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Restoring Thailand's Coastlines: The Promise and Pitfalls of Mangrove Projects · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  One of the big pushes about restoration is restoring coastlines
• 0:04
  with carbon sequestering type
• 0:08
  habitats, but also habitats that will protect the shoreline, will
• 0:12
  increase biodiversity, and will have economic
• 0:16
  as well as environmental impacts for a long time.
• 0:20
  But all of those different reasons to restore
• 0:24
  a coastline, they don't always align. And sometimes
• 0:28
  it gets in the way of actual proper restoration of
• 0:32
  a coastline. So we're gonna talk about Thailand, and we're gonna talk
• 0:35
  about the budding mangrove restoration, and some of the concerns that surround
• 0:38
  it with blue carbon, some private and public
• 0:43
  partnerships, and where and how restoration is
• 0:46
  actually done. We're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the How to
• 0:49
  Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey
• 0:56
  everybody welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
• 0:59
  your host Andrew Lewin and this is a podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean,
• 1:03
  how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a
• 1:06
  better ocean by taking action. This is where you find all things
• 1:10
  about the ocean and you can find out more information if you go
• 1:13
  to the website speakupforblue.com or
• 1:16
  you can also and you can also sign up for new
• 1:35
  news that's happening in and around the ocean and
• 1:38
  some new jobs that are available too if you're looking for a career. So lots of
• 1:42
  things to look for, speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter
• 1:46
  and then if you just want the regular website with a number of different podcasts on
• 1:49
  it, go to speakupforblue.com. Let's talk about
• 1:53
  Thailand and I want you to just be a little patient, sit back and
• 1:56
  just listen to what I'm going to say for this episode
• 1:59
  because there's a lot to get through and there's a lot of things
• 2:03
  that we have to consider. And I'm really glad this article was written by Carolyn Cowan
• 2:06
  from Among the Bay. And I'm going to link to the article
• 2:10
  in the show notes as well as the description if you're watching this on YouTube. there's
• 2:14
  a lot to know about restoration there's a
• 2:17
  lot that goes into restoration and there's a lot of things that could be good and
• 2:21
  bad when it comes to restoration some of those are the outside
• 2:25
  pressures that come with you know trying to
• 2:28
  do better for the planet we know we are in it right
• 2:32
  now for the the planet, right? We are
• 2:35
  seeing a lot of problems. We have observed climate change on
• 2:39
  countless different fronts, from droughts to wildfires, to
• 2:42
  sea level rise, to increased storm surges, more flooding, more
• 2:46
  rainfall, hotter ocean surfaces,
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  like record-breaking. And it doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime
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  soon. Some of the things that we can do are restore habitats
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  to decrease the effects of climate change and reduce climate change
• 3:02
  and greenhouse gases by sequestering more carbon. But
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  what we can also do is protect the coastlines more, just as
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  they originally did when these coastlines were intact. They
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  provided not only security from tsunamis or storm
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  surges, but they provided biodiversity so that
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  people can fish and people can live off and enjoy the
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  fruits of the labor of having healthy mangroves,
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  and also just a stable ecosystem, which again, provides
• 3:31
  security, provides natural resources ability, and
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  just makes everything better. Let's be honest, it just
• 3:38
  makes everything better. So today we're gonna be talking about Thailand's
• 3:43
  mangrove restoration projects and their plans, and how
• 3:46
  it can benefit them, but how some of the things that happen through
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  restoration, through different pressures and
• 3:53
  different, I guess, opportunities and projects, have not
• 3:56
  been as fruitful as hoped. And so we're gonna talk about that.
• 4:00
  But before we get into that, I want you to understand that
• 4:04
  restoration, one, is expensive. Protection is
• 4:08
  better. It's cheaper, it's longer lasting, and
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  it's better. But no matter what you choose, protection, restoration,
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  you always have to start somewhere. And even though we're
• 4:19
  gonna be talking about some problems that are going on with these
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  plans and with these projects over time, the strategy is the same,
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  is to continue to do things, continue to
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  restore, continue to protect. Be able
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  to find out the problems, adapt to those problems, and be able to
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  manage those problems better in the future by
• 4:40
  just switching up the strategy. So none
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  of these projects should be vilified. None of
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  these projects should be saying, hey, you know what, we can't do this
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  restoration because there's always these little problems here and there. No,
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  these problems happen when you start to do action. And
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  that's what we're talking about today is we're talking about action.
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  And that's sort of what I want to focus on is the action.
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  And so I want you to remember when I talk about a lot of these
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  things, and I identify some of the shortcomings of
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  these plans that, you know what, Thailand's doing a great job. The people
• 5:14
  of Thailand are doing a great job at forwarding this
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  restoration, okay? So there's a number of things that we need to consider when
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  we're restoring. Some things are a little bit higher priority than others,
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  but overall, there's still things that you can change and there's still things that you can
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  manage. So this is a great article. I highly recommend that you
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  take some time and read it. It's something that I
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  always love from Mongabay. The authors put in so much detail
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  and it's so great. And this article starts off with
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  speaking to someone who is uh... disorderly
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  the through the keeper of this education center
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  unnatural services called the mangrove nature school in
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  bangku a village roughly two hours drive south
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  of bangkok uh... and so in this uh... summit song
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  of groom uh... province i apologize if i'm not pronouncing this
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  properly i'm not very familiar with the pronunciation for a lot of
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  these places here in in thailand uh... but
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  So there's a huge area of,
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  well not huge I guess, but larger area of mangroves that are on
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  this preserve. It's been preserved for over three decades. It's a
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  6.5 hectare or 15.8 acres of patch of
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  mangrove forest that is next to this person's village. Being
• 6:32
  able to have that, you have mudskippers, iridescent fiddler
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  crabs that flip between the tangled
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  roots of a pair of seven and a half meter or 25 foot
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  mangrove trees as the tide laps relentlessly beneath the raised
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  walkway. So you get a little bit of a description of what happens in there. When
• 6:54
  they start to look at this coastline, they start to see
• 6:57
  a reminder that there is some eroding
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  of the coastline that's rapidly eroding. And Thailand's
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  Department of Marine and Coastal Resource Management estimates that parts of
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  the Gulf of Thailand lose up to 5 meters or 16 feet
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  of land to the sea level rise per year. We're going to talk about
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  sea level rise as well as coastal development in a little bit. Now
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  I want to go a bit into the history of
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  Thailand's mangrove areas and
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  the sort of degradation that we've seen over
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  that time because I think it's important to have sort
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  of a knowledge of where they were, where they've been, and how
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  it's going right now. So in 1961 there was estimate coverage
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  that was at 350,000 hectares
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  in 1961 and it dropped to 160,000 hectares by
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  1996. So that's a huge, huge drop. So
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  in 1996, they realized, hey, hold on a second, we need to build
• 8:03
  up our mangroves because they provide a lot of
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  services. So they provide, first of all, security. So
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  when a tsunami comes through, the areas that have intact
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  mangrove habitats dispel the energy, right?
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  They basically dissipate that energy of waves that comes over the
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  top and through the mangroves so that by the time it gets to some
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  of the villages and towns that are beyond the mangrove areas,
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  like that 50 meter swath that they like to keep in Thailand, then
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  the energy is a lot less, the destruction is a lot less,
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  lives are saved. and it's a lot better. So having an
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  intact and healthy mangrove forest is good from
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  a, or is great from a security standpoint. It's also great from a
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  biodiversity standpoint. There's lots of fishing that can go
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  on. It can feed local fishing villages for
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  a lifetime and more in generations if you have that healthy area,
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  right? Plus you have the diversity, you get a lot of birds. Having
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  biodiverse areas is meaning you have a stable coastline.
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  Meaning that, you know, when you have all these different animals that
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  take part in sort of taking care of
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  these habitats, you know, from making sure that invasive
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  species get eaten and taken away, or
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  that certainly everything is all balanced and stable, then you
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  start to have some good things happening there. So
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  that's all good from there. So having a biodiverse area, healthy
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  mangroves that can help with security is
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  a huge, huge impact. Then there's also the carbon
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  credits that you can get, that they're a carbon sink. So they sequester
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  carbon by continuing to build and regrow
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  and regenerate through mangroves, mangrove trees.
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  They are a tree, and they tend to sequester four times the
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  amount of, up to four times, maybe even more, of regular
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  trees that we normally talk about when we talk about blue carbon projects. So
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  they are a blue carbon community, a habitat, and something that
• 10:00
  we need to focus on. We did talk, and I'll put the link in the show notes,
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  recently with World Economic Forum about
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  one of their projects to restore mangroves in a lot of different places in
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  the tropics. And, you know, so that it's obviously
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  a worldwide and global initiative to do this, but in Thailand,
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  it's big. Now, 160,000 acres down in or down to 160,000 acres in 1996. The
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  response to that and the increase in
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  planting these types of mangroves increased by
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  50%. By the time, I think it was 2000 and,
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  so here it is right here, or
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  I guess right now, 2024, now has 248,400 mangroves. hectares
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  so it's a 50% increase of mangrove cover according
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  to UNESCO figures which is great that's a 50% of
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  coverage from 1996 that's big and
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  is a 400 sorry 46,400 of
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  those acres are managed for conservation as natural national
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  parks or wildlife sanctuaries so that's a big bonus
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  so we are seeing an increase in the coverage now
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  here's the thing we are seeing a mass
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  plantings happening and this is a lot of private and public sort
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  of partnerships that are happening where you will get companies who
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  are saying hey you know what we've planted a certain amount of trees a
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  certain amount of mangrove trees along this coastline and we've done this
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  and we've done that and the And it's great and
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  you get the companies that are being part of restoring the coastline, protecting
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  Thailand, protecting people along those coastlines and
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  just the nature of it all, the biodiversity, that
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  makes businesses feel good. It also shows that they're doing some good things and
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  it's good for their PR. And we've seen in the
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  history of Thailand, in the past, we've seen a lot of degradation and
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  removal for building like shrimp farms and development stuff.
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  And so now to see these coastlines being naturalized is
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  a good thing, right? We're starting to see that. And companies that
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  are partnering with the government to be able to
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  put these programs and have permission to plant in certain areas is
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  a benefit, right? To see that. So you'll see a sloth of in
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  pictures that this company is putting together of these little mango shoots
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  that are about yay big, you know, maybe a foot, foot and a half high, and
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  they're being planted in rows and they're like, you know, planted together and
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  so forth. And then all of a sudden, They
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  forget about it. They stop posting about it. They've planted their stuff, they've
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  done their thing, and they stop posting about it. Here's the
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  one of the concerns that's coming through, is where these trees
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  are being planted, where these mangrove seedlings are being planted. They're not being
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  planted in the right areas. They're being planted in areas that gets washed over
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  by the tide, and at the time for those seedlings, they get drowned.
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  They can actually drown, and they can get destroyed. And so these shoots
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  that you see will eventually die because they will they
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  will die. They will drown. They won't get enough. They won't get enough air.
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  They won't get enough, uh, non coverage of ocean and
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  they will dissipate and they will get destroyed. So all that money
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  that was put into, you know, grow the seedlings and
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  to create the seedlings and, uh, bring them over to certain
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  areas, the time it takes and the team building it does for these
• 13:22
  companies and the feel good, all that work, all that effort, all
• 13:25
  that money washed away with the ocean, literally washed
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  away. So these efforts are
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  not as good as that first preserve that we talked about at
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  the beginning of this show, when I went through it, where
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  it's like 6.4 hectares of mangrove forest that
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  is planted carefully, is planted together so
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  that the roots intertwine, so that they're
• 13:50
  stronger together, that are planted in specific areas
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  where the ocean's not gonna wash over them as
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  they're growing and not gonna kill them. When
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  we talk about restoration, this is what I talked about at the beginning, is that there
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  are certain places where you will restore, there are certain places where
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  you won't restore, and it does not matter if there were mangroves that were
• 14:11
  there before. The fact that there's been a lack of mangroves for
• 14:17
  10, 20, 30, 40 years could make that historic
• 14:21
  site not appropriate for planting
• 14:25
  mangroves anymore or for a mangrove habitat because it changes over time.
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  You know, if you don't have mangroves, you don't have the land because that
• 14:32
  gets eroded away from the water, from the ocean, and from the tides coming
• 14:36
  in and out. So you don't have that space. That's
• 14:39
  gone. You know, the fact that sea level is rising in
• 14:42
  a lot of these island areas and the fact that there is less
• 14:46
  of a stability because of lack of mangroves can change an area.
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  So something that was historically a mangrove habitat 30 years
• 14:53
  ago 40 years ago even 10 years ago may not be appropriate to
• 14:57
  be a mangrove habitat now and may need to be built up
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  which can take a lot more money and a lot more time to do but
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  just being just saying hey we're just going to plant these areas
• 15:07
  because this company was going to pay for a lot of that and they want to
• 15:10
  be a part of this that may not be the best area. So there
• 15:13
  needs to be better coordination of planning and the sites that need
• 15:17
  to do this. Now I'm a former GIS guy. I'm still a GIS guy,
• 15:20
  but I used to work in GIS and a lot of times when we talked about
• 15:23
  restoration, we would look at suitable areas.
• 15:27
  We'd have a map of the area, whether it be a coastline, whether it be on land. I
• 15:30
  did a lot of different things. We would look, okay, here
• 15:34
  are the attributes of an area that we're considering to
• 15:37
  restore or a number of areas that we're considering to restore. We would look
• 15:41
  at that attribute and we would look at, we'd basically do like a prediction model
• 15:44
  saying which areas would be the best, would have the best
• 15:48
  success rate of holding on to a mangrove for
• 15:51
  a longer period of time. So, it's not just that you plant it and
• 15:54
  a year later, all those seedlings are gone. It's you plant
• 15:58
  it and a year later, they're still there. Another year later, they're still there. Five
• 16:01
  years down the road, it's growing into a bigger mangrove area.
• 16:05
  Ten years down the road, all right, now we have an established area. We're starting to see more
• 16:09
  biodiversity of ocean animals that are there and mangrove animals, land
• 16:13
  and, you know, we're starting to see like birds, coastal birds and seabirds come
• 16:16
  out. We're starting to see like nursing areas starting to develop, nursery
• 16:20
  areas. These are really important. The longevity of
• 16:23
  that growth and seeing that habitat
• 16:27
  evolve and build on the security
• 16:31
  of that area and the stability of that area is
• 16:35
  great to see, but you have to give it time. It's going to take time. You can't just
• 16:38
  plant for the sake of planting and not being able to come
• 16:42
  back a year later and seeing the fruits of your labor, the fruits of
• 16:45
  the funding that's been put into it, and the actual labor that's been put
• 16:49
  into it. where you plant is a
• 16:52
  big thing. And so there needs to be a little bit better coordination and
• 16:55
  identification of candidate sites that are good to
• 16:58
  restore. So you're not just throwing away money for the sake of
• 17:03
  greenwashing, essentially, right? Because these companies, although they may not
• 17:06
  want to greenwash, they want to see the success, they don't necessarily follow
• 17:09
  the success. So having programs where the companies can be in
• 17:13
  it for the long run, like in it to win it really, to see
• 17:16
  that win and be able to report on that or be able to
• 17:19
  show that through social media or through, you know, talking to their clients or
• 17:23
  whatever business they're in. Being able to show success could
• 17:28
  really further these projects more. And when you have mangroves that
• 17:31
  are established, when you have mangroves that have been around for a while and that provide
• 17:35
  that security, provide that biodiversity benefit, then you start to
• 17:38
  see the social impacts and the environmental impacts quite
• 17:42
  quickly. And that is an important part of
• 17:45
  this area. The second problem that we've seen, and
• 17:49
  I told you to stay with me here, the second problem that we've seen is the
• 17:52
  fact that it's the same mangrove, the red mangroves, that
• 17:55
  are being chosen to basically be
• 17:59
  planted. So now you have a monoculture of habitat
• 18:02
  of mangroves. And some of these areas did not
• 18:06
  have red mangroves in the first place. right? Some
• 18:09
  of these areas had different types of mangroves. But
• 18:12
  the thing is, is that mangroves from a restoration practice is
• 18:16
  easier to grow, is faster to grow and faster to establish no matter where
• 18:20
  it is within, say in this case, in Thailand. So the
• 18:23
  red mangrove can actually grow faster, establish itself faster. So
• 18:26
  there's a good and bad thing in this. The good thing is that a lot of the times,
• 18:30
  from the government perspective, they want to provide security in case a tsunami comes
• 18:33
  in. We don't know when tsunamis are going to come in. The 2004 Christmas
• 18:36
  tsunami was one of those situations where it
• 18:40
  impacted a huge swath of people in Southeast Asia,
• 18:44
  and it killed a lot of people. And if you didn't have mangroves
• 18:47
  in your area restored, You were in trouble. But
• 18:51
  if you did, you weren't in as much of trouble and
• 18:54
  the damage wasn't as bad. And often places
• 18:58
  saving, you know, villages and towns and people. But
• 19:02
  if you, so here's the tugging, the
• 19:06
  pulling and tugging of this or push and pull of this. is
• 19:09
  the fact that when you are trying
• 19:13
  to restore for protection, you want to do it as fast as possible. The
• 19:16
  faster situation here is to have a monoculture of red mangroves to
• 19:20
  put up. This may not be the mangrove of the day. It may
• 19:23
  not be the mangrove that would do better in the soil, in
• 19:26
  the area that is being planted. But it does grow.
• 19:30
  And it's sort of more resilient than other species. So
• 19:34
  you're having this monoculture being built right off the bat and being planted and
• 19:38
  being established. But the good news is that you can start
• 19:41
  planting other species as that sort
• 19:44
  of forest, mangrove forest grows and is established, right?
• 19:48
  So the first thing is to get it up for security. The second thing is
• 19:51
  to prioritize for diversity of mangroves because
• 19:55
  you never know, you know, we've seen it here in Canada a lot of times and
• 19:58
  in the States, once you have like an invasive species come through and there's one
• 20:02
  species of tree that gets affected, it
• 20:05
  will destroy all those species. So you're not going to have forests
• 20:09
  that are a monoculture of
• 20:12
  a certain species, because if that species is affected, that entire forest is gone. So
• 20:15
  it's better to have diverse forests with different tree
• 20:18
  species, just like it would be for mangrove species. I
• 20:22
  don't know much about mangroves and invasive species, and I don't know if that's as
• 20:27
  prevalent as it is in forests here in Canada, but
• 20:31
  it can be pretty devastating. So if there is something like that, that's
• 20:34
  something you have to be careful of. Biodiversity in any
• 20:38
  kind of situation is much better, whether
• 20:41
  it comes from nature, animals, or even people. So we
• 20:45
  should consider that more. Regardless, that is
• 20:48
  one of the downfalls of trying to build and create and
• 20:52
  establish a mangrove forest that is diverse, that
• 20:55
  is long lasting, and that can help. But when you're trying to
• 21:00
  protect for security, you want that 50 meter swath
• 21:04
  of mangrove forest from the coastline that will
• 21:07
  help protect against any kind of tsunamis. So
• 21:10
  that's another one of those problems. Now the
• 21:13
  third and final sort of concern that we have is
• 21:17
  the fact that we're starting to see a lot of companies and a lot of governments start
• 21:20
  to jump on this blue carbon train. And
• 21:26
  the situation of blue carbon is really interesting. From
• 21:29
  a perspective of reestablishing blue carbon
• 21:32
  habitats, so you have mangroves, seagrasses, salt
• 21:36
  marshes, and so forth, these are areas
• 21:40
  that could sequester multiple
• 21:44
  times more carbon than regular
• 21:48
  plants and trees, right? So like land plants and
• 21:51
  trees. So it's important to have these blue carbon habitats along
• 21:55
  the coastline. Now the problem is that they're along the coastline. And a
• 21:58
  lot of times the coastline has been altered in
• 22:01
  many places around the world so that it is good
• 22:05
  for coastal housing and residences or
• 22:09
  hotels and tourism or things like that. But you still
• 22:12
  need those habitats in there, like I said, for security. They have multiple benefits.
• 22:15
  But the blue carbon benefit is that it can sequester more
• 22:19
  carbon, help us with reducing the amount of carbon
• 22:22
  dioxide that is in the atmosphere. So having
• 22:26
  more of those blue carbon habitats planted is better. But
• 22:30
  there's a bit of a greenwashing train, as there always is with a
• 22:33
  lot of private companies who are putting money into projects that
• 22:37
  may or may not be real in some cases, or they could be
• 22:40
  putting into projects where the location,
• 22:43
  just as I mentioned before, may not have been chosen right, but they can say, hey,
• 22:47
  we're doing stuff for carbon sequestration and we're establishing
• 22:51
  more blue carbon habitats, but they don't stay for a long time. Right?
• 22:55
  And so there's a push to do this type of work, but again,
• 22:59
  location matters and trying to figure out which location is
• 23:02
  the best is a big thing. So having more
• 23:06
  blue carbon habitats will be better, but you have to be careful of
• 23:09
  the game of blue carbon. There's also carbon sequestration,
• 23:14
  which is like, do we sink plants? And do we
• 23:17
  sink these seaweed type materials and
• 23:21
  aquatic plants and coastal plants that could absorb
• 23:24
  way more carbon than land plants and trees? And we
• 23:28
  sink them into the ocean to bury that carbon. That
• 23:31
  has not been perfected by any means. And there are very
• 23:35
  few projects that are going on that I know of that are successful in
• 23:39
  establishing that. And it's still in its early stages of
• 23:42
  doing that. We don't know the effect of sinking seaweed
• 23:46
  on mass levels in specific areas, the effect that
• 23:49
  that will have on the deep sea. Just like we don't know what the
• 23:52
  effect is on deep sea mining, on the deep sea, we don't know
• 23:55
  the effect of sinking all the seaweed and what that's going to do in
• 23:58
  the future for our deep sea. So a
• 24:02
  lot of the carbon sequestration, blue carbon, you have to
• 24:05
  be careful, although this is a very big key word within
• 24:09
  the conservation community and the climate change community, we do
• 24:12
  have to be careful and make sure that we are doing it properly. And not just
• 24:15
  for the sake of putting it up on your letterhead, a blue carbon company
• 24:19
  or a company that supports blue carbon habitats, or even, you
• 24:22
  know, the UN or, you know, World Economic
• 24:26
  Forum or big organizations like that, international organizations
• 24:30
  and even even small to medium-sized to large NGOs
• 24:34
  that are getting into this type of practice, they have
• 24:37
  to be careful that these programs are real and these programs are establishing long-term
• 24:43
  blue carbon habitats, right? Because they're not just blue carbon habitats, they
• 24:46
  provide biodiversity, they provide security, these are
• 24:50
  some big to-do habitats. So those are sort
• 24:53
  of the three problems that people have, especially
• 24:57
  in Thailand, when it comes to putting
• 25:00
  this forward. The other thing, there's one more, sorry I forgot to mention,
• 25:05
  has to do with when you have private and public partnerships, you have
• 25:08
  private companies who are buying up swaths of
• 25:12
  land. They have ownership in some cases over that
• 25:15
  land. And so the question comes is, if they pay for
• 25:19
  planting mangroves in specific areas, does that area become
• 25:22
  theirs to own? Or does it go back to the people of
• 25:25
  Thailand? Does it go back to the local villages of the people who live there? Do they
• 25:29
  lose their rights on those lands? Obviously, that's not what is
• 25:32
  wanted. That's not the outcome that's wanted. So people want to retain the ownership
• 25:36
  rights. of their land and they don't want to have
• 25:40
  it go to a company where they can just do whatever they want with
• 25:43
  it and we know how companies are sometimes and many times and
• 25:47
  you know that's something that can be very concerning. So that's sort of
• 25:50
  the final thing that happens. Now overall, planting is
• 25:53
  great. Making sure that we have restoration location
• 25:57
  sites chosen for specific reasons of long-term restoration
• 26:02
  and establishment of mangrove areas will be key
• 26:06
  to ensuring that these mangroves stick around for a long period
• 26:09
  of time. You can have social economic benefits as well
• 26:13
  as environmental benefits. we can reduce climate change, we can
• 26:16
  have more blue carbon habitats along our coastline, naturalize
• 26:20
  our coastlines more, especially in Thailand, and
• 26:24
  just have a better planet after that. A lot of
• 26:27
  work still needs to be done, but there are great people that are doing the
• 26:30
  work in Thailand and across the world, and I think
• 26:33
  it's really great. Now, I know in my audience here, There
• 26:37
  are people who are in the business of restoration, whether it be corals,
• 26:41
  whether it be mangroves, whether it be seagrasses. I would love to hear your
• 26:44
  stories. I would love to interview you on this podcast for your story.
• 26:47
  So if you have a project that you've been working on,
• 26:51
  or you are someone who's been in this field for
• 26:54
  quite some time, I would love to hear from you. Reach out to me on
• 26:58
  Instagram, at HowToProtectTheOcean. I would love to hear your story.
• 27:01
  So that's at HowToProtectTheOcean. And everybody else,
• 27:05
  I'd love to hear what you think of this story, what you think of restoration in general,
• 27:08
  and some of the key concerns that we went through here today. I'd love
• 27:12
  to hear your overall thoughts. You can leave comments on Spotify, on
• 27:15
  YouTube, in the comments section, or you can give me a
• 27:19
  shout out or DM me on Instagram, at howtoprotecttheocean.
• 27:23
  I want to thank you so much for having patience to listen. I know this has been quite
• 27:28
  an intuitive and long episode. We're almost at a half hour right
• 27:31
  now, but it's something that I want to go over for a long time.
• 27:34
  So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of
• 27:37
  the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll