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Human Relationship with the Ocean: Why Losing This Connection Could Cost Us Everything · How To Protect The Ocean

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When you meet someone who has shaped Ocean communication for more than two
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decades, you expect a pretty big story.
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What you do not expect is someone who never saw the Ocean until they were 18,
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then built one of the most influential virtual Ocean platforms in the world.
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Peter Neal has spent his life asking two simple questions.
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What if we tried something bold for the Ocean?
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And why not do it now?
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That's what we're gonna be talking about in today's episode of the
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How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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Let's start the show.
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Hey everybody.
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Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, Marine biologist and science communicator who's
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here to tell you what's happening with the Ocean, how you can speak up for
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the Ocean, and what you can do to live for a better Ocean by taking action.
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And this podcast is part of the larger Speak Up for Blue Podcast Network
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where we podcast with the purpose.
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And today the purpose is to kind of go over the history of science
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communication for the Ocean by interviewing the Peter Neal.
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Peter Neal has been doing science communication.
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For over two decades, probably more than that.
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He saw a calling at one point in his life.
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He's had a lot of different points in his life where he's done
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some pretty incredible things.
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At one point he said, Hey, there's a call to do something about the Ocean.
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In the early two thousands when the internet was still in its infancy.
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And he said, Hey, you know what?
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I'm gonna take this on.
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I'm gonna build a virtual platform that talks about the Ocean.
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I'm gonna build programs that are free and accessible to everybody, and
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we're gonna basically educate and make aware of millions of people about the
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Ocean and what's happening within and what they can do to better protect it.
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This is a man who's had the World Ocean Radio for 21 years and he's had the
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World Ocean Observatory for even longer.
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And it's somebody I can't wait for you to meet and to hear
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how he started all this stuff.
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If you want to go over to the World Ocean Radio and listen to his three to
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five minute episodes, you can do so.
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I'll put the links in the show notes, so check that out.
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But until then, here's the interview with Peter Neil.
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Enjoy and I'll talk to you after.
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Hey, Peter, welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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Are you ready to talk about podcasting, science, communication,
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the Ocean and everything that falls under and in between and all over?
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I'm always ready.
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That's, that's all I do.
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Indeed.
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It is.
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You know what,
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you know, it's really, it's really interesting to have you on the podcast
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because I don't know of anybody who's been, uh, podcasting or doing radio
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longer than I have, which is, it's kind of, this is, this is really
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surreal to be able to talk to you.
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Uh, we've talked before in the past and we've kind of, you know, talked
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online and, and, And so forth, but this is the first time we've had,
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you know, you on, on the podcast.
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And I'm super excited to kind of get the history around your activities,
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around the Ocean, uh, and get, you've been doing this for a long time and I
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want to get your perspective of where you began, where you've been, And then
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where you think everything is going.
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Uh, because I think it's really important.
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We're at a, a, a lot of.
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Um, you know, junctions in our life as we, as we speak, cop 30 is, uh,
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getting ready to go, or if it's not already gone or it's already happening.
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Uh, and we're starting to see some of the things that have come out of that.
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And obviously, you've, you've been around for a lot of cops and, and, uh,
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you know, probably analyzed them and begrudge them as well as with, with
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some of their, their, uh, you know, the, their, their results And so forth.
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But we're gonna talk all about that and talk about your, your work in
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starting, uh, world Oceans Radio and the World Ocean Observatory, and where
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it's going and where it's at, and all the stuff that you've done in between.
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So I'm super, super excited, but, uh, what I want to do right now
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is just get to know who you are.
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So, Peter, before we get into all of that stuff, let us know
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who you are and what you do.
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Uh, well, I'm Peter Neal.
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I'm director, founder, and, uh, now senior advisor, uh, to
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the World Ocean Observatory.
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Uh, I come out of, um, a kind of creative path of travel Army, uh,
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published, uh, fiction, uh, in the seventies, taught And then got involved.
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Uh, uh, I actually never saw the Ocean till I was 18.
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I was born in St. Louis.
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Uh, my Ocean was the Mississippi River, which of course is part of the Ocean.
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Yes.
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Um.
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But, um, I, uh, at one point moved out of teaching, uh, at university to, uh,
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running a small environmental organization in New Haven, Connecticut that had sailing
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vessel, uh, and was taking young people, uh, sailing to give them introductions
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to Marine science and sea experience.
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And then I went on from there to become the director of the Maritime
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Program for the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington.
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Went thereafter on to run the South Street Seaport Museum, uh,
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in New York City for 20 years.
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And then around 2005, I moved Maine and I brought with me, uh, an idea, uh,
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uh, for the World Ocean Observatory.
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Uh, it was not mine.
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Mm-hmm.
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In 1998, there was an international commission on the future of the Ocean,
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which was chaired by Mario Schwarz, the former president of Portugal.
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A great man.
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And that same year he convened also a, um, uh, uh, an independent
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commission on, on freshwater.
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Mm-hmm.
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Outta the freshwater came the World, world Water Manifesto, the World
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Water Forum, and began the whole, uh, sort of concept of an international.
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Uh, appreciation, understanding, and promotion of research about
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the freshwater part of the system.
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Uh, at the same time, the Commission on the Oceans published a report, which is
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called, uh, the Ocean, our Future, uh, published by Oxford University Press.
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I founded in a dollar bin in it, Cambridge, uh, Massachusetts,
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uh, book, book, book store, and sat down and read it at.
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In a sitting, um, and my life was changed.
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Uh, the penultimate recommendation was that there be a web base utility, uh,
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about the Ocean defined as an integrated global social system so that it looked
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beyond the conventional definition of the Ocean as a, as a place for species
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and habitat for research and policy.
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Uh, and looked at the much, much, much larger interconnection of all
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aspects of the global contribution of the Ocean, the freshwater saltwater
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continuum, uh, to the history of human endeavor and civilization.
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Uh, it's a big idea, uh, and I was about to say that's a big idea.
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But, and I did some due diligence.
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I, I actually went to see, um, uh, Bob Gagosian, who was head of Woods
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Hole at the time, and now mm-hmm.
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Was, And then went to Noah.
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Um, I went to see Julie Packard out on the west coast at,
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at, at the Monterey Aquarium.
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I was in touch with, um, um, uh, her deepness, uh, Sylvia Earl, who
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was always generous and supportive.
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Mm-hmm.
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Um, and, uh, And then also a fellow by the name of Patricia Burnell, who at
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the time was the Executive SEC Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental
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Oceanic Commission of the un.
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And he had been on the swish panel.
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So he knew the project and I went to see him in the lobby at the un.
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I had no qualifications, no, no degrees, um, no, no real experience other than sort
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of maritime history ships and experience.
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And I said, can I do this?
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And he said, well, it was supposed to be done by a group of guys in Malta.
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They're never gonna do it.
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Mm-hmm.
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Uh, why not?
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I love it when people say to me, why not?
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Uh, uh, it, it, it's, it's, uh, why not to me is the perfect answer to my question.
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What if, right?
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Um, what do we do with this?
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Well, why not?
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Yeah.
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And so there with literally no resources, uh, it began, and
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that was now 20, 22 years ago.
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Uh, and with no resources, I basically put together a new model at the time,
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truly an innovation, which was that we were to be from the beginning mm-hmm.
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A, um, a virtual organization that we did not need a building.
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We did not need a facade.
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We did not need massive overheads.
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Uh, we did not need huge staff.
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Uh, and we started with myself and a halftime, uh, person.
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Mm-hmm.
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And out of it came a kind of plethora of ideas that basically has been an iteration
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of the first drawing on the napkin when I lay out, well, what's it going to be and
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how is it going to work, Um, So I like to, I like to think that, that, uh, our
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budget is a fraction of the pizza budget of a major environmental organization.
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Uh, uh, we reach measurably.
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Millions of people worldwide.
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Yeah.
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Uh, trying to understand that.
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Yes, it's great that we, we, we deal with, uh, all the con the existing
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organizations and the conferences.
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It's all good.
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I don't ever want to disparage it.
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I do want to say, however, ask the question.
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Um, uh, when the, uh, UN Secretary General looks at the global response to
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the challenge of climate, which is Ocean.
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Yep.
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And Ocean are the same.
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Yep.
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Principle driver of climate is Ocean.
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Agreed.
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Uh, and you, um, and he says, well, um, uh, uh, you know, not enough.
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Not not, and not in time.
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Not enough.
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Not in time.
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And to me, that is a massive, uh.
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Stunning,
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crazy true evaluation of enormous amounts of energy and money.
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Mm-hmm.
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And good intentions that have been invested in the Ocean movement, the
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Ocean conservation press, sustainability movement, um, for, for decades.
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Um, and, uh, the, if you look at the current director of IOC and he talks
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about, you know, transformation.
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And my argument is that if you're trying to look at the transformation of knowledge
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to action, uh, you, there are four stages.
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One is research.
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You have to, you have to know what the knowledge is.
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So research and data, um, that typically gets, uh, it's, its, it's its own sort
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of amplifying feed, uh, endless loop, uh, where literally generations of scholars
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train generations of scholars in their disciplines, in their approaches, uh,
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judging their PhD, uh, dissertations.
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And, and it's all a kind of self, self-fulfilling organizational mm-hmm.
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Structure.
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Um, but the good news is it exists.
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It's a huge amount of new information, um, and it in many cases has
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been taken and moved into policy.
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Hmm.
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So policy has essentially become the focus of many, many, yeah.
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Uh, governmental organizations, uh, many, many independent,
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not-for-profit organizations.
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Uh, how do you take the data, turn it into policy, apply the
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policy worldwide, um, and, um.
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While we do data and, and science, great.
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Uh, we don't do policy as well.
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True.
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And the problem with that is, is that we are compromised often by, um, you know,
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vested interests and fear of change.
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Mm-hmm.
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Uh, and that those two negative destructive forces, um, slow our momentum.
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But in the progression from science to policy, there are two more stages.
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And one stage is education, and I now mean informal and formal education from
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the bottom up and from the inside out.
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Mm-hmm.
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And the fourth one is communication.
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That is how do you take this message, let's call it cumulatively
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Ocean literacy and extend it.
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Worldwide to, yeah.
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The people who will be the intergenerational constituency to
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perpetuate the science perpetuate and apply the policy and actually
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provide the political will to make something happen so that we can say
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soon it's more than enough in time.
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Mm-hmm.
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And when I raise the question and I say, well, what we have done, I can't, I, I, I
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don't wanna criticize what we have done.
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I'll let other people do that For me, what I say to people is, if it hasn't
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succeeded to our expectation, then let's ask the question, what have we not done?
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Mm-hmm.
13:55
And when you look at that, you come back to education.
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Beyond higher education.
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Yeah.
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And you come back to communication beyond the confines of your own
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institutional agenda mm-hmm.
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Or personal career aspiration or all, all of that.
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Um, So the World Ocean Observatory created this model in which we could apply that
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perspective effectively and economically.
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Yep.
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Uh, on a very, very small amount of annual investment on which we can
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demonstrate an astonishing return.
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When I get a grant or when I get a gift from somebody, a contribution to
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somebody, my, my argument to them is, measure us by the return on investment.
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And we'll prove to you that what we are doing is reaching people with
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responsible science, with responsible policy, with, uh, educational innovation,
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and with global communications.
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So how do you, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
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How do you, how do you do that, like right from the get go?
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I mean, it's, it's a big undertaking you took from the get go, putting up a
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site, virtually reaching out to people.
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Even at that time, the internet had caught on, but not everybody was
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on the internet like you see now.
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It wasn't part of our daily lives.
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Like we had desktop computers, maybe laptops were coming out.
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At that point.
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People were starting to use them, but even then they weren't like crazy
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popular that, that the age that we're in now, uh, almost the age of ai.
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But even before that, where we had, we had phones and stuff like that,
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those are just starting to come out.
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Um, even maybe a little bit after, like the iPod may have just
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started to come out at that point.
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How did you get to reach so many people through the website?
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Like how did you build it to get, like, to make those connections?
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Were they, was it a slow growth or was it something that caught on quickly
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because we hadn't seen anything like it?
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Well, both, uh, it caught on quickly 'cause we hadn't seen it.
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And, uh, it has been slow inexorable growth every year.
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Um, the, the, the, the, the rate of participation and engagement
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goes up and up and up and up and the budget hardly moves at all.
16:15
Right.
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And what I I, it's an interesting question.
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Nobody's really ever asked me this before 'cause I don't claim prescient.
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Right.
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But what I do
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would, would, is offer, as an explanation is that when I was running
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the Maritime museum in New York City, I had an enormous story to tell.
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The maritime contribution, uh, to the history of the state, the city
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of the state, and the nation is an astonishingly powerful story.
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It basically is the history of the acculturation of America,
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uh, the, the, and the arrival of goods, people and ideas.
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It's a huge story to tell.
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Mm-hmm.
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Two, it's in a huge market.
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Mm-hmm.
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Three.
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Uh, if it was going to remain a maritime museum of the conventional
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ilk, it was already in trouble and it was going to die.
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And when I came there, um, not trained as a museum professional, as director as I
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was already multimillion dollars in debt.
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So you, when you are faced with an insurmountable problem, it may well be
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that you say, Hmm, what we have been doing isn't good enough and not right time.
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And so what do you do?
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You create, you invent something that you haven't done.
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And so we would, uh, from the beginning I argued that, uh, museums in, in,
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in New York state are, are chartered by the, uh, board of Regents, the
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educational organization, state level.
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Your charters an educational organization.
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We did no education.
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So what we did then was to say we are going to become not just a repository
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of, of global, of imminent collections.
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Eminent collections.
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Uh, we have, you know, 140,000 objects and paintings.
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We also had the largest fleet of historic ships in the world.
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Right.
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Through thousand tons of ships that had to be restored in the water.
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Yeah.
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And we, well, alright, we're not gonna just restore them as passive
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objects, uh, uh, tied to the dock.
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We're gonna sail them.
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And so we restored them to sailing condition.
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We took people, uh, people out on the water so they could have the experience
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of a of a, of a Gloucester fisherman.
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Yeah.
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And then we went even beyond that, we just, we, it wasn't just simply, oh, go,
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let's go for a boat ride on an old boat.
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We suddenly started creating programs that were social history programs,
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expeditionary learning programs.
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Uh, we took, um, uh, we, we were given a grant of half a million dollars
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to take this a hundred year old schooner, uh, with, with, uh, uh, young
19:06
men who were just ending up in the welfare system in the state of Maine.
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It turned out, uh, and they were gonna be let free with a hundred
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bucks in their hand, and that they, they, they had no, no prep, right?
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So we took them with social workers, how all the way to Argentina and back
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in a hundred year old sailing vessel.
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Wow.
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And when they came back, yeah, they, they were transformed
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because it was before the mast.
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It was the, and when you look at experience at sea, let's
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just talk about it for a minute.
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What do you, what do you learn?
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Well, the captain is a violet in violet authority.
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Whatever he says, she says goes.
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Yeah.
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One, two, yeah.
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There is a line of communication that starts at the top and goes
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down, and it has to be direct and clear, received and understood.
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The value of time.
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You understand the, the, the, the what, what the meaning of time.
20:08
You understand what it means to be on time to stand watch.
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You also know that there are times when timelessness requires that no
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matter what the time is, you get up and you get out of bed and you go
20:22
to the four deck, or you go aloft.
20:26
Mm-hmm.
20:26
Uh, you learn respect for competence and skill.
20:30
You understand that the whole life of the vessel could be at risk
20:35
by the failure of a single knot.
20:38
Yeah, so competence, you are in nature 24 hours a day, you're living
20:44
close with people And so you have to understand human relationships.
20:49
So you take all of that and you say, alright, we're turning that boat,
20:54
that boat, that historic vessel that you could just put on the dock
20:57
and charge a few dollars and people would walk on board and Hmm, fine.
21:01
Yeah.
21:01
And turn it into a progressive teaching platform.
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It changes the entire value and the economics.
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Absolutely.
21:12
And so, absolutely we're beginning to get half a million dollars to go to Argentina.
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We got, uh, major grants.
21:19
Here's another one.
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We took blind children sailing.
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So we had a different vessel, also historic landmark, um, flat, uh, uh, hard
21:29
shine, shallow draft in New York Harbor.
21:32
And we would get funds to bring blind children, usually between,
21:36
you know, uh, 14 and 16, 12 to 1416 with their chaperones.
21:42
And we would go out into New York Harbor, we'd turn off the
21:46
edges, we'd raise the sails.
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We'd ask the kids to lie down on the deck and we'd sail until we,
21:53
just the point when they would, we were afraid they might fall asleep.
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And we would say, alright, let's sit up and sit in a circle.
22:04
Mm-hmm.
22:04
Sailing there, the Statue of Liberty going by and ask them, what did you see?
22:11
Yeah.
22:13
And invariably, invariably it brought us all to tears.
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I can imagine.
22:21
'cause these children were articulating their senses, their the sounds and
22:27
the feel of, of an experience in the natural world, unlike incredible
22:34
anything they've ever done before.
22:35
Yeah.
22:35
And they were asked to tell you what it seemed like.
22:40
What did they see?
22:42
And it was astonishing.
22:44
So if you look at that way of looking at collections, you realize that, um, uh,
22:51
you've changed the nature of the place.
22:54
Mm-hmm.
22:55
And people's wake up, people start to come.
22:59
People start to say, we did the first history of black exhibition in the United
23:03
States on, on the history of slavery.
23:05
Wow.
23:06
It had never been touched by maritime museums.
23:08
It is a immigration, maritime immigration story.
23:12
Right.
23:13
And it, and it transformed America.
23:15
Yeah.
23:16
Yeah.
23:16
The cultural impact of slavery on America Yeah.
23:18
Is alive and well and astonishingly powerful still today.
23:24
Absolutely.
23:24
But we can go about all this history and we can bitch on this, complain
23:27
about this and that, and have racist conversations to all the rest.
23:31
But the cultural impact of slavery is alive and well and part of our
23:37
national culture and identity.
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And we had the first exhibit I brought a priest from, from uh, uh,
23:45
from Africa to bless the exhibit.
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And we marketed it to the black churches of New York.
23:52
And suddenly in the Maritime Museum where the audience was 99% white, we
23:59
were inundated with people of that were all the descendants of slaves.
24:07
Right.
24:08
And we respected them.
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We invited them in.
24:12
We asked for their participation.
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We asked for their sensibility, and we were then suddenly an
24:18
entirely, uh, different place again.
24:23
So by essentially becoming a participatory place, a place for invention, um, a
24:30
place for, uh, um, uh, uh, attacks on the con on the conventions, uh, and
24:36
the prediction, uh, the expectations.
24:39
People began to say, well, yes, we we'll support that.
24:42
Yes, we'll support that.
24:43
Yeah.
24:43
Yes, we'll support that.
24:45
And we raised $40 million and we built a new, we took an 1807 building
24:50
in New York, lower Manhattan, right opposite the Brooklyn Bridge.
24:53
And we turned it into, but we also were the landlord of the Fulton Fish Market.
24:58
And it became an exhibit.
24:59
I said, okay.
25:01
Huh.
25:01
The fish market is alive and well, it's a living exhibit.
25:04
Yeah, it's not a fake little demonstration No.
25:07
Of an outdoor museum.
25:08
It's the real bloody thing.
25:11
And so we would have programs through the, through the, the Fulton mish
25:16
market in the middle of the night.
25:18
And so that we became the largest elder hostile provider.
25:23
Um, in, in, uh, in, in the program actually, we, I was the single largest
25:29
buyer of hotel room nights in New York.
25:32
And I would go and cut deals where I'd get a $250 hotel room for $72 a night.
25:38
Right.
25:38
And then we would turn that and we'd market that to, uh, elder hostel.
25:42
And then we brought thousands, thousands of mature travelers,
25:47
interested, educated travelers.
25:49
They would come in, they'd stayed in the lo uh, Manhattan and New York.
25:53
They'd walk the Brooklyn Bridge, they'd go to the field market,
25:56
they'd go to the slavery exhibition.
25:58
They'd go sailing on the historic vessels.
26:01
And it became an entirely new, um.
26:04
Uh, uh, touristic, let's say.
26:07
Yeah.
26:08
Uh, uh, you know, expeditionary experience.
26:12
So the argument here is not, um, necessarily to just
26:19
bemoan the, the, the change.
26:23
The idea is to drive change.
26:27
Yeah.
26:27
To invent change.
26:29
And when you do that, you begin to say and reach people who've
26:34
never been touched before.
26:36
Yeah.
26:37
Social media at the time, Facebook was all there was.
26:41
Yep.
26:41
But that was good enough.
26:42
Yep.
26:43
And we, it just astonished me to watch the, the line of
26:47
participations and followers mm-hmm.
26:50
And the comments and the, and the forwards and the reposts
26:53
and all that sort of stuff.
26:55
And then with LinkedIn I said, okay, we're not gonna just do generic LinkedIn.
26:59
We're gonna say, you have to be in this group.
27:02
You have to be, um, um, you have to be a professional.
27:07
Right.
27:08
You have to be scientist.
27:09
A policy.
27:09
Yeah.
27:09
Whatever future, whatever it may be in the Ocean sphere.
27:13
And, uh, I think we're at 16,600.
27:17
That's a really good list.
27:19
Absolutely.
27:20
Those are people who can make a difference.
27:22
Yeah.
27:22
Right.
27:23
Um, And then two more, uh, if you, uh, um, uh, if you want to.
27:34
Expand your audience.
27:36
You can, you can be a museum.
27:38
So we started doing online exhibits.
27:40
We took online exhibits from other maritime museums and promoted them.
27:45
Uh, then there came Road, world Ocean Radio wrote World Ocean Radio.
27:49
I just ra wrote and recorded today the 775th edition of Worlders and Radio.
27:55
Amazing.
27:57
And it's heard all over the world.
27:59
Yeah.
28:00
Both Coastal Africa, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, uh, across
28:05
the United States through, uh, not-for-profit radio, NPR AquaPORT,
28:10
uh, audio port and uh, uh, PRX.
28:14
Uh, and, um, all of these things represent, um, a contribution to our
28:23
calculation of value, which is our job is to bring together a global
28:30
community of citizens of the Ocean.
28:32
Right.
28:33
And the tools allow us to reach those people anywhere.
28:39
And then I'll give you one more.
28:41
All right.
28:42
Um, we decided about four years ago, I said, look, we have to do more
28:47
than we have to become educators.
28:49
Mm-hmm.
28:50
Um, beyond what we have already been doing.
28:53
So we created, um, something called World Ocean, Ocean Explorer.
28:56
I had founded two high schools in the Marine environment.
29:00
One in New Haven called the Harbor School, and the other,
29:02
uh, no, called the Sound School.
29:04
And the one in New York on Ellis, uh, on Governor's Island called,
29:08
um, uh, the, uh, the Harbor School.
29:12
And these are, yeah, these are public high schools, uh, that run
29:16
by the local systems, education departments of education.
29:20
Mm-hmm.
29:20
But the entire, uh, curriculum is water based, is Ocean based.
29:25
That's so cool.
29:25
And they've been going for 20 years now.
29:28
Uh, and the, the, so everybody who goes through that school
29:31
goes through that program.
29:31
It goes through.
29:32
That's program.
29:33
It's not a choice, not elective.
29:35
Yeah.
29:35
Um, it has professional training, it has agricultural training.
29:39
Yes.
29:40
It sort creates, it creates jobs for people.
29:43
Mm-hmm.
29:43
These are inner city kids, right?
29:45
Mm-hmm.
29:45
New Haven, poor, multiracial, inner city kids.
29:50
Sometimes those kids are an hour on the train to get to the trophy,
29:54
to get to the ferry, right.
29:56
To get, uh, to the school on time.
29:59
They miss the ferry.
30:01
They're, they, they lose the day.
30:03
Right.
30:04
So the discipline of just going to school, it's huge.
30:07
Is, is, is part of the process.
30:09
Yeah.
30:10
Anyway, so the idea was to create a virtual aquarium,
30:14
and, uh, it was, uh, and we.
30:17
We, uh, we, I had myself and one other person part-time.
30:22
Uh, And then we brought in another person, part-time, who is a, uh, a, a, a designer.
30:28
Uh, he has a PhD, but he's a platform designer, software guy.
30:33
Great man, great guy.
30:34
And he and, uh, and the, and the, and the managing director and myself
30:40
essentially started to build this, this thing, uh, it's going to have 10 modules.
30:45
It, it's going to document as a virtual aquarium, you literally,
30:49
it's built on a gaming platform.
30:51
Yeah.
30:51
You walk in, you can go to through exhibits, you can participate.
30:56
There's an associated curriculum.
30:59
Um, and it's been funded.
31:01
The, the first one on the Deep Sea has been funded now for three years
31:05
by the Schmidt Ocean Institute.
31:07
Yeah.
31:07
Uh.
31:08
Uh, other organizations and funders are seeing it as a, as a really
31:12
incredible return on investment mm-hmm.
31:15
Of, of reaching millions of people with a very small, focused contribution.
31:20
Uh, and we now have, uh, are have cohorts of teachers in all around
31:26
the world, um, and they are testing the, the, the program in the schools.
31:32
We have photographs and videos.
31:34
We're now essentially creating teaching stations that can go into
31:38
any environmental organization in the world, uh, for free.
31:43
Mm-hmm.
31:44
It's available to you for free, no barrier entry accessible to everybody.
31:47
You just have to go on the website, on any device, anywhere at any time.
31:51
Yeah.
31:51
Uh, no barrier entry, including language next month, this December we
31:56
will try, it will be translated into, uh, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
32:01
So that opens us up into, uh, more into Africa and into Latin America.
32:06
Yeah.
32:06
Yeah.
32:07
South America, uh, and uh, also German and Arabic.
32:10
Um, And so that the, what the Asian languages are to come Chinese and
32:16
Japanese, but ultimately even that barrier to entry will be eradicated.
32:22
Right.
32:23
And it, it is all available at no cost.
32:28
I think that's a, that's a really important aspect is the
32:30
accessibility, because, you know, a lot of these things, these games,
32:34
you know, there's always a payment.
32:35
There's always a monthly plan, a monthly subscription and things like that.
32:39
But, you know, you, you know, we need to educate everybody.
32:41
It's not just a specific sector of, of the population, you know, whether
32:46
it be in the US or, or elsewhere.
32:48
Uh, having this aspect.
32:51
Um, have you seen just an uptake in the amount of people there?
32:54
Are you already seeing an uptake in the amount of people
32:56
that are, that are playing it?
32:57
Absolutely.
32:58
Yeah.
32:58
Absolutely.
32:59
And the, and our best marketeers are the, our best marketers are the teachers.
33:05
Yeah.
33:05
And the teachers.
33:06
The teach the, the thing in the past, as you heard, you have a
33:08
package, uh, and you're trying to, you, you have to sell it.
33:12
And so the administrator, the principal, or the Board of education
33:15
said, oh, there's no money now.
33:17
You can't do that.
33:18
You don't have enough money to buy paper and pencils so you can Right.
33:21
You can't afford this.
33:22
No.
33:25
Completely bypassed.
33:26
This is available to the teacher.
33:28
Teacher has their stem and steam.
33:31
There are all these criteria and standards.
33:33
Yeah.
33:33
All of it's met it by design.
33:36
Yeah.
33:36
But what happens is, is that the teachers are looking around for the
33:39
easiest, best, most effective tool.
33:42
And these kids are all computer.
33:46
Literate.
33:47
They know how to do it.
33:48
They know how to operate game, a game on a gaming platform.
33:52
Yep.
33:52
And so we make it not, there's no guns, there's no explosions, there's
33:56
no rewards, none of that stuff.
33:59
It's school.
34:00
Mm-hmm.
34:01
Mm-hmm.
34:02
But it, uh, but it can be, let's call it education, but it, so it
34:07
can be, uh, a homeschooling parent can use it to great advantage.
34:13
Yeah.
34:13
Uh, an aquarium or a museum, American museum could use it inside their,
34:19
um, uh, uh, education department.
34:23
Yeah.
34:23
In a way that they don't have to go out and spend hundreds of thousands of
34:26
dollars to build an interactive exhibit.
34:30
They've got it for free in seven languages.
34:34
I love it.
34:34
Think, but you have to, what you have to do.
34:37
Where's the, where's the tie up?
34:39
The tie up is the conventional thinking.
34:41
The teacher that says, uh, I don't know, or the administrator
34:46
says, well, we can't afford that.
34:47
We've never done it before.
34:49
Yeah.
34:50
That it's getting, that, that's convincing them is selling them on the, the fact that
34:55
not only is it free, but it's beneficial.
34:57
But the teacher's, your agent, the teacher is your, is your
35:00
agent, your subversive agent?
35:02
The teacher says to the science coordinator in the department, Hey,
35:07
I'm supposed to teach these principals.
35:09
Yeah.
35:10
All of those principals are in here.
35:11
Look at the kids' faces.
35:13
Look at what's happening.
35:14
Look at what they're doing.
35:16
They're now making models of whale falls.
35:18
They're doing Yeah.
35:19
They're doing interactive things with, with high hydrothermal vent.
35:22
They're doing all of this stuff that, that before was just nonsense to them.
35:29
They're now doing it in an excited and participatory way,
35:32
and that's how they're learning.
35:35
Yeah.
35:36
I argue that everything that we do is to that end at that level
35:40
of, of, of, of sophistication and at that economy of cost.
35:47
Unreal.
35:49
Unreal.
35:49
And why?
35:50
And you know what?
35:51
I, I, you know who, I have to be careful,
35:57
you know, I'm a bit of a, I, I do, uh, I do speak my mind and that's fine.
36:04
Yeah.
36:04
Yeah.
36:04
Well, certain times, but often, um, you approach a funder and the funder says,
36:12
well, you know, we have our program.
36:14
The parameters and this, that, and the other thing.
36:17
And, And then, or you, you've, uh, or you, you finally find
36:21
your way into a foundation.
36:23
Very, not so easy to do.
36:24
They just don't write, open up the website.
36:26
No, for sure.
36:27
Oh, see, finally, weasel your way in.
36:29
Somehow, somehow, uh, and you've gotta contact and the connection you
36:34
get there and you're, oh, excited.
36:35
I got to put this down.
36:37
Meets all the criteria.
36:38
It's winner, right?
36:39
Oh, no.
36:41
Julia just retired or left to go have her third child, And so we're going
36:46
to have to hire a new program officer.
36:48
Oh, and by the way, we're going to do a reevaluation of our, of our,
36:52
uh, our program, uh, parameters.
36:55
And, uh, we may not even be interested in the Ocean in 12 months.
37:01
Yeah.
37:01
I'll give you another example.
37:02
The worst one of all, uh, a major international foundation with a long
37:08
history in, in a particular subject.
37:12
Uh, I had met the director.
37:14
I had met the staff people I had been encouraged to apply.
37:19
We were in their suite spot.
37:21
It was about a amount of money.
37:23
Well, within the, their capacity.
37:26
Yeah.
37:26
They took the, they, they gave us an incredibly difficult format.
37:30
We met the format, put it all in there.
37:33
They kept it for 365 days and sent us a rote, formulaic email of rejection.
37:49
And I said to myself, okay, I, people have said, I've heard no so many times.
37:57
Yeah.
37:58
I was a fiction writer for years.
37:59
I was submitting to stories, to the, I was submitting to the New Yorker or the, the,
38:04
the Kenyan Journal or whatever it may be.
38:06
I got, I have a file here filled with nos notes from editors and
38:12
you know all, oh, I'm sorry.
38:13
No, no, no, no.
38:14
I've heard a million nos.
38:16
Yeah.
38:17
That one hurt more than anything.
38:19
Mm-hmm.
38:20
Because
38:23
what do you do?
38:24
Well, you, you, you, you walk away and you just live a fight again.
38:28
You've done a lot of work so that work can be picked up and taken someplace
38:32
else, and you then, you never know.
38:34
You, you walk into a place one day and somebody says, what you do what?
38:39
And, um, I said, well, I, I can show it to you.
38:42
I can show it to you on my.
38:43
I'll show it to you on my phone.
38:45
I like right here I can, we can walk through it.
38:48
You can see a whole video if you wanna see it, see how it works.
38:51
See the kids laughing and playing and doing.
38:52
Mm-hmm.
38:53
Uh, and they said, this is an incredible, uh, how are you funded?
38:58
And I said, well, we're funded by, we're funded by prescient individuals, people
39:05
who have the capacity of an openness to look forward, not stuck in the moment.
39:12
Mm-hmm.
39:12
And not stuck in the past.
39:14
Yeah.
39:15
So, um, you know, uh, And then we, not only, we have a publications program.
39:22
We've done a whole bunch of books, uh, mine and others.
39:25
Um, uh, and my swan song is next year, which is basically called, uh, volution
39:32
How the Ocean Will Save Civilization.
39:34
We don't have a plan.
39:37
We don't have a plan.
39:38
Yeah.
39:39
National.
39:39
We have a, at one point we had two national Ocean plans in the United States.
39:43
Doesn't matter.
39:44
Nobody's implemented them.
39:46
Now there's nobody responsible for actually doing anything with them.
39:49
Right.
39:50
There's no money Um, So how do you expect there, uh, there to be
39:55
a national agenda or a national progress if there is no plan?
40:00
And the plan, if it's only driven by science and policy has already
40:05
essentially proven that it doesn't work.
40:08
Right.
40:09
Yeah.
40:09
And so what's the plan?
40:11
So I'm writing a plan.
40:13
I like it.
40:16
I like, I like it.
40:16
I like it.
40:17
This is what I like.
40:18
'cause you and I are similar in, in a lot of ways.
40:20
Uh, it's, if it's not there, you're gonna do it.
40:26
Right?
40:26
Yeah.
40:26
Like, if it's like, you know, you, you felt the call at, you
40:29
know, right from the beginning.
40:31
Okay.
40:31
We need a virtual platform to reach out to people, to educate people.
40:34
We need to make it accessible.
40:36
We need to make it interesting.
40:37
We need to ensure that people are ready for this and they can access it and they
40:42
can enjoy it, and they can learn from it.
40:43
You built that.
40:44
You didn't wait for, you know, the UN to build it.
40:47
You didn't wait for the US government to build it.
40:50
You didn't wait for other governments to build it, or other big, large
40:52
organizations who could have built it.
40:54
Nobody built it.
40:55
You were like, all right, I'm gonna build it.
40:58
I'm the same way with, with the podcast.
41:00
For me, I was like, nobody's talking about this stuff.
41:04
You know, nobody's talking about specific, you know, projects.
41:06
Nobody's talking about the, to the people and getting interviews and this and that.
41:09
At that time, nobody was talking about it.
41:10
Obviously, more people are talking about it now, but it's like, it's that
41:14
conservation aspect and conservation.
41:15
So I'm like, you know what?
41:16
I'm gonna start it.
41:18
You know?
41:18
We doesn't have to do it with a huge budget.
41:20
You know, it's actually kind, kind of interesting Peter, and I'm sure we could
41:22
say the same thing for you when you, when you first started with your team.
41:25
I had a friend of mine who, who I, a good friend of mine who, who I was talking
41:28
to a couple weeks ago, and he said, you know, Andrew, he is like, everything you
41:32
do, I was telling him all the stuff I do, like my whole process for, for the,
41:36
to publish an episode in each podcast.
41:39
And, and he is like, everything you do, it would take like 12 people in a nonprofit
41:43
organization to do Exactly right.
41:46
And I'm just like, I don't understand how that's happened.
41:49
Like, for me it's just like, let's just do it.
41:51
Like if we, if it needs to get done, I'll figure out a way to get done.
41:54
And, and we are, I'm very fortunate in the time that we live in today,
41:59
you know, I can, I can do it.
42:01
Like, I can schedule posts, I can do stuff.
42:03
Like, it's easy to start a podcast.
42:05
Like for you when you did radio, it must have been a lot more challenging to do,
42:09
but you did it and we've, we, we both find ways to do stuff to bring it to
42:14
the people, whether it's going to be.
42:17
Super, super popular or just reach small audiences around the
42:21
world and make it accessible.
42:24
And being able to educate people and grow that, and grow that and grow that.
42:28
And then we get into a big, we get into a point like, you know, for me, I've
42:31
had almost 3 million downloads for you.
42:34
You've reached millions and millions of people across the world, you
42:37
know, over over 20 some odd years.
42:39
And we've been able to do that.
42:40
Just being like, yeah, this, this is the call to action.
42:43
Okay, let's do the call to action.
42:44
Nobody else is gonna do it.
42:45
All right.
42:45
You're not gonna, you know, you're not gonna fund it like
42:48
multimillion dollars a year.
42:50
Okay, fine.
42:50
We'll just kind of piece it together through grants and, you
42:53
know, like with this explorer through the Smit Ocean Smith, Smit
42:57
Ocean Institute, things like that.
42:59
People who can get it and sell it and work your butt off as sort of like a,
43:04
like an independent organization that's bringing all these people together, right.
43:09
Well, take me, take me through like that.
43:11
Like, do you get I get frustrated every once in a while by people
43:14
not doing it on a bigger scale.
43:18
Do you get frustrated by the, like, you know, you, you talked about
43:21
some of the frustrations that you get, you seeing it as people want
43:23
it, you seeing it's accessible, but not getting the funding for it.
43:27
When you get frustrated like that, what do you do?
43:29
What's the next step when you go through that process?
43:34
I, um, I, I,
43:38
I go, um, I go to my Ocean space.
43:43
I go to my Ocean place.
43:45
Uh, I, it's, uh,
43:50
seven or eight minutes away.
43:52
Yeah.
43:52
Uh, and uh, I just go and sit there.
43:55
Right.
43:56
I've written a book, a book called Oceanic Feeling and, and,
43:59
uh, wrote about it this morning.
44:00
Today, you know, you, you, there is no finer place to be alone.
44:08
Um, and to have the full force of experience with nature at
44:16
every element of your senses.
44:18
Mm. Uh, and it doesn't take much.
44:22
You don't have to buy clothes to sit for yoga.
44:27
You don't have to drive someplace.
44:30
Uh, you don't have to do any of that.
44:33
Um, and, you know, all the great religions have seen the Ocean and water
44:40
as a place for sustenance and solace.
44:43
Um, we used to, uh, I used to marvel at, um, uh, Saturday morning attendance
44:51
spikes at the museum, Christian Adams, uh, at the, uh, uh, uh, attendance
44:58
spikes at the, uh, uh, museum.
45:01
Mm-hmm.
45:02
And it was, uh, Orthodox Jewish couples.
45:06
And, uh, you know, big Orthodox community out in, in Brooklyn, uh Right.
45:10
They would come there to court and it was con it was safe and by the water.
45:18
Mm-hmm.
45:18
And just was a place that was conducive to getting to know somebody.
45:22
Right.
45:22
Uh, and um, the same thing happens for me when you go out on the water,
45:29
say with my wife and we go sailing.
45:31
She's the captain because she's very good at it.
45:34
Um, uh, our relationship.
45:38
Is reduced to essentials.
45:40
Yeah.
45:40
And we know what our roles are and we know where we are and we know mm-hmm.
45:45
Why it's valuable for us.
45:47
And we've taught it to our children and we've taught it
45:50
to other people's children.
45:51
And we then engaged in education and organization that teach
45:55
it to other people's children.
45:57
So the whole thing is part and parcel.
45:59
I, when I was in St. Louis at age 14 or 15, you could, for 10
46:04
cents, you could take a street car and go down to the river.
46:07
Mm-hmm.
46:08
And I would go down to the river and sit in front of the
46:10
old courthouse in St. Louis.
46:12
Uh, and it was a slave place.
46:14
It was a slave market.
46:16
And I knew enough about it to go and sit there, and I'd go and sit
46:20
there and there'd be nobody there.
46:22
And I'd sit in a historic place in a kind of highly emotional evocation.
46:29
Both real and metaphor of of of, of a, of a national, of a, of a,
46:33
of a national identity crisis.
46:37
I would see the working waterfront, I would see the, the raw nature of the
46:43
river passing through the big city and all of those things factored in.
46:51
Yeah, of course.
46:51
In some way.
46:53
Um, I, uh, I remember one night I was, I, I was working for the
46:58
newspaper there, summer job.
47:00
And I went down and I, I, uh, I, uh, uh, got a call to go out and as I went down,
47:09
there were guy, a couple of guys on the riverside and they had a truck down there
47:14
and they just pulled a big turtle out of the big, huge turtle out of the river.
47:19
And uh, uh.
47:21
And I just marveled at that.
47:22
And they had this thing and they were lifting up, throw it in the
47:24
trunk of the car, and they're gonna take it back and they're
47:26
gonna, they're gonna eat the truck.
47:29
But I was on my way to the, to the river police boat, uh, and we went
47:33
out and within 30 minutes after seeing the turtle, we, we pulled what's
47:37
called a floater out of the river.
47:40
That's the first time I'd ever seen a dead person.
47:43
Mm-hmm.
47:43
I'd never seen a dead person since in that condition.
47:46
Uh, it was a, an enormously powerful evening where I had seen people without
47:54
food, harvesting food from the river.
47:57
Yeah.
47:57
And then I went out and I found somebody that the river had taken back.
48:02
Right.
48:03
Right.
48:04
I mean, come on.
48:05
Yeah.
48:05
It's, it's, it's, it's all there.
48:09
That's the beautiful thing about it.
48:10
And you don't have to pay, you don't have to show your credit card.
48:14
No.
48:14
You don't have to do any of that kind of stuff.
48:16
Um, and, uh.
48:19
So the sea connects all things.
48:21
Yeah, it does at every level of human civilization, including the
48:25
psychological, the psychological level.
48:29
Absolutely.
48:29
And uh, and that's why water is, is part at the core of every religion.
48:36
Uh, and, and, and in, at the heart of many civilizations, I just was in Morocco.
48:42
Morocco, I had no idea.
48:43
It's a desert country where, yeah, think about it.
48:46
They've got an Atlantic coast, but it's mostly desert.
48:49
And, uh, they have a, a, a national water policy, uh, that I, I knew nothing about.
48:56
I spent hours in this museum that was where there was nobody inside.
49:01
Mm-hmm.
49:01
Looking at really interesting exhibits from statements in the Koran right
49:06
up through the latest minister of, of, of, of environment and water.
49:11
Essentially outlining a revision to the National Water policy or
49:16
Morocco ratifying the, the, the, the International Ocean Treaty.
49:21
Understanding the interrelationship between freshwater and saltwater.
49:27
Yeah.
49:28
The Ocean begins at the mountaintop and it ends at the abyssal plane and everything.
49:33
In condition.
49:34
In, in, in, Yeah.
49:34
In, in the inclusive circle is the, um, uh, uh, there was
49:42
a, um, uh, God rest his soul.
49:46
There was a fellow out in California named Jay Nichols, so I don't
49:49
know if you've ever heard of it.
49:49
Yeah.
49:50
Jay.
49:51
We love, we love Jay.
49:52
Well, Jay.
49:53
Jay Jay.
49:54
He's another one of lot of people spearheading stuff.
49:57
I thought Jay was a little this No, no.
50:00
Jay had the blue marble.
50:02
Yep.
50:02
And blue marble.
50:04
I, um, I, um,
50:08
I, um.
50:10
I, I went to some of his Blue Mind con conferences and at one point
50:15
I, I knew, I had no idea if he was sick or whatever, how, how he died.
50:18
I still don't know.
50:20
Uh, but we became friends and I would see him occasionally.
50:22
Mm-hmm.
50:23
And, and I asked him, Jay, this is the most beautiful thing
50:25
in the world, this metaphor.
50:28
Yeah.
50:30
I carried him in my pocket all the time.
50:32
And, uh, I've given them to kings and presidents and I've also given them
50:36
to, to accidental meets on the street.
50:40
Yeah.
50:41
And, and it's a, it's an unforgettable gift.
50:44
And I ask them, mm-hmm can I do this?
50:47
May I, may I become an acolyte.
50:50
A disciple.
50:51
Mm-hmm.
50:51
And do the blue marble.
50:53
And he said, of course you can.
50:54
That's, that, that, that, that'd be lovely.
50:56
So I have a 500 blue marbles suit.
51:00
That's amazing.
51:01
I in my pocket all the time and my wife said, oh my God,
51:04
he is got the blue marble.
51:05
I said, no, no.
51:07
This person and it, you know.
51:09
I had a heart operation.
51:11
I called in the doctor and I said, I want to give you this as just as a,
51:16
as a, a statement of my, my gratitude for what you have done for me.
51:22
'cause it was extremely successful.
51:23
Mm-hmm.
51:24
And he said, you don't understand.
51:26
I moved to Maine and became a cardiology cardio cardios surgeon in Maine for
51:31
a third of what I could earn in, in New York City or Philadelphia to be by
51:36
my, by the Ocean and to have my Yeah.
51:39
Children by the Ocean.
51:41
And then later I called to make an appointment and I
51:45
said, my name is Peter Neil.
51:47
And the receptionist says, and I started to give her my date of birth and number.
51:51
Mm-hmm.
51:52
She said, oh no, Mr. Neil, I, we know who you are.
51:54
I said, well, I was only there for a day and a half and you put your hand
51:58
inside my heart, but that's fine.
52:00
But, uh, and she said, uh oh no.
52:04
The doctor called a staff meeting.
52:07
All the nurses, all the auxiliaries, all the other doctors were there.
52:11
And he held up the blue marble and he said, we need to remember who these
52:18
people are and what they're doing.
52:21
They're not numbers, they're not social security numbers,
52:23
they're not policy holders.
52:25
Mm-hmm.
52:25
They're not reimbursement targets.
52:28
They're out there in the world as human beings.
52:31
And we need to understand that and never fail to have it inform our purpose.
52:39
Mm-hmm.
52:39
Well, that's what the world, that's what we are.
52:42
Water planet.
52:44
Yeah.
52:44
We're all, we are water.
52:46
So if we don't understand that we're part of this whole global,
52:50
national natural system, we're, we're, we're stupider than we act.
52:56
Mm-hmm.
52:56
And we're acting pretty stupid.
52:59
Um, yeah.
53:00
Well, I mean, you know, it speak, speaking of which, um.
53:05
You know, cop 30 is happening right now as we speak, as we're doing this.
53:09
Yeah.
53:09
And, and we've seen the, the previous two, uh, cops 28 and 29
53:13
happen in, uh, countries that, uh, are mainly about fossil fuel.
53:19
Right.
53:20
Azer, Baan and, and, uh, I think it was Dubai or, or, or
53:24
somewhere in the Middle East.
53:25
They are, you know, it was mostly focused on how to continue to,
53:30
uh, use fossil fuels and not necessarily renewable energies.
53:34
We are doing COP 30.
53:36
The last article that I saw out of that was, uh, a protest that was happening by,
53:42
uh, indigenous, uh, people from the Amazon trying to get their voices heard and tried
53:48
to get on the floor to get their voices heard as, uh, Gavin Newsom was talking.
53:52
I'm sure he didn't know about this, uh, at the time, but as he was talking and
53:56
security was taking them out, these, the, the, the people were trying to get their
54:00
voices heard because their, their homes are being destroyed for fossil fuels.
54:05
And here is, you know, someone representing the US talking about
54:08
how we need to continue to do renewables and, and we, and not.
54:13
No, the, the, the whole venue not allowing the, the people, the indigenous people to
54:18
speak and to get their voices heard, which is what Cop 30 is really about, is to, to
54:22
speak about climate change and address the very issues that they're protesting about.
54:28
You know, you've been dealing with this for a hell of a lot longer than I have.
54:32
Um, you know, what are your thoughts on, on these, these,
54:37
these meetings, these cops?
54:38
And, and, and where do you think this needs to go to actually be more effective?
54:46
Oh, I, I've been to several, uh, earlier, right?
54:51
Once, uh, before, um, uh, uh, uh, before Paris.
54:58
Mm-hmm.
54:58
Uh, but, you know, the, the many Ocean, many of the Ocean
55:05
rural, Ocean congresses, um.
55:08
I have very mixed feelings.
55:09
Mm-hmm.
55:10
I've made, uh, many connections.
55:13
Uh, I've had my spirits lifted often, uh, I've had my spirits disappointed often,
55:21
um, I, um, I've now stopped going because, um, it's, it's very expensive and I think
55:32
that I have, the resources that I have are better spent doing something else.
55:38
Also, there is the price that you pay by disappointment
55:41
and sadness and frustration.
55:44
Uh, and I say I'd rather take the energy, limited amount of energy that
55:49
I have and put it towards something that's optimistic and and possible.
55:54
Mm-hmm.
55:54
Um, and if it takes one little, if it's another 700 radios, uh, that's,
56:01
that, that will, that will do me fine.
56:03
Um, uh, and there's, there are, there are.
56:08
One of the most horrible things is, uh, you're, you're in, you're in Lisbon,
56:13
and everybody's had a time, and we all had workshops and panel discussions
56:18
and keynotes and q and as and coffee breaks and everybody's tucking.
56:24
And then little cards and brochures are being handed by everybody's
56:28
positioning, uh, and it's over.
56:32
And the, the, you, you can predict the final declaration.
56:37
Uh, And then they're all saying, well, I'll see you in Rio next week.
56:40
Right.
56:40
We're going to Rio.
56:41
Or we, where are we going Now?
56:42
We, where's the next one we're going to, oh, blah.
56:45
We'll see Inala.
56:46
Mm-hmm.
56:47
And, um, it's, it's a movable circus.
56:50
Mm-hmm.
56:50
It's all the same people.
56:52
Yeah.
56:53
And, and locals are invited in.
56:55
And, you know, the Amazon people, I mean, that's a big one.
57:00
Yeah.
57:00
Those folk, those folks either by industrial energy and industrial
57:06
agriculture, um, their, not only is their culture, but their land is being Yeah.
57:12
Destroyed.
57:13
Yeah.
57:13
And, um, and, And then in the name of security, uh, I'm sure that, that
57:20
they were outside the blue zone.
57:21
Mm-hmm.
57:22
And the greens.
57:23
Oh, yes.
57:24
You can't like that.
57:26
Yeah.
57:26
I have a hook, which I have 40 name tags.
57:30
Yeah.
57:31
Conference registration, IDs.
57:34
And you don't have the id.
57:35
You can't go to the blue.
57:37
Blue.
57:37
Yeah.
57:38
Yeah.
57:39
Uh, and, um, uh, or no, you can't speak the, the, it's all been taken care of you.
57:45
And, uh, so, um, uh, and you, you can hardly, I, I would often go as press and
57:52
you, there's no place to ask a question.
57:54
Right.
57:56
There's no press conference.
57:57
You can't go and actually sit down and say, well, alright, let's talk about this.
58:01
Mm-hmm.
58:01
And Um, So I, as I said earlier, I think they have to keep happening.
58:11
I wish, however they would be, um, they'd open their minds a little bit.
58:17
If you go to the World Water Forum, they draw the line at the tide line.
58:22
So you may have 300 speakers and the word Ocean may be mentioned 10 times if that.
58:31
Now that's just bad policy.
58:35
Yeah, that's bad science.
58:37
Yeah.
58:38
That's bad sociology.
58:41
The climate weeks.
58:42
The climate week's, the same thing.
58:44
You barely hear anything about the Ocean.
58:45
You're like, and just at the beginning of this, of this episode, you mentioned
58:49
the Ocean and climate are synonymous.
58:51
They're the same.
58:52
You know, climate is Ocean.
58:54
When you talk about the climate, it's run function of basically
58:57
the circulation of water.
58:59
The, the basically the, the irrigation of the globe.
59:03
Yeah.
59:03
And climate change is simply what we've either put into effect that or what
59:08
we've taken out of to defect that.
59:10
Yeah.
59:11
And, and, uh, uh, and, and, and we're doing it how many different ways,
59:17
you know, oh, we have to put filters on the, on the, on the, on the,
59:21
on the, uh, on the exhaust pipes.
59:24
Well, yes, that's, that, that's true.
59:26
But you, you also might need to take a look at the, uh, uh.
59:33
The, the downstream effect of, of, of, of industrial waste
59:38
a hundred miles up the river.
59:40
Mm-hmm.
59:41
Mm-hmm.
59:41
And nobody does.
59:42
It's not part of the permanent process.
59:44
It's not part of the insurance coverage.
59:45
It's not part of the, uh, of the emergency response plan.
59:49
It's not part, the water is not even costed into the pro forma as to whether
59:57
or not the project is profitable or not.
1:00:00
Yeah.
1:00:00
And sold to the investor with a key element of the financial aspect of
1:00:05
the thing absent from the equation.
1:00:09
So investors are actually making a, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, their investment on a
1:00:16
false, on a, on a, on on false premises.
1:00:19
Yeah.
1:00:20
Uh, and until these kinds of things change, and these are hard to do.
1:00:25
But they become more and more reality.
1:00:28
If, if, if you could say, well, we don't have to worry about downstream negativity
1:00:32
or effect because we have insurance.
1:00:35
Yeah.
1:00:35
The insurance company says, well, you have insurance to here, but not downstream.
1:00:40
Right.
1:00:40
Not on the, uh, of the, the oyster bed.
1:00:43
Uh uh.
1:00:44
Right.
1:00:44
40 miles away.
1:00:46
You don't, there's no insurance for that.
1:00:48
And then you realize that the insurance company has actually insured itself
1:00:52
with reinsurance and the, their, it's a, it's a house of cards.
1:00:57
Yeah.
1:00:57
And so you say, well, everybody's figured it out a way to sort of cover their,
1:01:03
their little bit of it and try to hold that together in the case of some.
1:01:10
Number of pre-visualize disasters, And then the one that happens is
1:01:16
the one that's not visualized.
1:01:17
Mm-hmm.
1:01:17
And we call it a black swan, no.
1:01:19
Mm-hmm.
1:01:20
That's not a black swan?
1:01:21
No.
1:01:21
That swan's been out there the entire time.
1:01:25
White, by the way.
1:01:26
Mm-hmm.
1:01:26
But you just didn't look at it, or if you saw it, I don't wanna Exactly.
1:01:31
Exactly.
1:01:32
So it's it, sorry, go ahead.
1:01:34
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
1:01:36
I, I, uh, I'm venting, but, but Well, I'll tell you what, I, I, Peter,
1:01:41
you and I can probably talk about this, uh, on, on record for, for,
1:01:45
uh, hours and hours and hours on end.
1:01:47
I'll end it here, but I would love to invite you back to talk more about your
1:01:50
experience and sort of your knowledge and, and, um, advice for people,
1:01:55
uh, to take, to take, uh, you know, as we continue these conversations.
1:01:59
Because I think, you know, you've had a lot of experience in education.
1:02:03
You have a lot of experience in connection and communication, uh, and,
1:02:06
and, and putting together programs that really benefit and connect people of
1:02:10
wherever they are, uh, to the Ocean.
1:02:13
And I think it's really beneficial for us to, you know, en enjoy
1:02:16
that experience and hearing that experience and what can be done and,
1:02:19
and what has been able to be done.
1:02:21
So I think that's really, uh, important.
1:02:23
Love to have you back on Peter, and, and, and love to having you on it already.
1:02:27
Fun to talk.
1:02:28
Awesome.
1:02:29
Great.
1:02:29
See you later.
1:02:30
You be well hold fast.
1:02:33
Will do.
1:02:34
Thank you, Peter, for joining us on today's episode of the How
1:02:36
to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
1:02:38
It was great to have you on and I can't wait to have you back.
1:02:40
'cause when I talk to other podcasters and I talk to people who've done
1:02:43
science communication for a long time, it's just, I feel like it's just easy.
1:02:45
We're just riffing off each other and seeing what's going on.
1:02:48
A lot of times when I plan to have a guest on, I go through this whole
1:02:51
exercise, what questions to ask and what type of storyline do I want to
1:02:55
put, do the research and everything.
1:02:56
I've known of Peter for quite some time too.
1:02:58
This is the first couple times we've met this year, but we've been able
1:03:00
to get along really, really well.
1:03:02
And I think as both of us have been involved in science communication for
1:03:05
a long time, different paths of course, and we know different people, but it's
1:03:08
really easy to talk to each other.
1:03:10
And so the planning of these types of podcasts is really just
1:03:12
riffing off of what we have to say.
1:03:14
At that point in time and it's just amazing to be able to have someone
1:03:18
on that can do that and be able to talk about so many things and
1:03:21
bring so much value to the podcast.
1:03:23
So I love what he does.
1:03:25
I love for you to see what he does, to hear what he does.
1:03:28
Go over to the website, the World Ocean Observatory, and you can check
1:03:32
it out at world Ocean observatory.org.
1:03:35
That's world Ocean observatory.org.
1:03:37
I'll put the link in the show notes so you can check that out.
1:03:39
You'll have all of his contact, all of his resources there and
1:03:42
also put it up on our website.
1:03:44
But this is someone that you shouldn't have been sleeping on for the last
1:03:47
20 some odd years, but also don't sleep on him in in the future.
1:03:50
This is a great organization that's doing wonderful things and I want you to get
1:03:53
to know him and we'll have him back on so you can get to him a little bit more each
1:03:56
and every time we have him on the podcast.
1:03:58
So I wanna thank Peter for joining us and I wanna thank you for listening.
1:04:01
If you have any questions or comments.
1:04:02
Leave those comments down below.
1:04:04
If you're watching this on YouTube, and if you're watching this on your favorite
1:04:06
podcast app, apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, whatever that app that you love
1:04:11
so much to listen to this podcast on, please get in touch with me two ways.
1:04:15
You can go to Instagram and DM me at how to protect the Ocean
1:04:19
that's at how to protect the Ocean.
1:04:21
And of course, if you want to get ahold of me through my personal email, you
1:04:23
can go to speak up for blue.com/contact.
1:04:27
That's speak up for blue.com/contact.
1:04:31
Fill out the form.
1:04:32
Can't wait to hear from you.
1:04:33
I'd love to talk to all of you, each and every one of you every single time.
1:04:36
But that's it for today's episode.
1:04:38
Again, thank you Peter, and again, thank you for listening.
1:04:40
This has been another episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
1:04:43
I'm your host Angela, and from the true Nord strong and free
1:04:46
podcasting with a purpose.
1:04:48
Have a great day.
1:04:49
We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.