spend time in it, the more you see all these
(17:58):
different, different marine lives as well.
And that's, that's quite exciting.
It's always every dive is sort of a bit of a discovery really.
That's. Really special.
And I know a few years ago you create, was it you who created
Project Baseline, which is sort of a citizen science project
where people can film and document changes to the, the
(18:20):
giant kelp populations around New Zealand?
Yeah. Around Wellington specifically,
yeah. Exactly so so Project Baseline,
a baseline is really it's an international group where where
divers or or particularly yes, that one particularly was aim
for scuba divers. They can go back to the same
(18:41):
dive site and take photos and look at changes.
And what we thought actually in Wellington, what would be a lot
nicer is actually, let's just look at giant cat because I was
really surprised after I was diving in California that we
actually get seaweed and giant cat in Wellington.
And I was already diving here atthe time and I didn't really
(19:01):
sort of, it didn't really click.So you you sort of walk into the
ocean, you go past the giant catand past the cat forest and then
you continue your diving. But but by diving in California
and some of those like with really good visibility and very
thick sort of underwater forest,I got back and I was like
talking to people. And then somebody said, oh,
(19:24):
yeah, we've got giant kelp in Wellington.
How? And I'm like, really, how come
we a scooper, you know, community, we don't really talk
about this. And then I thought, oh, we
should really start looking at what the changes are because it
is the northernmost boundary. The, we already knew there are
changes in, in the extent of those cat forests depending on,
(19:45):
on temperature, on the water temperature.
And it was really something to start a project looking at how,
how do they actually change? And I kept it quite simple to
snorkeling actually, and just take Agps snorkeling around the
cat forest. And that's something.
Where actually we could, there'splenty of of opportunities for,
(20:07):
for people. It doesn't have to be always
scuba divers, you know, ocean swimmers could take Agps and
swim around the Kate Forest. Kayakers could submit
observations, booties, you know,so there's a whole range of
people who could contribute to projects like this.
But by starting looking at one species like the giant cat, when
you then start discovering all the other life, marine life in
(20:31):
this cat forest, you then start looking at it more as an
ecosystem. And, and that was really an
exciting journey to be on with awhole bunch of other people
really. Awesome.
And then was it about 18 months ago that you set up Explore Your
Coast, which is your project to be the first person to film 70
kilometres of Wellington's coastline?
(20:53):
So how I know you've made a goodstart on that?
How many kilometers have you covered so far?
So we've. Got 47 out of the goal to to
film 70 kilometers of coastline.Wow.
And yeah, Explore Your Coast really came about because I
could see the changes in different parts of the
coastline. So with my head on for the
Friends of Tapaturanga Marine Reserve, I was really passionate
(21:16):
about talking about how great the marine life has recovered in
in the Marine Reserve and how wecan share that as a scuba diver
around the wider Wellington areas.
We discovered amazing sponge gardens on a dive on the West
Coast of Wellington was like, well, people don't really know
about that as well. That discovery actually led to a
funding for the university to doa whole lot of, of, of sponge
(21:40):
monitoring and mapping work. That was amazing as well to to
see that and then inside Wellington Harbour it was really
about seeing and communicating there are these amazing cat
forest. But we could also already see in
the Project Baseline site that sea urchins were moving into the
project area and starting to eatthe cat forest.
(22:01):
So I had this contrast of these amazing thriving ecosystems,
places where the marine life is OK, doing OK, and then other
places where it really goes the completely wrong trend and where
the Cape forests started to rapidly decline actually.
And I was thinking about how canwe actually communicate this in
(22:22):
a, in a, in a wider scale, on a more of a regional level.
And over the years, I've done a lot of work with other community
groups around New Zealand as well.
So actually explore your course really provided me with an
opportunity to pull all of this work together to say, Yep, we
are documenting the coastline. On a larger level.
(22:43):
We are supporting community groups in other areas of New
Zealand as well with documentingtheir marine life, but also
helping with conversation and supporting projects that are
looking at how do we actually, what do local communities, hapu
EV communities wound in the areas?
How do you get the data you needand how do you pull that through
(23:04):
to actually real tangible marineconservation work or marine
restoration work in the ocean aswell?
So really taking all of these different levels.
And then of course, with friendsof Tapataranga Marine, we serve,
we often write submissions on, on, on policies relating to, to
marine, to the marine environment, marine management,
(23:27):
marine protection, biodiversity protection as well.
So we tackle all these differentlevels on, on the ocean because
we really have to change in New Zealand.
We've got to get the importance and the health and functioning
ecosystem, marine ecosystems in the center of decision making.
At the moment. The ocean is always
(23:48):
afterthoughts of things we do onland, but it's exactly the
actions on land and decisions wemake above the water impact the
ocean. So really that's where we have
to create change. But we can only do this if local
communities understands what's happening and if they can see
what's there and what happens tothose environments because we
(24:11):
all care. You know, in New Zealand we are
so passionate about our native wildlife on land.
There's lots of freshwater restoration happening, which is
great for the marine environment.
We are restoring our forests, reading, tracking, bringing Kiwi
birds back. And that's all really good stuff
because that provides better water quality to go in the
(24:32):
ocean. But in the ocean, the mindset
still often it's all there's plenty there.
Our actions don't make a change,but actually they do.
And that's just how do we communicate that in a way it
makes sense. And for me, because I've got a
science background, I'm really passionate about bringing
community science, indigenous knowledge.
(24:52):
When you work with hapu and EV, it's really important because
they have this long term baseline.
Again, the long term knowledge about how their local
environment is changing. And if we can help out a scuba
divers with easy methods for people to actually see what's
below the surface, that's great.And that's how you can make
difference, really. That's called.
(25:14):
Collaboration is so important, doesn't it?
Yeah, collaboration is really, yes, collaboration is really,
really important and it's a key and this everybody talks about
it and it's really hard to get acollaboration to the point where
you actually have a genuine collaboration.
But you know, hopefully we, we're working on a few projects
where we hopefully can show thatthis is possible as well.
(25:36):
But all of this at the moment, all the work, the cost for the
documentation of the coastline and other things is self funded.
So it'll be really nice to find partners and sponsors that
understand the marine space and they can help us make like quite
significant changes. Because at the moment when we're
(25:58):
looking at urchins and urgent grazing, it's a problem all
around New Zealand where we influence the balance in the
food web. We can talk about this in a bit,
but in general at the moment theNorth East coast of the North
Island is ravaged by urchins. We are putting a lot of
sediments in the ocean. If we start seabed mining in
Tabernacchi, we destroy another quarter of the North Island's
(26:22):
coastline. So by just those two pressures,
we we are starting to lose half of the North Island's marine
ecosystem. That's pretty significant.
You know, a lot of. Yeah, there's a lot of cause and
effect, isn't there? And yeah, this is a good time to
start talking about sea urchins or kind of barrens, as I know
(26:43):
they it's sort of the chain, theunderwater chain.
If the if there's an overabundance of sea urchins,
then they eat the giant kelp andthen that removes the marine
habitat. So what is causing this
abundance of sea urchins? Yeah.
It's like anything. When you remove the predators
for for like the top predators in the food web, then you create
(27:06):
a change in, in, in the, in the food web and an imbalance.
So in New Zealand, the key predators for those urchins are
fish on the reef, particularly snapper, blue Coats, Mookie and
others when they start foraging in the turfy algae as well.
And yeah, crayfish are the big ones, but it's so important to
(27:28):
look at it as an ecosystem. What we do in New Zealand is
we've back in the days we introduced A quota management
system where we were looking at single species.
So we are fishing for snapper, we are fishing for crayfish, we
are fishing for what glucot and all the other species
individually. But we don't look at the
combined effect of what it meanswhen we start removing all of
(27:50):
those fish out of the ecosystem.And the impact is that we are
losing all the predators that would otherwise eat the urchins.
It's really interesting because of course there's the predators
who eat the urchins straight when they see it.
But if you think about the forest and and same underwater,
we got other animals that foragein the bottom.
So for example, when you when you go for scuba dive in in the
(28:13):
marine reserve, you always see blue monkey and they are
munching around on the bottom and they're disturbing the
bottom that they're turning around pieces of gravel and
other things. And the small urchins they would
actually hide, you know, on the reef.
So if they get disturbed, there is usually a bunch of fish
around those blue monkey that picking up anything they can see
(28:36):
is edible. So if it doesn't like if, if, if
it isn't the urgent laffy that the fish gobble up by
themselves, if the other ones see little urchins, they just go
and crack them open. So we need all the diversity of
fish species on the reef to makethe sediment to eat urchins at
all different levels. If we do that, the cat forest in
(29:00):
a really good balance and actually has the cat forest can
maintain quite a high number of urchins.
Urchins are natural part of the of the reef ecosystem in cat
forests. But what they usually do is they
start hiding because they know if they are coming out when
they're too small, they get eaten.
So they they make sure they stayhidden.
When we change the balance in the food web and we take all the
(29:24):
urgent predator out by fishing, then the numbers of urgent
increase. But they also changed their
feeding behaviour because they know they don't have to wait for
CV to float by and they just getit when it's with the tube feet,
when when it floats around, theyactually start actively foraging
and that's when we see real quick tipping points.
(29:44):
In Wellington, you, it was really quite dramatic because
you could see how the urchins were moving up the reef from
deeper waters to shallow water and they were all bunching up
like a line of lawn mowers against the the cat forest.
And what happens is the urchins don't eat all the CV, they just
cut it off right at the bottom. So they actually just mow the
(30:07):
cat forest, like, yeah, like chainsaws.
They just go and and move it offand the cat forest floats off
and really nothing stays behind.So it really turns from this
amazing underwater forest into an area where there's only rock
behind because the cake forest, if you think about what would be
(30:28):
the root system on land, provides a real nice spots for
soft things like sponges and other things to grow.
But as soon as the cake forest disappears in this root system,
rots off, those soft animals areexposed to wave actions and
(30:48):
other things, and then they falloff as well.
And that's really where you get this massive change from happy,
healthy, colourful, thriving Cape Forest to just be a rock,
Yeah. I'll link to some videos on the
show notes so people can say what you're describing as well.
Yeah, pretty, pretty dramatic. So you have a new documentary
(31:09):
out about all of this called Seaweed a Love Story.
I love the title, so I'll link to the trailer as well.
People can watch it, but so how can people watch the
documentary? Yes.
So at the moment we are, we are organizing screenings in
Wellington. We are trying to get the
documentary to other locations in New Zealand as well.
(31:30):
It's a short documentary that really like the the director
Rebecca, she's been incredible in in pulling out how beautiful
the diving in The Cave forest isand and the story around it.
She's done such an amazing job. And so it's a short documentary
that highlights the urgency to, to for action and, and actually
(31:53):
shows how how quickly things canchange and what we take for
granted, but also how important those ecosystems are.
And really what we want to do iswe want to encourage
conversations. So what we are doing at the
moment is trying to arrange screenings where we can have Q&A
sessions with people who are interested in that.
Because it's not just the movie that is important to show the
(32:13):
beauty. We also have to have the
conversations to get people in the room, start talking what
everybody can do and build, build the foundation so people
are open to actually support, stand up for the ocean and
support other projects as well. If you think about it in
Wellington, I'm not sure why, but we've got a higher poaching
(32:36):
rate than the average New Zealand.
So that was yeah, MPI just had there was a big news article out
on TV as well, invaling them in fisheries office or stop people
along the shore. It's three times more likely
they actually take illegal sizesor amounts of fish compared to
the average New Zealand. So the harbor is really big.
(33:00):
If we would on the coastline, ifwe wanted to see change in in
the marine environment, we need the community to stand behind
it. And that's really important to
to get people thinking about howdo we ensure that our ecosystems
are healthy enough to keep providing food for us and for
our kids. And at the moment we are
(33:21):
pushing, we're putting so much pressure on all of those
ecosystems that they can't keep functioning.
They collapse in front or well, in front of our eyes, but we
don't see it. So we've got to get people on
board across, you know, recreational, commercial,
everybody on land, because it's really important that everybody
(33:44):
is starting to talk to their local representatives and
decision makers in locally on local government, regional
government and central government level.
Because of course, when you lookat on national level, if you
look at all the party manifestosacross all parties, everybody's
got some nice words about the ocean, but it never happens.
(34:07):
And how many years have we been watching the decline?
So I get a bit frustrated about that.
But you know, we need everybody to actually say we care about
the ocean. We know there's great marine
life, we want to see it functioning and we you want to
go out and and enjoy it because at the end it would be super
cool if you could walk to the coast, all around New Zealand.
(34:30):
Doesn't matter where it is, you take your kids within 10
minutes, you've got to fish for dinner and then you enjoy the
marine life. Snorkelling, you know, that's
what we want. So, and I think that's what we
should be aiming for. Was it the?
Underwater. Was it the underwater explorer
Jacques Cousteau who said we protect what we love, right?
(34:50):
Yeah, exactly. And your mission, I love how
your mission is to show people what's beneath the surface and
make it more accessible in different ways because we have
different ways of connecting with the water, right?
Even if. We.
Yeah. And so just some of the examples
of things that you do personally.
You have your virtual reality headset.
(35:10):
Yes. Back to different community
events. And so adults and kids alike can
put on the headset and feel likethey're diving in the marine
reserve because you've got this three, six day view of all the
beautiful fish and the blue water and the giant kelp.
And you've also put up QR codes along the South Coast.
So anybody walking along the South Coast, which is Island Bay
(35:32):
or Federal Bay, so on, can hold your camera up to these codes.
And then you watch these amazingvideos of the octopus.
Like you say, this is your footage, right?
Or is it? Yeah, I see your footage.
Yeah. At the most it's mostly my
footage, but we are really keen to reach out to others.
So everybody who's walking and on the coast who's got a
favorite fish, we've got a few spare, spare QR codes so we
(35:54):
could do fishy tales so you can tell interesting community
stories. So that's the sort of thing we'd
we'd really like to continue building up on.
And because, yeah, we just want to show what's at specific
locations or if we say, you know, marvelous marine life,
it's like, what's your favorite marine life in the Marine
reserve? Engage people that way.
(36:15):
Involve the. Community and also got your
beautiful underwater photographsthat I know you're creating a
website to sell some of them to raise money for your for your
explore your coast work that you're doing yeah.
Exactly. So yeah, it's a ocean inspired
art and really I created that for one is because I'd really
(36:35):
love every New Zealanders havinga piece of seaweed at home and
you know, others another way to to actually do that.
And, and it's just a really niceconversation starter because you
can show the beauty and the diversity.
And we've got a couple of thingscoming up.
So one is I usually take the VR headset and ocean arts to, to
(36:55):
those movie screenings. And later this year we, I also
have exhibition at Zealandia in August and September.
My images will be up there and available for purchase.
The South Coast Arts Trail is coming up and in November
there'll be another exhibition in the Thistle Hall with, with
(37:16):
me and jointly with two other artists as well, all ocean
inspired. So that's a really nice way to,
to, to spread the love for the ocean as well and fundraise at
the same time because it's, it'squite expensive so far.
Yeah. What?
Sort of equipment do you use when you're duck scuba diving
(37:38):
along the coastline filming. It looks like you're carrying
some pretty heavy equipment. What sort of what what are you
using to do your filming? Yeah, so for a lot of the
underwater it starts really simple for for explore your
course. When I'm I'm trying to to cover
distance, I usually just use a GoPro come over because then you
don't need to vary so much. You just put it on and then it
(37:59):
runs. And then when I get a chance,
usually I've got a small point and shoot camera in my pocket as
well. Because you never know if you go
and see something like that's a bit smaller, then you can pull
the camera out and take a photo.And if I get a chance to
actually spend time in the wooden, the cat first just
enjoying it. I've got a small DLSR camera in
(38:22):
a waterproof housing with strokes because you only get the
amazing color out when you when you actually get lights onto it
as well. Yeah, but whatever, you know,
it's really amazing. You don't really have to have
like super expensive equipment. Just with a small point and
shoot camera that you can buy that's waterproof to 1015
(38:42):
meters, you can really document quite a lot of the marine life
already. It's cool.
And you're diving in so many different areas.
Do you ever, do you ever feel nervous?
A lot of people coming on this podcast talk about feeling
nervous in your environments or getting in the water.
I don't get the impression that fear it plays a big part for you
in your scuba diving. But do you, do you ever feel
(39:04):
literally out of your depth in that well you got?
You gotta, you gotta trust your gut feeling to some extent.
I think when you, when you do that a lot, you sort of know
what conditions are OK and whatnot and you get a feeling
for when you're relaxed. And sometimes you, you know,
it's like, oh, actually something, you know, you're a
(39:26):
bit more tense or something. You just stop, stop and think,
why is that? Quick evaluation, you know, of
the situation. Then you can go actually, Oh no,
you know, the current picked up and I'm, I'm a bit exhausted by
swimming too hard or actually the conditions changed and it
feels a lot darker. Why is that?
And then you can decide, you know, what you do actually, do I
(39:47):
feel happy with the situation ornot?
And a bit of respect is good because you just got to make
sure you're on on your game. You do your pre dive checks, you
make sure everybody knows what the plan is for the dive.
And you can take that from a dive that is in in 2-3 meters of
water, beautiful weather, cave forest, or if you go into a cave
(40:08):
and you do some cave diving as well.
So you just got to. You just got to be.
Trusting your feelings to some extent and be prepared and have
respect for what you're doing. It's like for like for any
hobby, you wouldn't, you wouldn't just sit on a mountain
bike and go straight down Mount Victoria either.
You know, a little bit of. Caution is always a good thing.
(40:30):
Yeah, exactly. And just stop, Think, breathe,
enjoy, cool. In March we had what was New
Zealand's first ever seaweed festival, which was really cool.
It was a week long festival withall sorts of creative events
from yoga to sea shanties to art, and the opening event was
the Sunrise Seaweed Swim in Island Bay.
(40:53):
Luckily the weather was beautiful.
It was a good turn out and I remember talking to you.
We were both bobbing around in the water, and I remember you
saying it was the first time in a long time that you'd just gone
for a dip, that you hadn't been,you know, fully scuba diving
with all your gear, and that it felt good.
Yeah. I was wondering, did it Has it
inspired you to go for more depths?
(41:14):
I might just have to to wait foryou to Take Me Out again.
I'll. Take you up, but I.
Enjoyed it. It's always just making the
effort and, and it's not really that much of an effort.
And it, it was really lovely. And it was, it was such a cool
crowd of people as well. It's it's quite amazing, yeah.
Yeah, it's it was very inspiringto see the number of people who
(41:35):
turned out who were excited about the ocean and excited to
be involved. And I know a few people wanted
to sign up to do a few more community events, so that was
cool. So the next question was going
to ask us that, you know, you'realways working really hard to
build on awareness. You do a lot of community
events, you do a lot of public speaking.
You've done TDX Wellington, so you find all the all these
(42:01):
interactions and community education, is it, is it
energizing for you? Does it get frustrating
sometimes? Do you feel like you get enough
support in terms of practical support?
Yeah, emotional. No, no, I, I do it's, it's
really lovely. I it's just so nice when, when
you get feedback as well, you know, when, when people come up
(42:23):
after, after a talk and they say, oh, really amazing.
Sometimes I wish we could reach bigger audiences, but that's a
tricky 1, you know, because you give talks to, to a group of,
yeah, if you're lucky, somewherebetween 20 and 200 people.
But I think you've got to find aright balance between between a
(42:44):
level of where you can influencepeople and it's just important
to influence people in that influence fear that you have.
So you know, with ocean swimmersfor for you, if you talk about
seaweed, you're excited about seaweed, you're gonna spark
people. And then those ocean swimmers go
to the next group, you know, and, and after a little while,
(43:05):
I've got all the ocean swimmers around Wellington either
passionate or at least aware of our amazing cat forest.
So, so we do need that, we really need local support, but
I'd like to do with explore yourcourse as well as we can do all
these different levels of Community Action and also
(43:26):
finding community groups in, in other places to actually share
the experience of how you can work with decision makers with
HARPO and EV. So the idea is to actually scale
up on a local level these actions.
And there's a couple of really great projects where Explore
(43:47):
your course was helping out a little bit, but it actually
sparked into, into quite big initiatives, even the monitoring
data. It's called point.
And getting a bit of funding to engage mountains to see, for
example, with a seaweed snorkel in at the Miramar Peninsula,
that project where I had fundingto organise the snorkel sparked
(44:10):
the enthusiasm with mountains tosee to to love, remove, remove
the education and then later on create the restoration project.
You know, you never know how, how these things actually spark.
Yeah, it's called. It's called as.
You're just going to say. It's called a ripple effect,
Yeah. Exactly.
It's amazing water thing, yeah. Exactly.
(44:33):
The only one thing is that it's always hard to communicate to
potential funders is actually weneed long term data or we need
local data. It's great if we do something,
but we also have to support community groups to collect the
data and then also the engagement with these different
groups. And I don't think that's
happening in New Zealand yet. So I've been, I was really
(44:56):
lucky, I've got a, a Winston Churchill fellowship last year,
was able to travel and I was looking at projects in North
America, in Europe and in Australia.
And there was a lot more fundingavailable to actually facilitate
those projects. And the yeah, some of some of
the projects where private funding was supporting long term
(45:18):
biodiversity and monitoring is really inspirational and we
should like, I wish some of the aspiration would be here in New
Zealand as well. Way to make this come way.
Does the funding come in most countries?
Private funding is really important.
So local philanthropy, often it's either people locally who
have a passion or on a regional level, depending on the pockets
(45:40):
of people who support something.And there's really interesting
models and people were equally interested in New Zealand, which
was amazing to see because indigenous leadership is a
place, a big role of course, in around New Zealand, in
particularly with hapu and EV looking after their coastline
and making decisions and being able to pull together land and
(46:02):
marine as well, because it's across all of the whole.
And that was really interesting to talk to, to, to people as
well to see what happens overseas, but also how, how we
can do it. And if we could combine some of
those ex the expertises and approaches would be, would be
(46:23):
really good. But there's, yeah, that's,
that's one of the areas I think where we can do still quite a
bit. And there are ways because yeah,
there are definitely ways how wecould also attract international
funding as well. If we actually take our
aspirations for native species protection on land into the
(46:43):
ocean, we could we could do something there as well.
There will be exciting opportunities just making it
happen. Well, we.
Have a lot of ocean swimmers wholisten to this podcast,
particularly in Wellington, so hopefully people are feeling
inspired and galvanized to get involved.
What advice would you give them?Yeah, just even if they want to,
(47:06):
everybody wants to engage and want to see the documentary for
example, as a easy, easy starter.
We will set up a couple of events.
The next one is coming up quite shortly so might be a bit too,
too close to the podcast mid June.
But there will be more opportunities and people can
just e-mail exploreyourcourse@gmail.com.
(47:28):
Then we can put everybody on on on the e-mail list in the
newsletter. Hopefully we can on the next
event. I'm really keen to organise some
CV beer, so hopefully we can do more of that and then we can
also run some exciting events towards the end of the year
alongside all of these art exhibitions as well.
(47:49):
And those events and talks couldreally be like the the, the
inner, the first, the first rabbit for effect on on other
things, because we are really keen with explore your course to
hear from community groups who want to potentially host the
movie, movie screening or to an event of other sorts.
(48:11):
And then just take it from there.
And the other thing of course isreally important to keep your
eye out for any opportunity where you can say, Hey, we need
stronger Environmental Protection rather than weaker 1.
So anything that comes up aroundthe regional long term plans,
regional counsellors, just it's really great if people can
(48:32):
actually engage with these opportunities and it doesn't
really matter. You know what people's personal
choices are, but it's important that people engage and ask
questions and, and make the decision they think is the best.
And I guess when if we can have like on the next movie
screening, we'll have a local MPand the local regional
councillor coming along. So there's great opportunity to
(48:54):
ask questions to the decision makers that we currently have.
And I think that's really important as well.
So yeah, I think if we could allbecome ocean champions and some
sort or another would be great. You know, share the passion is
great. I'm going to put lots and lots
of links on the show notes so people can follow along with
(49:14):
your work and get involved and learn more.
Nicole, you inspire me so much with your energy and passion and
dedication to championing the ocean and all of its marine
life. So I wanted to ask who inspires
you? Like who are your ocean role
models? Oh, that's a good question.
I haven't, I haven't heard that one.
(49:35):
I think it's the marine life itself.
Of course, at the moment we see the movie ocean has has come up,
you know, so we can we definitely, you can see the
change with conversations with David Attenborough, who's now
also the ocean champion as well.But I think you don't really
have to go that far. It's, it's actually local
(49:56):
communities and local people whohave the deep connection with
the ocean. And I find that really
fascinating in in talking to people on the ground who spent
all their life and who can tell these, Yeah, who can say
actually 60 years ago, 40 years ago, we saw all of this amazing
(50:17):
marine life. And then just being in the
water, having the adventure. I think is is a little bit of
that the curiosity is, is something that I really love.
And I just love hanging out underwater and seeing all that
colorful marine life and, and the little things and the big
things and it's just in itself so inspiring to be in the water.
(50:38):
So yeah, I think that's really the key thing that keeps me
going. And that's easy because you know
exactly what you're in for. Over the years, if I think about
the, you know, the ocean, Vesa Bay or other things, I think
about, oh, that CVC was that I saw, you know, a couple of years
ago. I wish the environment stays
safe enough. So we've got more of those.
(51:00):
Yeah. Yeah.
That's what's. Actually in place is so
important. And yeah, like ocean memories, I
think is what you're describing.Yeah.
Special encounters you have thatyou never forget and you want
other people to be able to have them as well.
Yeah. Yes, agree.
It's it's completely like this and the ocean is a fascinating
place because everybody can build a different and a very
(51:20):
personal connection with the ocean.
We all have slightly different experiences, slightly different
memories. Some people like to swim and,
and, and achieve personal goals with swimming or others on scuba
diving. You could do the same.
You know, there's people who getright into the technical side
and all the gear and stuff. Or you could just pop around in
(51:41):
2 meters under The Cave forest and take photos or not even take
photos. Just hang out there, you know,
and don't move very much. So the ocean allows us to
connect in in so many different levels on a spiritual basis.
Well, and of course, for Mana Fenwa, that's an A total other
different connection then as well.
And it's it's interesting when you talk to different people
(52:03):
about their personal connection,that's always something that
this never ending source of, of energy and excitement and
curiosity as well. Awesome.
Well, we've covered so much today, but is there anything
else you'd like to talk about that we haven't covered yet?
I think we've. Done pretty good, yes.
It's just, I would just encourage everybody to to sign
(52:27):
up and yeah, just get involved and, and become that ocean
champion. And same if, if there's an
opportunity, I'm not sure if there's like principals, you
know, listening into the podcast, if we could show the
movie at a school assembly, that'll be another really cool,
cool event that I'd like to do as well.
Because kids, kids have that, you know, genuine curiosity for
(52:49):
the ocean as well. Awesome.
OK. Thank you so much for your time
today, Nicole. It's a pleasure.
Thank you Shona for having me. Thanks for listening to this
episode of Swim Chats. Please remember to follow or
subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode.
And if you enjoyed it, you can leave a five star rating and
review which helps other people find it too.
(53:10):
Enjoy the water and we'll see you next time.
Welcome to the Swim Chats podcast.
I'm Shona Riddell, a writer, former journalist and ocean
swimmer from Wellington, Altiro and New Zealand.
For each episode, I'll feature adifferent guest from our swim
community. They'll be dippers, adventure
swimmers, coaches and conservationists with one thing
in common. They all love being in the sea.
(00:26):
So whether you're a swimmer yourself or just interested in
stories about the ocean and people expanding their comfort
zones, I hope you enjoy these Swim chats.
Please hit, follow or subscribe so you don't miss an episode.
So Nicole, welcome to Swim Chatsthis morning.
Thank you for your time. It's lovely talking to you,
Shona. And you do so much.
(00:47):
So I was making a list of thingsthat you do so I could read them
out. So I thought I'll, I'll just
quickly list them and then we can talk about them in more
detail. Is that all right?
Yeah. Cool.
That sounds perfect. All right, so first of all,
you're the chair of the Friends of Tapu Taranga Marine Reserve
Trust, which for listeners who don't know, Tapu Taranga Reserve
(01:08):
is a fully protected marine reserve on Wellington South
Coast. It was founded in 2008, and it's
about four kilometers, I think. Nicole, you're also the
president of the Wellington. No longer the president, OK,
Former president of the Wellington Underwater Club.
(01:30):
You're the founder of Explore Your Coast, a project which is
documenting changes to our coastal ecosystem by diving 70
kilometers of coastline in Tefanga Nuya Tada or Wellington
Harbour. And you also have a new seaweed
documentary which has just come out which we will talk about in
(01:50):
more detail. So to sum all of that up, you're
a scuba diver, you live in Wellington and you care deeply
about our underwater kelp forests and marine life.
Is that is that a fair summary? That's really that's that's
bring it right to the point. Really it's all about me trying
like I'm so passionate about themarine environment because I
(02:11):
spend a lot of time there and I see how beautiful it is and how
important it is to us, you know,providing seafood and all the
other things. And it's really, it's created
this passion in me to bring the underwater bird to the surface
and shared in different ways andbe really innovative about how
we can try to get the underwaterbird into town, into a bar, into
(02:34):
people's homes, through arts, through virtual reality,
immersive experiences, all of that and connect people.
And then you mentioned the documentation as well.
That's the other thing is we because we can't see under the
surface, we really need to know what's happening underwater and
the information has to go to to local decision maker.
(02:55):
So one is we need better information about what's
happening right in our coastal areas.
And then it's about communicating all those
findings. And that's not necessarily the
science, it's just also the beauty as well of our underwater
world and the diversity with, with people back on shore.
Because we're an island nation, we, we very much depend on our
(03:18):
ocean, as you know, global citizens, but in New Zealand
particularly. Yeah, that's right.
And as you say, we're surroundedby the ocean, but not many
people can or want to necessarily get in depending on
the water temperature. And so don't see all the amazing
life that's underneath and the beauty.
(03:39):
And yeah. So I love that you come up with
creative ways to show people on land what's under the the
surface of the water. But I I thought maybe we should
start chronologically. I'm really interested to know
because you're from Germany. I'd love to know how you got
started with scuba diving. Like how old were you when you
first went for a dive? Oh, that was in my midst.
(04:04):
Early 30s, late 20s, early 30s. Need to do the math in my head.
Let's just say latest 20s soundsbetter.
Yeah, it's been it's been about 15-16 years really.
So right at at the time. And I was always keen Bavaria.
When I grew up in Bavaria, I wasreally lucky because I always
(04:27):
managed to get out. I had a really wild backyard
behind my parents place. There's mountains.
I could go skiing, climbing, mountain biking and really right
next to to my parents place was was a river and and we spend a
lot of time as kids in the border there in in the Bush next
to it really. And every time that was pretty
(04:48):
cold and there was, you know, lots of freshwater fish, but not
like that exciting, colorful marine life.
So when I got my got a chance and my parents spent on family
holidays and anywhere that was like the ocean, I was always
keen, you know, to see something.
And it was as a kid, you know, you get excited about like
really anything, really little little fish and other things.
(05:09):
And it didn't have to be too colorful to really impress me
back in the day because freshwater environment is
interesting but also not that colorful.
And I always thought it'll be great to go and start scuba
diving. And when I had an opportunity to
to come to New Zealand for, for my postdoc at Auckland
(05:30):
University, one of the things I had in my suitcase was actually
a diving mask because always thought I'll do that.
And you know, when you come, youjust have like once you case and
gear and yeah, right there, the diving mask was in it.
And then Auckland was really fabulous place to to get started
and get hooked on on scuba diving because the Auckland
(05:53):
University Underwater Dive Club was really active or still is.
And they offered lots of opportunities.
And I was really lucky because Ihad the opportunity to do my
first open border scuba dives atthe Poor Knights.
And the Poor Knights are this amazing marine reserve
subtropical fish species up off the Fungal Guy Coast in the
north of New Zealand. And as soon as you put your head
(06:16):
underwater, even just on the surface, you see fish life, you
see lush underwater forests and it's just something else.
So it really blew me away straight away.
And even on my first scuba dive,you can't take a Kamada onto the
training dive. But I had a little point and
shoot 24 disposable Kamada and Iwas just, we were waiting on the
(06:37):
surface until everybody else gotin.
So I just pulled it out of my pocket and I took a few photos
and I was like thinking, oh, there's a big fish.
And then the the fish came closer and closer.
I was like, that's probably not quite a fish.
Oh, it's a shark. So the first underwater photo on
this 24 camera image film was actually a bronze whaler shark
(06:59):
at the poor nights, which was amazing.
And then we put the camel of course away and then we all
started diving. And it was really weird because
we got circled by three bronze whaler sharks for both of the
open water dives and they got really close.
And of course the scuba instructor at the time was like,
this is weird. You know, they tried to shush
(07:19):
them away. We thought it's great because we
didn't know any better and I've never seen anything like it
again on scuba because sharks are actually, it's quite
skittish. And I had many occasions where I
went up to the pool nights, evenfree diving, trying to see the
similar experience and it's it'sreally rare.
So you really do treasure those exciting moments.
(07:43):
That's really amazing, of course.
And then was not turning back anymore.
Yeah, well, I was going to say what an incredible introduction.
Like, no wonder you're hooked. You're saying that like the best
of the best on day one. I would.
So you've obviously spent a lot of time scuba diving since then.
So here's a here's a question for you.
Do you actually prefer being underwater to being on land?
(08:06):
Well, if I had the chance to spend more time underwater, I
definitely do. It's in New Zealand.
It's, it's involves a lot of effort because the water of
course, as you know, is a bit cooler.
And so you do wear a lot more stuff and, and the, the time is
limited also by water temperature to some extent, but
(08:27):
it doesn't really matter becauseeven, you know, I had short
dives that were amazing, shallowdives, deep dives.
And it's, it's just going to, it's really about trying to see
the diversity and go different places as well.
I do a little bit of cave diving.
That's like a different, different thing.
Again, you know, it's, there's ahole for me.
(08:51):
It's the curiosity about seeing different places and I find it
quite impressive if you think about New Zealand as a long
country and we all know how how diverse the country is.
Between Capering Tonga, Rio, thecentral Plateau and then going
down South Island, Fiordland, the Alps and you get the same
(09:14):
diversity underwater. There's the topography
underwater in in New Zealand andsome places it's just mind
blowing. You know, you dive along steep
cliffs or you get Kevin and caves and then you get all this
marine life. It's not always very colorful,
but sometimes you get these big schools of fish coming along and
it's, it's just really impressive.
(09:35):
And then you then start looking under all of those seaweeds and
other things. You get this amazing colourful
and vertebra life that just blows your mind and that is
really cool. And you'd never quite know what
you see underwater as well because you just don't know what
swims past or what gets drifted by and the current, which is
amazing too. And the every time every.
(09:58):
Time is different, doesn't it? Yeah, exactly.
And also, you know, it's not just like the the being in the
water or looking underwater. It's also sometimes you have
this lovely experience on the coastline as well.
You've got sunset. Sunrise is dramatic.
You, you see wildlife. And yesterday I stopped on, on
the way along Tapataranga MarineReserve because I, there was
(10:20):
this amazing flock of sea guys and they were all like digging
through CV that was washed up close to Houghton Bay.
And it was less all going on, you know, the old ones, the
young ones with the different feathers, the, the oyster
catchers. And it was like all this
cacophony of that was incredible.
(10:42):
And that one I saw Penguin chasing bait fish in, in the
project site where we did the cat forest restoration.
That was so cool to see. So there's a whole lot of things
and, and the other thing that I really like about diving and the
ocean and the passion. I guess like in any other hobby
you find people with a similar passion and I think the CV
(11:04):
people are quite special. That's right, you find your
community. Yes, exactly I.
Was going to ask what's tapituranga because for people
who haven't been snorkeling or diving there what what would you
expect to see? Taranga Marine Reserve is
amazing. Well, for one, it's the only
fully protected marine reserve along the coast of a capital
(11:25):
city. So we've got something really
special here in Wellington. And when you put your head in in
the water Taputaranga, you very quickly see crayfish power
straight off the coastline. And that is incredible because
you can't really see that outside the reserve.
Outside the reserve you spend a lot of time looking and you're
lucky along the coastline. We're lucky because we still get
(11:48):
juvenile species in outside the reserve and inside this reserve.
You see then how these species grow up to the abundance and
size and I I guess probably backin the old days there was even
more fish and and power like trayfish around.
But the marine reserves really show how different it could be
(12:11):
between protected areas and not.And because it's on Wellington
South Coast, that's a really, really dynamic marine
environment if you think about how crazy the waves can get.
And we just recently had this massive storm with six 7m waves
coming on shore. And I always wonder how marine
(12:32):
life manages to survive and the really shallows.
But a couple of days after the storm has gone and the water's
cleared up, you go back to the coast and everything seems to be
so happy. Fish, a little fish are back in
the in their place. But then you see how rocks are
torn apart and how the seaweed grows sideways because they have
topped it over. It's incredible.
(12:54):
So the marine life along the coast is just so cool.
And it's same as we've got all the diversity of species because
we we are in in the confluence between different currents and
different water bodies. So we get often the southernmost
species in New Zealand and the northernmost species as well.
So we've got that and yeah, it'sjust just incredible.
(13:16):
And if you're really lucky, you know, I know I missed out on
that, but I know that on one of the days we had groups of orcas
and they stopped by with each single dive group.
It's incredible. If you think that they come and
check you out, you're not so cool.
So. Close.
So amazing and I know you encounters with octopuses as
(13:36):
well. Yes.
I love it. Octopus are always good.
That's the other thing. They're also in the harbour.
So everywhere we get like these thriving seaweed forests, we get
a lot of marine life octopus in between.
They're chasing all the little crabs and other things that that
also called the seaweed forest their home.
(13:57):
And it's always nice because notevery octopus, but some when you
stick around and you keep a bit of distance and you watch them
for a while, they then go like, oh, what are you?
Particularly if you go to video light or something shiny right
in front and then you see like 1tentacle coming up and then it's
usually more than one and then you've got the octopus right
(14:18):
over your camera. And that's, that's quite a neat
experience as well. And the other thing we get in
seaweed forest and we are reallylucky and Wellington as well as
with our seaweed forest in around the harbour and they're
home to sea horses and sea horses that came of flesh in
them. They sort of put their tail
around them and then they wait for for the crustaceans.
(14:41):
And particularly when you go night diving, which is also
super exciting because you see another, another, yeah, total
different mix of marine lives. They are out and they are on top
of the seaweed and they're looking for prey.
And that's so nice to watch. And that's the other thing.
There's so many species that people, you know, by chance take
(15:05):
photos of. So one of my dive buddies took a
photo of a fish, and it turns out he was either the 1st or the
second one ever in New Zealand to take a photo of that fish.
You know, that's incredible. That's.
Amazing. And that's.
Here in Wellington Harbor, you know, it's right in front of the
Beehive Central city. That's incredible and.
When you say seaweed, it's some giant kelp, isn't it, that we
(15:27):
have in Wellington and that's the northernmost limit in New
Zealand? Exactly.
So Wellington, because of those different water currents and and
influences, we've got this massive diversity overall in New
Zealand. We've got over 1000 different
species of seaweeds, like from the little ones that at the
bottom, often red and green, right up to the really large
(15:50):
ones that we see where you wherepeople often go, oh, touch me or
I got entangled in it. And up north we get mostly the
lush golden Cape, which is really interesting as well and
nice to dive through. And in Wellington, as you said,
we're really lucky that we are at the northernmost boundary of
(16:10):
Giant Cape. And you can really think about
it. Giant Cape was called Giant Cape
because it gets really tall and it can grow around the
Wellington coastline. I've seen it in up to 16 meters
of water depth and then it growsfrom 16 meter.
Often you don't quite see it on the surface because it doesn't
come up in in the really deep areas.
But if the conditions are good for it to grow in, particularly
(16:33):
now going into winter, it's often you see it in in big
floats on the surface. And it's the same like we get in
California where you think aboutthe otters putting like building
rafts and tying themselves onto the seaweed.
So it's quite cool. And it's a real, it's when you
dive into those trying cake forests, it feels like you're
(16:55):
diving in underwater rainforestsbecause you're diving down along
like pretty much like going downa tree from the canopy down to
the forest floor. The fish come in often.
It's like birds flashing throughthe forest.
We've got fish and then you start looking in the yeah,
smaller fish are hiding in the sort of understory and then you
(17:17):
see all the marine life at the forest, flow of which is then
often power tray fish and particularly the juvenile ones
as well. So they're real nursery grounds
and all these little fishing critters, they attract, of
course, bigger fish. So we'll, we don't only get the
bait fish cruising around, that's where the Penguins and
(17:38):
the shakes are after, but then also we get larger fish as well
that are attracted to it as well.
And then you get this whole thriving food web and then you
get dolphins coming in to chase fish and all that sort of stuff.
So, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's areal ecosystem and the more you
sort of spend time in it, the more you see all these
(17:58):
different, different marine lives as well.
And that's, that's quite exciting.
It's always every dive is sort of a bit of a discovery really.
That's. Really special.
And I know a few years ago you create, was it you who created
Project Baseline, which is sort of a citizen science project
where people can film and document changes to the, the
(18:20):
giant kelp populations around New Zealand?
Yeah. Around Wellington specifically,
yeah. Exactly so so Project Baseline,
a baseline is really it's an international group where where
divers or or particularly yes, that one particularly was aim
for scuba divers. They can go back to the same
(18:41):
dive site and take photos and look at changes.
And what we thought actually in Wellington, what would be a lot
nicer is actually, let's just look at giant cat because I was
really surprised after I was diving in California that we
actually get seaweed and giant cat in Wellington.
And I was already diving here atthe time and I didn't really
(19:01):
sort of, it didn't really click.So you you sort of walk into the
ocean, you go past the giant catand past the cat forest and then
you continue your diving. But but by diving in California
and some of those like with really good visibility and very
thick sort of underwater forest,I got back and I was like
talking to people. And then somebody said, oh,
(19:24):
yeah, we've got giant kelp in Wellington.
How? And I'm like, really, how come
we a scooper, you know, community, we don't really talk
about this. And then I thought, oh, we
should really start looking at what the changes are because it
is the northernmost boundary. The, we already knew there are
changes in, in the extent of those cat forests depending on,
(19:45):
on temperature, on the water temperature.
And it was really something to start a project looking at how,
how do they actually change? And I kept it quite simple to
snorkeling actually, and just take Agps snorkeling around the
cat forest. And that's something.
Where actually we could, there'splenty of of opportunities for,
(20:07):
for people. It doesn't have to be always
scuba divers, you know, ocean swimmers could take Agps and
swim around the Kate Forest. Kayakers could submit
observations, booties, you know,so there's a whole range of
people who could contribute to projects like this.
But by starting looking at one species like the giant cat, when
you then start discovering all the other life, marine life in
(20:31):
this cat forest, you then start looking at it more as an
ecosystem. And, and that was really an
exciting journey to be on with awhole bunch of other people
really. Awesome.
And then was it about 18 months ago that you set up Explore Your
Coast, which is your project to be the first person to film 70
kilometres of Wellington's coastline?
(20:53):
So how I know you've made a goodstart on that?
How many kilometers have you covered so far?
So we've. Got 47 out of the goal to to
film 70 kilometers of coastline.Wow.
And yeah, Explore Your Coast really came about because I
could see the changes in different parts of the
coastline. So with my head on for the
Friends of Tapaturanga Marine Reserve, I was really passionate
(21:16):
about talking about how great the marine life has recovered in
in the Marine Reserve and how wecan share that as a scuba diver
around the wider Wellington areas.
We discovered amazing sponge gardens on a dive on the West
Coast of Wellington was like, well, people don't really know
about that as well. That discovery actually led to a
funding for the university to doa whole lot of, of, of sponge
(21:40):
monitoring and mapping work. That was amazing as well to to
see that and then inside Wellington Harbour it was really
about seeing and communicating there are these amazing cat
forest. But we could also already see in
the Project Baseline site that sea urchins were moving into the
project area and starting to eatthe cat forest.
(22:01):
So I had this contrast of these amazing thriving ecosystems,
places where the marine life is OK, doing OK, and then other
places where it really goes the completely wrong trend and where
the Cape forests started to rapidly decline actually.
And I was thinking about how canwe actually communicate this in
(22:22):
a, in a, in a wider scale, on a more of a regional level.
And over the years, I've done a lot of work with other community
groups around New Zealand as well.
So actually explore your course really provided me with an
opportunity to pull all of this work together to say, Yep, we
are documenting the coastline. On a larger level.
(22:43):
We are supporting community groups in other areas of New
Zealand as well with documentingtheir marine life, but also
helping with conversation and supporting projects that are
looking at how do we actually, what do local communities, hapu
EV communities wound in the areas?
How do you get the data you needand how do you pull that through
(23:04):
to actually real tangible marineconservation work or marine
restoration work in the ocean aswell?
So really taking all of these different levels.
And then of course, with friendsof Tapataranga Marine, we serve,
we often write submissions on, on, on policies relating to, to
marine, to the marine environment, marine management,
(23:27):
marine protection, biodiversity protection as well.
So we tackle all these differentlevels on, on the ocean because
we really have to change in New Zealand.
We've got to get the importance and the health and functioning
ecosystem, marine ecosystems in the center of decision making.
At the moment. The ocean is always
(23:48):
afterthoughts of things we do onland, but it's exactly the
actions on land and decisions wemake above the water impact the
ocean. So really that's where we have
to create change. But we can only do this if local
communities understands what's happening and if they can see
what's there and what happens tothose environments because we
(24:11):
all care. You know, in New Zealand we are
so passionate about our native wildlife on land.
There's lots of freshwater restoration happening, which is
great for the marine environment.
We are restoring our forests, reading, tracking, bringing Kiwi
birds back. And that's all really good stuff
because that provides better water quality to go in the
(24:32):
ocean. But in the ocean, the mindset
still often it's all there's plenty there.
Our actions don't make a change,but actually they do.
And that's just how do we communicate that in a way it
makes sense. And for me, because I've got a
science background, I'm really passionate about bringing
community science, indigenous knowledge.
(24:52):
When you work with hapu and EV, it's really important because
they have this long term baseline.
Again, the long term knowledge about how their local
environment is changing. And if we can help out a scuba
divers with easy methods for people to actually see what's
below the surface, that's great.And that's how you can make
difference, really. That's called.
(25:14):
Collaboration is so important, doesn't it?
Yeah, collaboration is really, yes, collaboration is really,
really important and it's a key and this everybody talks about
it and it's really hard to get acollaboration to the point where
you actually have a genuine collaboration.
But you know, hopefully we, we're working on a few projects
where we hopefully can show thatthis is possible as well.
(25:36):
But all of this at the moment, all the work, the cost for the
documentation of the coastline and other things is self funded.
So it'll be really nice to find partners and sponsors that
understand the marine space and they can help us make like quite
significant changes. Because at the moment when we're
(25:58):
looking at urchins and urgent grazing, it's a problem all
around New Zealand where we influence the balance in the
food web. We can talk about this in a bit,
but in general at the moment theNorth East coast of the North
Island is ravaged by urchins. We are putting a lot of
sediments in the ocean. If we start seabed mining in
Tabernacchi, we destroy another quarter of the North Island's
(26:22):
coastline. So by just those two pressures,
we we are starting to lose half of the North Island's marine
ecosystem. That's pretty significant.
You know, a lot of. Yeah, there's a lot of cause and
effect, isn't there? And yeah, this is a good time to
start talking about sea urchins or kind of barrens, as I know
(26:43):
they it's sort of the chain, theunderwater chain.
If the if there's an overabundance of sea urchins,
then they eat the giant kelp andthen that removes the marine
habitat. So what is causing this
abundance of sea urchins? Yeah.
It's like anything. When you remove the predators
for for like the top predators in the food web, then you create
(27:06):
a change in, in, in the, in the food web and an imbalance.
So in New Zealand, the key predators for those urchins are
fish on the reef, particularly snapper, blue Coats, Mookie and
others when they start foraging in the turfy algae as well.
And yeah, crayfish are the big ones, but it's so important to
(27:28):
look at it as an ecosystem. What we do in New Zealand is
we've back in the days we introduced A quota management
system where we were looking at single species.
So we are fishing for snapper, we are fishing for crayfish, we
are fishing for what glucot and all the other species
individually. But we don't look at the
combined effect of what it meanswhen we start removing all of
(27:50):
those fish out of the ecosystem.And the impact is that we are
losing all the predators that would otherwise eat the urchins.
It's really interesting because of course there's the predators
who eat the urchins straight when they see it.
But if you think about the forest and and same underwater,
we got other animals that foragein the bottom.
So for example, when you when you go for scuba dive in in the
(28:13):
marine reserve, you always see blue monkey and they are
munching around on the bottom and they're disturbing the
bottom that they're turning around pieces of gravel and
other things. And the small urchins they would
actually hide, you know, on the reef.
So if they get disturbed, there is usually a bunch of fish
around those blue monkey that picking up anything they can see
(28:36):
is edible. So if it doesn't like if, if, if
it isn't the urgent laffy that the fish gobble up by
themselves, if the other ones see little urchins, they just go
and crack them open. So we need all the diversity of
fish species on the reef to makethe sediment to eat urchins at
all different levels. If we do that, the cat forest in
(29:00):
a really good balance and actually has the cat forest can
maintain quite a high number of urchins.
Urchins are natural part of the of the reef ecosystem in cat
forests. But what they usually do is they
start hiding because they know if they are coming out when
they're too small, they get eaten.
So they they make sure they stayhidden.
When we change the balance in the food web and we take all the
(29:24):
urgent predator out by fishing, then the numbers of urgent
increase. But they also changed their
feeding behaviour because they know they don't have to wait for
CV to float by and they just getit when it's with the tube feet,
when when it floats around, theyactually start actively foraging
and that's when we see real quick tipping points.
(29:44):
In Wellington, you, it was really quite dramatic because
you could see how the urchins were moving up the reef from
deeper waters to shallow water and they were all bunching up
like a line of lawn mowers against the the cat forest.
And what happens is the urchins don't eat all the CV, they just
cut it off right at the bottom. So they actually just mow the
(30:07):
cat forest, like, yeah, like chainsaws.
They just go and and move it offand the cat forest floats off
and really nothing stays behind.So it really turns from this
amazing underwater forest into an area where there's only rock
behind because the cake forest, if you think about what would be
(30:28):
the root system on land, provides a real nice spots for
soft things like sponges and other things to grow.
But as soon as the cake forest disappears in this root system,
rots off, those soft animals areexposed to wave actions and
(30:48):
other things, and then they falloff as well.
And that's really where you get this massive change from happy,
healthy, colourful, thriving Cape Forest to just be a rock,
Yeah. I'll link to some videos on the
show notes so people can say what you're describing as well.
Yeah, pretty, pretty dramatic. So you have a new documentary
(31:09):
out about all of this called Seaweed a Love Story.
I love the title, so I'll link to the trailer as well.
People can watch it, but so how can people watch the
documentary? Yes.
So at the moment we are, we are organizing screenings in
Wellington. We are trying to get the
documentary to other locations in New Zealand as well.
(31:30):
It's a short documentary that really like the the director
Rebecca, she's been incredible in in pulling out how beautiful
the diving in The Cave forest isand and the story around it.
She's done such an amazing job. And so it's a short documentary
that highlights the urgency to, to for action and, and actually
(31:53):
shows how how quickly things canchange and what we take for
granted, but also how important those ecosystems are.
And really what we want to do iswe want to encourage
conversations. So what we are doing at the
moment is trying to arrange screenings where we can have Q&A
sessions with people who are interested in that.
Because it's not just the movie that is important to show the
(32:13):
beauty. We also have to have the
conversations to get people in the room, start talking what
everybody can do and build, build the foundation so people
are open to actually support, stand up for the ocean and
support other projects as well. If you think about it in
Wellington, I'm not sure why, but we've got a higher poaching
(32:36):
rate than the average New Zealand.
So that was yeah, MPI just had there was a big news article out
on TV as well, invaling them in fisheries office or stop people
along the shore. It's three times more likely
they actually take illegal sizesor amounts of fish compared to
the average New Zealand. So the harbor is really big.
(33:00):
If we would on the coastline, ifwe wanted to see change in in
the marine environment, we need the community to stand behind
it. And that's really important to
to get people thinking about howdo we ensure that our ecosystems
are healthy enough to keep providing food for us and for
our kids. And at the moment we are
(33:21):
pushing, we're putting so much pressure on all of those
ecosystems that they can't keep functioning.
They collapse in front or well, in front of our eyes, but we
don't see it. So we've got to get people on
board across, you know, recreational, commercial,
everybody on land, because it's really important that everybody
(33:44):
is starting to talk to their local representatives and
decision makers in locally on local government, regional
government and central government level.
Because of course, when you lookat on national level, if you
look at all the party manifestosacross all parties, everybody's
got some nice words about the ocean, but it never happens.
(34:07):
And how many years have we been watching the decline?
So I get a bit frustrated about that.
But you know, we need everybody to actually say we care about
the ocean. We know there's great marine
life, we want to see it functioning and we you want to
go out and and enjoy it because at the end it would be super
cool if you could walk to the coast, all around New Zealand.
(34:30):
Doesn't matter where it is, you take your kids within 10
minutes, you've got to fish for dinner and then you enjoy the
marine life. Snorkelling, you know, that's
what we want. So, and I think that's what we
should be aiming for. Was it the?
Underwater. Was it the underwater explorer
Jacques Cousteau who said we protect what we love, right?
(34:50):
Yeah, exactly. And your mission, I love how
your mission is to show people what's beneath the surface and
make it more accessible in different ways because we have
different ways of connecting with the water, right?
Even if. We.
Yeah. And so just some of the examples
of things that you do personally.
You have your virtual reality headset.
(35:10):
Yes. Back to different community
events. And so adults and kids alike can
put on the headset and feel likethey're diving in the marine
reserve because you've got this three, six day view of all the
beautiful fish and the blue water and the giant kelp.
And you've also put up QR codes along the South Coast.
So anybody walking along the South Coast, which is Island Bay
(35:32):
or Federal Bay, so on, can hold your camera up to these codes.
And then you watch these amazingvideos of the octopus.
Like you say, this is your footage, right?
Or is it? Yeah, I see your footage.
Yeah. At the most it's mostly my
footage, but we are really keen to reach out to others.
So everybody who's walking and on the coast who's got a
favorite fish, we've got a few spare, spare QR codes so we
(35:54):
could do fishy tales so you can tell interesting community
stories. So that's the sort of thing we'd
we'd really like to continue building up on.
And because, yeah, we just want to show what's at specific
locations or if we say, you know, marvelous marine life,
it's like, what's your favorite marine life in the Marine
reserve? Engage people that way.
(36:15):
Involve the. Community and also got your
beautiful underwater photographsthat I know you're creating a
website to sell some of them to raise money for your for your
explore your coast work that you're doing yeah.
Exactly. So yeah, it's a ocean inspired
art and really I created that for one is because I'd really
(36:35):
love every New Zealanders havinga piece of seaweed at home and
you know, others another way to to actually do that.
And, and it's just a really niceconversation starter because you
can show the beauty and the diversity.
And we've got a couple of thingscoming up.
So one is I usually take the VR headset and ocean arts to, to
(36:55):
those movie screenings. And later this year we, I also
have exhibition at Zealandia in August and September.
My images will be up there and available for purchase.
The South Coast Arts Trail is coming up and in November
there'll be another exhibition in the Thistle Hall with, with
(37:16):
me and jointly with two other artists as well, all ocean
inspired. So that's a really nice way to,
to, to spread the love for the ocean as well and fundraise at
the same time because it's, it'squite expensive so far.
Yeah. What?
Sort of equipment do you use when you're duck scuba diving
(37:38):
along the coastline filming. It looks like you're carrying
some pretty heavy equipment. What sort of what what are you
using to do your filming? Yeah, so for a lot of the
underwater it starts really simple for for explore your
course. When I'm I'm trying to to cover
distance, I usually just use a GoPro come over because then you
don't need to vary so much. You just put it on and then it
(37:59):
runs. And then when I get a chance,
usually I've got a small point and shoot camera in my pocket as
well. Because you never know if you go
and see something like that's a bit smaller, then you can pull
the camera out and take a photo.And if I get a chance to
actually spend time in the wooden, the cat first just
enjoying it. I've got a small DLSR camera in
(38:22):
a waterproof housing with strokes because you only get the
amazing color out when you when you actually get lights onto it
as well. Yeah, but whatever, you know,
it's really amazing. You don't really have to have
like super expensive equipment. Just with a small point and
shoot camera that you can buy that's waterproof to 1015
(38:42):
meters, you can really document quite a lot of the marine life
already. It's cool.
And you're diving in so many different areas.
Do you ever, do you ever feel nervous?
A lot of people coming on this podcast talk about feeling
nervous in your environments or getting in the water.
I don't get the impression that fear it plays a big part for you
in your scuba diving. But do you, do you ever feel
(39:04):
literally out of your depth in that well you got?
You gotta, you gotta trust your gut feeling to some extent.
I think when you, when you do that a lot, you sort of know
what conditions are OK and whatnot and you get a feeling
for when you're relaxed. And sometimes you, you know,
it's like, oh, actually something, you know, you're a
(39:26):
bit more tense or something. You just stop, stop and think,
why is that? Quick evaluation, you know, of
the situation. Then you can go actually, Oh no,
you know, the current picked up and I'm, I'm a bit exhausted by
swimming too hard or actually the conditions changed and it
feels a lot darker. Why is that?
And then you can decide, you know, what you do actually, do I
(39:47):
feel happy with the situation ornot?
And a bit of respect is good because you just got to make
sure you're on on your game. You do your pre dive checks, you
make sure everybody knows what the plan is for the dive.
And you can take that from a dive that is in in 2-3 meters of
water, beautiful weather, cave forest, or if you go into a cave
(40:08):
and you do some cave diving as well.
So you just got to. You just got to be.
Trusting your feelings to some extent and be prepared and have
respect for what you're doing. It's like for like for any
hobby, you wouldn't, you wouldn't just sit on a mountain
bike and go straight down Mount Victoria either.
You know, a little bit of. Caution is always a good thing.
(40:30):
Yeah, exactly. And just stop, Think, breathe,
enjoy, cool. In March we had what was New
Zealand's first ever seaweed festival, which was really cool.
It was a week long festival withall sorts of creative events
from yoga to sea shanties to art, and the opening event was
the Sunrise Seaweed Swim in Island Bay.
(40:53):
Luckily the weather was beautiful.
It was a good turn out and I remember talking to you.
We were both bobbing around in the water, and I remember you
saying it was the first time in a long time that you'd just gone
for a dip, that you hadn't been,you know, fully scuba diving
with all your gear, and that it felt good.
Yeah. I was wondering, did it Has it
inspired you to go for more depths?
(41:14):
I might just have to to wait foryou to Take Me Out again.
I'll. Take you up, but I.
Enjoyed it. It's always just making the
effort and, and it's not really that much of an effort.
And it, it was really lovely. And it was, it was such a cool
crowd of people as well. It's it's quite amazing, yeah.
Yeah, it's it was very inspiringto see the number of people who
(41:35):
turned out who were excited about the ocean and excited to
be involved. And I know a few people wanted
to sign up to do a few more community events, so that was
cool. So the next question was going
to ask us that, you know, you'realways working really hard to
build on awareness. You do a lot of community
events, you do a lot of public speaking.
You've done TDX Wellington, so you find all the all these
(42:01):
interactions and community education, is it, is it
energizing for you? Does it get frustrating
sometimes? Do you feel like you get enough
support in terms of practical support?
Yeah, emotional. No, no, I, I do it's, it's
really lovely. I it's just so nice when, when
you get feedback as well, you know, when, when people come up
(42:23):
after, after a talk and they say, oh, really amazing.
Sometimes I wish we could reach bigger audiences, but that's a
tricky 1, you know, because you give talks to, to a group of,
yeah, if you're lucky, somewherebetween 20 and 200 people.
But I think you've got to find aright balance between between a
(42:44):
level of where you can influencepeople and it's just important
to influence people in that influence fear that you have.
So you know, with ocean swimmersfor for you, if you talk about
seaweed, you're excited about seaweed, you're gonna spark
people. And then those ocean swimmers go
to the next group, you know, and, and after a little while,
(43:05):
I've got all the ocean swimmers around Wellington either
passionate or at least aware of our amazing cat forest.
So, so we do need that, we really need local support, but
I'd like to do with explore yourcourse as well as we can do all
these different levels of Community Action and also
(43:26):
finding community groups in, in other places to actually share
the experience of how you can work with decision makers with
HARPO and EV. So the idea is to actually scale
up on a local level these actions.
And there's a couple of really great projects where Explore
(43:47):
your course was helping out a little bit, but it actually
sparked into, into quite big initiatives, even the monitoring
data. It's called point.
And getting a bit of funding to engage mountains to see, for
example, with a seaweed snorkel in at the Miramar Peninsula,
that project where I had fundingto organise the snorkel sparked
(44:10):
the enthusiasm with mountains tosee to to love, remove, remove
the education and then later on create the restoration project.
You know, you never know how, how these things actually spark.
Yeah, it's called. It's called as.
You're just going to say. It's called a ripple effect,
Yeah. Exactly.
It's amazing water thing, yeah. Exactly.
(44:33):
The only one thing is that it's always hard to communicate to
potential funders is actually weneed long term data or we need
local data. It's great if we do something,
but we also have to support community groups to collect the
data and then also the engagement with these different
groups. And I don't think that's
happening in New Zealand yet. So I've been, I was really
(44:56):
lucky, I've got a, a Winston Churchill fellowship last year,
was able to travel and I was looking at projects in North
America, in Europe and in Australia.
And there was a lot more fundingavailable to actually facilitate
those projects. And the yeah, some of some of
the projects where private funding was supporting long term
(45:18):
biodiversity and monitoring is really inspirational and we
should like, I wish some of the aspiration would be here in New
Zealand as well. Way to make this come way.
Does the funding come in most countries?
Private funding is really important.
So local philanthropy, often it's either people locally who
have a passion or on a regional level, depending on the pockets
(45:40):
of people who support something.And there's really interesting
models and people were equally interested in New Zealand, which
was amazing to see because indigenous leadership is a
place, a big role of course, in around New Zealand, in
particularly with hapu and EV looking after their coastline
and making decisions and being able to pull together land and
(46:02):
marine as well, because it's across all of the whole.
And that was really interesting to talk to, to, to people as
well to see what happens overseas, but also how, how we
can do it. And if we could combine some of
those ex the expertises and approaches would be, would be
(46:23):
really good. But there's, yeah, that's,
that's one of the areas I think where we can do still quite a
bit. And there are ways because yeah,
there are definitely ways how wecould also attract international
funding as well. If we actually take our
aspirations for native species protection on land into the
(46:43):
ocean, we could we could do something there as well.
There will be exciting opportunities just making it
happen. Well, we.
Have a lot of ocean swimmers wholisten to this podcast,
particularly in Wellington, so hopefully people are feeling
inspired and galvanized to get involved.
What advice would you give them?Yeah, just even if they want to,
(47:06):
everybody wants to engage and want to see the documentary for
example, as a easy, easy starter.
We will set up a couple of events.
The next one is coming up quite shortly so might be a bit too,
too close to the podcast mid June.
But there will be more opportunities and people can
just e-mail exploreyourcourse@gmail.com.
(47:28):
Then we can put everybody on on on the e-mail list in the
newsletter. Hopefully we can on the next
event. I'm really keen to organise some
CV beer, so hopefully we can do more of that and then we can
also run some exciting events towards the end of the year
alongside all of these art exhibitions as well.
(47:49):
And those events and talks couldreally be like the the, the
inner, the first, the first rabbit for effect on on other
things, because we are really keen with explore your course to
hear from community groups who want to potentially host the
movie, movie screening or to an event of other sorts.
(48:11):
And then just take it from there.
And the other thing of course isreally important to keep your
eye out for any opportunity where you can say, Hey, we need
stronger Environmental Protection rather than weaker 1.
So anything that comes up aroundthe regional long term plans,
regional counsellors, just it's really great if people can
(48:32):
actually engage with these opportunities and it doesn't
really matter. You know what people's personal
choices are, but it's important that people engage and ask
questions and, and make the decision they think is the best.
And I guess when if we can have like on the next movie
screening, we'll have a local MPand the local regional
councillor coming along. So there's great opportunity to
(48:54):
ask questions to the decision makers that we currently have.
And I think that's really important as well.
So yeah, I think if we could allbecome ocean champions and some
sort or another would be great. You know, share the passion is
great. I'm going to put lots and lots
of links on the show notes so people can follow along with
(49:14):
your work and get involved and learn more.
Nicole, you inspire me so much with your energy and passion and
dedication to championing the ocean and all of its marine
life. So I wanted to ask who inspires
you? Like who are your ocean role
models? Oh, that's a good question.
I haven't, I haven't heard that one.
(49:35):
I think it's the marine life itself.
Of course, at the moment we see the movie ocean has has come up,
you know, so we can we definitely, you can see the
change with conversations with David Attenborough, who's now
also the ocean champion as well.But I think you don't really
have to go that far. It's, it's actually local
(49:56):
communities and local people whohave the deep connection with
the ocean. And I find that really
fascinating in in talking to people on the ground who spent
all their life and who can tell these, Yeah, who can say
actually 60 years ago, 40 years ago, we saw all of this amazing
(50:17):
marine life. And then just being in the
water, having the adventure. I think is is a little bit of
that the curiosity is, is something that I really love.
And I just love hanging out underwater and seeing all that
colorful marine life and, and the little things and the big
things and it's just in itself so inspiring to be in the water.
(50:38):
So yeah, I think that's really the key thing that keeps me
going. And that's easy because you know
exactly what you're in for. Over the years, if I think about
the, you know, the ocean, Vesa Bay or other things, I think
about, oh, that CVC was that I saw, you know, a couple of years
ago. I wish the environment stays
safe enough. So we've got more of those.
(51:00):
Yeah. Yeah.
That's what's. Actually in place is so
important. And yeah, like ocean memories, I
think is what you're describing.Yeah.
Special encounters you have thatyou never forget and you want
other people to be able to have them as well.
Yeah. Yes, agree.
It's it's completely like this and the ocean is a fascinating
place because everybody can build a different and a very
(51:20):
personal connection with the ocean.
We all have slightly different experiences, slightly different
memories. Some people like to swim and,
and, and achieve personal goals with swimming or others on scuba
diving. You could do the same.
You know, there's people who getright into the technical side
and all the gear and stuff. Or you could just pop around in
(51:41):
2 meters under The Cave forest and take photos or not even take
photos. Just hang out there, you know,
and don't move very much. So the ocean allows us to
connect in in so many different levels on a spiritual basis.
Well, and of course, for Mana Fenwa, that's an A total other
different connection then as well.
And it's it's interesting when you talk to different people
(52:03):
about their personal connection,that's always something that
this never ending source of, of energy and excitement and
curiosity as well. Awesome.
Well, we've covered so much today, but is there anything
else you'd like to talk about that we haven't covered yet?
I think we've. Done pretty good, yes.
It's just, I would just encourage everybody to to sign
(52:27):
up and yeah, just get involved and, and become that ocean
champion. And same if, if there's an
opportunity, I'm not sure if there's like principals, you
know, listening into the podcast, if we could show the
movie at a school assembly, that'll be another really cool,
cool event that I'd like to do as well.
Because kids, kids have that, you know, genuine curiosity for
(52:49):
the ocean as well. Awesome.
OK. Thank you so much for your time
today, Nicole. It's a pleasure.
Thank you Shona for having me. Thanks for listening to this
episode of Swim Chats. Please remember to follow or
subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode.
And if you enjoyed it, you can leave a five star rating and
review which helps other people find it too.
(53:10):
Enjoy the water and we'll see you next time.
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