November 10, 2025 • 51 mins
Let's dive deep into the complex world of ocean policy, exploring the key challenges, the emerging opportunities, and what it takes to create effective and sustainable solutions for our oceans. Oceans cover 70% of the Earth and are vital for climate regulation, biodiversity, and human livelihoods. Climate change ocean acidification, warming, overfishing, plastic, chemicals, habitats destroyed are threats to health of ocean waters. Policy is essential for sustainable management, and conservation.
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ASharpe Outlook is broadcast live Mondays at 8AM PT on K4HD Radio - Hollywood Talk Radio (www.k4hd.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). ASharpe Outlook TV Show is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
ASharpe Outlook Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/asharpe-outlook--6643730/support.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This program is designed to provide general information with regards
to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors or station
are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial,
legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek
(00:22):
the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any
suggested ideas.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello and thank you for tuning in to A Sharp
Outlook on pay for HD radio and Talk or TV.
I am Angela Sharp, your host. Our arm chair discussions
with industry experts will give you the steps, tools and
information to be successful in business and to prepare you
to be your best self. Hello and welcome back to
(00:56):
A Sharp Outlook Today. Our podcast is dedicated to exploring
the critical issues being we're facing with our oceans and
the innovative solutions being developed to protect them. I'm your host,
Angelas Sharp, and today we'll be diving deep into the
complex world of ocean policy, exploring the key challenges and
(01:21):
emerging opportunities, and what it takes to create effective and
sustainable solutions for our oceans. Our oceans cover seventy percent
of the Earth and are vital for climate regulation, biodiversity
and human livelihoods. Climate change such as ocean acidification and warming, overfishing, pollution,
(01:49):
plastics and chemical habitats destruction are threats to the health
of our ocean waters. Policy is essential for sustainable management, conservation,
and equitable access to ocean resources. It highlights interconnectedness of
(02:09):
ocean health and human well being. Why ocean policy matters?
How can we overcome the challenges to effective international cooperation
on ocean policy. Many ocean issues are trans boundary and
require coordinated actions, such as UN Convention on the Law
(02:31):
of the Sea provides a framework for cooperation. Differing national interests,
lack of enforcement mechanisms geopolitical tensions have an impact, but
strengthening existing agreements, creating new partnerships, sharing best practices, and
understanding the importance of multilateralism and diplomacy in addressing ocean
(02:56):
challenges is important. Today we have a very special guest
us joining us, Stuart Sarcosy Bonyxy. He's here to talk
to us about this wonderful, wonderful topic of how we
can have healthy waters and protect our oceans. Stuart is
the co founder of Octopus and ceo AI for World
(03:18):
Ocean Council. He is Ocean Fellow at the Citter Center
of Ocean Policy and Economics at Northeast Maritime Institute and
mentor for Sea Ahead Blue Swell. Stuart has global Director
Policy and Investments as Resilient Cities Network and was founder
of for Bands Community Fund. In other words, Stuart is
(03:42):
a leading expert in ocean policy with extensive experience in
areas of management and being able to just get cooperation
and collaboration in international ocean and governance, sustain fisheries, marine
protected areas, and climate change impacts on oceans, as well
(04:07):
as the urban and coastal intersections that are so important.
He's worked with governments, NGOs, international bodies such as the
Ocean Council, and presently with startups and corporations. Stewart, Welcome
to the show.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Thanks very much, Angel, It's great to be here.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Well, it's great to have you here. You know, every
day I see the problems that are going on with
our oceans and the pollutions and the plastics and the
destruction of the you know, the coral reefs and things
like that, and I thought, we've got to get informed,
We've got to do something about it. We've got to
lift our voices and make some changes. And you get
(04:51):
enough people screaming about it, we can get some action.
We can get something to happen. We can make something happen.
That's why I was like, we're going to have this topic. Well,
before we get into specifics, can you paint a picture
for our listeners of why ocean policy is so critical
right now?
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Sure, And I think it comes from two different directions.
For me, on the one hand, it is rising in
its interest and popularity in the sense that people are
starting to notice a little bit of the kind of
threats that come from not taking care of what we
should be taken care of for some time. But I
(05:35):
think also from my and our point of view and
the work that we do, it's an ocean planet. As
you said, it's seventy percent of the ocean, it's sixty
to seventy percent of us. We are water. We are
salt water. And so for both the tensions and passions
(05:58):
and frustrations, demands and effort we have to make, mixed
with also the sort of place we are as an
ocean planet, in combination direct us towards something that is
much more applicable now as we start to see some
of the negative cascading effects from various problems or various
(06:22):
shocks and stresses. So for me, on the one hand,
it's passion because I've been a long, a lifelong ocean
and water lever and engage with it. But at the
same time, it also comes from the fact that I
personally began to get more and more worried and have
more frustration. So an ocean policy really is a planetary policy,
(06:42):
and I think that's part of back to what you said.
To some extent, people don't understand the role of the ocean,
the role of the ocean in the hydrological cycle that
makes our planet possible. Our breath, every other breath is
because of the ocean, the way that our system works,
(07:05):
and I think that's in some ways it's understandable people
don't pay attention to the full kind of ecosystem. And
I mean that in the sense of like the systemic
connectivity yeah of the planet. Right, So an ocean policy
is a planetary policy.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
You know. I mean, when you think about it, we
take advantage of some of the things that we have
the pleasures of using until we can't use it anymore,
and The thing is, if we were caring for it,
it would go on for generations and generations. But I'm
concerned about the generations ahead. What are the biggest threats
(07:44):
facing our oceans and why do we need robust policies
to address them.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
I think in some of this we hear a little
more regularly, even if you're not really an ocean advocate
or follower. And that comes back to what you said
about us sort of abusing. And there's just this kind
of general sense that the ocean is so vast, right,
one giant ocean that covers the planet, and it's all interconnected,
(08:14):
that we can't do it harm. But that, as we've seen,
is not true. So we've got coral bleaching because of warming, acidification,
and current changes temperature changes that affect both the species
and sort of general fisheries, but also ecotourism. And the
(08:35):
latest news that starts to make the headlines a little
bit is not the greatest when it comes to things
like coral die off and the acidification and the warming.
So and then of that of course relates to the
warming that leads to greater storms with more moisture content.
We saw what just happened in Jamaica there at this
(08:58):
discussion point of whether we have to give hurricanes like
that a six rather than a five and some unusual
amount of convection and water moisture in the system that
did what it did and the wind speed. So what's
(09:20):
facing the oceans comes from us to some extent and
then or exacerbated by us because there's also plastics and microplastics,
and in our waterways the pfast chemicals that then end
up in the ocean, algae blooms and dead zones and
things like that from agriculture runoffs. So we have abused
(09:44):
all of our systems. And that's not just in the
water or the ocean. But I think what really is
sort of a little out of sight, out of mind
is the water and what's below water. And I think
that's part of what this conversation is great for important
for people to understand that if they live in Des Moines, Iowa,
(10:04):
or they're in you know, the middle of the UK
or in the dead center of Central Europe, things they
do on a day to day basis have an effect
on the ocean, whether it's plastics and recycling, or whether it's
certain kinds of plastic materials purchases, they make things, they
drink stuff that goes into the water.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Mm hmm. Yeah. I even saw where you had an
article out there where what is it the sunscreen? Having
a water friendly sunscreen instead of some of these ones.
And because of the chemicals are coming off of your
body when you're getting into the water and it's killing
the coral and affecting the marine light. I mean, you know,
(10:50):
like I said, we take so many things for granted.
We don't realize there's supposed to be custodians of the earth,
not you know, just devour. You know, we need to
be more conscious of what we really are doing because
there are generations coming after us. Think about them. Think
about the ones that are coming after us. You know,
(11:12):
it doesn't hurt to read the bottle to see if
it has damaging chemicals in it, put it on the shelf,
and in fact even report it to the store. Stop
selling this and pick the one that is going to
be friendly to the water. I mean, that was so
fascinating when I saw that. That's what me to say,
we got to get this out. We have to get
(11:34):
this out so that you know, we can you know,
be able to have the waters therefore the next generations.
What are key challenges in ocean policy?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I think right now getting alignment from countries, from nation states,
and in the case a lot of work that I
do corporations and financiers and others on the same path.
And there's a bunch of there's a bunch of negotiations
and treaties. There's a whole slew people who are at
(12:11):
the UNF Triple C. The Conference of Party is the
COP in Brazil right now. I'm not there. It's rare
that I'm not at one of those COP gatherings, and
that's where some of these negotiations take place. But we're
talking everything from the International Plastics Treaty which has stalled,
(12:32):
to the High Seas Treaty, which they got enough signatures
for come three weeks ago, which is a great, great advancement.
Because part of the problem with the ocean as well is.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
That it's a commons, right, Gianic commons, other than up
to certain zones, right, we all have to play nice,
and not everybody does.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
So there's treaties like those. There's the negotiations that the
International Maritime Organization two weeks ago halted or paused until
next year, it's conversations around quotas and new fuels shipping,
because that shipping, where we get most of our goods
(13:17):
and where great pollution takes place, is all kind of
tied together. So there are and plastics in the water
and microplastics in our bodies. I mean, at this point,
you can't eat a oyster and not have microplastics in it,
I hate to say it. So we have real recovery
(13:38):
activities we need to do where those challenges lie and
where the treaties need to surround. But there's also sort
of enforcement and financing to sort of write to do
some of the precovery and recovery at the same time
make sure that we're preventing what we can at this point,
not to mention that if we don't close the gap
in terms of temperature rise, I think it's one of
(14:02):
those things where people think of it as just warming,
and that's not actually what climate change is. Climate changes
affects both deep cold spells, water and lack of water,
and other kinds of activities. So what we're going to
see is a bit more of a wackier set of
symptoms from that fact, as opposed to just pure sort
of global warming, and that's partially why the kind of naysayers,
(14:25):
it gets confusing when people kind of are putting in
an alternative narrative to it.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that, you know, with the fragmentation
of governance and multiple agencies and international bodies and overlapping
jurisdictions has a big effect on policy, for sure, I'm sure.
But that's where we as citizens of these countries, in
(14:52):
these areas, this is where we can help. We can
stand up and start you know, marching about the waters
and letting people know we're not voting if you're not
you know, planning, you know, some kind of healthy water
planning or something like that. We have a voice, and
we can actually you know, have have minds change because
(15:17):
we're out there making enough noise about it. Remember, we're
going to need this water. This is a life or
death situation. This is not just oh I want to
go to the beach. This is why for death situation
and we really you know, have to do about it.
And and then the lack of what about the lack
(15:37):
of law, you know, lack of enforcement and weak enforcement
mechanisms and limited resources for monitoring and compliance. You know,
how can you how can we help, you know, when
these governments are so fractured.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, I mean it's a great This isn't just in
one country or another, but globally, country by country where
the rules aren't pass and then enforced, whether it's a
marine protected area or it's wetlands and water pollution, in
water sourcing, or air quality for that matter, right, because
(16:14):
in lots of places where there are air quality problems,
you also have poisoned waters. So it really is a
struggle if there isn't a good national mandate. I think
corporations in cities and regional governments have much more of
a role to play, and they've gotten a bit more
used to doing so over the last say ten years,
and part of that comes from the fact that there's
(16:36):
been this disengagement by some national governments. True funding and
policy and regulation breakdown, enforcement breakdown. But you know, having
we talk about this a lot with marine protected areas,
because marine protected areas are not as good as those
(16:59):
that have enforcement and have funding behind them. The saying
can be said with the environmental protection laws because in
almost every country in the world there are still problems
with things like combined sewer overflow, which causes discharge of
sewage into actual water bodies. Right. Part of the problem
also is that we're talking about groundwater depletionment, freshwater depletion,
(17:23):
and the hydrological Society's cycle as a whole. So to
your point, it's ocean, the contributing waterways fresh water, including
in the United States the Great Lakes, which is twenty
percent of the twenty percent of the fresh water. And
(17:43):
you can imagine that saving that with as important as
that is, becomes just as important, just as important as
the ocean and all that it provides. And part of
this gets down to things like do we have enough
food to feed people, because it's a source of protein
globally for billions of people, right, And not to mention
(18:04):
that if we have water scarcity and that's groundwater, surface water,
or everything in between, then you're getting into very expensive
things like plants for desalinization just take a lot of
power and also have discharge that has to be dealt with.
So it's a little bit, like you said, going back
(18:26):
to the basics and sort of making sure we don't
damage what we have in the first place and recovering
enough of the things that we've had. It is however,
really important that we're monitoring and forcing, not just creating laws.
And I think that's where the rub is right, You've
got to have the funding to support that.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, you know, And I was just even thinking these
microplastics personally. It has affected me and I, you know,
I'm taking some medications to kind of repair some of
the brain cells that are affected by microplastics, some of
(19:09):
the nerves that are affected by microplastics. I mean, this
is affecting our actual health. And that's that's also very
important if we realize how much those microplastics and all
of those pollutions that are in the water that we're
just drinking every day, and it's even in the air,
(19:29):
it's in the soil, I mean everything, And they get
into the body and they clog up your your veins,
they clog up the near nerves, blood system, and they're
causing you know, memory loss, They're causing you know, your
inability for your nerves to function well, and and and
(19:53):
the the uh, the information from from the brain to
the nerve not connected, and it's such just a lot
of different things. And I thought to myself, what is
how in the world did that happen to me? Every
day that you eat, every day that you drink. Oh
my goodness. So it's really important for us to really
(20:14):
be serious about this. This isn't about some political thing
or we're going to fight it because we don't want,
you know, this particular party to win. So we're going
to fight you know, clean water, and we're going to
fight environmental things, and we're going to you know, instead
of getting informed and understanding it's affecting you in your
(20:36):
personal home every day, and it's you know, what can
we do? How can we you know, I know it's
a major hurdle. It's the lack of political commitment and
prioritization of ocean issues. But like I said, we the
people can can encourage that. What can we do first off,
(21:00):
to stay informed and what can we do to you know,
get this participation in order to energize participation?
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah, I think. I think the public campaigns that I've
seen and I've been involved with some organizations, I mean,
believe it or not. I mean there's tons of research
that's going on right now about microplastics and microfibers and
pfesta forever chemicals and all of them and their effect.
Because there are definitely people who like yourself, have seen
(21:38):
those effects. And at the same time it's so shocking
when they crack open every you know, oyster or muscle
and find microplastics or recent studies in Japan have found
microplastics in clouds before the rainfall, which means of course
that as it falls, it's coming down and going into
the soil. So I think at this point evidentially without
(22:02):
like knowing exactly the effects afterwards, it is indeed in us,
in plants, in animals, in the soil and in the water.
It's in the air and in the clouds, right, so
there could kind of can be no denying about that.
But that soup of all those things that are coming
down and affecting us really need the kind of testing
that good governance and good dollars and research institutions, whether
(22:28):
it's whether it's you know, the European Union here where
I'm sitting now or in the United States, and some
of those funds have been have been cut, and so
I think part of what's important for general public is
you can make personal choices about things you buy and
(22:48):
eat and what you wear and all kinds of things.
Because because there's a whole microfiber microplastic problem with clothing
as well. So pick your poison if you will, and
no pun intended, because in some ways they really are.
But you know, there's lots of ways that people can
make individual choices about what they purchase and what they eat,
et cetera. Then there's the kind of regulation side, which
(23:11):
is more difficult, because I think good data and good
evidence allows people to be informed and go to their
city council and say, is our local water treatment plant
doing the right thing by us? What's happening with X,
where's our water coming from? How is it filtered right?
Because these microplastics are so small, you have to have
(23:31):
a fine filtration at a point, which we had not previously.
And then it comes back to what we were talking
about a second ago, which is if there's laws there
for clean air, clean water, clean soil, et cetera, are
they enforced? And if not, that's an because they're already
(23:52):
on the books. That's an easier thing to go to
your whatever your elected leadership is and say, look this
not right. The ocean and its kind of vastness and
depth are more difficult, but as soon as it affects
(24:12):
somebody's ability to go to the beach because there's a
combined sewer overflow from rains and the beach is dirty,
or there's plastics on the beach when you're there, or
whatever it might be. Then it becomes more of an activation.
You can really kind of like activate people. And I
think part of the problem too is, and I mentioned
(24:33):
this just a second ago, you can do things in
the middle of your country wherever your country is, to
better the situation because you're not buying certain types of clothes,
plastic packaging materials, et cetera, and or allowing certain things
to go in the water, right, because that still goes
(24:54):
down into groundwater which we need to live from, or
it goes into a system which eventually ends up in
the ocean. Right. So that's why I have a giant
kind of dead zone off the coast of on the
Gulf Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, because it comes
out of the Mississippi full of all of the ag
runoff and everything else pollution wise, right, And so it's
(25:15):
creating this kind of like blanket. And then you have
algae blooms in Lake Erie in the United States, or
you have the recent algae blooms that took place in
parts of Europe in the summer. Is everything warms because
that's the combination, right, you get a soup where it's
super warm, you get red tides, or you get other
(25:35):
types of effects because you got the warming, plus you've
got the chemicals or basically too much nutrition. Right, that
allows stuff to grow. And so it's a way for
humans to get involved, but it's also something you have
to take to elective leadership.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
What are some innovative approaches to improving enforcement of ocean
policies like technologlogy? Can technology play a combating role in
illegal fishing and things like that? I mean, we've got
it everywhere, gets some drawing something. How can it? No?
Speaker 3 (26:12):
No, yeah, yeah, it definitely is. I think. I think
in the kind of climate and blue tech space, there's
definitely been an advancement. And you mentioned one of them,
and that's tracking fishing, fishing fleets and fishing boats and
where they are or where they should not be in
many cases, which is where the tracking comes in. But
(26:34):
there's also incredible sets of innovators, some of whom we're
working with in various ways, who are doing recovery and
precovery resilience building and finding ways with sensors or more
nature based solutions as we call them, to make changes
right there at the coast or in the water, whether
(26:56):
it's upriver or it's or it's deep sea. So technology
definitely has its place. Last week was the big Smart
City Expo here in Barcelona, and our events were part
of that under the Tomorrow Blue Economy, the Sustainable Ocean
Summit and the Global Blue Finance Summit. So technology, large
(27:16):
scale technology and small scale innovators and startups and the
funding to get to those individuals, organizations and startups is
super key because there's all kinds of things that we
can measure, and if you can measure it, then you
can management. Basically, that was the first part of a
(27:37):
waterside chat we did with her name is Christina Hill.
She's the head of the engagement for the Global Reporting Initiative,
and part of this comes down to what we just mentioned.
Technology can help us with data. Data can help us
with measuring, measuring helps us manage. So all of these
(27:58):
different technologies for cent for tracking and satellite imagery that
actually is really great at ocean and marine spatial planning,
those are helping us because we can very clearly see
what we need to do in various places now, unlike
everybody that wants to go to Mars or go further
(28:20):
than Mars, we still have a lot of mapping and
knowledge we have to do on the ocean, and an incredible,
incredible thousands of species are discovered all the time, and
that's because we only have mapped a very small part
of the ocean, and that means we need even more
(28:42):
data and more technology to help us be able to
do that, and we're getting better and better at it
because we're able to go to deeper depths and do
more and use these technological systems. So I would say, yes,
there's very much a case for technology in preventative measures,
in data and mapping and recovery as well. Some of
(29:03):
those devices that I've seen come around over the last years,
they're also now being used for things like quick mapping
and tracking after hurricanes. So the same remote operated vehicles
autonomous vehicles can be used in ways that are more
emergency like and speed up figuring out what has happened
(29:26):
after an emergency, right, So we can use it in
a number of different ways, and I think that's that's
the beauty of the good side of technology.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Mm hmm. Oh that's well. I'm glad that we have
it so that we can at least use it to
be able to see what's going on. You know, how
can we better balance economic development with the need to
protect marine ecosystem. I mean it should be included in
economic development or thought about or in part of the policy.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Yeah, it's interesting. Last week we had a panel and
it's it's rare to see, but we had a very
successful for profit company in the Netherlands and they created
an entire separate business line focused on ocean health. And
this is a very traditional maritime dredging, vessel port kind
(30:26):
of company, and they made a very specific choice to
create a separate business line that focused on ocean rehabilitation
and ocean health. And it pays right, Yeah, we can
we can monetize the good work. Now we can monetize
the good work too, So I think that's that's what's interesting.
(30:47):
And then this gets back to the regulation a little bit.
Say all fixed offshore wind has to have regenerative adaptive
systems built in to the fixed locations that they're doing
the wind turbines. If that was already policy and the
(31:07):
company's already invested in it. You can build reefs basically
and offshore living biospheres off of those fixed placements while
you're still doing the energy piece, right, So some of
this people see these things too much in pillars. Right.
It's great that we have the sustainable develement goals, but
sometimes you know STG six for water and water health
(31:31):
and STG fourteen for life underwater are not talking to
each other, and you're fresh and your salt aren't necessarily
mixed in terms of those policy conversations. So I believe
very strongly that we can still do regenerative activities and
do them in a way that ends up being monetized
(31:55):
and at the same time is just included. So why
build why build a base a fixed base for for
wind power? If you don't automatically include the attachments and
devices that create res out of the bottom of those right,
then you can also then monitor and there's more technology
comes in because there's sound monitoring and there's actually AI
(32:17):
that's used for visual monitoring. We have some great companies
we work with who do this work. It's incredible what
can be done, but you have to have sort of
that foresight. You have to build it in. You have
to build it into the budgets, and you got to
you got to plan early for it because we've done
so many things that are detrimental that we're now you know,
(32:38):
we're trying to recover that as well as trying to
do this new stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, but seeing we have such new technology out there,
I think it's time to start using it. You know,
what are some emerging opportunities and innovative solutions that you're seeing.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
So we have we have a member client who has
this amazing I think I think it's okay if I
mentioned company names, right, I mean, I'm I'm not making
any recommendations necessarily. I'm just saying that, like one really
great innovation we've seen is with this company we work
with called Ocean Ecostructures, and they've developed a patented device
(33:21):
set of devices that go down in the water and
both by their structure and what they're made of and
a kind of like sound vibration thing they do to it.
In fact, there's some sitting right below me here as
the sunsets on the pier where my offices are located
in Barcelona, and basically you can watch via time lapse
(33:46):
the way species come back to an area that may
not have had anything because concrete, traditional concrete in particular,
does not allow for the kind of life building that's necessary.
So Ocean Ecostructures has these structures that go in the water.
But the really cool thing about their work, which we love,
(34:08):
is that they then monitor it with ROVs with cameras
that have AI connected to it, and that artificial intelligence
can every three months collect numbers of new species, collect
the increase in biomass, increase in biodiversity reduction, and nitrogen
(34:28):
increase in oxygen, et cetera. And then their clients and
their clients clients have dashboards where they can see the
change and that the curve is like this usually right,
like from left to right. The curve in all of
those factors, or if it's something that's negative, is quite
pronounced every three months over time. And I don't think
(34:53):
they can claim, or I wouldn't claim that that's why
there's dolphins all the time now right in the Inner Harbor.
But we know from New York City and the rebirth
of the oyster beds the whales and dolphins, and this
comes from regulation, decrease in pollution, but increasing in things
like the oyster beds. So nature based solutions where connected
technology have made those kinds of changes. So I love
(35:16):
what ocean Ecostructures is doing because they can also do
it way offshore, which they are doing in offshore wind
oil rigs, et cetera, where they're creating basically reefs that
they monitor and they can monitor them such that that
data also helps with things like climate credits, biodiversity credits
(35:36):
and so on. Right, so there is a kind of
both impact side and a monetary side. But then there are,
as I said, nature based solutions. There's another group we
work with called the Great Bubble Barrier. They have an
amazing system that goes into rivers in cities that are
(36:00):
even inland, that create this curtain of bubbles that's put
in an angle in the river bed with a catchment system.
And because it's completely non evasive to fish and other
species or traffic of any kind, it separates plastics and
pushes it into this catchment system and so with little
(36:25):
to no sort of human involvement except for when the
catchment area gets full. Great Bubble Barrier has figured out
this way to push plastics and catch it before it
goes in the ocean basically, right, which is half the
battle in some cases, because we've got so much of it,
you know, we've got so much of it in the
environment already. And at the same time, I can think
(36:47):
of a super high tech one where there's a group
called Blue IQ who's doing sound monitoring. Their systems are
so sophisticated that imagine that you can tell exactly what's
happening underwater and buy species. They did a demo for
demo for us that was just incredible, and it was
a set of a set of microphones off the coast
(37:12):
of in the Gulf of Mexico, off of Mobile, Alabama,
and you could hear the shrimp talking wow, And you
could hear a boat approaching from a long way away,
and as the boat got closer, the shrimp stopped talking
and you could hear the boat go by. If you've
(37:33):
ever been underwater, you know that sense of a boat,
kind of the propeller of noise, right, You hear the
boat go by, and immediately the shrimps start talking again.
So imagine what that would mean for like sound monitoring
for work that's being done underground, monitoring for ships and
whale strikes, being able to hear what's happening underwater with
(37:53):
such a sophistication that you can tell exactly what's happening, right,
And I could go on. I mean, there's all kinds.
And then there are of course larger corporations that are
doing incredible work and attempting to change the course of
the kinds of things that we're doing, whether it's data collections,
or it's shipping, or it's ports. We work super closely
with the Port of Barcelona in the City of Barcelona
(38:16):
who have a whole blue economy plan that is super advanced.
And there are other parts of the world where they're
doing things like this too, where we're working that in combination,
I think is what really starts to sort of from
the small innovator on up to these big companies and
then the cooperation between these other types of entities. It
can be done. Sometimes it's more expensive, but in the end,
(38:39):
just like building resilience allion dollar now save thirteen later right,
insurance companies like this, you can start to do the
precovery work rather than always being in recovery.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Absolutely, what role can individuals and the general public play
in supporting better ocean policy?
Speaker 3 (39:00):
So I think it's interesting, right, Because because I've done
policy work in various ways, it's very clear that if
you capture and I'll say this in a storytelling way,
if you capture the human eimation, human imagination, and you
get people interested in the changes negative and positive, that
(39:25):
they can be a part of, whether it's their purchasing power,
you have power advocacy with their elected leaders. You know,
we see this. We see this here in Barcelona, but
I see it back in New York and in Washington,
d C. And wherever you might wherever you might be
when there's a connection to the water. And I brought
(39:48):
brought up previously right that one of my one of
my you know, go to books is a book called
Blue Mind by doctor Wallace Nichols, and that book is
a scientific, cultural, social, et cetera review of our connection
to water, both in on near and under and what
(40:10):
it does for us. Well, it's obvious that we're sustained
from it because you can go without food a lot
longer than you can go without liquida. We are water.
We are water literally, right, as is the planet. So
getting people's imagination, getting connection because the ocean is far away, right,
(40:30):
I think there are better and better storytelling, documentary films,
young youth spokespeople, people I work with who are doing
incredible work eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, and there has
to be more of that and connected to the ocean.
It's very hard. I remember I was with my son
(40:52):
at an ocean series at a film festival and there
was a series of films and then they stopped, and
everybody was talking about why don't people understand more? And
here he is ten years old, and he sort of
loudly said, and you know, you know Rowan or you
knew him when he was at the time he was ten,
(41:13):
and he said, Papa, it's so obvious. It's because we
don't live in Atlantis. And I said what he said,
We don't live underwater, so we don't think about what
it means when these things go into the water. And
there were a couple of people sitting around because it
was an outdoor film festival in the mall in Washington,
d C. And they were like, exactly took a ten
(41:35):
year old kid to kind of say it, but you know,
out of the mouth of babes. To some extent, it
is that simple because there is a disconnect forests land.
We live on it. We're here, we know where our
cities are built. But anyone that lives in a coastal
city and knows the wrath of the ocean, or or
a great lake, for that matter, a great sea inland,
(41:56):
the sea knows to respect it. Right. But I think
that further connection to the species, to its well being
is still something we have to work on. So for
individuals to be connected, it's kind of personal, But it's
also that sort of Not everybody's going to go be
a marine biologist, right, Not everybody's that lucky, I would say,
(42:18):
But also also not everybody knows the same thing about
terrestrial ecosystems either. Right. You've watched the bison, the buffalo
come back in the Great Plains. That would not have
happened without indigenous people, without native tribes, that very very early.
Right now, it seems obvious because they interact with the land,
(42:43):
same thing with the ocean. Right. It's like getting people
to understand my joke about it is you can't see
the you can't see the ocean for the fish, because
it's the same thing as on land. Right. In some ways,
we're very concentrated on the turtle with the straw stuck
in his nose. Meanwhile, there's a problem right with plastics,
with governance. Hence the importance of like the Plastic Treaty
(43:06):
and even the I Seize Treaty to get everyone engaged.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
So building education and awareness is really important about ocean issues.
What materials or websites would you recommend? How can consumers
become more aware so they are making informed choices and
about seafood, plastics and other products that.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Are Yeah, you just have some that I was going
to say, because you know, if you're a seafood eater,
know where your food comes from. There are ways, there
are ways to track that, and you'd be surprised where
it's coming from. You might even be surprised. And I
can give you a couple of hints, like look up,
you know, do a quick google on some of the
(43:53):
studies that were done by going to secret shop at
various fish and chips places and things like that, and
then taking that fish into the laboratory and discovering what
was supposed to be cod was not cod, or some
other whitefish was not that whitefish might have even been
(44:13):
an endangered species of some kind or shark or you
name it. I think there's a real human element to
this as well, because the high seas is a dangerous place.
So for seafarers, whether they're doing cargo shipping or they're
doing fishing, there's an element of danger, and there's an
(44:35):
element of human rights, diversity, gender, all kinds of things
that come into play. So I think, if people have
a real interest in their food, that's an angle. If
they have real interest in plastics and what plastics are
where and what's happening with it, that's an angle. If
people are interested in the court of human rights aspect
(44:56):
and like what happens at sea, whatever industry that might be.
Some are much better than others, but it's pretty scary
when you look at when you take a deep dive
into it. So I think, almost again, pick your journey,
pick your adventure, and decide what means a lot to you. Obviously,
for a lot of people, seeing a good documentary or
(45:21):
going to an aquarium is the life changing for some people.
Right you can find thousands and thousands of reports literally
weekly on things like ocean sewage in wastewater. There's a
couple that I was just involved with over the last
couple of years on plastics and microplastics on fisheries. If
(45:45):
you really care about species, right, you might find a
whole track of things that are around biodiversity or things
like coraal loss. So you know, not everybody even gets
to go to an aquarium, right. Your city or small
town may not have an quarium wherever you are in
the world, and you definitely may not even get in
(46:05):
the water to scoop over, right. So I think part
of this really is how do we get people to
that or get that to them? And there is I
think a movement in that direction, and seeing youth take
charge of this is just really incredible. There's there are
there are people that we can you know, we can
even supply afterwards that people should follow on Instagram. There's
(46:29):
a young woman who actually lives here in Barcelona who
I'm connected to through through work and through family. Her
name is Olivia Mondel Novao Olivia Mondel. She has an
incredible Instagram feed. She wrote a book when she was sixteen,
she is now eighteen. She is out there advocating on
(46:50):
behalf of the ocean and ocean speech and the surrounding
kind of activities. So I think you can find sources
like that, not just use, but all along the age spectrum.
And and I think if you need to stay informed,
that's the way to do it because it's very Obviously
you get on LinkedIn and you follow me, you're going
(47:10):
to see this stuff as you do every day practically, right.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yes, yes, you have good information. I mean it's excellent information.
That's how I I, you know, learned about some of
the things that will protect me. And believe me, I
have to have my seafood shipped in because I don't
trust you know what's in the store because I did
(47:38):
some research. So and we should demand better. But if
you're not absoluteble, you can't demand what you don't know.
And that's you know, some of the problem people don't know. Well,
we have this new little tricky little uh tool that
is out there called a I. All you have to
(47:59):
do is type it in and it will answer and
pull up anything you ever wanted to know, who's involved
in it, you know how you can be involved in
it and everything else. If you want to know about
the oceans, that's a place to start getting information. And
like I said, go ahead and follow Stuart on LinkedIn.
(48:22):
He's always you know, has wonderful articles about what's going
on and different things like that that will make.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
I would encourage you like you they can they can,
they can follow it. Sorry, they can follow they can
follow me, but certainly follow these organizations. I've been mentioning
my own World Ocean Council and Octopus, but Ocean Sewage Alliance,
There's an Ocean of Certification Alliance, the Nature Conservancy, and
and lots of those big NGOs are doing amazing work
(48:54):
ww F and others, but also smaller local groups. There's
an amazing organization called Native Conservancy in Alaska. It's an
indigenous group, incredible work on everything from kelp to traditional
boat building and everything in between. There's these amazing groups
in the Great Lakes, including those based in Traverse City
(49:15):
that are doing all this work and building a new
incubator there. So there's a group called Sea Ahead that
I have worked with, the Northeast Maritime Institute. I mean,
I can go on and on, but like, do that research,
get on Instagram and follow them because they almost all
have Instagram and LinkedIn groups. But you know you can
you can find in lots of other places as well.
(49:37):
But and then you're really following the people doing the
work for sure.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Yeah, Stuart, this has been really incredible. I've enjoyed this.
I know people have become very informed and excited to
get involved. So when they're out there trying to tap
into these organizations, consider donating volunteering with organizations that are
(50:02):
working on ocean conservation. Thank you so much Stewart for
coming today and just letting us know the different things
that are happening with the oceans. And yes, we do
want healthy waters, don't you, And so people are going
to be jumping on board and doing what's necessary to
(50:25):
make this happen. I just want to say thank you
to everyone who tuned in today. A Sharp Outlook is
here every Monday at eleven am Eastern time eight am
Pacific time. Let's stay informed about all of these different
things that benefit you health wise and the environment and
(50:46):
generations to come. So whatever you do this week, stay informed.
I want to thank you for joining us on a
Sharp Outlook. We have been in formed and energized to
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and videos to learn more on today's topic. Please join
(51:09):
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(00:22):
the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any
suggested ideas.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello and thank you for tuning in to A Sharp
Outlook on pay for HD radio and Talk or TV.
I am Angela Sharp, your host. Our arm chair discussions
with industry experts will give you the steps, tools and
information to be successful in business and to prepare you
to be your best self. Hello and welcome back to
(00:56):
A Sharp Outlook Today. Our podcast is dedicated to exploring
the critical issues being we're facing with our oceans and
the innovative solutions being developed to protect them. I'm your host,
Angelas Sharp, and today we'll be diving deep into the
complex world of ocean policy, exploring the key challenges and
(01:21):
emerging opportunities, and what it takes to create effective and
sustainable solutions for our oceans. Our oceans cover seventy percent
of the Earth and are vital for climate regulation, biodiversity
and human livelihoods. Climate change such as ocean acidification and warming, overfishing, pollution,
(01:49):
plastics and chemical habitats destruction are threats to the health
of our ocean waters. Policy is essential for sustainable management, conservation,
and equitable access to ocean resources. It highlights interconnectedness of
(02:09):
ocean health and human well being. Why ocean policy matters?
How can we overcome the challenges to effective international cooperation
on ocean policy. Many ocean issues are trans boundary and
require coordinated actions, such as UN Convention on the Law
(02:31):
of the Sea provides a framework for cooperation. Differing national interests,
lack of enforcement mechanisms geopolitical tensions have an impact, but
strengthening existing agreements, creating new partnerships, sharing best practices, and
understanding the importance of multilateralism and diplomacy in addressing ocean
(02:56):
challenges is important. Today we have a very special guest
us joining us, Stuart Sarcosy Bonyxy. He's here to talk
to us about this wonderful, wonderful topic of how we
can have healthy waters and protect our oceans. Stuart is
the co founder of Octopus and ceo AI for World
(03:18):
Ocean Council. He is Ocean Fellow at the Citter Center
of Ocean Policy and Economics at Northeast Maritime Institute and
mentor for Sea Ahead Blue Swell. Stuart has global Director
Policy and Investments as Resilient Cities Network and was founder
of for Bands Community Fund. In other words, Stuart is
(03:42):
a leading expert in ocean policy with extensive experience in
areas of management and being able to just get cooperation
and collaboration in international ocean and governance, sustain fisheries, marine
protected areas, and climate change impacts on oceans, as well
(04:07):
as the urban and coastal intersections that are so important.
He's worked with governments, NGOs, international bodies such as the
Ocean Council, and presently with startups and corporations. Stewart, Welcome
to the show.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Thanks very much, Angel, It's great to be here.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Well, it's great to have you here. You know, every
day I see the problems that are going on with
our oceans and the pollutions and the plastics and the
destruction of the you know, the coral reefs and things
like that, and I thought, we've got to get informed,
We've got to do something about it. We've got to
lift our voices and make some changes. And you get
(04:51):
enough people screaming about it, we can get some action.
We can get something to happen. We can make something happen.
That's why I was like, we're going to have this topic. Well,
before we get into specifics, can you paint a picture
for our listeners of why ocean policy is so critical
right now?
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Sure, And I think it comes from two different directions.
For me, on the one hand, it is rising in
its interest and popularity in the sense that people are
starting to notice a little bit of the kind of
threats that come from not taking care of what we
should be taken care of for some time. But I
(05:35):
think also from my and our point of view and
the work that we do, it's an ocean planet. As
you said, it's seventy percent of the ocean, it's sixty
to seventy percent of us. We are water. We are
salt water. And so for both the tensions and passions
(05:58):
and frustrations, demands and effort we have to make, mixed
with also the sort of place we are as an
ocean planet, in combination direct us towards something that is
much more applicable now as we start to see some
of the negative cascading effects from various problems or various
(06:22):
shocks and stresses. So for me, on the one hand,
it's passion because I've been a long, a lifelong ocean
and water lever and engage with it. But at the
same time, it also comes from the fact that I
personally began to get more and more worried and have
more frustration. So an ocean policy really is a planetary policy,
(06:42):
and I think that's part of back to what you said.
To some extent, people don't understand the role of the ocean,
the role of the ocean in the hydrological cycle that
makes our planet possible. Our breath, every other breath is
because of the ocean, the way that our system works,
(07:05):
and I think that's in some ways it's understandable people
don't pay attention to the full kind of ecosystem. And
I mean that in the sense of like the systemic
connectivity yeah of the planet. Right, So an ocean policy
is a planetary policy.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
You know. I mean, when you think about it, we
take advantage of some of the things that we have
the pleasures of using until we can't use it anymore,
and The thing is, if we were caring for it,
it would go on for generations and generations. But I'm
concerned about the generations ahead. What are the biggest threats
(07:44):
facing our oceans and why do we need robust policies
to address them.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
I think in some of this we hear a little
more regularly, even if you're not really an ocean advocate
or follower. And that comes back to what you said
about us sort of abusing. And there's just this kind
of general sense that the ocean is so vast, right,
one giant ocean that covers the planet, and it's all interconnected,
(08:14):
that we can't do it harm. But that, as we've seen,
is not true. So we've got coral bleaching because of warming, acidification,
and current changes temperature changes that affect both the species
and sort of general fisheries, but also ecotourism. And the
(08:35):
latest news that starts to make the headlines a little
bit is not the greatest when it comes to things
like coral die off and the acidification and the warming.
So and then of that of course relates to the
warming that leads to greater storms with more moisture content.
We saw what just happened in Jamaica there at this
(08:58):
discussion point of whether we have to give hurricanes like
that a six rather than a five and some unusual
amount of convection and water moisture in the system that
did what it did and the wind speed. So what's
(09:20):
facing the oceans comes from us to some extent and
then or exacerbated by us because there's also plastics and microplastics,
and in our waterways the pfast chemicals that then end
up in the ocean, algae blooms and dead zones and
things like that from agriculture runoffs. So we have abused
(09:44):
all of our systems. And that's not just in the
water or the ocean. But I think what really is
sort of a little out of sight, out of mind
is the water and what's below water. And I think
that's part of what this conversation is great for important
for people to understand that if they live in Des Moines, Iowa,
(10:04):
or they're in you know, the middle of the UK
or in the dead center of Central Europe, things they
do on a day to day basis have an effect
on the ocean, whether it's plastics and recycling, or whether it's
certain kinds of plastic materials purchases, they make things, they
drink stuff that goes into the water.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Mm hmm. Yeah. I even saw where you had an
article out there where what is it the sunscreen? Having
a water friendly sunscreen instead of some of these ones.
And because of the chemicals are coming off of your
body when you're getting into the water and it's killing
the coral and affecting the marine light. I mean, you know,
(10:50):
like I said, we take so many things for granted.
We don't realize there's supposed to be custodians of the earth,
not you know, just devour. You know, we need to
be more conscious of what we really are doing because
there are generations coming after us. Think about them. Think
about the ones that are coming after us. You know,
(11:12):
it doesn't hurt to read the bottle to see if
it has damaging chemicals in it, put it on the shelf,
and in fact even report it to the store. Stop
selling this and pick the one that is going to
be friendly to the water. I mean, that was so
fascinating when I saw that. That's what me to say,
we got to get this out. We have to get
(11:34):
this out so that you know, we can you know,
be able to have the waters therefore the next generations.
What are key challenges in ocean policy?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I think right now getting alignment from countries, from nation states,
and in the case a lot of work that I
do corporations and financiers and others on the same path.
And there's a bunch of there's a bunch of negotiations
and treaties. There's a whole slew people who are at
(12:11):
the UNF Triple C. The Conference of Party is the
COP in Brazil right now. I'm not there. It's rare
that I'm not at one of those COP gatherings, and
that's where some of these negotiations take place. But we're
talking everything from the International Plastics Treaty which has stalled,
(12:32):
to the High Seas Treaty, which they got enough signatures
for come three weeks ago, which is a great, great advancement.
Because part of the problem with the ocean as well is.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
That it's a commons, right, Gianic commons, other than up
to certain zones, right, we all have to play nice,
and not everybody does.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
So there's treaties like those. There's the negotiations that the
International Maritime Organization two weeks ago halted or paused until
next year, it's conversations around quotas and new fuels shipping,
because that shipping, where we get most of our goods
(13:17):
and where great pollution takes place, is all kind of
tied together. So there are and plastics in the water
and microplastics in our bodies. I mean, at this point,
you can't eat a oyster and not have microplastics in it,
I hate to say it. So we have real recovery
(13:38):
activities we need to do where those challenges lie and
where the treaties need to surround. But there's also sort
of enforcement and financing to sort of write to do
some of the precovery and recovery at the same time
make sure that we're preventing what we can at this point,
not to mention that if we don't close the gap
in terms of temperature rise, I think it's one of
(14:02):
those things where people think of it as just warming,
and that's not actually what climate change is. Climate changes
affects both deep cold spells, water and lack of water,
and other kinds of activities. So what we're going to
see is a bit more of a wackier set of
symptoms from that fact, as opposed to just pure sort
of global warming, and that's partially why the kind of naysayers,
(14:25):
it gets confusing when people kind of are putting in
an alternative narrative to it.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that, you know, with the fragmentation
of governance and multiple agencies and international bodies and overlapping
jurisdictions has a big effect on policy, for sure, I'm sure.
But that's where we as citizens of these countries, in
(14:52):
these areas, this is where we can help. We can
stand up and start you know, marching about the waters
and letting people know we're not voting if you're not
you know, planning, you know, some kind of healthy water
planning or something like that. We have a voice, and
we can actually you know, have have minds change because
(15:17):
we're out there making enough noise about it. Remember, we're
going to need this water. This is a life or
death situation. This is not just oh I want to
go to the beach. This is why for death situation
and we really you know, have to do about it.
And and then the lack of what about the lack
(15:37):
of law, you know, lack of enforcement and weak enforcement
mechanisms and limited resources for monitoring and compliance. You know,
how can you how can we help, you know, when
these governments are so fractured.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, I mean it's a great This isn't just in
one country or another, but globally, country by country where
the rules aren't pass and then enforced, whether it's a
marine protected area or it's wetlands and water pollution, in
water sourcing, or air quality for that matter, right, because
(16:14):
in lots of places where there are air quality problems,
you also have poisoned waters. So it really is a
struggle if there isn't a good national mandate. I think
corporations in cities and regional governments have much more of
a role to play, and they've gotten a bit more
used to doing so over the last say ten years,
and part of that comes from the fact that there's
(16:36):
been this disengagement by some national governments. True funding and
policy and regulation breakdown, enforcement breakdown. But you know, having
we talk about this a lot with marine protected areas,
because marine protected areas are not as good as those
(16:59):
that have enforcement and have funding behind them. The saying
can be said with the environmental protection laws because in
almost every country in the world there are still problems
with things like combined sewer overflow, which causes discharge of
sewage into actual water bodies. Right. Part of the problem
also is that we're talking about groundwater depletionment, freshwater depletion,
(17:23):
and the hydrological Society's cycle as a whole. So to
your point, it's ocean, the contributing waterways fresh water, including
in the United States the Great Lakes, which is twenty
percent of the twenty percent of the fresh water. And
(17:43):
you can imagine that saving that with as important as
that is, becomes just as important, just as important as
the ocean and all that it provides. And part of
this gets down to things like do we have enough
food to feed people, because it's a source of protein
globally for billions of people, right, And not to mention
(18:04):
that if we have water scarcity and that's groundwater, surface water,
or everything in between, then you're getting into very expensive
things like plants for desalinization just take a lot of
power and also have discharge that has to be dealt with.
So it's a little bit, like you said, going back
(18:26):
to the basics and sort of making sure we don't
damage what we have in the first place and recovering
enough of the things that we've had. It is however,
really important that we're monitoring and forcing, not just creating laws.
And I think that's where the rub is right, You've
got to have the funding to support that.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, you know, And I was just even thinking these
microplastics personally. It has affected me and I, you know,
I'm taking some medications to kind of repair some of
the brain cells that are affected by microplastics, some of
(19:09):
the nerves that are affected by microplastics. I mean, this
is affecting our actual health. And that's that's also very
important if we realize how much those microplastics and all
of those pollutions that are in the water that we're
just drinking every day, and it's even in the air,
(19:29):
it's in the soil, I mean everything, And they get
into the body and they clog up your your veins,
they clog up the near nerves, blood system, and they're
causing you know, memory loss, They're causing you know, your
inability for your nerves to function well, and and and
(19:53):
the the uh, the information from from the brain to
the nerve not connected, and it's such just a lot
of different things. And I thought to myself, what is
how in the world did that happen to me? Every
day that you eat, every day that you drink. Oh
my goodness. So it's really important for us to really
(20:14):
be serious about this. This isn't about some political thing
or we're going to fight it because we don't want,
you know, this particular party to win. So we're going
to fight you know, clean water, and we're going to
fight environmental things, and we're going to you know, instead
of getting informed and understanding it's affecting you in your
(20:36):
personal home every day, and it's you know, what can
we do? How can we you know, I know it's
a major hurdle. It's the lack of political commitment and
prioritization of ocean issues. But like I said, we the
people can can encourage that. What can we do first off,
(21:00):
to stay informed and what can we do to you know,
get this participation in order to energize participation?
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah, I think. I think the public campaigns that I've
seen and I've been involved with some organizations, I mean,
believe it or not. I mean there's tons of research
that's going on right now about microplastics and microfibers and
pfesta forever chemicals and all of them and their effect.
Because there are definitely people who like yourself, have seen
(21:38):
those effects. And at the same time it's so shocking
when they crack open every you know, oyster or muscle
and find microplastics or recent studies in Japan have found
microplastics in clouds before the rainfall, which means of course
that as it falls, it's coming down and going into
the soil. So I think at this point evidentially without
(22:02):
like knowing exactly the effects afterwards, it is indeed in us,
in plants, in animals, in the soil and in the water.
It's in the air and in the clouds, right, so
there could kind of can be no denying about that.
But that soup of all those things that are coming
down and affecting us really need the kind of testing
that good governance and good dollars and research institutions, whether
(22:28):
it's whether it's you know, the European Union here where
I'm sitting now or in the United States, and some
of those funds have been have been cut, and so
I think part of what's important for general public is
you can make personal choices about things you buy and
(22:48):
eat and what you wear and all kinds of things.
Because because there's a whole microfiber microplastic problem with clothing
as well. So pick your poison if you will, and
no pun intended, because in some ways they really are.
But you know, there's lots of ways that people can
make individual choices about what they purchase and what they eat,
et cetera. Then there's the kind of regulation side, which
(23:11):
is more difficult, because I think good data and good
evidence allows people to be informed and go to their
city council and say, is our local water treatment plant
doing the right thing by us? What's happening with X,
where's our water coming from? How is it filtered right?
Because these microplastics are so small, you have to have
(23:31):
a fine filtration at a point, which we had not previously.
And then it comes back to what we were talking
about a second ago, which is if there's laws there
for clean air, clean water, clean soil, et cetera, are
they enforced? And if not, that's an because they're already
(23:52):
on the books. That's an easier thing to go to
your whatever your elected leadership is and say, look this
not right. The ocean and its kind of vastness and
depth are more difficult, but as soon as it affects
(24:12):
somebody's ability to go to the beach because there's a
combined sewer overflow from rains and the beach is dirty,
or there's plastics on the beach when you're there, or
whatever it might be. Then it becomes more of an activation.
You can really kind of like activate people. And I
think part of the problem too is, and I mentioned
(24:33):
this just a second ago, you can do things in
the middle of your country wherever your country is, to
better the situation because you're not buying certain types of clothes,
plastic packaging materials, et cetera, and or allowing certain things
to go in the water, right, because that still goes
(24:54):
down into groundwater which we need to live from, or
it goes into a system which eventually ends up in
the ocean. Right. So that's why I have a giant
kind of dead zone off the coast of on the
Gulf Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, because it comes
out of the Mississippi full of all of the ag
runoff and everything else pollution wise, right, And so it's
(25:15):
creating this kind of like blanket. And then you have
algae blooms in Lake Erie in the United States, or
you have the recent algae blooms that took place in
parts of Europe in the summer. Is everything warms because
that's the combination, right, you get a soup where it's
super warm, you get red tides, or you get other
(25:35):
types of effects because you got the warming, plus you've
got the chemicals or basically too much nutrition. Right, that
allows stuff to grow. And so it's a way for
humans to get involved, but it's also something you have
to take to elective leadership.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
What are some innovative approaches to improving enforcement of ocean
policies like technologlogy? Can technology play a combating role in
illegal fishing and things like that? I mean, we've got
it everywhere, gets some drawing something. How can it? No?
Speaker 3 (26:12):
No, yeah, yeah, it definitely is. I think. I think
in the kind of climate and blue tech space, there's
definitely been an advancement. And you mentioned one of them,
and that's tracking fishing, fishing fleets and fishing boats and
where they are or where they should not be in
many cases, which is where the tracking comes in. But
(26:34):
there's also incredible sets of innovators, some of whom we're
working with in various ways, who are doing recovery and
precovery resilience building and finding ways with sensors or more
nature based solutions as we call them, to make changes
right there at the coast or in the water, whether
(26:56):
it's upriver or it's or it's deep sea. So technology
definitely has its place. Last week was the big Smart
City Expo here in Barcelona, and our events were part
of that under the Tomorrow Blue Economy, the Sustainable Ocean
Summit and the Global Blue Finance Summit. So technology, large
(27:16):
scale technology and small scale innovators and startups and the
funding to get to those individuals, organizations and startups is
super key because there's all kinds of things that we
can measure, and if you can measure it, then you
can management. Basically, that was the first part of a
(27:37):
waterside chat we did with her name is Christina Hill.
She's the head of the engagement for the Global Reporting Initiative,
and part of this comes down to what we just mentioned.
Technology can help us with data. Data can help us
with measuring, measuring helps us manage. So all of these
(27:58):
different technologies for cent for tracking and satellite imagery that
actually is really great at ocean and marine spatial planning,
those are helping us because we can very clearly see
what we need to do in various places now, unlike
everybody that wants to go to Mars or go further
(28:20):
than Mars, we still have a lot of mapping and
knowledge we have to do on the ocean, and an incredible,
incredible thousands of species are discovered all the time, and
that's because we only have mapped a very small part
of the ocean, and that means we need even more
(28:42):
data and more technology to help us be able to
do that, and we're getting better and better at it
because we're able to go to deeper depths and do
more and use these technological systems. So I would say, yes,
there's very much a case for technology in preventative measures,
in data and mapping and recovery as well. Some of
(29:03):
those devices that I've seen come around over the last years,
they're also now being used for things like quick mapping
and tracking after hurricanes. So the same remote operated vehicles
autonomous vehicles can be used in ways that are more
emergency like and speed up figuring out what has happened
(29:26):
after an emergency, right, So we can use it in
a number of different ways, and I think that's that's
the beauty of the good side of technology.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Mm hmm. Oh that's well. I'm glad that we have
it so that we can at least use it to
be able to see what's going on. You know, how
can we better balance economic development with the need to
protect marine ecosystem. I mean it should be included in
economic development or thought about or in part of the policy.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Yeah, it's interesting. Last week we had a panel and
it's it's rare to see, but we had a very
successful for profit company in the Netherlands and they created
an entire separate business line focused on ocean health. And
this is a very traditional maritime dredging, vessel port kind
(30:26):
of company, and they made a very specific choice to
create a separate business line that focused on ocean rehabilitation
and ocean health. And it pays right, Yeah, we can
we can monetize the good work. Now we can monetize
the good work too, So I think that's that's what's interesting.
(30:47):
And then this gets back to the regulation a little bit.
Say all fixed offshore wind has to have regenerative adaptive
systems built in to the fixed locations that they're doing
the wind turbines. If that was already policy and the
(31:07):
company's already invested in it. You can build reefs basically
and offshore living biospheres off of those fixed placements while
you're still doing the energy piece, right, So some of
this people see these things too much in pillars. Right.
It's great that we have the sustainable develement goals, but
sometimes you know STG six for water and water health
(31:31):
and STG fourteen for life underwater are not talking to
each other, and you're fresh and your salt aren't necessarily
mixed in terms of those policy conversations. So I believe
very strongly that we can still do regenerative activities and
do them in a way that ends up being monetized
(31:55):
and at the same time is just included. So why
build why build a base a fixed base for for
wind power? If you don't automatically include the attachments and
devices that create res out of the bottom of those right,
then you can also then monitor and there's more technology
comes in because there's sound monitoring and there's actually AI
(32:17):
that's used for visual monitoring. We have some great companies
we work with who do this work. It's incredible what
can be done, but you have to have sort of
that foresight. You have to build it in. You have
to build it into the budgets, and you got to
you got to plan early for it because we've done
so many things that are detrimental that we're now you know,
(32:38):
we're trying to recover that as well as trying to
do this new stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, but seeing we have such new technology out there,
I think it's time to start using it. You know,
what are some emerging opportunities and innovative solutions that you're seeing.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
So we have we have a member client who has
this amazing I think I think it's okay if I
mentioned company names, right, I mean, I'm I'm not making
any recommendations necessarily. I'm just saying that, like one really
great innovation we've seen is with this company we work
with called Ocean Ecostructures, and they've developed a patented device
(33:21):
set of devices that go down in the water and
both by their structure and what they're made of and
a kind of like sound vibration thing they do to it.
In fact, there's some sitting right below me here as
the sunsets on the pier where my offices are located
in Barcelona, and basically you can watch via time lapse
(33:46):
the way species come back to an area that may
not have had anything because concrete, traditional concrete in particular,
does not allow for the kind of life building that's necessary.
So Ocean Ecostructures has these structures that go in the water.
But the really cool thing about their work, which we love,
(34:08):
is that they then monitor it with ROVs with cameras
that have AI connected to it, and that artificial intelligence
can every three months collect numbers of new species, collect
the increase in biomass, increase in biodiversity reduction, and nitrogen
(34:28):
increase in oxygen, et cetera. And then their clients and
their clients clients have dashboards where they can see the
change and that the curve is like this usually right,
like from left to right. The curve in all of
those factors, or if it's something that's negative, is quite
pronounced every three months over time. And I don't think
(34:53):
they can claim, or I wouldn't claim that that's why
there's dolphins all the time now right in the Inner Harbor.
But we know from New York City and the rebirth
of the oyster beds the whales and dolphins, and this
comes from regulation, decrease in pollution, but increasing in things
like the oyster beds. So nature based solutions where connected
technology have made those kinds of changes. So I love
(35:16):
what ocean Ecostructures is doing because they can also do
it way offshore, which they are doing in offshore wind
oil rigs, et cetera, where they're creating basically reefs that
they monitor and they can monitor them such that that
data also helps with things like climate credits, biodiversity credits
(35:36):
and so on. Right, so there is a kind of
both impact side and a monetary side. But then there are,
as I said, nature based solutions. There's another group we
work with called the Great Bubble Barrier. They have an
amazing system that goes into rivers in cities that are
(36:00):
even inland, that create this curtain of bubbles that's put
in an angle in the river bed with a catchment system.
And because it's completely non evasive to fish and other
species or traffic of any kind, it separates plastics and
pushes it into this catchment system and so with little
(36:25):
to no sort of human involvement except for when the
catchment area gets full. Great Bubble Barrier has figured out
this way to push plastics and catch it before it
goes in the ocean basically, right, which is half the
battle in some cases, because we've got so much of it,
you know, we've got so much of it in the
environment already. And at the same time, I can think
(36:47):
of a super high tech one where there's a group
called Blue IQ who's doing sound monitoring. Their systems are
so sophisticated that imagine that you can tell exactly what's
happening underwater and buy species. They did a demo for
demo for us that was just incredible, and it was
a set of a set of microphones off the coast
(37:12):
of in the Gulf of Mexico, off of Mobile, Alabama,
and you could hear the shrimp talking wow, And you
could hear a boat approaching from a long way away,
and as the boat got closer, the shrimp stopped talking
and you could hear the boat go by. If you've
(37:33):
ever been underwater, you know that sense of a boat,
kind of the propeller of noise, right, You hear the
boat go by, and immediately the shrimps start talking again.
So imagine what that would mean for like sound monitoring
for work that's being done underground, monitoring for ships and
whale strikes, being able to hear what's happening underwater with
(37:53):
such a sophistication that you can tell exactly what's happening, right,
And I could go on. I mean, there's all kinds.
And then there are of course larger corporations that are
doing incredible work and attempting to change the course of
the kinds of things that we're doing, whether it's data collections,
or it's shipping, or it's ports. We work super closely
with the Port of Barcelona in the City of Barcelona
(38:16):
who have a whole blue economy plan that is super advanced.
And there are other parts of the world where they're
doing things like this too, where we're working that in combination,
I think is what really starts to sort of from
the small innovator on up to these big companies and
then the cooperation between these other types of entities. It
can be done. Sometimes it's more expensive, but in the end,
(38:39):
just like building resilience allion dollar now save thirteen later right,
insurance companies like this, you can start to do the
precovery work rather than always being in recovery.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Absolutely, what role can individuals and the general public play
in supporting better ocean policy?
Speaker 3 (39:00):
So I think it's interesting, right, Because because I've done
policy work in various ways, it's very clear that if
you capture and I'll say this in a storytelling way,
if you capture the human eimation, human imagination, and you
get people interested in the changes negative and positive, that
(39:25):
they can be a part of, whether it's their purchasing power,
you have power advocacy with their elected leaders. You know,
we see this. We see this here in Barcelona, but
I see it back in New York and in Washington,
d C. And wherever you might wherever you might be
when there's a connection to the water. And I brought
(39:48):
brought up previously right that one of my one of
my you know, go to books is a book called
Blue Mind by doctor Wallace Nichols, and that book is
a scientific, cultural, social, et cetera review of our connection
to water, both in on near and under and what
(40:10):
it does for us. Well, it's obvious that we're sustained
from it because you can go without food a lot
longer than you can go without liquida. We are water.
We are water literally, right, as is the planet. So
getting people's imagination, getting connection because the ocean is far away, right,
(40:30):
I think there are better and better storytelling, documentary films,
young youth spokespeople, people I work with who are doing
incredible work eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, and there has
to be more of that and connected to the ocean.
It's very hard. I remember I was with my son
(40:52):
at an ocean series at a film festival and there
was a series of films and then they stopped, and
everybody was talking about why don't people understand more? And
here he is ten years old, and he sort of
loudly said, and you know, you know Rowan or you
knew him when he was at the time he was ten,
(41:13):
and he said, Papa, it's so obvious. It's because we
don't live in Atlantis. And I said what he said,
We don't live underwater, so we don't think about what
it means when these things go into the water. And
there were a couple of people sitting around because it
was an outdoor film festival in the mall in Washington,
d C. And they were like, exactly took a ten
(41:35):
year old kid to kind of say it, but you know,
out of the mouth of babes. To some extent, it
is that simple because there is a disconnect forests land.
We live on it. We're here, we know where our
cities are built. But anyone that lives in a coastal
city and knows the wrath of the ocean, or or
a great lake, for that matter, a great sea inland,
(41:56):
the sea knows to respect it. Right. But I think
that further connection to the species, to its well being
is still something we have to work on. So for
individuals to be connected, it's kind of personal, But it's
also that sort of Not everybody's going to go be
a marine biologist, right, Not everybody's that lucky, I would say,
(42:18):
But also also not everybody knows the same thing about
terrestrial ecosystems either. Right. You've watched the bison, the buffalo
come back in the Great Plains. That would not have
happened without indigenous people, without native tribes, that very very early.
Right now, it seems obvious because they interact with the land,
(42:43):
same thing with the ocean. Right. It's like getting people
to understand my joke about it is you can't see
the you can't see the ocean for the fish, because
it's the same thing as on land. Right. In some ways,
we're very concentrated on the turtle with the straw stuck
in his nose. Meanwhile, there's a problem right with plastics,
with governance. Hence the importance of like the Plastic Treaty
(43:06):
and even the I Seize Treaty to get everyone engaged.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
So building education and awareness is really important about ocean issues.
What materials or websites would you recommend? How can consumers
become more aware so they are making informed choices and
about seafood, plastics and other products that.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Are Yeah, you just have some that I was going
to say, because you know, if you're a seafood eater,
know where your food comes from. There are ways, there
are ways to track that, and you'd be surprised where
it's coming from. You might even be surprised. And I
can give you a couple of hints, like look up,
you know, do a quick google on some of the
(43:53):
studies that were done by going to secret shop at
various fish and chips places and things like that, and
then taking that fish into the laboratory and discovering what
was supposed to be cod was not cod, or some
other whitefish was not that whitefish might have even been
(44:13):
an endangered species of some kind or shark or you
name it. I think there's a real human element to
this as well, because the high seas is a dangerous place.
So for seafarers, whether they're doing cargo shipping or they're
doing fishing, there's an element of danger, and there's an
(44:35):
element of human rights, diversity, gender, all kinds of things
that come into play. So I think, if people have
a real interest in their food, that's an angle. If
they have real interest in plastics and what plastics are
where and what's happening with it, that's an angle. If
people are interested in the court of human rights aspect
(44:56):
and like what happens at sea, whatever industry that might be.
Some are much better than others, but it's pretty scary
when you look at when you take a deep dive
into it. So I think, almost again, pick your journey,
pick your adventure, and decide what means a lot to you. Obviously,
for a lot of people, seeing a good documentary or
(45:21):
going to an aquarium is the life changing for some people.
Right you can find thousands and thousands of reports literally
weekly on things like ocean sewage in wastewater. There's a
couple that I was just involved with over the last
couple of years on plastics and microplastics on fisheries. If
(45:45):
you really care about species, right, you might find a
whole track of things that are around biodiversity or things
like coraal loss. So you know, not everybody even gets
to go to an aquarium, right. Your city or small
town may not have an quarium wherever you are in
the world, and you definitely may not even get in
(46:05):
the water to scoop over, right. So I think part
of this really is how do we get people to
that or get that to them? And there is I
think a movement in that direction, and seeing youth take
charge of this is just really incredible. There's there are
there are people that we can you know, we can
even supply afterwards that people should follow on Instagram. There's
(46:29):
a young woman who actually lives here in Barcelona who
I'm connected to through through work and through family. Her
name is Olivia Mondel Novao Olivia Mondel. She has an
incredible Instagram feed. She wrote a book when she was sixteen,
she is now eighteen. She is out there advocating on
(46:50):
behalf of the ocean and ocean speech and the surrounding
kind of activities. So I think you can find sources
like that, not just use, but all along the age spectrum.
And and I think if you need to stay informed,
that's the way to do it because it's very Obviously
you get on LinkedIn and you follow me, you're going
(47:10):
to see this stuff as you do every day practically, right.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yes, yes, you have good information. I mean it's excellent information.
That's how I I, you know, learned about some of
the things that will protect me. And believe me, I
have to have my seafood shipped in because I don't
trust you know what's in the store because I did
(47:38):
some research. So and we should demand better. But if
you're not absoluteble, you can't demand what you don't know.
And that's you know, some of the problem people don't know. Well,
we have this new little tricky little uh tool that
is out there called a I. All you have to
(47:59):
do is type it in and it will answer and
pull up anything you ever wanted to know, who's involved
in it, you know how you can be involved in
it and everything else. If you want to know about
the oceans, that's a place to start getting information. And
like I said, go ahead and follow Stuart on LinkedIn.
(48:22):
He's always you know, has wonderful articles about what's going
on and different things like that that will make.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
I would encourage you like you they can they can,
they can follow it. Sorry, they can follow they can
follow me, but certainly follow these organizations. I've been mentioning
my own World Ocean Council and Octopus, but Ocean Sewage Alliance,
There's an Ocean of Certification Alliance, the Nature Conservancy, and
and lots of those big NGOs are doing amazing work
(48:54):
ww F and others, but also smaller local groups. There's
an amazing organization called Native Conservancy in Alaska. It's an
indigenous group, incredible work on everything from kelp to traditional
boat building and everything in between. There's these amazing groups
in the Great Lakes, including those based in Traverse City
(49:15):
that are doing all this work and building a new
incubator there. So there's a group called Sea Ahead that
I have worked with, the Northeast Maritime Institute. I mean,
I can go on and on, but like, do that research,
get on Instagram and follow them because they almost all
have Instagram and LinkedIn groups. But you know you can
you can find in lots of other places as well.
(49:37):
But and then you're really following the people doing the
work for sure.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Yeah, Stuart, this has been really incredible. I've enjoyed this.
I know people have become very informed and excited to
get involved. So when they're out there trying to tap
into these organizations, consider donating volunteering with organizations that are
(50:02):
working on ocean conservation. Thank you so much Stewart for
coming today and just letting us know the different things
that are happening with the oceans. And yes, we do
want healthy waters, don't you, And so people are going
to be jumping on board and doing what's necessary to
(50:25):
make this happen. I just want to say thank you
to everyone who tuned in today. A Sharp Outlook is
here every Monday at eleven am Eastern time eight am
Pacific time. Let's stay informed about all of these different
things that benefit you health wise and the environment and
(50:46):
generations to come. So whatever you do this week, stay informed.
I want to thank you for joining us on a
Sharp Outlook. We have been in formed and energized to
take the next steps. We have posted links to websites
and videos to learn more on today's topic. Please join
(51:09):
us again next week for another thought provoking conversation right
here on Key for HD Radio and Talk for TV.
Listen to the podcast on all the podcast apps, and
until next week, stay informed.
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