Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / A New PBS Documentary Wants You to Care About Coral. Meet the Man Behind It.

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A New PBS Documentary Wants You to Care About Coral. Meet the Man Behind It. · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  Imagine you're a dive shop owner, and you live in the Keys,
• 0:03
  in the Florida Keys, right?
• 0:04
  Beautiful place.
• 0:05
  It's known for the coral reef diversity, wall-to-wall corals back
• 0:11
  in the 80s, 70s, 80s, 90s, even 2000s.
• 0:15
  And then you start to notice some degradation.
• 0:18
  You start to notice some patches.
• 0:20
  There's disease outbreaks that hit the reefs hard.
• 0:23
  Climate change is affecting it, increased sea surface temperatures, heat waves.
• 0:29
  You know, you're getting the highest temperatures at 100 degrees
• 0:31
  Fahrenheit we've ever recorded.
• 0:33
  And you start to see the reef go down and down to it, to the point where you
• 0:36
  couldn't see patches before, and then all of a sudden now it's just a huge patch.
• 0:41
  It's like patches of coral reef everywhere.
• 0:43
  You have a choice to make as a dive shop owner.
• 0:46
  You can continue on, and you can try and do something, or you can
• 0:49
  just say, "Hey, you know what?
• 0:51
  Put my arms up like I tried.
• 0:52
  I did what I did, but I have a business.
• 0:54
  I have a life too.
• 0:55
  I have a family I have to worry about, and I need to support.
• 0:57
  And so I'm gonna just sell the business and get out while I can." Not for
• 1:01
  my guest today, Michael Goldberg, who is the co-founder of ICARE.
• 1:05
  It's ICARE for Corals, is a marketer, a businessman, who teamed up with
• 1:11
  a coral reef scientist to help rebuild the coral reefs through reef
• 1:15
  restorations, through creating frags, and replanting them in the wild.
• 1:19
  He's been doing this for the last five and a half years.
• 1:21
  So much so that it's caught on so much so that there is a movie called,
• 1:26
  Descent Into The Blue that's coming out on PBS on September 1st, 2026, where
• 1:30
  you can watch where all this came from.
• 1:33
  How Mike and how Kylie, which is his co-founder, Kylie Smith, Dr.
• 1:37
  Kylie Smith, met, and how they started to ask each other questions.
• 1:41
  Like, Mike was asking her questions about coral reef restoration and how we're gonna
• 1:44
  fix the corals and everything, and how that company formed, but also what it
• 1:47
  was like beforehand and the problem that they were facing, and then their solution,
• 1:51
  which was about reef restoration.
• 1:52
  And the whole point of this, what they want you to get out of it, is that to
• 1:55
  care for the reefs, that there are people out there who want to do something, not
• 1:58
  just for business, but for the fact that the sake that they care about the
• 2:02
  reef, they care about the community, they care about the culture of Key West.
• 2:05
  And I think this is a great story to tell, and I wanted Mike to
• 2:08
  come on the podcast to tell this.
• 2:10
  The director, Rory Fielding, of the film, was supposed to make it.
• 2:13
  He unfortunately wasn't able to make it, but the movie that they're gonna
• 2:16
  see on PBS is absolutely phenomenal.
• 2:18
  I'm gonna put the link to the trailer, if I'm allowed, in the show notes so
• 2:21
  you can check that out, but also don't forget to check out the PBS show when
• 2:24
  it comes out on September 1st, 2026.
• 2:27
  But until then, enjoy this interview with Mike Goldberg
• 2:29
  talking about reef restoration.
• 2:31
  We talk not only about his story and how this all happened, but also, what
• 2:34
  needs to happen in the reef restoration field now, not just the science, but
• 2:39
  also the business implementation part and sort of newfound ways to fund.
• 2:43
  Because we know governments these days, you just never know if they're
• 2:45
  gonna fund things or not, and funding has been cut over the last little bit.
• 2:48
  So we're gonna talk about that all on this episode.
• 2:51
  Here's the interview with Mike.
• 2:52
  Enjoy, and I'll talk to you after.
• 2:54
  Hey, Mike.
• 2:54
  Welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 2:56
  Are you ready to talk about Descent Into the Blue, the new
• 3:01
  movie that's coming out on PBS?
• 3:03
  I am so excited about this.
• 3:05
  I just found out a few minutes ago that it was actually airing next week-
• 3:10
  on PBS, so I cannot wait.
• 3:12
  Oh, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a lot of fun.
• 3:14
  I've seen the trailer.
• 3:15
  I've seen the screening.
• 3:16
  It looks impeccable in terms of imagery, the videography.
• 3:21
  There's so many different voices that are speaking about
• 3:24
  how important coral reefs are.
• 3:26
  And I, I'm looking forward to discussing all of that.
• 3:29
  We're gonna have really interesting conversation today, not only about Descent
• 3:32
  Into the Blue, this movie that's gonna be airing on PBS that you were a part
• 3:35
  of, but also we're gonna have a frank conversation about coral restoration.
• 3:39
  Where it's at.
• 3:40
  Cause we see it all the time on Instagram.
• 3:42
  We see a lot of different organizations from all over the world trying to restore
• 3:45
  their reefs to what it was at some point.
• 3:48
  And there's a lot to learn from that, and there's a lot of things that we can
• 3:51
  progress on, and I think we're gonna talk all these things, especially from you, who
• 3:55
  you've had, you know, a number of years, you know, the dive industry and coral
• 3:59
  restoration and all that kind of stuff.
• 4:01
  So, we're gonna have a great conversation.
• 4:02
  I'm looking forward to it.
• 4:03
  But before we get into all that, Mike, why don't you just let us
• 4:05
  know who you are and what you do?
• 4:07
  Yep, no problem.
• 4:08
  Yeah, I'm excited as well.
• 4:09
  My name is Mike Goldberg.
• 4:11
  I am the co-founder of ICARE, and we're restoration group
• 4:13
  based in Islamorada, Florida.
• 4:16
  But before I even started that, I became a dive professional decades ago.
• 4:20
  I'm embarrassed to say how many years ago now.
• 4:22
  Uh, 30-some odd years ago.
• 4:25
  Yeah.
• 4:25
  And, I own a scuba dive business in the Florida Keys.
• 4:28
  I've been diving regularly for decades, over, well over 10,000 dives.
• 4:33
  I had the actual privilege to see the reefs at their- pristine,
• 4:39
  almost impeccable finest.
• 4:42
  And seeing what we've seen in the last, oh, roughly 10 years is, not only
• 4:48
  heartbreaking, but it also forced me to do something, and that's how I.CARE was born.
• 4:53
  My co-founder and I just said, "Okay, that's enough.
• 4:57
  We gotta do something.
• 4:58
  We can't just sit here and hope someone else does that.
• 5:00
  We need to be the ones to take up the reins to make a difference
• 5:06
  for our community, specifically here in the Florida Keys."
• 5:09
  Yeah.
• 5:10
  I mean, that's, it's an interesting background too, right?
• 5:12
  you know, a lot of the times when we talk about coral restoration, we have
• 5:15
  scientists on and they're looking at frags and how frags will react
• 5:19
  to certain different conditions.
• 5:21
  You come from a business background, marketing background,
• 5:23
  finance background, own your own business, and this is, like, a key.
• 5:27
  Like, you're in the community, in the Keys.
• 5:28
  And the Keys from my-- I never had the opportunity.
• 5:31
  From my understanding, it is a very tight-knit community.
• 5:33
  You care about what's around.
• 5:35
  It's very ecotourism or very even tourism-based.
• 5:39
  and the water is everything, to that community.
• 5:41
  The reefs are everything, and there's a history there.
• 5:44
  There's a culture there that has really invested into these reefs.
• 5:48
  You said something that's, that I find really interesting.
• 5:50
  The last 10 years is where you've really seen the degradation of the reefs.
• 5:55
  when you first started to notice it, 10 or so years ago, were you thinking, like,
• 6:00
  this is the beginning of this, or were you just thinking, like, this is just
• 6:03
  a one-year thing or a two-year thing?
• 6:05
  Oh, no.
• 6:06
  I knew it was the real deal.
• 6:07
  The first bleaching event that I saw widespread was in the
• 6:12
  Eastern Caribbean back in… And I could be mistaken on the year.
• 6:15
  We'll call it 2008, roughly.
• 6:18
  and that was a shock.
• 6:20
  We didn't know what coral bleaching was.
• 6:21
  I didn't.
• 6:23
  I heard about it.
• 6:24
  There were some rumblings of things happening in the Barrier Reef out
• 6:28
  in Australia, but everything we had experienced up to that point
• 6:31
  was just perfection in the Eastern Caribbean where I was living.
• 6:35
  And then, know, about 10 years ago when we faced SCTLD, you know, stony coral
• 6:41
  tissue loss disease, and had already a bleaching event before that, yeah,
• 6:46
  I mean, I, I knew we were in for a shift that was significant and that
• 6:50
  we weren't gonna be able to escape it.
• 6:53
  And we were watching, as you know, and your audience knows, we were just
• 6:56
  watching corals die all around us.
• 6:59
  As a non-scientist at that point, I almost threw up my hands.
• 7:02
  I mean, I didn't know what to do, and it was depressing.
• 7:06
  And actually, as a business owner, my wife would tell me, "What are you doing?
• 7:09
  The product isn't what it used to be.
• 7:11
  You better get out of this business before it's too late.
• 7:13
  You're not gonna have anything to sell, and we've invested all,
• 7:16
  you know, our life into this.
• 7:17
  You, you invested your life into this business and your industry."
• 7:22
  And she had a good point, to be fair.
• 7:24
  Uh, so, w-you know, what's one guy that knows nothing about how to change
• 7:28
  things, what's one guy gonna do?
• 7:31
  10 years ago was really when it hit home, for sure.
• 7:33
  Yeah.
• 7:34
  But I'm not the type of person to give up.
• 7:36
  That's just not my nature.
• 7:37
  So, I had to do something.
• 7:38
  But it was quite traumatic at that time, for sure.
• 7:40
  I can imagine.
• 7:41
  Well, I mean, especially from a business owner standpoint, I get it.
• 7:43
  Like, you know, just what you said- Mm-hmm … like what your wife was saying is like,
• 7:46
  "What do we do?" Did you see other dive shops close down or other businesses that
• 7:52
  depended on the reef close down 'cause they saw, like what was gonna happen?
• 7:57
  Not necessarily that direct correlation, but when tourists come and they put their
• 8:04
  face in the water in, let's say, 2017, and they say, "What the hell happened?"
• 8:09
  You know that there's forces competing for their dollars to go skiing or
• 8:16
  go do something else, whatever it is that's on their bucket list.
• 8:19
  And when there's other things that are competing and the diving doesn't give
• 8:22
  them the same high that it once did, well, you're naturally gonna see a loss.
• 8:28
  I would say that's more what happened.
• 8:30
  And over the years, you know, in the last 10 to 15 years, we've seen a
• 8:33
  consolidation for sure in the dive industry, no question about it.
• 8:37
  There's a variety of forces involved, but that certainly is a major factor, so.
• 8:43
  Yeah.
• 8:44
  Yeah, I can imagine.
• 8:45
  Now, you did mention that at some point, you started to say, "Look,
• 8:49
  we've gotta do something," Take me back to that time where you started
• 8:52
  to think that, and you started-- Like you said, you're not gonna give up.
• 8:55
  You're gonna help out.
• 8:56
  Obviously it's a big problem.
• 8:57
  This is not just a local to the Keys.
• 9:00
  This is a larger global problem, which again, you said, you know, you
• 9:04
  come from a very different background where conservation wasn't necessarily,
• 9:08
  like, at the forefront of your career, and you're learning about
• 9:11
  bleaching and all this kind of stuff.
• 9:13
  What was your first idea in terms-- Before ICARE was even thought about,
• 9:17
  like, what was the first thing you were thinking about when it was time
• 9:20
  to be like, "Hey, we either have to put up or shut up," kind of thing?
• 9:24
  Sure.
• 9:24
  Sure.
• 9:25
  So, about 2017-ish, '28-- early 2018, a young lady walked into my shop, and I
• 9:37
  Turned out to eventually be my co-founder, Dr.
• 9:39
  Kylie Smith.
• 9:40
  And she was there just to fill some tanks.
• 9:43
  She was working on her PhD. She was doing a project down in Marathon and, studying
• 9:49
  the relationship between the parrotfish populations and coral outplants.
• 9:54
  And, you know, we were still going through the tremendous coral loss
• 10:00
  with stony coral tissue loss disease.
• 10:02
  I said, "Okay.
• 10:04
  All right, Kylie.
• 10:05
  I don't know you too well, but sit down.
• 10:06
  I got a lot of questions for you." And that's literally how it started.
• 10:10
  And she would come in every week, two, three times a week, and she couldn't get
• 10:15
  out without me asking a dozen questions.
• 10:18
  I'm a very inquisitive person, and I wanted to figure out what
• 10:21
  it is that was happening, why, if anyone knew what was happening.
• 10:26
  Because at the time, they really didn't know.
• 10:30
  It was too early on in the evolution of that disease, so it was a mystery to most.
• 10:38
  And I said during this period of discovery for me, I said, "Well, I've got an
• 10:44
  idea." I started doing some work with another restoration group, and it gave
• 10:49
  me that idea of how we can incorporate the public in a much more meaningful
• 10:54
  way, and using the best science possible.
• 10:59
  You know, It was an interesting time for her because she's finishing
• 11:03
  her PhD, trying to figure out her career path and what she wants to do.
• 11:07
  And I looked at it as a fantastic business opportunity.
• 11:10
  I had already gone heavily into conservation in other aspects
• 11:14
  that were much less scientific.
• 11:16
  you know, doing re- hosting reef cleanups, distributing grocery bags
• 11:20
  to the community for free, so they would have reusable grocery bags.
• 11:24
  Recovering all used wetsuits from the Keys and having them made into yoga mats.
• 11:29
  So I was already on the forefront of doing something unique as a
• 11:32
  business, and then this was a natural direction for me to go because my--
• 11:38
  If anyone gets to know me, I'm a complete coral geek, always have been.
• 11:41
  And I could stare at a piece of coral and a hammerhead shark could swim in
• 11:46
  front of me, and I really-- It's like, "Okay, cool, but let me look at this
• 11:48
  piece of coral, 'cause this is really beautiful." And through those discussions
• 11:52
  with Dr. Smith, we were able to formulate the basis of what ICARE is today.
• 11:57
  And that took about a year figuring out what direction, convincing her not
• 12:02
  to take a government job and, being a, the, top person in her own nonprofit.
• 12:08
  'Cause there's a lot of risk involved.
• 12:11
  I didn't see it that way.
• 12:13
  Her family members saw it that way.
• 12:14
  It's kind of a funny story when you think about it.
• 12:17
  But I convinced her that, "No, there's no risk.
• 12:19
  This is great.
• 12:20
  This is gonna be the best thing for you.
• 12:22
  Trust me, we're gonna make this work." And, with her connections
• 12:25
  within the scientific community and my connections within the dive industry,
• 12:30
  we were able to actually pull it off.
• 12:32
  That's amazing.
• 12:33
  So it is a nonprofit organization, ICARE, right?
• 12:35
  Yes.
• 12:36
  Yes, it is.
• 12:36
  Okay.
• 12:36
  And so when you first started to put this thing together, you went right
• 12:43
  to, "We're gonna restore the reefs. We're gonna frag reefs, corals,
• 12:46
  and we're going to start planting them." Was that the original idea?
• 12:50
  Was like, this is-- It was this where Dr. Smith was like, this is the idea.
• 12:53
  This is what people are doing.
• 12:54
  This is what the science is telling us.
• 12:56
  This is how we're gonna rebuild these reefs."
• 12:59
  There was a lot of discovery on our part and a lot of learning.
• 13:01
  And I was learning the industry as much as anything else.
• 13:06
  How other practitioners were, moving forward, what they were doing, how
• 13:12
  they were doing it, what was working, what was not working, in all aspects,
• 13:16
  from the actual work underwater, above the waterline, and also how
• 13:21
  it works within the community.
• 13:23
  So we were working on all fronts, and it wasn't just propagating coral.
• 13:29
  We started actually with a partnership with working directly
• 13:34
  with Mote Marine Laboratories.
• 13:35
  And that's how it all started.
• 13:38
  What is it now?
• 13:39
  Almost five and a half years ago.
• 13:41
  January of '21, I think, is when we put our first coral down But it has
• 13:45
  evolved since then where we are now propagating all of our own coral
• 13:50
  and we have our own onshore nursery.
• 13:53
  And then in October, just over a month, we are installing nine
• 13:57
  offshore coral and sponge nurseries.
• 14:00
  So it's becoming a full standalone restoration effort for sure.
• 14:06
  Not just a partnership with anyone.
• 14:08
  But although we do partner now closely with Reef Renewal USA, with Ken Nedimyer.
• 14:13
  We have a wonderful partnership there.
• 14:15
  And we partner with everyone.
• 14:16
  We partner with Mote Marine Laboratories, with our sponge work as well.
• 14:20
  So there's several partnerships, and we also partner with Florida
• 14:24
  Aquarium and Reef Institute.
• 14:25
  And it's not just us as a standalone.
• 14:28
  We do avail ourselves to everyone, in a reciprocating way, for sure.
• 14:33
  And these partnerships, obviously there's a lot of new things that you guys could
• 14:37
  be trying and can take what they've been working on, 'cause all of them work
• 14:40
  on coral restoration at some point, in some- Yes … part of their programs.
• 14:43
  Undoubtedly, yes.
• 14:44
  What do you find, like, you, like, ICARE really gets from these partnerships?
• 14:49
  What's the real benefit here?
• 14:51
  Wow, knowledge.
• 14:52
  I mean, really, truthfully, it's knowledge first and foremost.
• 14:55
  We do share coral, of course.
• 14:58
  But the knowledge that we gain from someone like Ken Nedimyer or with
• 15:03
  the works that Florida Aquarium are doing, which is thoroughly cutting
• 15:06
  edge, that knowledge helps us advance what work we are doing, for sure.
• 15:13
  We're installing nine pop-up nurseries in October.
• 15:17
  And for your audience, if they're not aware, a pop-up nursery is this
• 15:22
  idea was started by Ken Nedimyer.
• 15:24
  He did it in a couple locations, and we're taking it to what we believe is another
• 15:28
  level because we believe that's an ideal way for our setup so that each site that
• 15:34
  we're restoring has its own nursery.
• 15:37
  And that comes from a conversation that I had with Ken, and I said,
• 15:43
  "Okay, let's take it up a step," because we're taking divers out every
• 15:48
  day on our boats that are paid spots.
• 15:52
  One of the difficulties with an offshore nursery is the maintenance.
• 15:57
  Everyone knows it.
• 15:58
  It's intense.
• 15:58
  it never stops.
• 16:01
  And we're gonna be the only group to have people paying every
• 16:06
  day of the week to go do it.
• 16:08
  'Cause my boat and the other partners that we work with in the Keys will have the
• 16:14
  option to offer to their customers, if, as long as we're on the boat, they can either
• 16:19
  go dive the reef for fun or make a left turn and go into the nursery and do work.
• 16:25
  It's their choice.
• 16:26
  That we don't have to pay for as a group.
• 16:29
  Right.
• 16:30
  Like, that, that's free to us.
• 16:32
  Customers are paying to do that.
• 16:34
  That's vital considering the constraints we have financially.
• 16:38
  And we also biologically keep the corals and the sponges next to the
• 16:45
  areas that they're actually gonna be transplanted to just feet away.
• 16:50
  So we don't have to remove the corals from the water, put them on
• 16:53
  a boat, transport them someplace else, put them back in the water.
• 16:56
  I know that that is acceptable and it works, but that is a stressor
• 17:02
  that those corals don't have to endure, and those sponges, they
• 17:05
  don't, do not have to endure.
• 17:05
  Sponges even more so because they are so susceptible to that transport stress.
• 17:10
  I would imagine, I mean, to reduce risk is probably the best thing that you
• 17:15
  can do is reduce that risk of lengthy travel so that it's right there.
• 17:20
  A question for you.
• 17:21
  Y-y-you mentioned pop-up nurseries.
• 17:24
  So are these temporary nurseries until you get what's going on, or
• 17:28
  are they, like, more semi-temporary where they can be there for years?
• 17:33
  Semi-temporary.
• 17:33
  Yeah, okay.
• 17:33
  They'll definitely be there for years.
• 17:35
  Absolutely.
• 17:36
  Gotcha.
• 17:36
  I mean, in the eyes of the governing bodies, the way it's set up, it's for
• 17:41
  five years to start and can be extended.
• 17:45
  The goal, of course, is to be able to accomplish the job and
• 17:47
  not have the nursery there.
• 17:49
  We're all gonna learn how long that truly does take but, temporary in that sense.
• 17:53
  And that's my next question is like, what does success look
• 17:55
  like for each reef to you?
• 17:58
  You know, I think we're all learning that as we go.
• 18:01
  That's an open-ended question that most people are trying to figure out.
• 18:04
  I used to dive these reefs when the corals competed for space.
• 18:08
  And there's no such thing anymore.
• 18:10
  And so what truly does determine the time to move on, I think is, is a
• 18:17
  question that I'm not gonna be able to answer for many years to come.
• 18:21
  I would say that current, right now, we're having better and better success
• 18:27
  because we have a living laboratory that we're able to capitalize on that,
• 18:32
  every year that we go through these stressor events, whether a bleaching
• 18:35
  event, a disease, or whatever, gives us a coral that's even more resilient.
• 18:40
  And we're seeing that, and, the scientific community would probably
• 18:44
  gonna get upset with what I'm about to say, but the bleaching events that
• 18:48
  we've had in the past, now granted from a smaller, we have a smaller stock of
• 18:52
  corals that are alive out there, but the temperatures that we have this summer,
• 18:59
  if you were to lay those temperatures on 1995, we'd have a mass bleaching
• 19:03
  event already, and that's not happening.
• 19:06
  And I know that because these temperatures didn't exist in '95, and the first
• 19:12
  bleaching event that I experienced had exactly these temperatures at this
• 19:16
  exact same time, and it was widespread, and that isn't happening today.
• 19:23
  And that tells me the corals that we're propagating today are from
• 19:27
  that resilient base, giving us corals that are more heat resistant.
• 19:32
  There's no question in my mind.
• 19:34
  Now, honestly, that's an- anecdotal.
• 19:36
  That is not a study.
• 19:37
  I'm not a scientist, but I know what I see, and everyone
• 19:40
  on my team gets to see this.
• 19:43
  so I'm confident that 10 years from now, with the rate at which we are
• 19:49
  putting these corals down, we'll be able to move on from the sites that we're
• 19:53
  currently restoring to a newer site.
• 19:56
  Those corals that are now finally spawning, producing more coral, the
• 20:01
  sponges that we're putting down, keeping the water cleaner and clearer,
• 20:05
  all those things are important.
• 20:06
  The more you put down, the more places there are for corals to settle.
• 20:09
  We're hoping we're gonna find success in the grazer community or in the
• 20:14
  herbivore communities, which is imperative for us long-term success.
• 20:19
  So there's a lot of things that have to happen, but if you don't
• 20:23
  do something and you're not prepared, then it'll all fall apart.
• 20:26
  and we're finding those successes, there's no question.
• 20:29
  That's great.
• 20:30
  It's great to hear 'cause I think, as someone who's not in the water all the
• 20:33
  time, like yourself, like for me, you know, I live up in Canada, in Ontario.
• 20:37
  Love reefs, love the ocean, talk about it all the time, but I'm not
• 20:40
  in the ocean to see the success.
• 20:42
  So when you hear people like, "Oh yeah, I'm in coral restoration,"
• 20:46
  it's not a skepticism, but there's just like you're up against a lot.
• 20:50
  Obviously there's local disturbances, nutrient pollution, any kind of
• 20:54
  coastal development, those kind of things that can be controlled
• 20:57
  from a local level, which is great.
• 20:59
  Fishing, all that kind of stuff.
• 21:00
  But when you look at the temperatures and the bleaching events and the
• 21:04
  swings back and forth, I just covered a story on Great Barrier Reef where
• 21:07
  they've said that in the last sort of like 10 years, since 2017, they've
• 21:11
  seen a lot of swings back and forth.
• 21:13
  So years where the temperatures really reached maximums and they
• 21:18
  saw really low coverage, like record low coverages of coral cover.
• 21:22
  And then on the next year, they get a storm or a bunch of storms, or the we
• 21:26
  haven't seen as much heat, and then they recover 36% and increase that much.
• 21:31
  And there's coral cover by like 36% instead of down in the teens.
• 21:35
  But they say they're seeing a lot more of these swings since 2017.
• 21:39
  So you almost wonder, like as a scientist, I look at it and I'm like, obviously
• 21:43
  restoration has to happen at this point.
• 21:45
  there's no doubt.
• 21:46
  But you worry about the heat and how that's going to affect these narrow
• 21:50
  ranged animals that are so critical to shoreline security and fisheries
• 21:58
  and diversity and tourism, and there's the social side and economic side.
• 22:03
  So it's good to hear and like see these pictures.
• 22:06
  I'm looking at a picture on your About page of a coral fragments
• 22:10
  that are on like this bare rock.
• 22:12
  And you can see there's probably maybe 25, 30 of these frags that are put on.
• 22:17
  I don't know what the type of coral, and then you just see it.
• 22:19
  I don't know what it-- it doesn't say the timescale here, but you just see
• 22:22
  probably like maybe a couple years later, they've actually attached to themselves.
• 22:25
  They've actually connected and you know, it's one big colony now.
• 22:29
  And it's pretty much covering most of the rock.
• 22:32
  Looking at the first picture, seeing how separated they are and seeing how
• 22:35
  this growth, like, and knowing that we know these corals can be resilient
• 22:38
  if you just give them a break or you give them that extra chance to survive.
• 22:44
  I do think there is something, I've covered it on the podcast before, where
• 22:47
  there's specific corals or even Zoanthidea that are more heat tolerant than others.
• 22:52
  And if we can start selecting for those a little bit more, that would be great.
• 22:56
  It's not great for necessarily the entire diversity of the species, but for the
• 22:59
  survival in the way that they're going right now, we need anything we can get.
• 23:04
  And I do think you're right, Mike.
• 23:06
  I don't think it's anecdotal.
• 23:07
  I don't know the studies offhand.
• 23:08
  I'm sure there have been studies that looking at how these corals that are still
• 23:12
  around today, still persisting since '95, how they've been able to adapt, or the
• 23:17
  fact that it's just natural selections.
• 23:18
  Those with Zoanthidea that can have that tolerance will actually persist.
• 23:24
  And who knows?
• 23:24
  In 10, 20 years we might see a very different type of species that will
• 23:29
  persist through if we continue to grow.
• 23:31
  We have no idea what's gonna happen.
• 23:33
  But to see the recovery rates of this.
• 23:37
  There's another picture right underneath that where on the one hand it looks
• 23:42
  like a lot of gorgonians and maybe some algae, and it's very sparse.
• 23:46
  Not much coral, or not very big coral.
• 23:48
  They've just been planted.
• 23:49
  And two years later, these are Acropora, I believe.
• 23:52
  These coral clusters two years later, like they're huge.
• 23:54
  And these are slow-growing corals.
• 23:56
  Like they're not considered, like they're stony corals.
• 23:58
  They're not as wide-ranging as these soft corals, and they're huge.
• 24:01
  And you can see how much space they take up, and you can see how persistent
• 24:05
  they are and what they can do in terms of create these little habitats
• 24:08
  that are around it as they grow.
• 24:09
  This is really big stuff.
• 24:10
  And I love the idea of having these restoration sites.
• 24:15
  And we'll get into the business side later of having like the divers paid
• 24:18
  to come out and do the work, which as a diver, for me, that would be so much fun.
• 24:23
  It's an experience that you don't normally get other than just
• 24:26
  watching, which is what we're designed to do for divers, right?
• 24:29
  We go around- Mmm … and we watch the beauty.
• 24:30
  Here, it's like I can leave and be like, "I helped restore or helped, you know,
• 24:35
  put corals back into the water." For me, that would be a kind of a cool thing.
• 24:39
  I think for a lot of divers who are very eco-conscious, especially over
• 24:42
  the last 10 years who've seen this kind of stuff, I think is really cool.
• 24:45
  Now, we're here also to talk about The Descent Into the Blue.
• 24:49
  How did this movie come up with the work that you're doing?
• 24:53
  You've been doing this for about five and a half years.
• 24:55
  How did all the, the movie idea come up, and how did you get hooked up with
• 24:59
  Rory Feely on this, who's a director?
• 25:02
  And how did all this come play out?
• 25:04
  One of the people in the movie who does the filming was contacted by Rory, and
• 25:11
  then is a good friend, Fraser Nivens.
• 25:14
  And Fraser said, this is ideal for my friend Mike and ICARE." And he hooked
• 25:21
  us up directly with Rory, and based on what his vision was, and we had a…
• 25:27
  I remember having a lunch one day as I was learning about what
• 25:31
  Rory's goals were for the movie.
• 25:34
  I said, "Well, our thoughts are aligned." To change the mindsets
• 25:38
  of people that know nothing about coralists, and they live in St. Louis.
• 25:42
  And their daily work has nothing to do with conservation, the ocean.
• 25:47
  They don't even think about it.
• 25:49
  They know almost nothing about it.
• 25:50
  But to bring home to them the importance of what is the most biodiverse ecosystem
• 25:57
  on our planet, bring it home to them.
• 25:59
  Open their eyes to what happens when we lose this, if we lose this.
• 26:04
  Where are we headed, and how it affects their lives.
• 26:07
  And that's what I've been saying all along, trying to
• 26:12
  correlate back many years ago.
• 26:14
  They said loss of the rainforest, and everyone understood, okay, the loss of
• 26:17
  the rainforest, what that means, and there was all sorts of push, and there still
• 26:21
  is, and well, there should be, and how that affects the health of our planet.
• 26:26
  The coral reef does the same thing.
• 26:28
  It is incredibly vital to the health of our planet.
• 26:32
  And without that, we're stepping into the unknown, and we wanted to, and
• 26:37
  I want to bring that home to people.
• 26:40
  It doesn't matter where they are.
• 26:41
  They don't need to be just in Florida.
• 26:43
  Floridians, we tend to think about it more.
• 26:46
  The rest of the country, it's not something they're conscious of.
• 26:50
  That was the goal of the movie.
• 26:52
  Someone who watches that says, "Ah, holy crap.
• 26:56
  I get it.
• 26:57
  I understand it." And maybe the next time they're down in Florida
• 27:03
  and they're diving, they say, "I'm gonna look those guys up.
• 27:06
  I wanna get involved." Or, "I'm a parent.
• 27:09
  I've got two kids that are entering into high school.
• 27:12
  They have no idea.
• 27:13
  Their heads are a mush.
• 27:14
  They're not sure what they're gonna do in their lives, but let me introduce them to
• 27:18
  a possible career path." Go, enjoy, learn, and maybe, STEM is gonna be your future.
• 27:26
  So there's all sorts of reasons.
• 27:27
  But bringing it to the unknown population through the country and the world, if we
• 27:34
  can, is what the goal was for the movie.
• 27:37
  And when we sat down for lunch, we both realized that we had the same objective.
• 27:43
  That's amazing.
• 27:44
  I think it's great for you to be so excited about what you've been
• 27:48
  able to accomplish, and Dr. Smith and the crew for the five and a half
• 27:52
  years that you've been doing this.
• 27:54
  I think it's a wonderful aspect to say, "Hey, we've been able to do this,
• 27:58
  but we need to tell more people about it." I think that's where the message
• 28:01
  really comes because a lot of the stuff that's been done on restoration
• 28:05
  from a science perspective, a lot of the times that's kind of put up into
• 28:10
  the science journal, behind a paywall where nobody really gets access.
• 28:14
  And who wants, like, other than scientists, which, you know, it
• 28:17
  brings the credibility, but other than scientists, who really wants to
• 28:20
  read a science journal article with all this, the math and everything?
• 28:24
  And it doesn't really bring what you want home.
• 28:27
  To be able to show the effect is wonderful.
• 28:31
  I want to kind of just have you take people through sort of the ups and downs
• 28:37
  of the movie in terms of the content.
• 28:39
  Can you just talk us through, like, the bit of the storyline,
• 28:43
  in terms of how everything is introduced, where the problem is,
• 28:46
  and then the solution that you're presenting at the end through iCare?
• 28:50
  I love the beginning of the movie it's animated, where the little
• 28:53
  girl is throwing the sea stars into the ocean, and she's confronted
• 28:57
  by the individual on the beach.
• 28:59
  You know, "What are you doing? You can't really change them." And she
• 29:02
  says, her response to the person and of course those that are gonna watch
• 29:06
  the movie, you'll get this immediately.
• 29:08
  But after she throws one sea star that's washed ashore and she's
• 29:13
  confronted by that individual saying, "You're wasting your time."
• 29:16
  She says, "Well, not for that one sea star it's not." And, that's kind
• 29:20
  of the beginnings of what we do.
• 29:23
  That's why we do it.
• 29:25
  Because if you focus on the grand effort of restoring the world's reefs, you'll
• 29:31
  get overwhelmed really fast because it's an enormous task way beyond the scope of
• 29:38
  me and the entire restoration community.
• 29:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:44
  What you, what you have to narrow down is that focus on that one sea star or
• 29:47
  that one small little patch reef, or that one coral cluster that you just planted.
• 29:53
  And seeing that coral, those corals grow, that's what you need
• 29:57
  to stay focused on because that one cluster that you put down.
• 30:00
  I put down some brain corals and I come back and the brain corals we're working
• 30:03
  with these days are doing fabulous.
• 30:06
  Eight months, 10 months later, they've all fused.
• 30:09
  A year later, they're likely gonna be spawning.
• 30:13
  And that's just one coral cluster.
• 30:14
  Well, that's how it starts.
• 30:17
  It doesn't start by restoring the entirety of the reef system.
• 30:21
  You can't do that.
• 30:22
  You gotta one coral at a time, one little area at a time.
• 30:26
  And that narrow focus allows you to then broaden your perspective on how we
• 30:33
  actually accomplish and create success.
• 30:36
  So that beginning of the movie really tells the story of what
• 30:40
  everyone is trying to accomplish.
• 30:43
  And if you keep that in mind as you're watching this, you won't get frustrated
• 30:48
  thinking, "God, this is an impossible task." But that every individual can
• 30:55
  make a difference if you want to.
• 30:58
  And that's how we can turn a single sea star, if everyone is
• 31:04
  participating or every diver gets involved, now you can turn that one
• 31:09
  sea star into millions of sea stars being thrown back into the ocean.
• 31:14
  And that's kind of the way I look at the movie, and hoping that others
• 31:19
  will help take up that charge.
• 31:22
  It's a great way of approaching, what we're looking at in
• 31:25
  terms of coral restoration.
• 31:28
  I think you hit the nail on the head when you said planting small pieces
• 31:32
  of fragments may seem like it's impossible to repopulate a reef.
• 31:39
  But the fact is, is as it grows, you mentioned the brain coral,
• 31:42
  as it grows, these brain corals grow, like, really large too.
• 31:45
  And as they grow and they reproduce, those gametes, larvae, whatever
• 31:51
  they are at the time, spread and get caught up somewhere downstream,
• 31:57
  or wherever the current brings it.
• 31:58
  And it settles either within that reef or away from that reef, and
• 32:02
  it can help build other reefs just by creating one brain coral.
• 32:08
  And the- Like replanting one gra- brain coral.
• 32:10
  And I think a lot of people would see the opposite of just
• 32:14
  planting these little frags.
• 32:16
  You know, we have this entire ocean where these reefs are dying.
• 32:20
  How are these little frags really going to help repopulate, like a coral reef?
• 32:24
  Just that I think gives optimism or pessimism depending on how they look at
• 32:30
  it, to go out and build these reefs and really see how even if you're not building
• 32:36
  it to the full of what it was, like, in the trailer it talked about, I think it
• 32:39
  was your voice of how when 30, 40 years ago, it would be wall-to-wall corals.
• 32:45
  There wouldn't be many spaces between the corals.
• 32:46
  You couldn't see the rock that much.
• 32:48
  and that was like the reference point that we go to.
• 32:51
  But now people have a different reference point.
• 32:53
  If they dive now, this is what the reef looks like to them.
• 32:56
  Very bare, lot of spots, and So they think this is a healthy reef.
• 33:00
  But if you talk to yourself or you talk to anybody who's been diving those reefs,
• 33:04
  you're like, "Well, hold on a second.
• 33:05
  No, no, no, no, no.
• 33:05
  Let me tell you.
• 33:06
  Sit down.
• 33:07
  Like, let me tell you and even show you , what it used to be." but I
• 33:10
  think that, that hope, that optimism that planting those little frags can
• 33:15
  really build into a bigger reef is such a good part of the story in there.
• 33:21
  I also like the community aspect of the movie, where there's a lot
• 33:25
  of different voices in this film.
• 33:27
  You hear from kids, you hear from adults, you hear from people who
• 33:30
  are from the Keys, you hear people who are coming in from the Keys,
• 33:33
  the divers, you see it in the movie.
• 33:35
  Did you want that to be a part of it, to see how diverse the community
• 33:38
  is that we're working to help out, and it's not just a few individuals?
• 33:42
  Oh, yeah.
• 33:43
  Honestly, when we originally set this up, we wanted as many voices as possible.
• 33:48
  It's not just a movie for scientists to be looking at.
• 33:51
  Honestly, this is a movie for the general public to inspire, not
• 33:55
  necessarily for the scientific community.
• 33:57
  The scientific community might look at this through a different lens, which
• 34:00
  is fine, but it's really truly made for the general public to understand that
• 34:05
  there is hope, that we can turn this, and that success is up to us, and with our
• 34:12
  efforts, we will accomplish this goal.
• 34:15
  I think that's kind of the reason why there's so many different voices.
• 34:19
  But from the filmmakers that are in the movie, from Frasier or Steven Frink, from
• 34:25
  Ken Nedimyer or my co-founder, and then our interns, and then the Curious Minds
• 34:31
  kids who are very fresh looking at it from , a completely different perspective.
• 34:36
  All of those aspects and all of those perspectives, I think give the viewer
• 34:43
  an insight into what we're doing, but also that there is truly hope
• 34:49
  and the outcome isn't inevitable.
• 34:51
  The death of the reef is not inevitable, and we can adjust what we do to have
• 34:57
  it survive and hopefully persist.
• 35:00
  What will be the coral of the future?
• 35:02
  I don't know.
• 35:03
  I don't know what's gonna be happening here 100 years from
• 35:05
  now or 1,000 years from now.
• 35:07
  But if we give up today and don't do anything, then we
• 35:11
  have the future baked in.
• 35:13
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:14
  That's not acceptable to me.
• 35:15
  What action do you hope the viewer will take after watching this movie?
• 35:22
  It's kind of a hard question to answer.
• 35:24
  It depends on the, you know, where they are in their lives.
• 35:27
  Just for them to understand.
• 35:29
  We haven't got into the money side of it, but, you know,
• 35:32
  I come from that background.
• 35:33
  And I tell Dr. Smith all the time, "Listen, I don't know who I'm speaking to.
• 35:38
  I never know." And I don't take anyone for granted.
• 35:41
  I don't know who's gonna walk in the door or who I'm gonna talk to on a pod- who's
• 35:45
  listening on a podcast or in an interview.
• 35:48
  But everyone I look at in a, from that lens.
• 35:51
  As crass as that may sound, it's the way it is.
• 35:55
  We are dealing with a different environment for funding that most have
• 35:59
  never faced before on a federal level.
• 36:02
  At a state level in Florida, we're having a change of administration from the
• 36:05
  DeSantis administration, which has been supportive and incredibly supportive of
• 36:11
  the work that we do, to now we're stepping into an unknown where they have cut the,
• 36:16
  the-- They're not funding, for 2028.
• 36:21
  And with that, the new administration, whoever that is, has to shape
• 36:26
  it the way they see it working.
• 36:29
  And that unknown is very uncomfortable for us and for everyone in Florida
• 36:33
  that's involved with reef restoration.
• 36:35
  So you see someone, you're talking to someone, I don't take it for granted.
• 36:38
  That may just spark an idea and say, " I wanna be a financial backer of what
• 36:43
  you're doing because not only are you rebuilding the reef, but you're at the
• 36:47
  forefront of rebuilding an economy and supporting economy at all levels, and
• 36:53
  involving the community of divers, not only in Florida, but the community of
• 36:57
  divers around the country and around the world who come and need that, and
• 37:01
  want that outlet to be a participant."
• 37:04
  So, I always look at it from that perspective.
• 37:07
  As I said, it's below the way that most scientists think.
• 37:11
  That's not the way they wanna approach things.
• 37:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:12
  But that's just the reality.
• 37:15
  And for me, not being a scientist, I'm never afraid to ask people for stuff.
• 37:20
  I've never been afraid.
• 37:22
  So I always make it known.
• 37:23
  "Listen, if you like what we're doing, you think it's that important, here's
• 37:26
  what it takes to get behind what we're doing and we need support." So,
• 37:30
  that's the other side of the not so pretty side of what we have to do.
• 37:35
  Well, like I'll be honest, I think it's different.
• 37:37
  I think it is the pretty side of what you have to do.
• 37:39
  I think it's the future of what you have to do.
• 37:42
  I think this movie shows not only the level of effort, but like that it
• 37:48
  requires everybody, not just you, not just Dr. Smith, not just your team.
• 37:53
  It requires a community of divers to come out and participate
• 37:57
  and help with the restoration.
• 37:59
  It requires funding whether it's through dive dues, like when they pay
• 38:05
  to dive with your outfit, or whether it be in some other form, whether it's
• 38:09
  like an adopt a coral kind of thing.
• 38:11
  There's the science side where scientists care about obviously doing
• 38:15
  good in the world, helping with the restoration by looking at how to
• 38:20
  make the process more efficient, looking at it from a physiological
• 38:23
  side, publishing, getting that credibility, getting people other eyes.
• 38:26
  So we have people all over the world working on it.
• 38:29
  Sharing that information from a scientific perspective, I think is a great idea.
• 38:33
  But I always say that the business people are the solution makers.
• 38:38
  They're the ones who's like, they see a problem, whatever that is, they see
• 38:41
  a problem, and they deliver on it.
• 38:43
  Amazon saw a problem, like the guy from Amazon, he was like, at one
• 38:47
  point, he's like, "If I can get things to your door, that would
• 38:50
  be easier." It's changed the game.
• 38:52
  You're looking at reefs are declining.
• 38:54
  That's the problem.
• 38:54
  If I can get reefs back up, not only is that good for my business, but
• 38:59
  it's also good for the environment.
• 39:00
  I mean, we can talk about biodiversities, shoreline
• 39:03
  security, so many benefits to that.
• 39:06
  But it's also you care about the environment.
• 39:08
  It's you care about the world around you.
• 39:10
  You care about what it's gonna look like for the next
• 39:12
  generation of divers and so forth.
• 39:14
  I think the money aspect has to come in because as you said, we can't always rely
• 39:18
  on funding depending on who's in power.
• 39:21
  Because there's some people that are in power that really wanna
• 39:24
  fund this, and it's expensive.
• 39:26
  It can be expensive.
• 39:27
  Restoration's always more expensive than preservation.
• 39:30
  But there's gonna be others who wanna cut everything, and they
• 39:33
  don't want have to do anything.
• 39:35
  Whether they care about the environment or not, they're just
• 39:37
  like, "This is too much money."
• 39:39
  It's a quote-unquote, "luxury," which obviously we can debate of
• 39:43
  whether that's legitimate or not, but we're not gonna get into that.
• 39:45
  That's not the purpose of this podcast.
• 39:47
  But, I think having the business solutions to come up with a way to get the money,
• 39:54
  but also give something of value to the people who are providing that money,
• 39:59
  I think is a really important part.
• 40:02
  And without revealing kind of any secrets of like what you're doing
• 40:05
  in the future, 'cause I know it's a business and everything, but
• 40:08
  like- There are different ways.
• 40:10
  There's the DOP, the coral and things like that.
• 40:13
  You mentioned earlier they kinda all work.
• 40:15
  Can you just talk about some of the ways that people have been funding or getting
• 40:20
  people to fund it through either payment of some sort and not just a donation?
• 40:25
  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 40:26
  So, when we set up ICARE, the objective was to have every diver that walks
• 40:34
  through the door, whether they're participating or not If your dive costs
• 40:38
  you $100, there's gonna be $2 added on, and that's gonna go to the work.
• 40:43
  I started raising money long before we put our first coral down, of course.
• 40:47
  And, I started it with two shops.
• 40:49
  We now have three different shops that are actively involved.
• 40:53
  And in all those years, no one has ever objected to that $2.
• 40:58
  And I also pacify those divers by letting them know that I personally take 2% of all
• 41:04
  my dive revenue, and I also donate that.
• 41:08
  When I think about the amount of money that I've personally put in, my wife's
• 41:11
  like, "Are you kidding me?" " That's a good chunk of our retirement."
• 41:15
  I said, "Yeah, but there's some things, you know, where this is just
• 41:18
  more important, than living a little bit more comfortably. It's more
• 41:22
  important that I put that money…" And it's a lot of money that we put in.
• 41:26
  So those are a couple of things that we do.
• 41:28
  People obviously that participate in our coral outplants, they pay
• 41:31
  as well, an additional dollar to be an active participant.
• 41:36
  Our local community of divers will also pay that.
• 41:39
  It's not free to them.
• 41:40
  And so those are the, I don't like using this word generally speaking,
• 41:44
  but like a user fee of sorts.
• 41:46
  And I think one of the things that sets us apart is the perspective
• 41:52
  that I try to impart to my team and to those that are involved.
• 42:00
  And that is, we have a fiduciary responsibility to everyone that's a
• 42:05
  participant at any level and every level.
• 42:09
  Whether it's just the $2 or it's $25, or whatever it is, or if
• 42:15
  it's a larger donation, we have a responsibility to do it the right way.
• 42:19
  And I think we convey that with how we conduct our work.
• 42:24
  And that allows us to get, I believe, the public more invested in what we do.
• 42:30
  So when we first started, we decided that we were gonna monitor 100% of
• 42:35
  all of our corals that we put down at, uh, intervals of one week, one month,
• 42:39
  90 days, one, two, and three years.
• 42:42
  And that wasn't being done in the industry, at least in the Keys.
• 42:46
  And what was being done, without going into great detail, wasn't something
• 42:48
  that made sense to me, and I don't think it invited long-term success.
• 42:53
  And we now, because of that approach, is now the standard that most of the
• 43:01
  practitioners are now adhering to.
• 43:03
  And we're the new guys.
• 43:05
  What do we know?
• 43:06
  And we're saying, "Well, listen, that didn't make sense to me to monitor
• 43:10
  20% of what it is that you're putting down and not randomize that 20%
• 43:15
  to select what you want to report.
• 43:18
  Okay, you're not gonna give accurate information, and I can't do that
• 43:22
  and say that I have a fi- if I have a fiduciary responsibility to those
• 43:25
  folks that are giving me money, I'm doing wrong by those dollars.
• 43:29
  I can't look at them, and a lot of these people, a large number of
• 43:32
  them, I know personally because I've been in this business for so long.
• 43:35
  These are people that believe in me, trust me.
• 43:39
  And I'm not doing right by them, that's not gonna sit well with me at all.
• 43:42
  So we start from that base and because of that, we have a very high success level.
• 43:48
  One year after outplant, our survival is 47% across all 17 species that we
• 43:54
  work with, and that's pretty high.
• 43:57
  That's pretty darn high.
• 43:57
  And you'd be surprised how few can actually report what their survival is.
• 44:02
  And we've been able to report that year after year after year.
• 44:05
  Despite the coral bleaching event of 2023, we're still
• 44:08
  reporting what our survival is.
• 44:10
  We're not hiding anything.
• 44:12
  And I think that invites those people to want to be involved
• 44:16
  and support the work that we do.
• 44:19
  Again, being responsible financially to those investors is critical to them in
• 44:25
  trusting future dollars to us, coming back to do more work with us when they
• 44:30
  get to see the corals that they put down actually had survived So that's
• 44:35
  kind of way I see it financially.
• 44:37
  It's huge.
• 44:39
  It's such a huge part when you put it together.
• 44:41
  It's the service you're providing.
• 44:42
  It's not just the fact that you're saying, "Hey, I want money to do this
• 44:48
  work." You wanna show that you're doing it, but you're also doing it, that
• 44:50
  you're looking to increase the success rate as much as possible by monitoring
• 44:55
  that and being transparent about that.
• 44:57
  Obviously, not every transplant is gonna be successful.
• 45:00
  Of course.
• 45:00
  There are natural things in the world and unnatural things in the world that
• 45:04
  could harm them, and that's part of living out in the ocean, for corals.
• 45:09
  But the fact is, is you're showing, again, it goes in the name, ICARE.
• 45:13
  You care about what's being put in there.
• 45:15
  And I think that's an important value.
• 45:17
  I think it goes probably to a lot of the divers and people who are
• 45:21
  listening to this who may not be divers, who will say, "I'm willing to
• 45:25
  put my money behind this guy because he's willing to give me reports.
• 45:28
  He's willing to give me the information to say, 'Hey, this actually
• 45:31
  worked,' or, 'We tried this method.
• 45:32
  It didn't work too well and this is why.
• 45:34
  And then we're gonna try another one.'" I think that's the
• 45:37
  science of it all, to be honest.
• 45:38
  Like, that's- Mm-hmm … you're doing science just by being
• 45:40
  transparent and monitoring.
• 45:42
  Obviously, Dr. Smith is able to provide a lot of that, the methodology and the
• 45:46
  science and looking it up, and you're able to handle the business side.
• 45:49
  And I think it's a great partnership, and with the rest of your team
• 45:52
  and what you've been able to accomplish is absolutely amazing.
• 45:56
  And then having this movie that's coming out, Into The Descent Into the Blue,
• 46:00
  is such an important part of that, is to show the work that goes into it, to
• 46:04
  show people that there is a lot of work.
• 46:06
  So when you do put your money into it, you're putting the
• 46:08
  money into this hardworking thing that we have going on, and it's
• 46:11
  important to us that you see that.
• 46:13
  I think that's great.
• 46:14
  It's not an advertisement.
• 46:15
  It's just like this is the reality of the world we live in.
• 46:17
  We're here to find solutions.
• 46:18
  And you know, we're here to implement those solutions,
• 46:20
  which I think is very admirable.
• 46:22
  So Mike, I wanna thank you for the work that you're doing.
• 46:25
  You know, not giving up, 'cause as have many people who would have.
• 46:28
  You and Dr. Smith and the team, and the team at your diving operation.
• 46:33
  Can you just name out your diving operation?
• 46:34
  Just so that people know if they wanna go down to the Keys in Islamorada.
• 46:37
  Oh, absolutely.
• 46:38
  Yeah.
• 46:38
  It's Key Dives.
• 46:39
  We're located in Islamorada.
• 46:42
  And the shop was voted number one in North America across all seven
• 46:48
  categories at Scuba Diving Magazine readers poll for 2025, and then
• 46:52
  it'll be announced the first week of September that we also were number
• 46:57
  one again across all seven categories.
• 46:59
  We swept every category for two years in a row.
• 47:01
  It's never happened before.
• 47:03
  And the reason I believe we are number one is because of the work that we do.
• 47:09
  People understand, and I tell this to my divers.
• 47:13
  I said, "Listen, the more people that come here, the more I get
• 47:16
  to donate, so keep coming."
• 47:18
  I love that.
• 47:19
  I love that aspect.
• 47:20
  You come, and it's not that you're just coming to take part.
• 47:23
  Like you said, some people can take part.
• 47:25
  If you just wanna go diving, you can go diving.
• 47:27
  And you're enjoying yourself, and you're donating to a great cause.
• 47:30
  That's the beauty of it.
• 47:32
  That's what's nice, is you get to enjoy yourself while donating to a great cause.
• 47:35
  And then so you can come back over, and over, and over again, and you'll
• 47:38
  see a nice reef in the future.
• 47:40
  Mike, I wanna thank you so much for the work that you've put in, the work that
• 47:42
  your team put in, and Rory as well for the work that he's put into the film.
• 47:46
  It is coming out September 1st, 2026 on PBS.
• 47:51
  Check it out your local listings.
• 47:53
  Go watch it.
• 47:54
  Let us know what you think of it.
• 47:56
  My socials are in the show notes, but also I'm gonna put, Mike, I'm gonna put your
• 47:58
  social media tags for not only the dive shop, but ICARE as well, and for the film.
• 48:03
  And yeah, thank you so much for coming on.
• 48:05
  This has been absolutely wonderful.
• 48:06
  Love to have you back on just to kinda see how things are
• 48:08
  progressing over the next year.
• 48:10
  We're heading into what they're calling an El Niño, but even maybe even a super
• 48:13
  El Niño, so I think it'll be interesting to see how these reefs and how these
• 48:17
  fragments are gonna handle themselves, good or bad, I think it would be good to
• 48:21
  talk about just to see what the work is.
• 48:23
  But I'd love to have you back on maybe sometime in the next year or so.
• 48:26
  It'd be a pleasure, Andrew.
• 48:26
  Thank you so much for the time.
• 48:28
  I really appreciate it.
• 48:29
  You bet.
• 48:30
  You bet.
• 48:30
  No problem.
• 48:31
  Thank you, Mike, for not only coming on the podcast and joining us on the
• 48:34
  How to Protect the Ocean podcast today, but also for the work that you do.
• 48:36
  You and Kylie and your team are phenomenal.
• 48:39
  The divers that show up with part of your dive shop that go out and
• 48:43
  do the work, thank you so much.
• 48:45
  Thank you to everybody who's donated.
• 48:46
  Thank you to everybody who's participated in these types of projects, whether
• 48:50
  it's through ICARE or through another coral restoration thing.
• 48:54
  The one thing that really got me was the fact that if you plant some small
• 48:57
  fragments on a rock, they can connect, they can join up, they can become bigger,
• 49:02
  and then they start reproducing, and those reproduction things start moving
• 49:06
  around, and they start to grow in other places, which helps rebuild the reef.
• 49:10
  This is the key, folks, is the optimism, the hope that once you put these
• 49:14
  reefs back in, in a place where they can grow and in a place where they
• 49:17
  can do well, then they will recover.
• 49:20
  They are resilient enough to recover.
• 49:21
  We're seeing it in the Great Barrier Reef when there are times when the
• 49:24
  temperature gets lower, the water's a little better, the pH is a little
• 49:28
  better, they will recover, really fast.
• 49:31
  It's just a matter of can we give them time and sustain that time so that they
• 49:34
  recover and become even more resilient?
• 49:37
  Coral restoration is a great example of that happening.
• 49:40
  It's a tough business.
• 49:41
  It's an expensive business.
• 49:42
  So if you're gonna donate, please do so.
• 49:44
  You can go to ICARE, icareaboutcoral.org.
• 49:47
  That's icareaboutcoral.org.
• 49:49
  I'll put the link in the show notes, and you can check that out.
• 49:52
  And if you feel like you wanna donate, you can do so.
• 49:54
  But watch their stuff.
• 49:55
  Follow them on Instagram.
• 49:57
  Their handle is, let me just get it, ICARE About Coral.
• 50:01
  Surprise, surprise.
• 50:02
  Or it's @I.CARE is where they go.
• 50:05
  But if you search up ICARE About Coral, that's what you look for.
• 50:08
  You can watch videos.
• 50:09
  You can watch things that they do, cleanups and all that kinda stuff.
• 50:12
  It's all about the community, and it's really important to
• 50:15
  have a part of the community.
• 50:16
  Even if you live in Canada, if you live all across the world, it doesn't matter.
• 50:19
  You can take part, or you can take part into your own local
• 50:22
  coastal reef restoration.
• 50:24
  I think that's really important.
• 50:25
  Anyway, thank you again for Mike.
• 50:26
  I'm gonna put the link to the trailer as well as the links to ICARE About Coral.
• 50:30
  I wanna thank him for the work that he does, the team, the work
• 50:33
  that they do, and Kylie, of course.
• 50:35
  And also just thank you for joining us on today's episode of the How
• 50:38
  to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 50:39
  I am your host, Andrew Lewin.
• 50:40
  Have a great day.
• 50:41
  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.