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From Whales to Words: The Role of Environmental Communication in North Atlantic Right Whale Conservation · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  A big part of conservation is how we get the message
• 0:03
  out when we identify a particular issue or when we identify something that's
• 0:07
  really great in the world of oceans is how do we get that
• 0:10
  message out and what the effect on people who
• 0:14
  are receiving that message is and how all
• 0:17
  the parts that go into putting a message together. And
• 0:21
  I'm really excited today to talk to Marcus Reamer,
• 0:24
  who's a PhD candidate at the University of Miami. He's
• 0:28
  studying environmental communication, especially when it comes down
• 0:31
  to North Atlantic right whales. We're going to be talking about
• 0:35
  all the things that happened over the last two decades in terms of
• 0:38
  communication, the types of communication that happen, especially within
• 0:42
  media around the North Atlantic right whales, And
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  it's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to be talking about sort of how journalism, the
• 0:50
  way it could go compared to the way it does go in
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  terms of when they cover conservation stories and conflict. So
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  we're going to talk about a lot of really cool things. I can't wait for you to listen.
• 1:00
  Let's start the show with Marcus Reamer talking about environmental
• 1:04
  communication. Let's start that show. Hey
• 1:11
  everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
• 1:14
  your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with
• 1:18
  the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to
• 1:21
  live for a better ocean by taking action. And
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  I have to tell you, I am extremely excited to
• 1:28
  be talking to Marcus Reimer today. Not just because Marcus
• 1:31
  is doing his PhD on environmental communication, which is Something
• 1:35
  that I've always wanted to do or especially lately wanting to do but
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  it's and we're just gonna get down and dirty into this
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  Topic because communication especially science communication
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  is not talked about enough in my opinion I know I like to
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  talk about it because something I'm really really interested in but
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  it's something that I feel like we all need to learn about because I
• 1:56
  It's not just communicators like Marcus and I that are going to be talking about oceans
• 2:00
  or directors of communications of different organizations,
• 2:04
  but it's going to be you. You and I as just people who
• 2:08
  are interested in protecting the ocean, how we are going to
• 2:12
  get those messages across to our family members, our friends, our
• 2:16
  colleagues, and to make sure that people are thinking and feeling connected
• 2:20
  to that ocean. That is where we
• 2:23
  need to go, not only with this podcast, but a lot of other different types
• 2:26
  of communication styles to get people to really
• 2:30
  understand the significance of protecting the ocean. So
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  today, I had Marcus on because I wanted to talk to him
• 2:37
  about doing his PhD. And so we talked about all
• 2:40
  the different types of degrees he has. He has two masters, one PhD, an undergraduate degree,
• 2:44
  of course. And well, he's about to get a PhD, knock on wood.
• 2:47
  Hopefully about to get his PhD in about seven weeks of this recording. But,
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  you know, I want to talk about that process, especially when it
• 2:55
  came to environmental communication, his thought process on it. But
• 2:58
  we also like at the end of like the last half of the episode, we really
• 3:02
  talk about communication. We really talk about that focus
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  and how there are different stakeholders involved and how maybe in a
• 3:09
  in when an issue comes up like northern northern northern
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  Atlantic right whales and like lobster fishers, that
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  they're not the only two you know, people involved or organisms
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  involved in this conflict. There are other people that are involved that will benefit
• 3:24
  from having these whales around. There are people who benefit
• 3:27
  from fishing with different gear. These are complex issues
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  that need to be talked about, but it's really difficult to
• 3:34
  talk about all the complexities to an audience that just wants
• 3:38
  to know, hey, how do we fix this? How do we fix this quickly? It's never quickly, especially
• 3:41
  when it comes to marine science and conservation. And that's what we're going to get into with
• 3:45
  Marcus. Marcus Reamer talking about his
• 3:48
  dissertation and how we can communicate over
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  issues such as, you know, the critically endangered and protecting the critically
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  endangered Northern Atlantic right whale. We're gonna talk about
• 3:58
  that on this interview. Enjoy the interview and I will talk to
• 4:02
  you after. Hey Marcus, welcome to the How to Protect
• 4:09
  Andrew, I'm always ready to talk about environmental communication. Are
• 4:14
  Oh, I am ready. I've been looking forward to this episode ever since we
• 4:17
  met over LinkedIn. You know, you shared one of your,
• 4:21
  I believe it was one of your chapters of your dissertation that you're currently doing.
• 4:25
  on environmental communications surrounding the oceans. And
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  I think the post was, if I remember correct, I've seen a lot of posts since.
• 4:31
  But I think it was about the North Atlantic right whale and
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  sort of how communication was done around the management around that. And obviously, we've covered that
• 4:39
  on the podcast. So we're familiar with the situation in terms
• 4:42
  of entanglements and obviously, the critically endangered
• 4:46
  status of these whales and how shipping is related and
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  all the challenges that they face. But I've never
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  really talked about the communication and how communication plays such an
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  important role in not only looking at endangered species, but
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  other aspects of the ocean. And it's always
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  great when I can connect with somebody who's also in communications,
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  who's formally learning about communications at a university. I've just kind
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  of flown by the seat of my pants and just kind of done it that way. But
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  it's great to see and to be able to engage with somebody who's studying
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  it right now and is doing a PhD on it. And
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  then when we looked into it, we started talking before we press record, there's a lot of
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  stuff to you in terms of like you have two masters, you know,
• 5:28
  you have a Bachelor of Science. And so we're gonna talk
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  all about that and sort of like how you see communication fitting
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  in, not only for like your career in the future, but just sort of
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  in the environmental movement or, you know, whether it has to do with climate change or
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  oceans, especially, and where that kind of fits in in the future
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  for either yourself as well as just for the the movement in
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  general and the conservation in general. So before we get to that, we're
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  going to get to know you a little bit. So Marcus, why don't you just let us know who
• 5:58
  Sure. I am currently a PhD candidate at the University
• 6:01
  of Miami's Rosensteil School. I'm in the Department of
• 6:05
  Environmental Science and Policy, and I'm
• 6:08
  an Abbess Fellow at the Abbess Center, which is an interdisciplinary PhD
• 6:13
  program. I'm currently studying the
• 6:16
  role of communication and media in the context of
• 6:20
  whale and dolphin conservation. And that
• 6:23
  won't be true for much longer. Uh, we're recording this today, exactly
• 6:27
  seven weeks before my defense, which is pretty exciting. So
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  hopefully by that time, yeah. Yeah. Hopefully
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  a couple of months from now, I'll be able to say I am a PhD
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  instead of candidate, but I am really fortunate to
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  say that I've spent my entire career in ocean conservation.
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  I started about 12 years ago in animal care
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  and training where I spent a few years where I really found my
• 6:54
  interest in science and environmental communication. When
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  I was, you know, talking to visitors from all over the world and
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  sharing stories about our animals and how that relates
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  to animals out in the ocean and what people can do to
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  care for all of them. So, A
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  few years into that career, I decided to go back to school. As you mentioned,
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  I have a couple of master's degrees. Got my
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  master of professional science from the university of Miami in
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  marine conservation, where I really started to explore the
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  idea of science communication about the ocean and
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  graduated after the 2016 election. It was kind of an
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  uncertain time for a lot of people and a weird time
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  to be searching for a job. So I wanted to expand my skillset. And
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  I found a really great program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel
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  Hill, uh, in public administration with a focus on
• 7:48
  nonprofit management. So that's where that second master's comes in
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  the, around the same time that I started that degree, I
• 7:55
  started working at a job in DC and did those two things together.
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  So I've. Since I left animal care
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  and training, I've worked in communication capacities for
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  organizations like seven seas media. the National Marine Sanctuary
• 8:10
  Foundation outside of DC, and a consulting firm. And
• 8:15
  I also work part-time here at the Rosensteil School, where
• 8:19
  I share my own career story and
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  experiences with students in our Master of
• 8:25
  Professional Science program, where I sort
• 8:29
  of help them explore different career paths, sort of like you
• 8:32
  were saying before, for people who
• 8:35
  might not know all that's out there or might want to try different things
• 8:40
  and figure out sort of where they want to land. So help them
• 8:43
  explore career paths and prepare for their required internships
• 8:47
  and postgraduate careers. So lots to
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  work with here, but currently a PhD candidate,
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  currently helping our master's students in one of our programs across
• 8:59
  14 tracks. And just really grateful to be here today and
• 9:03
  to be able to to share my perspective and
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  Yeah. And I love, I just love the beginning of the story too, uh,
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  where, you know, you, you're working a little bit and you
• 9:17
  kind of figure out, okay, this is what I really like to do before
• 9:21
  that. Let's like go back a little bit before that. Did you have a
• 9:24
  bachelor of science at that point or an undergrad degree,
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  um, before you worked, uh,
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  with the sort of the, the communications like the animal communications were the
• 9:38
  So I got my bachelor of arts in psychology, um,
• 9:42
  with, with the intent of working with animals.
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  I kind of wanted to live out every four year old's dream and work with marine mammals
• 9:50
  and was really fortunate to land a job, you know,
• 9:53
  right out of college and did that for four or five
• 9:57
  years. So that, that was sort of always the plan was ocean
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  animals. I grew up in central Maryland. Uh,
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  my. parents own a seafood restaurant. And I remember
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  distinctly from a, from a very young age, getting in trouble
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  for trying to bring live blue crabs home to keep his pets. Um,
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  and we, yeah, we, we traveled a
• 10:21
  lot to the Eastern shore of Maryland and the Delaware beaches. So
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  the ocean's really just always been part of my life. And
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  when I was eight years old, uh, a family friend, um,
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  took me to the national aquarium in Baltimore and we were supposed to
• 10:37
  feed the sharks that day. That tour got canceled and
• 10:40
  I was kind of salty about it. And the backup plan was to
• 10:43
  go meet and interact with one of the dolphins during the show. And
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  I can tell you pretty much everything about it to
• 10:51
  this day. So that was my inspiration. I was eight putting
• 10:54
  on the rubber boots and, you know, meeting a dolphin and giving
• 10:58
  hand signals, spelling fish. Um, in front of a stadium
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  full of people, which was pretty cool. The dolphin was. Yeah.
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  The dolphin was also eight. Her name was Chesapeake. Um, and
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  what's really cool. I like that everything. And what's really cool
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  is that when I was in animal care and training, I actually went back to
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  the national aquarium to work with Chesapeake and her daughter,
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  uh, in the Marine mammal pavilion. So it was really cool. Yeah.
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  Really cool. Like full circle. That's so cool. the
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  same dolphin who inspired me to really
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  pursue that career path, who led me to the University of
• 11:34
  Miami to do all of these things. You know, I got to go back and really
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  get to know her and see how she had grown as well. So a
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  That is so cool. I love that. I love hearing stories
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  like that. Now, when you were working at Animal Care,
• 11:50
  and you're telling these stories, and you said you love sharing stories about
• 11:55
  some of these animals to connect with people. We are a storytelling
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  species. We like to hear stories. We like to tell stories. What
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  about that aspect said, Hey, you know what? I want to
• 12:05
  start looking at more of a communications role within,
• 12:09
  within the oceans or within ocean conservation, because, you
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  know, it's not something a lot of people think of right off the bat. Like I know for
• 12:16
  me to start doing podcasting, it kind of came around around
• 12:19
  and about way. Um, but what was it for you that said, Hey,
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  I think it was two things. I, like I said, I was
• 12:31
  really fortunate to just land that dream job straight out
• 12:34
  of college. So I started really early. I worked down in the keys, um,
• 12:38
  went and worked in, in Baltimore, had this full circle moment and
• 12:43
  was really saying, is this something I can imagine myself doing for, you
• 12:47
  know, 30 or more years. And, you
• 12:51
  know, a lot of internal dialogue on that one, but at that
• 12:54
  same time, you know, I met some really incredible people
• 12:58
  from all over the world who had an interest in
• 13:02
  not only the animals in our care, but the animals out in
• 13:05
  the ocean as well. And being able to, you
• 13:08
  know, teach people the most basic things. Dolphins
• 13:12
  are not fish, they're mammals, right? Right. I'm an ocean expert.
• 13:16
  You're knowledgeable about the ocean, right? But there are just a lot of
• 13:19
  people who don't know things that feel very
• 13:22
  simple. So being able to, to empower people. Um,
• 13:27
  with knowledge and they, they leave more educated than they
• 13:30
  arrived with was really inspiring, but really it
• 13:34
  was those more individual interactions,
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  whether it was kids during a poolside meet and greet who
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  I saw a lot of my eight year old self in them and saw that, that
• 13:45
  twinkle in their eye or. if it was kids
• 13:48
  from Baltimore City Public Schools coming in for straight
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  A night, if they wouldn't otherwise be able to come to
• 13:55
  the aquarium and show them dolphins and really share my
• 13:59
  love with them through story. And so sort
• 14:03
  of as I got to the tail end and I was saying, is this something that I could do
• 14:06
  for another few decades? Like what does growth look
• 14:09
  like? I'm a person who really loves to learn and explore and challenge
• 14:13
  myself. Every day working with animals is an
• 14:16
  adventure. Um, but thinking about that fulfillment, I
• 14:20
  was like, you know what? I'm a storyteller. I
• 14:23
  have, you know, use the animals that were either
• 14:27
  behind me or in front of me or next to me, wherever I was sort of
• 14:30
  standing in that amphitheater to inspire people to
• 14:33
  care a little bit more about the ocean than, than when they woke up that day.
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  So that's when I was like, you know what? I kind of want to go back
• 14:40
  to school and I want to start exploring science
• 14:44
  and environmental communication, whatever that means. Yeah,
• 14:47
  so it was sort of those two things converging and it
• 14:54
  So was it difficult finding a pro you went back. Is that where you went back to?
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  I went back to Miami for that one. They have a master of professional science program.
• 15:05
  So it's okay. Um, it's You it's
• 15:08
  kind of a choose your own adventure you write and treat it like a traditional master
• 15:12
  of science where you complete a hypothesis based research
• 15:16
  project or you can do more professional based non
• 15:19
  hypothesis work. And so I enrolled
• 15:23
  in the marine conservation program, which is very flexible and sort
• 15:28
  of took coursework that I would have never really thought to take during
• 15:32
  my undergrad years. Of course, I threw a bunch of marine mammal classes in
• 15:35
  there. to feed my passion for that and
• 15:39
  was able to explore science communication through
• 15:43
  my project, which I did with Seven Seas Media,
• 15:46
  which at that time was called Seven Seas Marine Conservation and
• 15:50
  Travel Magazine. Yeah.
• 15:54
  So sort of charted my own
• 15:57
  course there, but had the kind
• 16:00
  of expert support that I needed in our faculty to
• 16:03
  really work through that knowing that I was
• 16:11
  Right, right. There's a lot of more hands-on communication
• 16:15
  roles too, right? I mean, that's what I think that's what it provided. It
• 16:18
  was like that professional science, like let's get, I
• 16:21
  love these programs. I feel like programs like this, we don't advertise
• 16:25
  enough. I think people think that if you want to go into marine
• 16:29
  conservation, I've seen this a lot where people are trying to, you know, they work for
• 16:32
  a bit, they may not have thought about going into marine biology or
• 16:35
  marine conservation, and then all of a sudden they're like, I really like this, it's
• 16:39
  really fulfilling, and they're not getting the fulfillment in the current, you
• 16:42
  know, stream that they're at. So they kind of come back like, well, I
• 16:46
  need to become a marine biologist now. And I always tell them, like, you don't necessarily need to
• 16:49
  become a marine biologist. You might be able to take the degree that you have. and
• 16:52
  then use that to get into a master's of professional
• 16:56
  science or something similar at a different university and just
• 17:00
  to be like, hey, this is what I can use now. And you don't have to go back
• 17:03
  to do another four-year degree to restart. And
• 17:07
  that's expensive, one. Plus, it may not give you
• 17:10
  what you want. It may not give you what you like. There's a lot of us who've gone through the
• 17:13
  science program that don't end up in science all the time. And so
• 17:17
  I think for a lot of people, These
• 17:21
  programs are really ideal. And I know the
• 17:25
  Master of Professional Science has been a huge hit in University
• 17:28
  of Miami. So that's always great to
• 17:31
  hear. Now, coming out of that, that was right before the
• 17:38
  Right after. I graduated December 2016. So right
• 17:42
  in the aftermath, when everybody was sort of wondering
• 17:48
  Yeah, because we knew at that point, you know, Trump became president.
• 17:51
  He wasn't the most, the administration wasn't, I'll
• 17:54
  say this politely, the most environmentally focused. Let's just
• 17:58
  say a lot of environmental programs federally got cut and
• 18:03
  funding as well got cut, which put a damper on a lot of
• 18:07
  environmental organizations and their ability to hire. ability
• 18:10
  to do projects and so forth. So you decided to go back for
• 18:13
  that masters of, uh, I believe it
• 18:17
  was, it was at Chapel Hill, the public administration. So
• 18:20
  you kind of saw like a different skillset that you might be able to use in
• 18:28
  I think it's a great point. And I should say that the
• 18:32
  last quarter of every year can be a challenging time
• 18:35
  to look for a job, right? Because, you know, end
• 18:39
  of budget year, people are taking off for the holidays. It
• 18:43
  doesn't really start back until January. So that compounded with
• 18:48
  waiting for the new president elect to take office
• 18:51
  and see what was going to happen, you know, made
• 18:55
  it a bit of a challenging job search. And one
• 19:00
  of the things that I knew I wanted to do was work for nonprofit organizations.
• 19:04
  What were the skills that I did not. get coursework in
• 19:08
  during my professional science master's degree. There were courses that
• 19:12
  just weren't offered when I was there that had previously been
• 19:15
  offered things like grant writing or leadership. And
• 19:19
  so I was like, you know what, if I'm going to be looking for
• 19:22
  a job anyway, let's see about gaining some new skills
• 19:25
  and really focusing on the nuts
• 19:30
  and bolts of being not just a good employee, but
• 19:34
  you know, somebody who could lead organizations or understand organizations
• 19:39
  and be a really effective team member wherever I ended up. And
• 19:43
  so I thought I was applying to a certificate program.
• 19:47
  It ended up being an online master's program. So happy accident there
• 19:51
  as Bob Ross would call it. Um, at
• 19:54
  around the same time that I was accepted, uh, which
• 19:58
  I guess was March of that year. I had found my job at
• 20:01
  the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and I started those two things about
• 20:05
  the same time. So it was really cool to step into
• 20:08
  a new job, which is a senior level role under new
• 20:12
  leadership, lots of big challenges to tackle, and
• 20:15
  then also sort of learn about those things through
• 20:20
  this public administration program and apply them as I went. So
• 20:24
  just a really, really incredible secondary experience.
• 20:27
  I'm so grateful for that. opportunity.
• 20:32
  And while it was an online program, you know, Chapel Hill's just so good
• 20:36
  at what they do on that front. I was able to go to the campus, uh,
• 20:39
  two years in a row for what are called immersions and it's online in-person
• 20:44
  students. We all come together for special topics and it was just a
• 20:47
  really special experience. Yeah. So I call that like
• 20:51
  the third leg of my three legged stool. I've got the science, I've
• 20:54
  got the communication and then I've got that sort of, um,
• 20:58
  an organizational management or administration skillset. Because
• 21:03
  one of the things that I often tell students or people that
• 21:06
  I mentor, no matter what you want to do, you're going to work
• 21:09
  for an organization or with other people. Even if you want to
• 21:13
  be a consultant and work for yourself, even if you want to
• 21:16
  be quote unquote, just a shark scientist off on
• 21:19
  a remote Island somewhere, you're gonna, be
• 21:23
  affiliated with an organization. So you should understand what they
• 21:26
  are, how they work effectively, and how you fit into all
• 21:29
  that. So I was really grateful for that experience as
• 21:35
  Yeah. This is something I've been discovering even recently. I
• 21:39
  just turned 46 and over this past
• 21:43
  year I've discovered there's a lot of jobs
• 21:46
  where they're like program coordinators or program managers
• 21:50
  and this and that. And you require a skill set
• 21:53
  that you may not learn in university through like a marine biology
• 21:57
  degree, maybe in the professional science, depending on the track that you use,
• 22:01
  But it's not easy to find a program that
• 22:04
  has, it's a pretty diverse set of skills that
• 22:08
  you can develop. So having something like in public administration or non-profit
• 22:13
  work or something like that, that you can gain that experience is
• 22:17
  really great. Project management experience is so helpful.
• 22:20
  It just keeps you organized. It allows you to have maybe
• 22:24
  those senior type roles, managers, supervisors and so forth.
• 22:27
  So it must have been great to be able to learn that alongside that Marine Sanctuary
• 22:31
  program because you're just basically like, here's what I'm learning and
• 22:34
  here's how I'm applying it. I'm already applying in real time and I
• 22:37
  think that's such a, like you said, enriching
• 22:41
  experience. You don't get that often. It couldn't have
• 22:44
  been easy to do though, like work a full-time job and then do an online
• 22:53
  Carefully. I'm really thankful
• 22:57
  that, you know, my boss at the sanctuary foundation was super supportive
• 23:01
  and, you know, the program was designed
• 23:05
  for working professionals that online format is really for.
• 23:09
  people who either have a job or, you know, are in
• 23:12
  the middle of their search. And so it's a lot of evening coursework, asynchronous.
• 23:16
  So I would be watching my asynchronous lectures. I
• 23:20
  shouldn't say watching because I was listening to them, you know, on
• 23:23
  my commute into work, for example, right. You know,
• 23:27
  so, so carefully, but, um, the
• 23:30
  really cool thing was that like, In
• 23:34
  my master of professional science experience, I was around a
• 23:37
  lot of really knowledgeable and really exciting people who were tackling diverse
• 23:41
  topics in ocean science, conservation, you know,
• 23:46
  all kinds of stuff like that. The master of professional science, it's
• 23:49
  just so much broader because local government, there
• 23:53
  are thousands of them in the U S right. So people
• 23:57
  working on veterans issues and human health and housing I
• 24:01
  could learn new perspectives and apply it to my own work
• 24:05
  in a really different way that I didn't get in the professional science. So
• 24:09
  in that experience where I brought the communications interests and had to
• 24:12
  figure out how to work with that in public administration, I
• 24:15
  brought the environmental science and had to figure out sort of how
• 24:19
  that fits with what we were talking about. And my
• 24:22
  colleagues were so diverse and just so interesting that
• 24:26
  it never really felt like. Work. So it didn't feel like
• 24:29
  an extra lift because I found it exciting. And
• 24:33
  fun. So while it was, you know, finals
• 24:38
  week was never fun for anybody, but it was that combo of, of
• 24:42
  enjoying it and just having a really supportive, uh, employer
• 24:46
  and, and team and just a program that was run really,
• 24:50
  really well allowed me to thrive. And I credit
• 24:53
  a lot of my success to that program. As well, because it
• 24:57
  informed a lot of my, my work moving forward into the PhD and
• 25:04
  Awesome. That's great to hear. And so that's what so that's what made you
• 25:08
  do the PhD. So my next question, you
• 25:12
  know, going back to University of Miami to do the PhD, why there?
• 25:17
  And and again, going into communications, like what
• 25:20
  did you have the idea of what you want to do going into the
• 25:23
  PhD? Or was this something you had an idea of who you want
• 25:31
  It's an interesting question, because I My parents bring
• 25:34
  this up all the time. I said, I would never go to graduate school. And then I
• 25:37
  went and then I went again and then I went a
• 25:41
  third time. So it's sort
• 25:45
  of been, it's evolved as we've gone, I should
• 25:48
  say, but, um, you know, coming out
• 25:51
  of the public administration program, I was
• 25:55
  like, man, I still just don't quite feel finished. And the things that
• 25:58
  I was seeing, I was the communications director for the sanctuary foundation. I
• 26:02
  had. you know, just an incredible
• 26:05
  front row seat to what was going on in ocean science
• 26:09
  and conservation across the country. At the time there were 14 sites
• 26:13
  from American Samoa to the Florida Keys to Massachusetts,
• 26:17
  different communities, you know, different topics. I could be talking about
• 26:21
  whales in one meeting and then shipwrecks in another, working
• 26:26
  to support fundraising, talking about grants we were making.
• 26:29
  So just that incredible diversity of topics that I
• 26:33
  could talk about. was really fulfilling to me. But,
• 26:36
  um, I think it was in that role that I was really just noticing this
• 26:41
  gap between ocean communication and
• 26:45
  terrestrial conservation communication, climate communication. And
• 26:50
  that really inspired me to, to pause and be like, you
• 26:54
  know, I'm thinking about a PhD. I think I
• 26:57
  would want it to be about ocean communication and really how that
• 27:01
  fits The ocean conservation movement,
• 27:04
  and this was before the UN ocean decade and things like that.
• 27:08
  So I was like, you know what? Let's just try and let's
• 27:12
  find a program that's interdisciplinary and lets people get
• 27:15
  weird with what they want to try out. And I
• 27:19
  didn't have to look much further than the university of Miami for the
• 27:23
  program here at our Abbott center for ecosystem science and policy. It's.
• 27:28
  a little bit different from a traditional PhD because you don't have
• 27:31
  to work with any one faculty member in a particular school
• 27:35
  or college. So ending up there was
• 27:38
  definitely a match. I was familiar with the university and with the
• 27:42
  Rosensteil school already. And so I was able
• 27:45
  to come back and jump right in.
• 27:49
  So I didn't go in with this proposal to do communication
• 27:52
  and media about right whales, but it sort of just naturally fell
• 27:57
  into place because I started six months before COVID. I had
• 28:00
  these big dreams to go out and do community engaged work and,
• 28:04
  and tackle all these topics. Wanted to work on some of this stuff with the
• 28:07
  Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary expansion. And,
• 28:11
  and a lot of that got just curbed by
• 28:14
  COVID and we obviously had to adjust
• 28:18
  course. And I give all the credit in the world to my co-advisors who
• 28:21
  were so patient during that time. When I was like, well, can't
• 28:25
  go out and do that. So what are we going to do instead? Here's a million bad
• 28:28
  ideas that I'm just throwing out. You
• 28:31
  know, what do we think could work? So I
• 28:35
  not only came into the PhD with an open mind
• 28:39
  and an open question, but the world
• 28:43
  altering sort of change that was COVID also
• 28:48
  forced me to think on my feet and brought me
• 28:53
  Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that's great. Like, the
• 28:57
  one interesting, I mean, there were a lot of interesting things that happened during
• 29:00
  COVID with with graduate students, some good, some bad, you
• 29:03
  know, a lot of people had to pivot and switch the focus of
• 29:07
  their, you know, some people couldn't do fieldwork anymore.
• 29:11
  So they had to, you know, take the data they had and make the best of what they
• 29:14
  could and maybe elaborate on some of the things or
• 29:17
  like I said, pivot on in ways
• 29:21
  that they never thought of before. you
• 29:26
  definitely built the skill set as a graduate student during COVID, where
• 29:30
  you had to be really resilient. And I'm sure it tested the
• 29:33
  mind body with all of that. So
• 29:38
  what did you decide when you did your PhD, as
• 29:42
  that changed where you couldn't do as much community engagement, if at all,
• 29:47
  what line did you wanna go towards? Like what line did you wanna follow?
• 29:54
  Yeah. Well, and I shouldn't call them bad ideas, but when
• 29:59
  you brainstorm, there's just so much that ends up on the cutting room floor. And
• 30:02
  that's, if I looked back at my idea sheets
• 30:06
  from year one versus now, I would wonder what
• 30:09
  the heck I was thinking. But, um, I think that's all
• 30:13
  of us when we look back at our past work. So One,
• 30:18
  you know, the fact that I had the experience as an online student
• 30:22
  at UNC really helped me learn
• 30:25
  to work effectively online and in a virtual environment. So.
• 30:30
  That's when I said, you know, it's at least for the foreseeable future,
• 30:33
  we're going to need to look into things
• 30:37
  that don't require interacting with people. So what is that exploring media,
• 30:41
  um, whatever that looks like. And. you
• 30:45
  know, I tried my hardest coming into this PhD to, to try
• 30:48
  to branch out and do other topics and whales
• 30:53
  and dolphins, they always just call back to me. And so I was like, you know what?
• 30:56
  Well, in dolphin conservation, my advisor at
• 31:00
  the time agreed. She said, this is your wheelhouse. There's
• 31:04
  no need to try to branch outside that. So let's just follow that where
• 31:08
  you think it'll lead. And around that same time, two documentaries
• 31:12
  came out about right whales. And I said, well, This
• 31:16
  is ripe. This is prime for, for the exploring. And
• 31:19
  this is the kind of work that we can do. This is something that's
• 31:22
  timely. It's. You know, not around
• 31:26
  people. So what if we did right whales? Yeah. And
• 31:29
  that's sort of how we ended up on that one. I had been familiar with it.
• 31:33
  Right. Um, done, obviously learned
• 31:37
  about it in courses, done projects. I did like my
• 31:40
  GIS course in. Uh, the MPS program, I
• 31:44
  did a paper about right whales, um, supported
• 31:48
  some of that work, uh, while I was with the sanctuary foundation. And
• 31:51
  I was like, this is where we'll land. I think we can do something pretty
• 31:55
  interesting with this and look at right whale conservation from
• 31:59
  a different angle, which also kept
• 32:03
  me motivated going back to what you said about needing resilience
• 32:07
  and, you know, to be able to make it through a
• 32:10
  graduate program, that was something that was gonna keep my attention and keep
• 32:13
  me motivated, not all day, every day. Having
• 32:18
  an interest and feeling like I was doing something interesting definitely
• 32:23
  helped. So that's how we landed on Right Whale Communication, Right
• 32:30
  Yeah, not communicating with Right Whales, like talking to
• 32:33
  them or getting there, it's about the media. And
• 32:37
  to be honest, There were
• 32:40
  a lot of things that went on, not only in the past, but even during COVID in
• 32:44
  regards to North Atlantic right whales. I mean, we've seen
• 32:47
  like in the early 2000s, they weren't critically endangered or
• 32:50
  maybe even before that. Then all of a sudden they plummeted. and
• 32:54
  then you know there was that disastrous year of fatalities
• 32:59
  in it was 2017 where they started to come up to the Gulf of
• 33:03
  St. Lawrence here in Canada. There's been a lot of stuff
• 33:06
  that went on pre-COVID but even with COVID during COVID
• 33:09
  even up to like last year there were a lot of things going on
• 33:13
  especially around A lot of the sustainable
• 33:17
  seafood programs that were supporting lobster
• 33:22
  fishing and crab fishing and shrimp fishing and anything
• 33:25
  that had to do with a pot that was on the ground and
• 33:29
  a line that would go up where these whales
• 33:33
  would swim through because they couldn't see it and then they would end up
• 33:36
  getting hurt. you know, could die of infection or what
• 33:40
  have you. Plus, you know, shipping channels and so forth. With
• 33:43
  climate change kind of rearing its ugly head, especially nowadays, and
• 33:47
  seeing the different patterns that we're seeing of distribution
• 33:51
  with North Atlantic right whales, it wasn't a bad time to
• 33:55
  start looking at how The media was
• 33:58
  portraying this from a conservation standpoint
• 34:02
  as well as probably from a bit of a controversial standpoint with
• 34:06
  how different organizations and governments were taking a
• 34:09
  stance on protecting these animals from
• 34:13
  a fisheries perspective as well as from a conservation perspective. So there's
• 34:16
  a lot that was going on. in the last 20 years or
• 34:20
  more, 24 years, to say, hey, there's a lot that
• 34:24
  you can go here. Now, when you look at media, were you looking at how
• 34:28
  the media was portraying, like looking at the different sides? And if there's one
• 34:32
  that was being more biased towards one way or another,
• 34:35
  like the conservation or not, what was the question
• 34:44
  There's a lot there. So maybe what
• 34:47
  I'll do, I'll, I'll. Walk you through the sort of order of my
• 34:50
  dissertation projects and we can follow the thread lines
• 34:54
  that we're interested in. So the
• 34:57
  first paper as part of the core of my,
• 35:01
  my body of research right now is not actually about communication
• 35:05
  or media, but it was a really important chapter. And
• 35:08
  that was a law and policy case study related to
• 35:11
  the Eastern North Pacific gray whale. And I chose that. That
• 35:15
  was a project that I started looking into while I was a master's student.
• 35:19
  And it, it's a really incredible conservation story
• 35:23
  because that was the first marine mammal ever removed from the
• 35:26
  U S endangered species list for a successful recovery rather
• 35:30
  than extinction. And that was done in 1994. And
• 35:34
  so what I did with that paper was look at this sort of
• 35:38
  historic context of how we went from industrial
• 35:42
  whaling, where we decimated nearly all whale stocks globally
• 35:46
  to a place where whales are almost celebrities out
• 35:50
  in the ocean. And so really looked at the law and policy
• 35:54
  decisions, the cultural movement, the,
• 35:59
  I should say movements that took place over a span of
• 36:03
  about 40 years. And then the law and
• 36:06
  policy framework under which we were able to help
• 36:11
  that population of gray whales not only recover but thrive
• 36:14
  where they're now in these sort of boom and bust cycles. So
• 36:19
  walking through that helped me explore the complexities of
• 36:22
  marine mammal conservation and management, not just
• 36:26
  under us law, but under international law and all these different agreements.
• 36:31
  And it introduced me to some of the cultural movements and the conservation
• 36:35
  marketing that helped whales become those celebrities they
• 36:38
  are today. And that actually has come up
• 36:42
  in. Subsequent projects. So
• 36:46
  that was chapter 1. It's really chapter 2, but
• 36:50
  the 1st project, you know, law and policy case study. We
• 36:53
  did it before. Can we do it again with the same laws, the
• 36:56
  same frameworks. For animals, like the right whale, the
• 37:00
  rice's whale, other endangered species. And
• 37:03
  then I moved on. to the next project, which
• 37:07
  was a content analysis of whale watching operator
• 37:11
  websites in the U S. And if
• 37:14
  I were to ask you what you thought environmental media was, you
• 37:18
  would probably say things like documentaries, uh, presentations,
• 37:22
  displays of zoos and aquariums. You probably wouldn't go
• 37:25
  for a whale watching operator website, but.
• 37:30
  You know, coming out of the whaling era when whale watching
• 37:35
  really blew up and we, as a global
• 37:38
  community, on the whole changed the way that we consume
• 37:42
  whales from, for meat and oil and, you
• 37:45
  know, other materials to visual experience
• 37:49
  and consuming them for, you know, that spectacle of
• 37:52
  nature. You know, whale watching is
• 37:56
  one of the only ways that most people will ever experience these
• 37:59
  animals in their habitat for real. Right. And
• 38:03
  the messaging that we receive from things like
• 38:07
  advertisements. Interact with things
• 38:10
  like podcasts or, you know, science talks that
• 38:14
  we go to, or, you know, um, exhibits that
• 38:17
  we engage with at aquariums to create meaning about what
• 38:21
  whales are and what their plight is. So
• 38:24
  we looked at. Whale watching operator websites, uh,
• 38:28
  in six regions. So Massachusetts, Northern
• 38:31
  Southern California, Washington state, Hawaii,
• 38:35
  and Alaska. And really just wanted
• 38:39
  to understand what is it that whale watching operators are selling
• 38:42
  to people during that pre-tour experience? What are the expectations they're
• 38:45
  creating and what do people think they're buying? Right.
• 38:49
  And, and that's a really important. thing to
• 38:52
  consider because we don't always actively engage with
• 38:55
  environmental media, but we experience environmental messages in
• 38:59
  passing all the time. It's almost like a pinball machine
• 39:02
  where we're sort of just bouncing around. You
• 39:06
  know, even Lisa Frank drawings of whales and dolphins like
• 39:09
  that help shape the things that we think
• 39:13
  they are and what those animals mean. So
• 39:17
  looked into whale watching operator websites, and Massachusetts
• 39:21
  was obviously one of the focal areas. And they, on
• 39:26
  the whole, promote right whales
• 39:29
  as one of the top species that you can see for the operators
• 39:33
  who listed specific species. So
• 39:36
  they're obviously something of interest up there. We
• 39:40
  didn't really see, you know, specific right
• 39:44
  whale tours, but they were mentioned fairly frequently. So they're
• 39:47
  at least known and something that people want to see. So
• 39:51
  that sort of told us what operators were focusing on.
• 39:54
  It's what we found was that it's more about the things that
• 39:58
  they can control. Are there bathrooms on board? Are you going
• 40:01
  to be able to learn if you want to? Who's the captain and what's
• 40:04
  the boat? Can you bring food? Um, and
• 40:08
  conservation and education, we're a little bit lower on the list of.
• 40:12
  Priorities, you know, and we saw lots of
• 40:16
  stereotypic images, what we call the whale watching imaginary. So
• 40:20
  the imagery is pretty standard across regions and across websites. You've
• 40:24
  got whale jumping on a whale jumping on
• 40:27
  a scenic backdrop, whale tail, um, people
• 40:31
  leaning over the side of the boat with their cameras to take pictures of
• 40:34
  a part of the whale that's up close, you know, So it's not all
• 40:37
  that diverse, but also you're trying to get people on the
• 40:41
  boat so that you can educate them and give them this incredible experience. So
• 40:45
  you don't want to show a picture of a whale logging 300 meters
• 40:48
  away. You know, that's just not all
• 40:52
  that inspirational. So some interesting stuff came out of that one,
• 40:55
  but it wasn't traditional. Environmental media, as
• 40:59
  you might think of it. So we have the lawn policy analysis with
• 41:02
  the whale watching operators, and then we get into the whale, the right whale
• 41:05
  stuff. started by looking at 13 years
• 41:10
  of news coverage in larger U S newspapers from 2010, when
• 41:15
  the population started to decline from its moderate peak all
• 41:19
  the way through, uh, March 15th,
• 41:23
  2023. And where that project came from, you know, I
• 41:27
  got a news alert one day through like Apple news or something that
• 41:31
  had said as part of a federal spending bill, the
• 41:34
  US Congress had blocked certain provisions with right
• 41:38
  whale conservation and the federal agency's ability to
• 41:41
  manage that. And I said, well, that's interesting. Let's look into that. Saw
• 41:45
  some follow-up stories. And I said, you know what? I want to
• 41:48
  know how we got here. And so went through and
• 41:52
  chose six large US newspapers, sampled
• 41:56
  everything they had done for about 13 years, which ended
• 42:00
  up being 356. texts, which
• 42:03
  include letters to the editor, and
• 42:07
  really just set out to figure out what those stories
• 42:10
  they were telling were, what was the focus, and how they were presenting it.
• 42:14
  So, to your earlier point about a lot happening over the
• 42:17
  last few decades, yeah, saw it firsthand. And
• 42:22
  what came out of that project, because we went in and
• 42:26
  just coded for which publications are
• 42:29
  publishing about right whales most, which authors, what
• 42:32
  are the themes they're talking about? We found that one
• 42:35
  publication and one author were really driving the narrative. And
• 42:40
  that started in 2017, that summer that
• 42:43
  you mentioned where at least a dozen whales were found dead
• 42:46
  in the Gulf of St. Lawrence where they didn't at the time have legal protections.
• 42:50
  And that started what we call an issue attention cycle. We're
• 42:55
  quite familiar with those as consumers of media, but
• 43:00
  I really looked at all of that coverage through the lens
• 43:03
  of issue attention cycle, which says media will follow predictable
• 43:07
  patterns to focus on what's problematic or
• 43:11
  what they can dramatize to maintain consumer interests
• 43:15
  until they grow bored and move on to something else. Um,
• 43:19
  and we can talk more about that if you want, but we found that there was an issue
• 43:22
  attention cycle surrounding entanglements. Uh,
• 43:26
  in fishing gear, specifically as it related to the new England lobster
• 43:29
  fishery, where everybody sort of focused in
• 43:33
  on that. They focused on the drama, the conflict, uh,
• 43:37
  disagreements and it was
• 43:40
  huge and it was contentious and it's, it's a really interesting,
• 43:44
  but tangled web and. it
• 43:49
  was really interesting to see what came out of that. And
• 43:52
  so followed that
• 43:57
  more than decade of news media to say, what were the important events? Who
• 44:01
  were the featured actors? So who were the human stakeholders that the
• 44:04
  journalists went to or who engaged with journalists to
• 44:08
  co-create the story? And what would that story be,
• 44:12
  you know, for people who are following along? Most people, they read stories here
• 44:16
  and there, but we looked at the full what's called media
• 44:20
  discourse to make sense of sort
• 44:23
  of not news media as an outside actor
• 44:27
  looking in and showing people what is,
• 44:31
  but really as participants in environmental politics who,
• 44:35
  you know, serve as this political arena for
• 44:38
  different interests to try to shape public discussions and
• 44:41
  inform policy decisions. So some really interesting stuff
• 44:45
  came out of that. And as part of that issue attention cycle, came
• 44:49
  the two documentaries that I mentioned earlier. So
• 44:52
  the next project was to do a critical examination of
• 44:56
  those two documentaries. It's really rare to get two
• 44:59
  movies about the same topic by different filmmakers within
• 45:03
  a year of each other, you know, that takes such different approaches
• 45:07
  to storytelling. And so I wanted to take advantage of that opportunity to
• 45:11
  compare and contrast. So I looked at both of those
• 45:14
  films. I've seen both. more times than I can count. I'm
• 45:18
  sure my dog can recite it in his sleep at this point. But
• 45:23
  really looked at the different angles that they took, the storytelling devices
• 45:26
  that they used, and then expanded on
• 45:29
  that project with the final chapter of the dissertation, which
• 45:33
  is really where we took it to real people. So where
• 45:37
  we looked at the contents of the media in the study before, we
• 45:41
  wanted to look at the media effects. And so I did focus groups where
• 45:44
  people saw one of two films, And, you
• 45:48
  know, we talked through their experience as a viewer, what
• 45:52
  they thought the filmmaker was trying to do with it,
• 45:55
  what they understood the issue to be after seeing
• 45:59
  that film. And so that was a pretty interesting way to
• 46:03
  not only compare and contrast, you know, the critical reading that
• 46:06
  I did with the way that people experienced it, but
• 46:10
  also helps offer some informed insights about messaging
• 46:14
  surrounding right whale conservation. moving forward and then the
• 46:18
  use of wildlife film in support of conservation. And
• 46:22
  what was interesting about this project is that I was able
• 46:25
  to do the focus group work, uh, in
• 46:28
  Southern Delaware and Maryland's Eastern shore, which is along
• 46:32
  the right whales migratory pattern, but it's not near critical habitat.
• 46:37
  You know, these are not people who are probably tuned
• 46:40
  in to all the drama in the newspapers and things like that.
• 46:44
  They may have heard of right whales. So they weren't involved
• 46:47
  in the films. They probably hadn't seen them. So being able to
• 46:51
  talk to people with relationships to the ocean and
• 46:54
  an interest in conservation, show them these
• 46:57
  films and talk to them about it was a really cool
• 47:01
  experience. So those are the projects that I've worked on
• 47:04
  that are going into the dissertation. A lot there.
• 47:12
  Well, I mean, you know, when you do When you're working on a project, obviously
• 47:16
  you're still working on your writing phase. I
• 47:19
  don't know if you've submitted yet. Have you submitted yet? No, not yet.
• 47:23
  You're still probably putting the finishing touches on over the next
• 47:26
  few weeks. But overall, when
• 47:30
  you look at media, because one of
• 47:33
  the reasons why I started this podcast is because when I started looking
• 47:36
  at articles, when I was looking for articles during that
• 47:39
  time, I was like, It seems to be talking about the
• 47:43
  same thing over and over again. Obviously whales are a big topic.
• 47:46
  Sharks, usually it has to do with shark quote-unquote attacks, right?
• 47:50
  And the negative that comes around that. When
• 47:54
  it came to North Atlantic right
• 47:57
  whales, what were the types of,
• 48:02
  when different types of media started talking about it, say
• 48:05
  like mainstream media, like newspaper articles or
• 48:08
  digital newspaper articles and things like that, what was the
• 48:12
  content, was it more of Oh, another North Atlantic
• 48:15
  white whale was discovered dead. You know, here's it. Or
• 48:18
  were there any coverages on any potential, and
• 48:22
  if there were available, optimistic articles
• 48:26
  or optimistic stories of right whales that survived or like,
• 48:30
  you know, new calves come through or what have you? Like, what was the
• 48:38
  So looking at 13 years of news coverage, I
• 48:41
  saw pretty much everything under the gamut that you
• 48:45
  just mentioned. From 2010 to 2017, it
• 48:49
  was fairly rare to
• 48:53
  see stories about right whales in the publications that we sampled,
• 48:57
  other than NOAA is urging vessels to
• 49:00
  slow down, right whales have been sighted in this area, or right
• 49:05
  whale was found dead here, or right whale calf was
• 49:08
  spotted here. There were some talk
• 49:12
  of like naval bases in Georgia, Jacksonville at
• 49:15
  that time, a couple of stories bubbled up there,
• 49:19
  some stuff about energy development, but it was lots of
• 49:22
  like one-offs. Then 2017 happened
• 49:27
  and things started to intensify a
• 49:30
  little bit. And so in an issue attention cycle, this
• 49:33
  theoretical framework that I used, step one is that you have this issue
• 49:37
  that's known by the people that affects most and
• 49:41
  probably some experts who are working on it, but it's not really something commonly
• 49:45
  known by the public. And then there's this period of intense
• 49:49
  enthusiasm or what they call alarm. Right. And
• 49:53
  so that's when there's a huge problem and it becomes sort
• 49:56
  of prevalent or more prevalent in the
• 50:00
  coverage that people start seeing. And that was 2017. That's when
• 50:03
  you started to hear Right. Well, dad, right. Well, dad, right.
• 50:11
  And then. Along with that is this enthusiasm that,
• 50:15
  you know, we're going to fix this. We have this problem. We can all
• 50:18
  do it. And then you move into this third stage, which
• 50:22
  is where you have to grapple with reality. It's you realize the
• 50:25
  cost of significant progress and that's where
• 50:29
  things start to fall apart a little bit. And then it decreases
• 50:33
  from there. And so there's a gradual
• 50:37
  decline in public interest at stage four. And
• 50:40
  then at stage five, the person who coined
• 50:44
  the issue attention cycle framework talks about the fact that it's
• 50:49
  kind of in limbo. The topic will remain something that people
• 50:52
  are interested in. Maybe it'll pop up here and there again, but it's
• 50:56
  probably not going to be as intense as it had been earlier in
• 50:59
  the cycle. We saw the same thing with COVID, right? It was this unknown
• 51:03
  thing that started. you know, in a far off place. And
• 51:06
  then it made its way over here. You know, we
• 51:10
  were all going to do this. All we need is a vaccine. Costs
• 51:14
  of significant progress. Oh, here's what closures mean.
• 51:17
  Debates over vaccines. And now where are we? People all
• 51:21
  but forget about COVID. So this is a fairly predictable way of
• 51:24
  looking at media and to take it back to right whales during
• 51:29
  that third stage, realizing the cost of significant progress, it
• 51:33
  really focused in on fishing gear entanglements. And
• 51:38
  so what did that mean for science
• 51:41
  communication? What did it mean? You know, for the overall discourse,
• 51:46
  there's lots of issues facing the right whale. They're all integrated. You
• 51:50
  brought up earlier climate change. There's vessel strikes. There are,
• 51:54
  you know, there's ocean noise, there's entanglement. And
• 51:58
  so. What I saw was really excellent science communication.
• 52:02
  Focusing on the biggest issue that's causing the greatest harm that
• 52:07
  where there was an opportunity for the greatest conservation gain, which
• 52:10
  happened to be reducing the risk of entanglement for whales. Yeah.
• 52:16
  What came with that was this perception that environmental
• 52:20
  groups or whoever was singling
• 52:23
  out lobster fishermen and trying to do these nefarious things.
• 52:28
  Um, And what that did was
• 52:32
  increase the representation of lobster fishing voices who
• 52:35
  then in collaboration with journalists,
• 52:39
  and that's not like a thing that happens actively, it's just sort
• 52:43
  of how the reporting shook out, really
• 52:46
  focused on what harms further
• 52:50
  regulation on the fishing industry would do to
• 52:53
  them and their communities. And so it then became this debate
• 52:57
  between, I call it the clash of the titans, between
• 53:00
  protecting right whales or protecting lobster fishing rights,
• 53:04
  and only one side could win. And so that's
• 53:07
  really the thing that the media coverage overall
• 53:11
  focused on for the remainder of the time. You
• 53:15
  heard things about vessel strikes, some stuff about, you know,
• 53:19
  during the Trump administration, offshore oil exploration permits
• 53:22
  and undoing environmental regulations, that was mentioned. Biden
• 53:27
  took office in 2021. That's when the fishery service started
• 53:31
  to really explore new rules. There were a bunch of
• 53:34
  lawsuits. So it really just focused in on the fights.
• 53:38
  And even in stories that were focused on solutions, where
• 53:42
  there were stories that talked about fishermen who
• 53:46
  were really invested in, you know, so-called ropeless
• 53:50
  fishing gear technology and trying it out and were
• 53:53
  really committed to participating. for
• 53:57
  the benefit of right whales, even those stories included
• 54:01
  some kind of conflict, whether it was certain
• 54:04
  fishermen are calling these fishermen traders or the, the
• 54:09
  state government denied special permits to try out ropeless
• 54:12
  fishing gear. And that created a new conflict to consume. So
• 54:16
  like even those solution stories focused on a conflict
• 54:20
  because that's what people read. And then we got to this
• 54:23
  inflection point. where, as you mentioned earlier, seafood sustainability
• 54:27
  labels changed the designation of American lobster
• 54:31
  from U.S. and Canadian fisheries to an unsustainable source,
• 54:35
  citing right whales as the cause. That caught
• 54:38
  a lot of people's attention. Blue Apron, the meal kit company
• 54:42
  stopped carrying lobster, Whole Foods, Walmart, like
• 54:47
  pretty wide Yeah, pretty, pretty recognized organizations
• 54:52
  took notice and said, as part of our sustainability commitments, we're not
• 54:55
  going to carry lobster that caught Congress's attention. Right.
• 55:00
  And then. In an unrelated federal
• 55:04
  spending bill, all these things happen, right? Well, provisions were
• 55:07
  written in, took everybody by surprise where the
• 55:11
  fishery services. basically not
• 55:14
  allowed to impose any new regulations until
• 55:19
  2029. We came out of that period and into 2023 with
• 55:24
  lobstermen suing the Monterey Bay Aquarium for their Seafood Watch decision.
• 55:28
  So to answer your question in
• 55:31
  short, after all of that detail work, is
• 55:36
  really to say the coverage focused on conflict and
• 55:39
  disagreements and you
• 55:43
  know, the problem and scientists
• 55:47
  and environmental groups sort of stayed the course and they really tried to
• 55:50
  focus on rope as the issue, not fishing, not
• 55:54
  fishermen. It's rope that we want to address. You
• 55:59
  know, this is where our greatest gain is, and this is
• 56:02
  where we think our expectations are
• 56:05
  realistic. And then, you know, when you heard people talking
• 56:09
  from a lobster fishery, whether it was individuals or groups, you
• 56:13
  know, they talked about themselves as this sort of small
• 56:16
  scale fishery that was being villainized when in fact they have a great
• 56:20
  deal of power and influence in that region. But they
• 56:24
  also compared themselves to right whales and
• 56:27
  called themselves endangered and said any regulations
• 56:32
  would cause them economic harm, It would harm their communities. And
• 56:36
  so it really became this story of we're stuck between a
• 56:39
  rock and a hard place and we have to pick one. And that
• 56:43
  doesn't necessarily reflect the scientific reality. It doesn't necessarily
• 56:47
  reflect where things had been, but it's what was
• 56:55
  So this is the interesting thing that I always have. You
• 56:58
  know, like obviously, you know, in stories, we like to have conflict, right?
• 57:01
  That makes a good story, you know. And that conflict
• 57:05
  happens, but at what cost? You know, from a journalistic perspective, you
• 57:09
  think you want to stay in the middle. Here's the one side, you
• 57:12
  know, especially when it came to small scale fishers who are using, you
• 57:16
  know, the lobster pots. And then here's the other side of
• 57:19
  a lot of NGOs, government workers and so forth who want to protect these,
• 57:24
  these, you know, wonderful animals, these northern white whales. At
• 57:30
  what point do we just kind of say, hey, look, a story is a
• 57:33
  great story and that's wonderful, but at what point do we kind
• 57:36
  of hold journalists accountable to be like, where
• 57:40
  do we want to go from here? What do we want to
• 57:43
  do? We understand that there are two sides to this conflict. We
• 57:47
  want fishers to continue to fish. We want these animals
• 57:50
  to grow in population and be healthy. And
• 57:54
  so from a from a media perspective, from a communication perspective, where
• 57:57
  do we be like, okay, we understand both sides, what's the best way forward?
• 58:01
  Oh, there's there's this new technology that allows ropeless crab
• 58:05
  pots and lobster pots. How about we say,
• 58:10
  hey, let's invest in this more so that
• 58:14
  we can decrease the amount of instances or the risk that
• 58:17
  these animals will get entangled because there'll be less pots. Now, I know the
• 58:21
  fishing community was not necessarily happy about the first iterations
• 58:25
  of these ropeless pots. But if
• 58:28
  you can have more significant investment, that means the technology, in
• 58:32
  theory, could move through faster. So at what
• 58:35
  point do the journalists be like, instead
• 58:39
  of getting the story and make the most conflicting story,
• 58:43
  or the one with the most conflict, and then get
• 58:47
  clicks or get papers to read, at what point do you just be
• 58:50
  like, let's move forward with the best option for both
• 58:57
  I wish I had a simple answer for that. Um, but
• 59:00
  I'm going to give the stock academic answer that I, we don't really know
• 59:04
  yet because this is so challenging. Um,
• 59:08
  I think generally with science and environmental journalism, there's
• 59:12
  just changes in the news industry where you don't have specialists
• 59:16
  covering a specific beat the way that you used to. So science and environment
• 59:20
  is now very broad. Right. And going
• 59:24
  back to the gray whale paper that I mentioned earlier, like Marine mammal
• 59:27
  conservation is a special kind of complex, right?
• 59:31
  There's just so many overlapping laws. These animals travel
• 59:35
  through jurisdictions. They intersect with
• 59:38
  lots of different human uses of the ocean. And there's
• 59:41
  just really robust conservation marketing behind them.
• 59:45
  So they, they are especially complicated, um, to
• 59:49
  communicate. And I think right whale conservation is
• 59:53
  extra complicated in that. because you
• 59:56
  have these interrelated issues. Climate is driving changes
• 1:00:01
  in their prey, which is leading whales to new and unexpected places in
• 1:00:05
  different aggregations. And there are lots
• 1:00:08
  of things that are threatening them. The math is bad,
• 1:00:13
  right? The population can't afford to lose a single individual
• 1:00:17
  each year, and we need to almost triple the birth rate. And
• 1:00:20
  what's the way to do that? Stop injuring and killing them. How
• 1:00:24
  do you do that? Well, there's shipping and then there's fishing and
• 1:00:28
  then there's noise and
• 1:00:31
  all kinds of stuff. So at some point, if you're a
• 1:00:35
  reporter or you're an editor trying to find the story
• 1:00:38
  that you want to include in your upcoming paper, you
• 1:00:42
  have to frame something and you have to exclude almost
• 1:00:46
  all of the other things to be able to tell a simple and
• 1:00:49
  clear journalistic story when the science behind
• 1:00:53
  it is very complex and you know, climate is
• 1:00:56
  a big factor here. That's the overarching
• 1:01:00
  like mega boss that's touching all of this. And
• 1:01:04
  the thing that we need to do is decarbonize and,
• 1:01:07
  and slow climate change and ocean warming and things like that.
• 1:01:12
  But in the meantime, this particular species doesn't have
• 1:01:15
  decades for, you know, figuring that out. Yeah.
• 1:01:19
  So, so it's kind of. Like the science and
• 1:01:23
  the reality has boxed things into a point where you
• 1:01:27
  have to make tough decisions and that emphasis on conservation technology.
• 1:01:31
  It's probably where the most conservation gains are, but
• 1:01:35
  focusing on technology as a solution. There's other
• 1:01:38
  research out there about this. It's just a
• 1:01:42
  really limiting strategy because it convinces non
• 1:01:46
  experts that there's nothing that they can do. to be part of that. That's for
• 1:01:50
  the engineers. That's for the experts. That's for the government to pay for. I'm
• 1:01:54
  good. Right. When you actually need that, that public
• 1:01:58
  pressure to create the kind of demand for
• 1:02:02
  the industry to adopt the technology. Right. Yeah. If,
• 1:02:05
  and when it's ready. And so I think
• 1:02:11
  this is, this is why it's so interesting to me to look
• 1:02:37
  And it's true, if you, and the one thing I was thinking as you
• 1:02:40
  were saying that when you were talking is, if
• 1:02:43
  you start to throw all the complexities to people, to an
• 1:02:46
  audience, then they can get really down on the situation, and
• 1:02:50
  like, well, there's no way out. You know, you got climate change, you got ocean noise,
• 1:02:54
  you know, we're not gonna stop shipping from happening, we're not gonna stop fishing from happening.
• 1:02:58
  These animals are doomed, let's just forget about it. I remember when I first
• 1:03:02
  started a YouTube channel a number of years ago, like early 2012s,
• 1:03:05
  11s, you know one of the things that i focus
• 1:03:08
  on was all the issues but i'll talk about the issues and we'll we'll just you know if
• 1:03:11
  i talk about them the people listen to the more and i remember talking
• 1:03:15
  so that was a dinner with uh... the owner of my gym and we
• 1:03:18
  were and it was a group of us and she was like oh yeah i watch your videos that
• 1:03:22
  stop and i got really like that but that's not what we need to
• 1:03:25
  stop sick kept hearing is just negative negative negative and
• 1:03:28
  i just felt helpless uh... like oh Oh, interesting.
• 1:03:32
  Oh, OK. And so I started to really think about that and be like, I've got
• 1:03:36
  to be careful of how many negative stories that
• 1:03:39
  I cover. You still have to cover those
• 1:03:43
  stories, but you have to show that optimism. And I went
• 1:03:46
  to a conference, International Marine Conservation Congress in
• 1:03:50
  2014, and the theme was ocean optimism. I spoke to
• 1:03:53
  a lot of people about that theme that weekend and just being like,
• 1:03:57
  or that we can just be like it's important for us as
• 1:04:00
  scientists as communicators to put forth that hope
• 1:04:04
  where we can see you know people adapt like with climate change a
• 1:04:07
  lot of times you know i'll talk about climate change like yeah there's really no way out
• 1:04:11
  of the range of my well might be good look at this you know country
• 1:04:14
  down here and like in the philippines you got these fishing villages who
• 1:04:17
  have like you know they know that there's gonna be typhoons they know they have marine protected
• 1:04:21
  areas they've installed but then when a typhoon comes in and then it
• 1:04:25
  kind of disrupts everything and they have no money, then they have to fish everything.
• 1:04:28
  But now they've got a savings account that they've put together so that
• 1:04:31
  when they do have these typhoons, well, they can come in,
• 1:04:35
  they can use that money in the meantime, and then that holds
• 1:04:38
  them over until that marine protected area kind of gets back to
• 1:04:41
  normal, you know, gets out of the thing. There's just not added pressure to
• 1:04:45
  that. And people are like, oh, wow, I didn't know that. That's really cool.
• 1:04:48
  And so it's like me trying to get all these little
• 1:04:51
  stories that may not be huge on
• 1:04:55
  the global market of media, but it
• 1:04:58
  kind of gives people a little bit of hope here and there and kind of piecing
• 1:05:02
  those together. But it would be interesting to hear you
• 1:05:06
  know i've always and i've always thought about this is like having focus groups and getting their
• 1:05:09
  responses to certain episodes that i do to be like we
• 1:05:13
  what were your thoughts on this on on this type of messaging and
• 1:05:16
  what was your thoughts on this type of messaging you know what what if we throw all
• 1:05:20
  of the gambits against the north atlantic right well just like what
• 1:05:23
  are your thoughts after we talk about this you know and and the fact that the
• 1:05:26
  hey they still have caps you know there's still some casual what are your thoughts and
• 1:05:30
  then just talk about one issue because i feel as though Some
• 1:05:34
  people will think and some audience members may think that
• 1:05:37
  if we just cover like, you know, I did a story when Seafood
• 1:05:42
  Watch pulled, Monterey Bay's Aquarium Seafood Watch pulled their support
• 1:05:45
  for the lobster fishery, the main lobster fishery. And
• 1:05:49
  I remember I covered that and so I'm sure some audience members are
• 1:05:52
  like, well, if we can get rid of the fishing, then we can get the
• 1:05:56
  whales back on track. Potentially. But
• 1:06:00
  then there's a lot of other things that go like shipping is like they're notorious for
• 1:06:03
  being hit by ships because they don't move very well when they're at the surface
• 1:06:06
  or they sit just below the surface so they're really hard to see. So
• 1:06:10
  there's that aspect. So it's interesting in
• 1:06:13
  the way to go about it. But there are solutions. It's just you
• 1:06:17
  have to throw the whole gambit of solutions to that
• 1:06:20
  face. And it's just like you said, it gets more and more complex. And
• 1:06:24
  I think that's the challenge for communicators in the future is how
• 1:06:27
  can we try and simplify the problem? Or do we just talk
• 1:06:31
  about the complexities and how we're addressing that complexity? Right?
• 1:06:36
  Well, and I think going back to your point about wanting
• 1:06:39
  to do focus groups on your own podcast, I did focus groups
• 1:06:43
  with the two films that are out there that focus on right
• 1:06:46
  whales. And I heard a lot of the same stuff,
• 1:06:50
  right? Um, the two versions of the film, not
• 1:06:56
  You've got one that is by a reporter who
• 1:07:00
  reflects his reporting that he did throughout that period that
• 1:07:03
  I researched. So it was about lobster fishing in new England, the
• 1:07:07
  policy processes, the conflict, and it
• 1:07:10
  doesn't leave with a resolution. And the other is
• 1:07:14
  by a Canadian filmmaker focuses more on
• 1:07:18
  Canada, Florida, throughout its range, doesn't
• 1:07:21
  talk about policy. And there's only one fisherman in
• 1:07:25
  it. And he is a participant in you know, whale research and rescue
• 1:07:28
  and also trying out this gear. So you've got one conflict
• 1:07:32
  and one solution story showed people and
• 1:07:35
  had these conversations. And just like you were saying, like
• 1:07:39
  a lot of the feedback, the, the opening question that I
• 1:07:42
  started every focus group with finish this
• 1:07:46
  statement. When the credits rolled, I felt blank. And
• 1:07:49
  I heard a lot of negative emotions for both films, hopeless,
• 1:07:54
  defeated. I feel angry. And so through
• 1:07:57
  conversation and probing that, what it comes down
• 1:08:01
  to, and this is not unique to these two films. I
• 1:08:05
  should lead with the fact that both of these films won awards.
• 1:08:09
  They are well done, high quality. This is not unique
• 1:08:12
  to these two films. This is something that people who
• 1:08:16
  study environmental film ask often, which
• 1:08:20
  is what are they supposed to do? How
• 1:08:24
  are they supposed to play into conservation and policy? And
• 1:08:29
  a lot of what I heard from people really just boils down to, they
• 1:08:33
  spent so much time describing the problem, which I probably
• 1:08:36
  could have understood in a couple scenes, but
• 1:08:41
  then they left me with these big feelings, and I don't
• 1:08:44
  know what to do with them, so I'm just going to pack them away.
• 1:08:48
  And these are people who hear about right whales
• 1:08:51
  in their local news when they pass by twice a year. These
• 1:08:55
  are people who live by the ocean because they appreciate the ocean.
• 1:08:59
  And I've heard from people, you know, all
• 1:09:02
  kinds of political ideologies, different age groups where it's
• 1:09:06
  like, sure, I care about this issue, but the government
• 1:09:09
  has to solve it. I don't know what I can do because I don't lobster fish
• 1:09:13
  in new England. I don't have a boat. Right. And
• 1:09:16
  so. Some other things I've
• 1:09:20
  heard too, people, when I would ask, okay, the
• 1:09:23
  film didn't tell you what you're supposed
• 1:09:26
  to do. What do you think you could do? Almost everybody went to
• 1:09:30
  boycotting certain types of seafood, which the film's never mentioned.
• 1:09:34
  And so the fact that we just jumped to boycotts, has
• 1:09:40
  some interesting implications. But then I heard from people
• 1:09:43
  who are like, okay, I could boycott this seafood, but I don't eat lobster and
• 1:09:46
  crab regularly. I'm not that wealthy. Or
• 1:09:51
  I heard from a couple of people who say, okay, well, I'm not supposed to eat beef because
• 1:09:54
  of climate. I'm not supposed to eat chicken because of climate. I'm
• 1:09:58
  not supposed to eat soybeans because of water. And now,
• 1:10:02
  and now I'm not supposed to eat seafood because of whales. What
• 1:10:05
  the heck can I And so that's where we talk about, yeah,
• 1:10:09
  I mean, this is where we start to
• 1:10:13
  hear from people that like outside messages do matter
• 1:10:17
  because it places this context. And so the focus on
• 1:10:20
  the problem is something that. Not
• 1:10:24
  just these two films, but the reporting, um, that I looked at
• 1:10:28
  really focused on, but it didn't really do the
• 1:10:31
  follow through. Whereas lobster fishermen could tell you
• 1:10:34
  what happens if there are more regulations. Right. Or
• 1:10:38
  at least that's their argument. Yeah. So I think in
• 1:10:42
  a situation that is so uncertain, we don't know
• 1:10:46
  what happens to the ecosystems if right whales disappear. They've
• 1:10:50
  been depleted for so long, you know,
• 1:10:53
  maybe it's some localized effects or maybe it's part of a larger cascade. We
• 1:10:57
  don't know. And so people recognize after seeing
• 1:11:00
  these films, they know extinction is bad. They know we
• 1:11:03
  need to avoid it. but they don't quite see
• 1:11:07
  how they can get involved. And that left them feeling stuck and angry
• 1:11:11
  and hopeless. And even when I did hear positive
• 1:11:15
  emotions, it was in response to seeing this
• 1:11:18
  incredible footage of right whales and not the story. And
• 1:11:22
  so going back to your point, like there
• 1:11:26
  has to be some kind of agency, but also
• 1:11:31
  some of the things that we really need to do are kind of boring. When
• 1:11:35
  we're talking about conservation technology and ropeless gear, I
• 1:11:39
  heard from a lot of people. Oh, well, the federal
• 1:11:42
  government should just fund that, but they didn't put that together with
• 1:11:46
  the fact that federal agencies took budget cuts last
• 1:11:49
  year or that every time you vote, that
• 1:11:53
  has implications for right whales or each year
• 1:11:57
  during congressional appropriations, you should reach out
• 1:12:00
  and tell your, you know, members of Congress. that you
• 1:12:04
  want to see funding for right whales, because if it's not in that
• 1:12:07
  bill, there's no guarantee it gets done. And then
• 1:12:10
  when you pose the question, okay, if we're paying for
• 1:12:14
  conservation technology, what are we not paying for? What are we giving
• 1:12:18
  up? Right. And those are tough conversations, but
• 1:12:21
  like that civic engagement is really important. And
• 1:12:25
  I'll go back just one more quick point about the conservation technology.
• 1:12:30
  A lot of what I heard from people is like, well, the solutions right there.
• 1:12:34
  It's this fishing gear. Everybody wins. Lobstermen
• 1:12:38
  can keep fishing. Whale stopped getting entangled. Hopefully
• 1:12:42
  these whale disentanglement people are out of a job and happy about
• 1:12:45
  it, but nobody's really brought up the perspective of
• 1:12:48
  the lobstermen either. What does it mean to be a fisherman? Right?
• 1:12:53
  Like there, there's a huge sense of identity there. There's. there's
• 1:12:57
  cultural importance of fishing the way that
• 1:13:00
  their grandfathers or great grandfathers fished.
• 1:13:03
  And that's missing from the conversation so that it's not just
• 1:13:07
  Noah should pay for this technology to be developed and implemented. It's
• 1:13:12
  also, how do you persuade an entire industry
• 1:13:16
  that this can work and that this is worth doing?
• 1:13:21
  And so I think, You
• 1:13:24
  know, it's really hard to simplify the story and you have to make decisions
• 1:13:28
  because there's no way one movie, one news article can
• 1:13:32
  capture four plus decades of
• 1:13:35
  science and conservation or nearly a century of
• 1:13:38
  the right whale being endangered. But future movies
• 1:13:42
  and future communications should explore some of these other topics, especially
• 1:13:46
  because it's not just whale conservationists and
• 1:13:50
  experts and lobster fishermen who are affected if we lose the
• 1:13:53
  right whale. There are indigenous communities. Who
• 1:13:57
  had no part in hunting the right whale to near extinction, who
• 1:14:00
  would have to grapple with their losses. You know, what does that
• 1:14:04
  do for conservation morale? Right. What
• 1:14:07
  does it do in the ecosystem? So what does
• 1:14:10
  it do for tourism? You know, I looked at whale watching websites in
• 1:14:14
  another project. I didn't hear from whale watching operators in
• 1:14:18
  news coverage or these films. or anything like that.
• 1:14:22
  Right. So when we focus in, when
• 1:14:25
  we focus in on these two, just Titans, we
• 1:14:29
  sort of miss out on all the other color around that
• 1:14:33
  for this black and white story. And then it just leaves people feeling like,
• 1:14:37
  well, that's a big bummer. I
• 1:14:41
  have to focus on the cost of living right now or
• 1:14:45
  my job or parenting. So
• 1:14:50
  Yes, it's too complicated. I can't figure it out on my own. I think it's
• 1:14:53
  really interesting, too. You mentioned a couple of things. One, looking at
• 1:14:56
  documentaries in general, the one that when you mentioned they
• 1:15:00
  talk, they focus mostly on the problem, and then they don't
• 1:15:04
  really give time all the time for the solution. Well, the
• 1:15:07
  same thing happened. I remember watching Chasing Coral. That's another one
• 1:15:10
  where they focus too much or they focus so much on the problem, which
• 1:15:14
  cool technology, really interesting to see. But you felt
• 1:15:17
  depressed at the end. You even see scientists like crying as they're like
• 1:15:21
  looking at the Great Barrier Reef, you know, at a conference that's bleached
• 1:15:24
  by 90%. And then after that, their only solution
• 1:15:28
  was to go into kids' classrooms and, you know, tell kids
• 1:15:31
  about corals and how important they are and this and that. And you're just kind of like sitting
• 1:15:35
  here. And I remember like seeing on Twitter and
• 1:15:38
  on social media the reactions to the movies and just being like,
• 1:15:42
  I feel like, well, there go corals. That's it for them.
• 1:15:45
  Too bad. Dive while you can. And it was
• 1:15:50
  disheartening after a while to look at that and just be like, oh
• 1:15:53
  man, that's how people see these when we do these videos. It's
• 1:15:57
  so important. to do what
• 1:16:00
  you talked about and start talking about look like you
• 1:16:03
  may yeah you can avoid seafood if you if that's
• 1:16:07
  what you choose to do everybody makes their own choices but
• 1:16:10
  it's also like talking about the policy and being like if you
• 1:16:14
  vote for this type of candidate they're
• 1:16:17
  more likely to fund you know environmental legislation
• 1:16:21
  or environmental for for environmental policies or put in environmental
• 1:16:25
  policies and regulations to help these animals so
• 1:16:28
  now you're doing it just by putting a vote you're helping them in that respect
• 1:16:32
  and yes you can still avoid you know, plastics, you can
• 1:16:35
  still avoid, you know, seafood if you choose to
• 1:16:39
  do that. But at least you're giving, you're hitting it for like a multifaceted, solutions
• 1:16:43
  are multifaceted just as much as the issues that
• 1:16:46
  hit us. So I think that's a really interesting thing
• 1:16:50
  to point out when we talk about these types of stories is focusing
• 1:16:55
  on all the things that we can do from small to tall
• 1:16:59
  just by voting. You know, and that's one thing I focus on
• 1:17:02
  here is, it's always voting you know is it of
• 1:17:05
  very important election coming up you know for it for the u s uh...
• 1:17:09
  it seems like and is not far behind in terms of our federal government
• 1:17:14
  it's, it's, it's so important to highlight
• 1:17:19
  that, you know, especially with these days, when the
• 1:17:23
  parties are so, you know, black and white in terms of their differences,
• 1:17:27
  and what they're going to fund and what they're not going to find, it seems like one party is more apt to
• 1:17:30
  fund environmental legislation and put in environmental legislation
• 1:17:34
  than others. And I think that's, I feel I feel that's really interesting.
• 1:17:38
  And trying to get out of the hole, let's put environment to
• 1:17:41
  the side, because we have all these other issues to deal with. and
• 1:17:45
  try and bring it in and be like, yeah, well, we can deal with all of them together, I
• 1:17:48
  think is really important. But Marcus, this has been a
• 1:17:52
  riveting discussion. I'd love to invite you back on.
• 1:17:56
  We're coming up on time, but I'd love to invite you back on to talk more about this.
• 1:17:59
  Maybe after once you become a doctor, I'll be able to call you Dr. Marcus
• 1:18:03
  Reamer. which I'm looking forward to doing. But I want to
• 1:18:06
  thank you for coming on and discussing this with us.
• 1:18:10
  It's not often we get to really dive deep into communications, and
• 1:18:14
  I want more and more people on that. I'm starting to meet more science communicators
• 1:18:18
  out here in this, you know, digital universe,
• 1:18:22
  and being able to discuss it more. Because one
• 1:18:25
  of the things I tell our audience is, We
• 1:18:29
  need to talk about this. The one thing is to be
• 1:18:33
  aware and learn, but we need to continue to discuss this
• 1:18:37
  on multiple levels. And the
• 1:18:40
  more we can learn how to do it, the better. So I
• 1:18:43
  think it's great to have you on, and I'm looking forward to having you back
• 1:18:47
  on after your PhD and after you relax a little bit. I'm sure you'll
• 1:18:52
  Who knows what it is to relax in a life like mine.
• 1:18:57
  You know, I do another masters at some point, you know, my, my
• 1:19:01
  parents joke that my only option, you know, I'm squeamish, so
• 1:19:05
  I can't go to med school. So I might just go get an MFA or
• 1:19:08
  a JD. But, um, if
• 1:19:12
  there's one message that I want to leave off on
• 1:19:16
  with hopes that we can speak again in the future, you know, I
• 1:19:19
  would love to come back. Um, a lot of what I've found, not
• 1:19:24
  just in my experience with PhD research, but, but
• 1:19:28
  throughout my career is that we tend
• 1:19:32
  to think of communication as a thing that just happens. And
• 1:19:38
  that's changing, you know, for, for climate communication, for
• 1:19:41
  other forms of environmental communication, but for
• 1:19:45
  ocean topics specifically, there are certain
• 1:19:50
  barriers to public engagement that We
• 1:19:54
  have to learn how to do really well. We have to understand
• 1:19:57
  them and we have to put money behind that. Funders have to,
• 1:20:01
  to incorporate that into research. We need more people to
• 1:20:05
  take an interest in researching ocean communication because
• 1:20:09
  you know, things that I've heard from people who walk on the beach every
• 1:20:13
  single day, whether it's in Florida or whether it's here in
• 1:20:16
  Maryland and Delaware is that it feels far away. Right.
• 1:20:21
  So there, there's a perceived distance, but then you have to think most
• 1:20:25
  of the world does not live next to the ocean
• 1:20:28
  and experience it every day. So there is a real distance too. And
• 1:20:32
  so the, the thing that I find to be important, yeah,
• 1:20:36
  the stuff that I've done with right whales, I hope will be helpful not
• 1:20:39
  to just to that cause, but to figuring
• 1:20:44
  out how we can incorporate communication into
• 1:20:47
  comprehensive conservation strategies, whether that's
• 1:20:50
  research or practice, to make the most of
• 1:20:53
  this ocean decade and beyond. So how
• 1:20:57
  can funders do more to support social science that
• 1:21:00
  incorporates communication? How can we
• 1:21:04
  support more interdisciplinary work, you know, with
• 1:21:08
  the limited funding that we have for all the big challenges that
• 1:21:12
  we need to address? So ocean communication is certainly something
• 1:21:15
  that I I'm interested in, I've gotten good at, but
• 1:21:19
  there are just barriers that are in the way that we need an all hands
• 1:21:23
  on deck approach to, to help achieve a lot of those sustainability
• 1:21:27
  goals. So yeah, I
• 1:21:30
  think that's, that's my closing message. If there is one, it's, it's one
• 1:21:34
  of hope and optimism and a call for action, which is
• 1:21:37
  we got to put money behind it and bring people like you and
• 1:21:41
  I into the fold. Um, to help make
• 1:21:44
  sense of some of this stuff, not just for non-expert audiences, but
• 1:21:48
  for the people who are directly involved as well. Filmmakers, journalists,
• 1:21:54
  nature writers, you name it. Communication
• 1:21:58
  scholars and practitioners are really valuable resources to
• 1:22:05
  Absolutely, absolutely. Marcus, this was wonderful. Thank you
• 1:22:09
  so much for coming on the podcast. Looking forward to having you back. Looking
• 1:22:12
  forward to hearing that you have successfully achieved that
• 1:22:15
  PhD and that doctor status. And I can't wait to
• 1:22:19
  see what you're up to next. It's going to be a lot of fun, whether it's another graduate
• 1:22:22
  degree or working in the rest of us. It's
• 1:22:26
  going to be a lot of fun. But I want to thank you again for coming on the podcast. And
• 1:22:33
  Thank you, Marcus, for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean
• 1:22:36
  podcast. This was an episode that went a little longer than normal. Apologize for
• 1:22:40
  that. You know, we're getting in, we're geeking out about it. I really, I really appreciated
• 1:22:43
  Marcus's time, of course. Thank you, Marcus. But this is something that,
• 1:22:47
  you know, we're going to have more conversations on. He's got to prepare for his PhD and
• 1:22:51
  he's willing to talk all the time. about this and I'm sure we
• 1:22:54
  could have gone on for another couple of hours, but we're not Joe Rogan,
• 1:22:58
  we don't have the three-hour podcast, so I want to kind of keep it
• 1:23:01
  a little tight and make sure that we were talking about, you
• 1:23:04
  know, the issues that we want to talk about and the topics that we
• 1:23:07
  want to talk about, but we're going to talk about more about environmental conservation
• 1:23:12
  and communication when he comes back on and I'm
• 1:23:15
  looking forward to that happening and hopefully I will be talking to him as a
• 1:23:19
  doctor at that point. But I want to thank Marcus for joining us,
• 1:23:22
  and I want to thank you for listening, because like I said before at the beginning of this episode, this
• 1:23:26
  is a way for all of us to learn about communication, because we all
• 1:23:29
  have to communicate that message. Whether we're communicating to our politicians,
• 1:23:33
  whether we're communicating to our family members, our friends, our colleagues, getting
• 1:23:37
  people connected to the ocean is really important when we talk about protecting the
• 1:23:40
  ocean. Whether you live in Ontario like me, surrounded by the great lakes
• 1:23:44
  and beautiful rivers and watersheds, that's how I feel connected to
• 1:23:47
  the ocean. Every time I look at water, I think about the ocean. That's me
• 1:23:50
  personally. Not everybody feels that way. You know, I remember, you
• 1:23:54
  know, just a quick anecdote. I remember being at a conference in PEI
• 1:23:58
  and they were talking about how people who live in Toronto, you know, when you
• 1:24:02
  sit at Bloor Street, you know, and young and you look down towards
• 1:24:05
  the water, you look south towards the water, You can't see the water from
• 1:24:09
  there. Obviously, it's a big way. There's a lot of land in between that,
• 1:24:12
  but there are buildings in between that. And the lakeshore now
• 1:24:16
  is just covered and peppered with condos, and not necessarily
• 1:24:19
  a good thing. And so you're not seeing the lake. You're
• 1:24:23
  not seeing that water body. You're not seeing the shoreline. And
• 1:24:26
  that could affect the way you feel connected to
• 1:24:30
  a big body of water, like Lake Ontario, or like any of the other Great
• 1:24:33
  Lakes, or like an ocean body, or a major river like the St. Lawrence River. That
• 1:24:37
  matters. And so planning a city, making sure
• 1:24:41
  that we all feel connected, make sure that we talk about the benefits of
• 1:24:44
  water, the benefits of being close to water and seeing water
• 1:24:47
  on a regular basis, whether it's any body of water, that's
• 1:24:51
  really important. And being able to talk about it and being able
• 1:24:54
  to make sure that we get that message across is critical to
• 1:24:58
  protecting the ocean and protecting our water bodies on this planet, which covers most
• 1:25:01
  of the planet. So, you know, we need to talk about it more. We need to learn that.
• 1:25:04
  And so I want to thank Marcus for coming on the podcast again. to
• 1:25:08
  be able to help us talk about that and teach us about what
• 1:25:11
  he learned through his dissertation and what we can learn from him and
• 1:25:15
  this podcast. So I want to thank him again. I want to thank you for listening and
• 1:25:18
  you for putting in the time and the effort to help protect the ocean the
• 1:25:22
  way that you do. And I'd love to hear your questions or comments about this
• 1:25:25
  episode. You can hit me up on Spotify. You can comment there. You
• 1:25:29
  can comment on a YouTube channel where this will be put. And you
• 1:25:32
  can also reach out to me on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean if
• 1:25:36
  you're listening too. your favorite podcast app and they don't have the comments. I don't
• 1:25:39
  understand why podcasts don't have comments right on the episodes. That would be so cool.
• 1:25:42
  I like the way Spotify is going about it in the way that they have interaction.
• 1:25:46
  So that would be cool. Let's see what we can conjure
• 1:25:50
  up in this episode and the questions that come in, the comments that come in. I'd love
• 1:25:53
  to hear your comments later on. So thank you so
• 1:25:56
  much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have