Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 538: Does Wildlife Win or Lose With Renewable Energy?

Transcript

Ep. 538: Does Wildlife Win or Lose With Renewable Energy? · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Listeningdcast, you can't predict anything.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: for el, First Light has performance apparel to support every
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: dot com. F I R S T L I T
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: E dot com fills your machine on machines on how long.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Has it been on?
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: Long enough?
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Let's we'll start it right where I said. Is it on? Great?
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: I'm holding my hands right here? Uh uh?
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Who's the kid? That's a kid sent this in? I
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: call him a kid. Yeah, he's like said age I
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: don't know. Called a Musky Manifesto Observer number five, September eighteenth,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty three.
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: The Musky Dossier.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: A lot of mail comes in. I don't know how
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: this email got sent me, but I had it printed off,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: which makes it seem more thing.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: It's from a kid.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: It's a manifesto full of photos and everything, and it
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: has to do with one of my favorite pet peeves,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: which is the latest the new craze of the new
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: musky craze, like Musky two point zero.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: This is something that you've made up.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: No, yes, my as I was just saying before Phil
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: turned the machine on. My maternal grandfather was a Musky fisherman.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Now back then you just went fishing muskies. Now it's
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: this whole thing of like they treat them like they're
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: like people, treat them like they're like pets. They got
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: all these strains, they turn them out. There's like they're
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: they're like, it's it's rotten. Real guys that have gotten
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: his persnickety is is UH catch and release trout anglers? Well,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: supposedly super interested in the well being of the fish,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: but not so interesting that you wouldn't try to jab
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: a big hook in its lip.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: A lot of the recent UH enthusiasm comes from the
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: fly fishing crowd. No, yes from US muskies.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, maybe you cast out a big lure, you get close,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: you do the figure eight, they do that with you.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: You get mad if someone is mean to one.
• 2:36
  Speaker 5: All I can say is, if you're new timeline is
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: my entire life.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: It maybe which made five years. This is an example
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: of that just came about came into my universe and
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: now I'm interested in it, and so it's musky.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Geologic time, this whole thing of like, oh, did you
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: hear that in Dickerson Lake they released the quad four
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: strain three quad four strains.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know about this either.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: I'm making up the words, and I guarantee there's a
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Dickerson Lake though, Brandon, are you aware.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Of when was musky one point? Oh, I've caught one
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: old day, the old days forty maternal grandfather, and then
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: there was a hiatus for then there was.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: A break, and then there was just like fishing, and
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden it became like that the
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: catch and release, the really precious, persnickety, mean spirited catch
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and release school of thought got moved away from brown
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: trout and laid.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Upon the muskie. Interesting, and now brown trout are being
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: given a break? Are the col people.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Are still mean to give your mean to a brown trout?
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 3:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And I guess there's a lot of top water action.
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: There's some similar baits, just similar sizing, folks going nighttime activities,
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: all that stuff, going after both species.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Fish with a thousand. I caught thou musky chet caught
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: some muskies caught one musky in my life by tiger musk.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: No musky musky? What strain? I didn't ask it? You
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: turn it right out? It strained the line. I turned
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: it loose. We took one photo. I was fishing a
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: little spinner bait. Thought I might pick up a walleye
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: and a little lake in Wisconsin, and thought I had
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: a log. Wasn't a log. Fought it for about twenty
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: five minutes, and my dad got in a net. This
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: is a little We were in a little john boat
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: we rented for twenty five bucks on this this lake
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: in Wisconsin. We just thought we were going to mess around,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: and we were messing around. Didn't think we'd catch a musky.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: And my picture's still on the wall of that place. Really,
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, how big was it? I don't know, forty
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: five inches. We didn't have we didn't have a scale,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: we didn't have a ruler. It was a nice fish.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: The anger hearing from his Brendan Rundy here from North Carolina.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: He's a marine scientist.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: What did I say wrong?
• 5:07
  Speaker 6: His last name?
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: No?
• 5:09
  Speaker 7: He took me sorry, I stand corrected.
• 5:13
  Speaker 5: I will think that's right.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: That's that's my uncle. Actually nice, really.
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: So now now I'm real dubious about this supposed fish
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: he's got on the wall.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a marine scientist of the Nature Conservancy, and
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: he's not going to put it this way, but he's
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: here to talk about what I'm what I suspect to
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: be a little bit of a deal with the devil
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: on on alternative energy.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Definitely not how I'm going to put it.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: No, not the devil, but but uh a fatal compromise,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: a fatal compromise. But I don't want to lose sight
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: of the muskie manifesto. I don't want to spend ton.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Of time on it.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: So this kid and his dad and his grandpa are
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: outfish and muskies muscle lunges, and they catch a whopper.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: They catch the world record musky by a good stretch.
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: Well, let's hear how good of a stretch? You gotta
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: have details if you're talking world record man.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: They catch it.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: This kid that wrote in his observer number.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Five okay out of some undetermined number of observers.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Um, okay. He even tells us the Linnean name.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: He socks mass quiner g.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Seventy two pound musky. All kinds of witnesses they weigh it.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: They put it on a thing. They mayn't handle it.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: They're mean to it. The rub off, rub the slime
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: off it, turn it loose. Uh. They go and they
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: tell a guy.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: They go and tell a guy at the dock about
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: The guy says man, the musky community. I wouldn't even
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: put it out there because the muskie community will come
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: after you.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Anyways.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: The I g F A kicks him off because they
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: weighed the fish on a boat.
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: M A lot of technicalities with the idea.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: The muskie has to be weighed on dry land.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: So you have to kill the fish. Basically, how are
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: you going to pull that off with that in a
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: regular old boat?
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: You have that cradle and then you like nurse the
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: thing all the way.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: He's got all these photos.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: More stress, more stress.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Here's the fish here.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: But one thing he gets into is he gets in
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: it probably weighed more of course, because they will. They
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: had to certify their scale after the fact. The scale
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: they certified after the fact was dead on balls at
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: fifty but a seventy five pound weight when they certified
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: their scale is seventy five pound weight rang in at
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: seventy two fifty.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Seventy two five.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Kicked off, and this is his story, kicked off because
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: they didn't weigh it.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: On land.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Then he gets into a bunch of other really big
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: musky that had been disqualified for all kinds of reasons.
• 8:32
  Speaker 5: Is there consensus for that rule? Is like, since you
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: aren't on a solid ground, that.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: The boat sinks, the certified.
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: The certified scale isn't as accurate. That's that's the reason.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but he's pointing out. Imagine if you'd
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: killed that fish, what you would have heard about from
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the walleye, from the muskie community, which apparently is a
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: you know, musky two point zero.
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: But if you'd have killed it fifty years ago, nobody
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: would have cared, would have said nothing.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Now it's catched, it's now it's like what you supposed.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Hsky two point oh?
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Well, just think about all the cat.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: And panfish that you'd save by killing that fish.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: It's a two point oh catch twenty two.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: In the old days, we hadn't name this podcast that
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: two point oh catch twenty two.
• 9:20
  Speaker 6: Title days one point oh. Now it's title Day's two
• 9:23
  Speaker 6: point oh.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: What was your comment?
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: Just think about all the chipmunks and and uh small
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: mouth and panfish. They would have saved by killing that.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Save a perch killing musky, dont forget ducklings.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, little kid toes, stuff like that.
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: There's that dude up in Canada three years ago that
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: got smashed by a Walleye and BC tore his hand
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: all up.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: Wiley or a musky.
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: I'm sorry, musky, yep, musky. Yeah, those Walleye anglers just
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: really perked up there, like see, we knew that fish
• 9:56
  Speaker 5: was bad.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: We know it wasn't real lazy.
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: It's not just for eating Sowa's buddy.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I hear you, man, you got bone. Your grandpa got
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: boned by the IGFA.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a boomer.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: I don't know what more to say about it.
• 10:11
  Speaker 8: What do you want the igf A to.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Do about it? Though? I send the guy something. Yeah,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: consolation lure got away in that land. It's a catch
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: twenty two. What are you supposed to do?
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: Rules or rules?
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: Rules is rules?
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: You kill it and you're gonna hear about it from
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: the musky community. Two point zero. You don't kill it.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: You can't be in the thing.
• 10:31
  Speaker 8: Would you killed it?
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd have made a video about it.
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: He'd cut it into stakes.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I'd have got out my spearfish and k ivy right
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: in the top of the head. Now to do it
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: not been like sucket musky community.
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: For context, I'd like to understand catch twenty one and
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: catch twenty three. You should come up with those.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: It's a real catch twenty three. Catch twenty three exists.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: It's Michael Jordan's fishing boat.
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: That's right. Yeah, yeah, it never gets off.
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: Not a musket work on the street.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Wonder people hearing this?
• 11:11
  Speaker 6: Crin first to April.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, hey, go check out. So we got our live
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: tour coming up. Let me pull up the dates.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: We got our live tour.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Coming up, just to remind everybody, where's my little thing?
• 11:25
  Speaker 6: April? What is it? Twenty second or twenty third? To May?
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: April twenty third, Mace, Arizona, bear with me here April
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: twenty four, San Diego, California, April twenty five, Anaheim, California.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: April twenty seven, Sacramento, California. That winds up being a
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: lot of California April twenty nine, Salt Lake City, April thirty, Boise, Idaho,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: May one, Missoula, Montana, which is gonna be a riot
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: hometown crowd having spent many a night in that theater
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: above it and in it.
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: And blow it with your elevator operator, buddy, We used
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: to catch pigeons below that thing.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Scoot and Newton. I'm gonna tell the story of Scoot
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: and Newton. May second, Spokane, May four, Portland, Oregon, Portland,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Oregon and slow Gin Fizz. If that ain't loved, then
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: tell me what is great tun Uh huh.
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: You know it's a winner When Phil laughs, I know
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: it about once a year something tis fancy.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: The other day what was it? Yeah, there are something
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: caught Philsier.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: That was just a great uh retain impression. Uh huh.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: May five, Tacoma. Get your tickets. You can go to
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: the actual you can go to the meeater dot com
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: and you'll find a live events thing and find it there.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Or you can go to the specific theaters. But I
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: didn't just name the specific theaters, which makes it very tricky.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Type go to your computer and type of media, your
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: live you'll find it. Come check us out. It's gonna
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: be a ton of fun.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: It's a three act show.
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: Bring your wife, you know, I uh is a little
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: in the weeds. But when we talk about reaching new
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: audiences with the podcast. If there's gonna there's gotta be
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: like a Venn diagram of when Phil laughs, mm hmm.
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: We're reaching new audience members. I don't know if those
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: people be around for a while, might pop in see
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: what's going on.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Like you'd have to just catch one of them to
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: have me walking by someone playing it like you left
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: your car door open at the gas station and you
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: left it on and some guy caught some guy like
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Phil caught a little lick there. All right, Yannie, hit it,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: quick hit.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: If the live tour isn't it enough for you, you
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: can come spend If that's not enough, Yanny, for you,
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: three days with us and a new thing we're calling
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: Meat Eater Experiences. We're gonna have a lot more details
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: to come, but I've been instructured to do a quick
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: hit here about this. We're hosting a fishing trip in Venice, Louisiana,
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: as well as.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: I get some background on that one waterfowl.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: Hunt in Kansas. You have some background, I'd like.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: To give some background. Oh yeah, please do the last couple.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Of years when we've been down been going down spearfish
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: and on spearfish and the oil rigs out of you know,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: coastal Louisiana. And I fell into becoming friends with Renee,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: who owns Cypress Cove Marina, and we got talking about
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: something fun we'd like to do, and we're gonna basically,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: not basically, we're gonna take over Cypress Coved Marina.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: So we're doing a thing where he's got a house boat, condos,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: a hotel, We're getting all the spots. He's got a
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: whole ton of charter captains that charter out of his
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: marina and friends and stuff. So we're getting all the boats,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: all the lodging, put together food plan, and then we're
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: gonna have meat eater crew guys there and we're doing
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: big fishing party, guys and gals, guys and gals, big
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: fishing party in shore, offshore on guide boats, hanging out
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: at night, cooking fish, cleaning fish.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: It's gonna be a good time. Renee is gonna do
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: once per group is going to do a big Cajun
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: seafood boil, which I'm very excited about. He's so I
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: like people that are so into doing their type of
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: food that when when you meet someone that has custom
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: made or had someone custom made them, the thing to
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: cook their food in you know, it's serious and there
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: it's gonna be good. So we're gonna get that experience
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: down there. And then yeah, the waterfowl Honting in Kansas,
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: three different trips between November December and uh well January
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: first really is the last one for that hunt, so
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: uh check, go to go to the website. There'll be
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: a drop down menu under Mediator Experiences and all the details.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Will be there here shortly.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: You know what I like about the waterfowl part of
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: it is that's gonna be the thing I need to
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: motivate me to finally get me.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: A power plucker.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have my power plucker sent there, know
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: when it's all said and done on and bring that
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: power plucker back home.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: It's good idea.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: What's that kind of power plucker I want?
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: You know, the one that my brother in law has Now,
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: I think it's called the foul foul Plucker.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Isn't it?
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: Dude?
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Do you ever be on that guy's website? Nope?
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: I got the nosing around there, and my neighbor, Pottery
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: pat he after he offered to go haves. He's on
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: it with me, But I don't know if I want
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: to like want to share. Well, hey, then you know.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Whatever, then I gotta go looking for it over his house.
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: So I mean, you guys live like fifty yards apart.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: It's not like.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Sharing being me and powdered pad or to share everything.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Anyway.
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: It's I've told you where I've seen these things set up.
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: Eventually there's a shack that gets built around them.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Kahl was saying, because because the feather mate, the feather
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: management so much.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Eventually just yeah, you kind of dig it out.
• 17:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you're like, boy, it doesn't really work in the
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: garage all the time.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: That's a creeping cost if you start out with a
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: power plucker and then you end up with a building.
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and then you have a house that's built around well,
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: yeah exactly.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: I think it could be modified a little bit. They're
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: not cheap. I'm looking at it right now on the
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: orbist site. There's seven hundred and thirty bucks. Yeah, but
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: they get for him. But it makes it pretty duck
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: well when you do it right, you read the that
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: guy is so serious. People place the order with that guy.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: And also, like you go place the order, all of
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: a sudden your phone rings. He's calling you to make
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: sure that you're serious about this purchase.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: To be like, well, I saw you bought one of
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: the pluckers. Here's the deal, right, let's work together.
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: Uh, Cal, I could see that there could be some
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: feather build up, you know, I mean especially if you
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: I mean if you're processing you know, at fifty a day.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: But I mean we processed almost twenty birds and we've
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: basically filled up a shot full canister shot back in
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: that you know, two hour period and it was full,
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: like you couldn't really done too many more without dumping it.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: But it worked, said two hours for twenty birds.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I'm guessing. I mean we had kids
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: there that are, you know, helping and messing around, but
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, the keys, it's got to be a
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: dry bird.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Well, you gotta read more. I started reading more than
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: you read.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I just send that.
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: Guy a picture of my thumb, say like, is it
• 18:56
  Speaker 5: going to be better than this?
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: I do better, but we'll do faster. That's one hundred
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: percent sure, petition buddy, I want.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: One of those things still.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Man, I'm gonna have it sent there so when we're
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: doing our when we're doing our mediator experiences deal, we
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: can people can power.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: Pluck totally go home with a bunch of birds.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Hopefully you got more to say.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: No, I think that's uh, that's good for it.
• 19:23
  Speaker 7: Off.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Quick hit spots are available to the general public starting
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: the opening day of bear season.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: And turkey season in Pennsylvania.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: April fifteen.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Isn't that? What's tax day? Yep?
• 19:38
  Speaker 6: That's it?
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, so when you go to either send your
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: money in or file for your money.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: Who was it that had a horse named Iris because
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: she was born on April fifteenth? You remember that?
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: No, I thought that was a cute ir s.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, April fifteen spotsor availed again. We got our trip
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: fishing Louisiana in shore. Offshore, you can even go jug
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: and catfish.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, listen, man, I would have gone way deeper, but
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: I was asked to do a quick hit. But yeah,
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: we got all kinds of things we can talk about
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: for this trip or.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Or ducks and geese and Kansas. Yeah, and every night
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: there's gonna be a long We're gonna give a long.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Lecture about something.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: Every dight.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna read this Musky Manifesto with everybody present.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: That's right, and that's optional. If you don't want to
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: stay for that. You can just go get some rest
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: because the next day is going to be another big
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: day of hunting or fish.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: And so there's a thing we spent a lot of
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: time on a uh something blowing up out a blow
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know, blowing up that might be over selling it.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: A problem in Wisconsin that is just disconcerting to me.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Unbeknownst to me for my whole life, I had no
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: idea you can't spear a Northern pike in wiscon which
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: to me seems like the pike spirit. If you'd have
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: said to me before I found this out, if you
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: said to me, what is the pike spear in the
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: state in America? I would have just said, Eh, Wisconsin
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: is there?
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: Is it because of Musky two point zero?
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Is that what they don't who's driving it right now?
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's what I thought.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know who is driving it. Prior to Muski
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: two point oh, you cannot spear a Northern pike in Wisconsin.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: You can spare a sturgeon in Wisconsin. Can't spear a
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Northern pike Why because they can't trust one. They think
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: pike spears will get all the Biggins and they think
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: that a pike spearer cannot tell the difference between a
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: northy in a muscle lunch man.
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: It's like looking into an aquarium at the zoo.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: He can you can trust Americans. You can trust Americans
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: to tell the difference between a button buck and a spike.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: You can trust Americans to tell if a deer has
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: three times on one side. You can trust an American
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: to tell a hen pintail from a drake pintail in
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: the early season when they don't have their breeding plumage.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: You can tell Americans how to tell a hen pheasant
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: from a rooster pheasant. You can trust Americans how to
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: catch a pike and not mistakenly, or catch a muskie
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: and not mistake it for a pike.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: What else do you trust Americans to do?
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: I think I think you know fast moving waterfowls. Fantastic example.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: For sure, you brought up hen versus rooster pheasant. How
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: about a sharp tail and a hen pheasant when they
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: get up into the city.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: You can trust an American to tell the difference between
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: a sharp tail hen and a hen pheasant. To drab
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: colored brown birds with a pointy tail, the sun in
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: the bright sun. There's no prohibition on hunting them in
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the bright sun. Far from it, no prohibition against walking
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: into the sun. What else can you trust Americans?
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: Nothing?
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: You can trus men's room from the women's room.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: You can trust Americans tell the men's well you used to.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can trust Americans to not shoot a black
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: bearsyle with cubs. You can trust Americans to identify a
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: male mountain goat. But apparently you cannot trust Americans to
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: not spear muskies while spear and pike. Therefore, the entire
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: state of Wisconsin can't go pike spearing. As we explained
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: in the past episode, they put it to Wisconsin has
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: this kind of cool but widely widely celebrated and widely
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: displot despised.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: Way that you.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Can get game loss change. What's it called calendar? You
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: remember the advisory panel?
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, the regional like Pat Dirkins always talking about, and yeah,
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: regional advisor or yeah, there's an acronym, but it's a
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: county by county or region by region citizens Advisory Council.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: So if you want to get a game a long
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin change, you can bring it to the citizen's advisory panel.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Like I'm going to get in there heavy duty as
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: a non resident because they're trying to move through the Citizens'
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Advisory Panel process. They're trying to move youth turkey in
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin from two days to four days, which I firmly support,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: and the Wisconsin public supports that. What the Wisconsin public
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: is uneasy about is youth deer going from two days
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: to four days, but they're supportive of it going four
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: days for turkey.
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of people that gripe about those youth
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: hunting seasons.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: I don't understand. Well, if I didn't have kids, i'd
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: hate them.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Well, I was staying there to day. If we had
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: a youth elk, I was saying, I would have never
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: gotten the vast ectomy. I said that on the show.
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: As a man with no children. Here in Gallason County,
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: here we go, I pay out the nose for your kids'
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: education already.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: I don't know why they also need to beat me
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: out into the field.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Do you know what I mean?
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Pick one or the other.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: How's that You've had plenty opportunity at this point in
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: your life. Those kids need a little opportunity to.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, help me out here.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Whoa I got my glasses on. Who can help me
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: out finding this?
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: Well?
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: How did the vote break?
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: So they put it to the citizens Advisory Panel and
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: it got shot down kind of. They said, do you
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: support pike spearing, and how in the world could someone
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: say no?
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: But here's what happened.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: They had a nearly even vote of yes no, and
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: you had the option to say no opinion, okay, which
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: was so close that it actually advanced to the Conservation
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: the Conservation Congress in Wisconsin after a somewhat anemic public input,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: meaning evenly broke yes no. I think it was slightly no.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: But then there's all these people that copped out with
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: a no opinion. So then it goes to the Conservation Congress,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: and the Conservation Congress in Wisconsin says thirty five to
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: twenty eight, Yes, we want a pike speerience season. But
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: as this guy puts it, the DNR Wisconsin's now dragging
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: their feet. This guy that writes in about it wrote
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: this letter. Myself and the two thousand other individuals I
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: represent as part of the Wisconsin Dark House Angling Association
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: and the Powerful Fish Decoy Association National, The Powerful National
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Fish Decoy Association are going to continue the fight. So
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: it's like it's it's a pot boiler in Wisconsin.
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I mean, what what is the risk? Like,
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: are you aware of any long studies that examine the
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: abuse of overtake by spear fishermen during the ice season,
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: like a guy committed to a fish shack versus six
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: tip ups?
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Like that's what I was going to say, Like
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: I've I've speared pike and you're you're not out fishing.
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: The guy's got a whole set of tip ups out
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: like no way, yeah, and you're sitting there and like, yeah,
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: maybe you're targeting bigger pike.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: But I'm not aware of any studies, and I could
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: see an argument for going to lake by lake management. Yeah,
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: well yeah, of course, depending on you know, the population
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: status of muskies or the presence even of muskies in
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: a given lake.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be a great compromise. Of course if there's
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: like big treasure. You know, what was the strain of
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: muskies also quad for strain. So he as when the
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: guy or the guy that we communicate about this issue,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: when he wrote his letter being like, hey, what gives
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: the Conservation Congress supported and advanced it. How come Noah movement.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: The department came back to him. Department, the department, this
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: is the this is the Fishing Game Department Wisconsin d
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: and R coming back to him. The Department does not
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: plan to advance this proposal as a d n R
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: rule change. Question spearing Northern Pike through the ice may
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: raise user conflicts with other ice fishers.
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: Since I may not right, I mean sorry, go ahead.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Since implementation of a rule change in nineteen nine twenty
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: three that eliminated the January and February spearing seasons on
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: the Monominee in Brule Rivers, no winter spearing has been
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: allowed in Wisconsin, with the exception of ice spearing on
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Lake Superior. Spearing can be selective for the largest pike
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: in the population a lot of maize and cans.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: So, if I get that argument correctly, he's saying that
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: because spearfishing is so selective of the largest pike, then
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: it could have negative population consequences.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Now it's other guys, bitch, and that they're going to
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: spear all the big pike.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the implication, right.
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: It's like in your four foot chunk of a how
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: many acre lake, your little window that you see you're
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: going to be selective within that four foot chunk out
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: of one hundred and fifty eight acres.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: But other states allow the spearing of northern pike. Oh yeah,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: have we seen across the northern tier? Have we seen
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: a truncation of the size distribution in lakes where spearing
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: northern pike is allowed.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: I think the problem with that is it's been historically
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: it's just always been historically present. But what I can
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: tell you can study the dickens out of is the
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: fact that there ain't nobody out spearing pike. Yeah, a
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: little bit. It's like a it's not hurting anything. Yeah,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: he goes on, the department goes on. There is also
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: concern with spearers mistaking muske Lunge for Northern pike on
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: water bodies. We're both Congeners.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: What's that mean? Same genus?
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: We're both congenders, reside Congeners.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: That's what that means. Con generics. Yeah, good thing you're here.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: That's great.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, congeners.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Congeners are congenerics. Yeah, same genus ESOCHS E S O X.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna start saying that all the time all the time.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I get a word like that to write it
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: on my hand for a few days and then then
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: I got it.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Then I got it down.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: While the public input for the twenty twenty three advice
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: requestion was fairly close, more people did not support this proposal,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: with three thousand, one hundred and forty three in favor
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: and three thousand, three hundred and fifty five opposed. We
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: just don't govern that way.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: You know. It's a buddy of mine.
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: He's a retired railroader out of Missoula, loves spear and
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: pike has only to my knowledge, speared maybe a handful
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: in many, many seasons. Because he is actively selecting for
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: a huge pike. He has one pike mounted on his
• 31:39
  Speaker 5: wall in his house, and it does not matter if
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: you've been through that door a thousand times or for
• 31:44
  Speaker 5: the very first time. Eventually he'll be like, did you
• 31:49
  Speaker 5: see the pike? And you're like, yep, gam it's still.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: There, Like how did he get that one? With a spirit?
• 31:55
  Speaker 5: Yep, spearin through the ice. But he's like, he would
• 31:59
  Speaker 5: be the and this is an invasive species in this lake.
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: It's it's the lake that you can underwaters spearfish for
• 32:06
  Speaker 5: in western Montana. He would be he would raise Holy
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: hell if anybody decided to eradicate the pike from that
• 32:16
  Speaker 5: system because he loves that species so much. So that's
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: just kind of like a random selection of dark house spearfishermen.
• 32:27
  Speaker 5: They're not or this particular person, right, he's letting every
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: fish go. Yeah, and he's up there all the time.
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: And like the economic impacts that we always talk about
• 32:38
  Speaker 5: people who do stuff like this, right, it's it's a
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: weird thing. The other thing that is like worth pointing
• 32:46
  Speaker 5: out here that's kind of a nowhere type of deal
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: is like you want to talk to about people who
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: discuss climate change and the impacts of that, talk to spearfishermen.
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: I'm sorry, ice fisherman, ice anglers. Yeah, the catch is
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: going down. They didn't ice fish this year the amount
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: of days, right, they didn't. They didn't get out at all.
• 33:07
  Speaker 5: But that could be a reason for the d NR
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: to be like, well, why would we put in the
• 33:11
  Speaker 5: expense of rewriting the rags, uh for something that's trending
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: downward anyway?
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Uh, Yeah, I'm the idea on that.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Like, I grew up in big time pike country in Michigan.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: We fished. That was our primary ice. Now one of
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: our primary ice.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Is that well, let me put this way, that was
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: our only ice, big game fish that we concentrated on.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: You could spear, you could tip up, and you want
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: to see some bloody ice, go out there on a
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: big tip up day. If you were out for numbers,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: running tip ups is going to give you bigger numbers
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: of fish.
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: Well we're weren't you saying that your your lake as
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: a kid had a bunch of dead pike all over
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: during the summertime, like people would kill them and leave them.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: Is that right?
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you see a lot of that, right, But that's
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: and that's after the bass. Oh when the lake shore
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: is like littered with fish that got let go with
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: a nightcrawler and its anus. Let's talk about mercury and
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: fish from sure.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: The reason I want to talk about mercury and fish
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: is one we have a colleague of beloved colleague who
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: he claims that have been mercury poisoned. I have been
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: eating fish most of my life, and waters that carry
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: a health advisory, state health advisories.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: I lived for a while.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: In Seattle, and we would have people not eat the
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: perch we caught because they knew that those fish had
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: a health advisory.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: People are aware of it.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: There was just a recently an article in the New
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: York Times about you probably saw this. If we're cutting
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: if we've been so successful in cutting mercury admit what's
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: the word, not admissions, submission emissions, mercury emissions. If we've
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: been so successful curbing mercury emissions, why do tuna still
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: have mercury in them?
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: It takes a very long time for mercury to leave
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: the environment. It can be actually a bigger problem in
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: freshwater systems than offshore, because no one's taking anything out
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: of stink of remote lakes in Canada, for example, Atmospheric
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: deposition of mercury puts mercury in that water. It's taken
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: up by algae, other phytoplankton. It enters the food chain
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: that way, it works its way up into say, let's
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: say walleye are the top predator in a given lake.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Then if very very few people are fishing that lake,
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: harvesting fish out of that lake, the mercury never leaves.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: That's how the mercury has to be removed. Pretty much.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: It's got a very long half ton, it's got a
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: very long half life, and so it just stays in
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: the system. And it's actually the lakes that are fished
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: harder that tend to have lower mercury.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: And like you're hauling the mercury out when you haul
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: fish way, it's.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: Them get them big muskies out of there. There's there's
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: no once it's in the food web. I mean, there's
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: not really any mitigation that can be done. It's not
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: like you can spray a lake.
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: And where's it all coming from in the first place?
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: Does industrial pollution?
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, fossil fuels too.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Well, how are they curbing?
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: I got a ton of questions about it now.
• 36:46
  Speaker 5: I thought mercury was so heavy that it just works
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: its way.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Down in its elemental form. It's it's super dense, right,
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: But the mercury that's dangerous to animals from a toxicity
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: standpoint is the methylated form. Uh so, it's it's got
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: a carbon and a couple of hydrogens on it. The
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: density of that molecule I don't know off the top
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: of my head. But it's not like the silver liquid
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: you're thinking of in a in a thermode. The fun stuff,
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: the fun stuff, Yeah, yeah, that you probably played with
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: that you and I both so I were bald played
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: with as kids in elementary school. No, that stuff has gone.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: How have we slowed emissions? We haven't slowed fossil fuel consumption.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: Well, depending on who you mean by we, we have
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: slowed fossil fuel consumption as global you globally know. How
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: have we slowed the emission of mercury? It's generally it's
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: about uh, scrubbing procedures when those fossil fuel, when that
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: that that gas is being emitted from coal burning powers.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: So want to hear about clean coal or whatever? Is
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: that different? Uh? No, it's you're on the right track. Yeah,
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: although we're hearing less about clean coal. But yeah, but
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: that would be scrubbed where the emissions are scrubbed exactly,
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: and mercury is part of that. Okay, yep.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: And then they use mercury in mining applications.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: It's out of my pay grade.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's that's not making its way. I mean they
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: use mercury in like, you know, like leech mining. Okay,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: But I don't know if that gets into the water system,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: because everybody talks about the atmospheric mercury that shuts into your.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Fish yeap, And depending on the fish, it could be both.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: It could be that that point source. You know, if
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: you're talking about a fish that's in an estuary or
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: close to shore, like bluefin tuna, for example, you brought
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: up tuna. Bluefin tuna have elevated mercury. Often they're apex predators.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: They're eating a lot of fish that are associated with shore,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: that are living in rivers and systems that might be
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: influenced by a single factory or something up upstream. But
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: then you have fish that never come close to shore,
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: like blue marlin, for example, that live in the blue
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: water pelagic environment for their entire life. The mercury that's
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: in those animals is just from non point source, from
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: atmospheric deposition coming down in the rain.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: An atmospheric deposition is global, correct. I mean, you could
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: go to the remotest corner of the Indian Ocean and
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: mercury rains down in that.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: You'd find a Budweiser bottle, a food line bag, and
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: some microplastics, and there'd be mercury there, got it, But
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: not in.
• 39:30
  Speaker 5: The concentration right of like the Great Lakes and its
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: heyday of the industrial output of the Industrial Revolution right.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: Well, in general, since the nineteen seventies, mercury deposition worldwide
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: has gone down largely as a result of the environmental
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: movement in North America in that time. And again a
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: little out of my depth here, but we as a
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: country put pressure on other countries to be more environmentally
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: responsible the emissions and the burning of fossil fuels, and
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: that lowers atmospheric deposition of mercury too. Got it.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: So when will do you picture if current practices continue,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Is there a day in which all of a sudden
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: you notice that there's no more health advisories on the
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: consumption of wildfish, probably.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Out of the lifetime of everyone in this room. Unfortunately,
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: that's my guess. You take that long, yeah, because you
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: have some places where there's just super high concentrations, and
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: you have some species that are just notorious notorious for
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: high mercury content. But we'll see, so you.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: Can put less. Like the fact that we're putting less
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: of it out there is not being represented in what
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: we're seeing when we sample fish.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: That's fair to say. No, it is being represented, because.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: So I'm saying we're not seeing, like I said with
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: this article's point about tuna, we're putting less of it
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: in the sure, but we're not yet seeing less of
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: it in our fish.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, I see. Well, So, first of all, I'll say
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: that in order to observe a decline in a toxic
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: kint like mercury, you have to have a really long
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: time series of information. So, in other words, in order
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: to observe that decline, you'd have to have the data
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: going back to, say, the nineteen seventies. I'm not a
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: tuna guy. I love eating tuna. I'm not aware of
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: what sort of long term data sets there are for
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: tuna muscle. And we keep saying tuna, but there's all
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: these species in all these different environments. So I was
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: part of a study a couple of years ago where
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: we did have a long term data set for blue
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: marlin muscle that went back to the nineteen seventies, and
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: we did observe.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: DeLine like who was collecked in that?
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: Like? How? Yeah, good question. So the federal government, the
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: National Marine Fishery Service otherwise known as Noah Fisheries, has
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: a laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina, where I live, and
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: there were scientists there and at the Duke University Marine
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Lab also in Beaufort, that began collecting muscle tissue from
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: blue marlin in the nineteen seventies in from in fact,
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament, which is something that
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: you've covered on this podcast. Yeah, sopist opportunistic sampling of
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: muscle taken from the animals that were landed in that tournament,
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: and in the seventies also animals that were landed willy
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: nilly and you know, just brought to shore or maybe
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: in other tournaments. So there was a we had they
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: analyzed those data. Then It's not like we had crusty
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: chunks of marlin. Maybe they were drying it or something. Okay, yeah, no,
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: they analyzed those data then, uh, and then we had
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: there was a gap of twenty five years. And then
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: in the late nineties, scientists at that same lab, the
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: Noah Lab no Officieri's Lab in Beaufort began collecting muscle
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: again from blue marlin in the Big Rock Tournament. The
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: NC State University Lab where I went to graduate school
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: in Morhead City, North Carolina, took over that sampling in
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: the early two thousands and created a long term data set.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: I think the paper. The data in the paper went
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: up to maybe twenty twenty two, So that's what for
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: thirty year, forty year, fifty year time series. Yeah, of
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: blue marlin muscle, and there was a market decline in
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: the content of total mercury and methyl mercury in that
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: muscle from the nineteen seventies to present day. Oh my god,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: good news, good news. And the other good news is
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: huh for blue marlin in particular, for some reason, I
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: don't know if I have a good speculation here, but
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: for some reason, blue marlin are special in that most
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: of the mercury in their muscle tissue is not the
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: nasty stuff, the methylated form. For most fish, when they're
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: forming FDA EPR or forming consumption advisories, they're sampling the
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: muscle for total mercury. It's much easier year to run
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: a sample for total mercury and the muscle tissue. They're
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: coming up with an advisory at three parts per million
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: or five parts per million or whatever, just based on
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: that total mercury number, because they're assuming that all of
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: that mercury is methyl mercury, the nasty stuff. That's true
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: for most fish, most of the total mercury is the
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: methal form, but in blue marlin it's a fraction of
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: the total, which is really good from a from the
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: standpoint of consumption. Now, I'm not hoping that people are
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: going to go out and start exactly that stocks over
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: fished and apex preaders. We don't want to take a
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: lot of them out of the system anyway. But but
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: you could, you could eat blue marlin. From a safety standpoint,
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: very few of the samples in our study flirted with
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: the consumption advisory.
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: Well, I mean, Steve will tell you what you can
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: and can't eat on a fisheries side of things.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: From an authority standpoint.
• 44:54
  Speaker 5: Steve, Well, what do you mean, I mean, you're just
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: going to eat it?
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I will tell you my favorite quote, which
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: I've said thousand times. Me and Yanni were with a
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: friend of ours that likes to fish off flattheads. Yeah,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: and when we asked him about his feeling about eating
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: all those flattheads, he said, if I eat so, if
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: I catch and eat so many big flattheads that it
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: kills me, I win.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: So somewhat fatalistic viewpoint, yeah, markedly so.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: But I have not.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: I have never.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: I've never changed my fish consumption behavior because of health advisories.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: But it nags in the back of my head the
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: same way when I'm eating deer meat, even if I
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: had to test it, if I'm eating deer meat from
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: areas that has like CWD, it is always in.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: The back of my head. So have you been tested
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: for mercury? No, no intention to do so.
• 45:50
  Speaker 7: No.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I would definitely do it. If you got a kit
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: right now, I would do it right now a kit.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not. Somebody of the bag could never.
• 45:58
  Speaker 8: Be in a home test for fish meat you bring home.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: Uh no, not other than from a culinary standpoint.
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: It's a centrifuge, Like, don't isn't that what you do?
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: You like put your blood samples in a centerfuge and
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: spin them up and then it separates.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: I left my medical career behind a long time ago,
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: but I know a guy in Morehead City who had
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: blood drawn explicitly for a mercury test because he was wondering.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: He's like, man, I eat a lot of fish passed
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: with flying colors. That's good to hear, that's what they
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: were doing.
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna text our doctor and we can get well.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Recently I texted so recently, Yanni text. We were worried
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: we had low tea. We asked so Yanni sent a
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: note to our doctor wonder about his tea, And then
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: a couple yes later, I have to send her a
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: note wonder about my tea. And she's like, and I
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: caught her breaking the hippocratic oath because she said, are
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: you guys sitting around talking about testosterone?
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: And I was like, who exactly? Who exactly? Referring to
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: because I was under the depression.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: This is all very secret, isn't the hippocratical do no harm?
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: That's nothing.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: You're thinking people's secrets, patient doctor confidence. Yeah, that's what
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: she broke.
• 47:22
  Speaker 5: Cracks who guys about Steve is Michigan or eats every
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: single fish? And I think like one of the more
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: thorough fish consumption advisories comes out of the state of Michigan.
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: It seems like that's the state that has put the
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: most work into and it's based off of like the
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: Minton state. So it's a Michigan portion, So you put
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: your hand up and that represents your fish full. And
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: then the quantity based off of your weight and size
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: is like you can have a thumb sized portion once
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: a week, or you can have a palm size portion
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: once a month.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: I've always Yeah, that's made me chuckle.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: The in Lake Washington in Seattle. I don't know what
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: it is now, but for a while the perch the
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: fish advisor is very specific where they would even get
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: into sizes of fish, meaning that an example would be
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: there was no restriction or what not restrictions out the word.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: There's no advisory on perch under twelve inches yep, but
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: perch over twelve inches carried a health advisory.
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and they do it differently for children, men, pregnant women.
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: Montana has some real specific like size based advisories.
• 48:43
  Speaker 8: Steve, would you feed a pregnant woman mercury filled fish.
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: Along with not?
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: Would not?
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Would? I? I don't know, because here's the thing about it.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Here's I don't want to spend all over I want
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: to talk about alternative energy.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Here's the thing about it.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: You know, if you're a fisherman, everything you know, if
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: you if you're a fisherman and you dig into your rags,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: you're seeing the health advisories. But when you go to
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: the grocery store and buy fish, you're just not that
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: would all carry a health advisory as well.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: You've seen a lot of fresh I'm actually asking a
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: lot of fresh caught wild walleye at the grocery store.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: No, well, there's a there's a wild walleye commercial fishery
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: in Ontario. Yeah, so when you go and buy that,
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: or when you go to a perch fry on Friday
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: night in Michigan, you're not presented with the health advisory information.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: But if you're a fisherman, it's you get your nose
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: rubbed in it. So I'm like, I feel like the
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: whole So for people to think that this is a
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: thing happening to fishermen, it's a thing happening to people
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: that go to sushi restaurants.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, what's yours? What do you want me?
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: Do you want it on the menu?
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: No, I'm saying that this is this isn't the thing about.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: This isn't a thing for people to fish. This is
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: a thing for people that eat fish.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: Sure, and I I just got this thing. There's this
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: organization that does like fish.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: They do fish consumption estimates twenty five years, fifty years
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: down the road and fish. They expect fish consumption to
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: go up globally. So it's not like people that it's like,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: this is what we're talking about for people that go
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: and catch a waho. It's people that eat a wahoo.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: Yep. So I guess we need to continue to reduce emissions.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: Ye take that, keep that mercury level down.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: But people be like, oh, you fish, you must eat
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of mercury. It's like you go out to
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: eat with your wife, you must eat a lot of mercury.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: I wonder if, in general, there's a presumption that people
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: who fish or buy a fishing license are eating more
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: fish than people who are going to the grocery store
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: to get that fish.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: I think so, dude, if you're a big if you
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: love sushi and you're going out once week and eating biggics,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that people go to sushi restaurants
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: to eat, you're pounding a lot of mercury compared.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: To some dude that thumps a cup of wall I know.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: And then trout.
• 51:13
  Speaker 5: I mean, I hate to play in Steve's hand here,
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: but the think of the amount of catch and release
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: trout fishermen. We all know that the only fish that
• 51:22
  Speaker 5: they're eating are coming from the grocery store.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're just not.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: They're getting their mercury from down at I don't know
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: the sushi joint. I can't name our old sushi joint.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: They got enough. Just as as one example, I think
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: if I didn't get fish from you guys or my
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: in laws from both Fort North Carolina when they bring
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: us some shrimp, we wouldn't really eat fishkill. We just don't.
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: I don't, I don't, but I don't like don't. Yeah,
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: to Brendan's point, I don't know the light trying to
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: see you know, I just don't buy a lot of fish.
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: I'm with you, honest, like, dude, we eat way more like.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Oh listen, I'm an outlier magnitude. All right, we're gonna
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: not move on to where you're.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: Actually an expert. Okay, but I appreciate you. You just
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: dragging you into this.
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: Oh go ahead, Sorry, I just I'm like, I was
• 52:29
  Speaker 5: straining my brain to try to figure out the last
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: fish that I bought at a grocery store, and it
• 52:37
  Speaker 5: has to get like further divided because it's like, the
• 52:39
  Speaker 5: only fish I've purchased at a grocery store is bait
• 52:43
  Speaker 5: to go catch other fish with.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: I would never buy it at a grocery store. In fact,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: there's no way smell Nope, I mean, oh yes, what
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: you bought right. I'll eat it all day long in restaurants,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: but I would never buy it at a store to
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: prepare it at home because I'm home. I just eat
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: it out of my freezer. But if I go to
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: it and there's fish, I'm probably getting the fish.
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: Okay, back on track. Sorry.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: Brendan Runny is a marine scientist of Nature Conservancy, and
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Krin's been really wanting to get him on because we've
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: been wanting to talk about offshore alternative energy development and
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: what it might mean for fish, which led to a
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: broader conversation about where I wanted to have that discussion
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: as a sort of as.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: A example.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Of the opportunities, challenges compromises around alternative energy development, which
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: comes at a cost.
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: Fair all energy development comes at a cost, comes at
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: a cost.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: Now, I want to lay out something that I said.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you something I said on previous
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: episodes on a previous episode when we talked about this,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna let you run.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: But I just want to tee this up.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: If I was the emperor of the world, Nope. If
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: I was the emperor of the.
• 54:03
  Speaker 6: Country, the emperor everybody.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: If I was in charge of America. If I was
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: solely in charge with America of America and my people
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: came to me and said, he, here's our plan on
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: developing currently undeveloped landscapes offshore. On shore, here's our plan
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: to take currently undeveloped landscapes and develop them for alternative
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: energy in order to combat climate change. I would say, Man,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: here's why I'm not into it. I'm not into it
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: because I fear that we're going to make these changes,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: these changes will not be enough to counteract what's happening
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: on the Indian subcontinent in China and RU show. Okay,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: we will see no net decrease in fossil fuel consumption,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: and we will have burnt up our biggest asset, which
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: is our wildlife habitat. So we'll sit. We'll have destroyed
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: a bunch of wildlife habitat and seeing no difference in.
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: Global average temperatures. Okay, now you go. Yeah, so a
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: couple of things. So we're in a climate crisis, fair.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, Well, yeah we're seeing.
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: Yes, if you're a Michigan ice fisherman, hell yeah.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: We're seeing. We're seeing annual increases.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: And now I'm not I don't I don't want to
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: go back like what they do where they try to
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: go back a thousand years because we just weren't measuring
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: temperature the same. But in the modern era with with
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: how we measure temperature now, we are seeing increases, and
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: there's some little blips and stuff, but generally we are
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: seeing increased temperatures, and we're seeing impacts of increased temperatures
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: on fisheries, on wildlife, on marine resources, and we're seeing
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: like some chaotic weather.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: Patterns, weather patterns, we're seeing rain shifts, range expansions of
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: many marine species, many terrestrial species for that matter. The
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: United States is responsible for fifteen percent of the carbon
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: emissions globally. China is responsible for thirty all right, but
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: we have the leg up because we industrialized one hundred
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: years before them. So we have an opportunity right now
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: because we have the means and the motive to try
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: to transition from an electricity generating sector that's largely dependent
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: on fossil fuels into energy sources that do not produce
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: any further carbon emissions. To your point about if we
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: don't do this now, if we do this now, no
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: one else is going to do anything else. We still
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: have the opportunity to bring that DOWT, to get rid
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: of that fifteen percent, to turn that fifteen percent into zero.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: Whether or not any of the other nations on this
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: planet partake in transitioning from fossil fuel burning electricity production
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: to renewable energies, we're still responsible for a huge portion
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: of that. So as a nation, we can move towards
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: an electricity producing sector that produces no carbon, and we should.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: That's why it's the goal of this presidential administration and
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: the goal of the Nature Conservancy to bring us to
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: net zero carbon emissions by the year twenty fifty. That's
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: only twenty six years from now. We need a major
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: uptake in the production of renewable energies like wind and
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: solar on land and also offshore. Can I respond to
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: another thing that you said, You can talk for an
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: hour if you want start so I understand your trepidation
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: about the loss of habitat.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: Can you, within this touch on the BLM's proposal. Definitely, Okay,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: tell everybody about that.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: So right now, the Bureau of Land Management is overseeing
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: something called the Western Solar Plan. There is this is
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: maybe going to be a little jargony there's right now
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: a draft programmatic Environmental impact statement for the Western Solar Plan.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: There are several alternatives in that plan. They all involve
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: opening public land BLM land to solar application. What a
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: solar application means. Solar application means that that land has
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: cleared the first hurdle, the first governmental hurdle, to be
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: identified as suitable for the building of solar farms. It
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean that all of that land, under any circumstance,
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: will eventually have solar on it. You've seen a lot
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: in the news about the government selected preferred alternative of
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: that solar plan, which would open twenty two million acres
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: of public land to solar application.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Public hunting ground. Let's just call it that.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: BLM lands upon which a variety of recreation upon which
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: a variety of consumptive and non consumptive outdoor activities can
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: take place.
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: Well, you met you like you mentioned that. And at
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: the same time, the BLM has promised to prioritize recreation
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: activities and wildlife habitat. So how do these two things.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: Like, I'm glad you asked. So, there's one other alternative
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: in that plan that would only open eight million acres
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: to solar application, and that eight million acres is lands
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: that are both already disturbed and are within ten miles
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: of transmission existing transmission infrastructure. So that's one thing to
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: support with this. Where we know we need more renewable
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: energy production, we have an opportunity we can build solar
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: on lands that are already disturbed. By the way, twenty
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: three million acres of federal land is currently an oil
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: and gas leases, twenty three million acres twelve million acres
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: currently producing oil and gas. Oh hit me? Is those
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: numbers again? Twenty three million acres of federal land more
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: than the preferred alternative in the draft Programmatic Environment Impacts.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Twenty three million acres of federal land are currently leased
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: to oil and gas companies, twelve million acres currently producing
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: oil and gas of public land.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: So one of these proposals would more than double the
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: amount of land, would more than double the amount of
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: land given to energy production.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I understand the question. But what I'm not sure
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: about is whether there's overlap in that twenty two millionaires
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: for solar three.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: For the eight million dollars or eight million acre plan.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: They would use existing roads and things like that that
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: are being used by fossil fuel extraction operations.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: Or wherever possible, we want to use existing transmission infrastructure,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: which of course includes things like roads, that includes things
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: like power lines. Right, And that's what we that's what
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: we know we need, and that the Nature Conservacy's working
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: towards identifying the lowest impact ways to build out a
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: clean energy economy.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: Right Because I mean, not only do you have like
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: the idea of solar panels covering the ground, but all
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: the roads in infrastructure you would have to build is
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: not much different than what's already being done by fossil
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: fuel viperation.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: The footprint of any energy installation is not restricted to
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: just the infrastructure that's generating the electricity.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 8: Who are the biggest players that are foreign against this?
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: When you say this, do you mean the renewable energy
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: transition in general or the one.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: It's got to be a bitter pill for environmental groups
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: who've been who've built their careers, who've built their organizations
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: on fighting energy development.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's a bitter pill at all. I
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: think all it's in my mouth right now, it's better,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: well not certainly not for every environmental group. So there's
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: always trade offs with building any energy infrastructure, and why
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: would we not transition to building renewable energy infrastructure. Why
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: would we stick with fossil fuels when we have the
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: opportunity to build infrastructure, to build utility scale projects that
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: produce electricity at no net carbon emissions.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: You're asking a huge question, and I'm trying to keep
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: this conversation contained because I could come I could come
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: in with a lot of things that are sort of
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: out of my area of direct interests and expertise, and
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: I would get into I guess, national security questions. I
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: don't know, like like I don't even know. I don't
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: even know where the conversation would go. If we're talking
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: about it from a sort of a perspective of the
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: US economy security, it could go one hundred directions.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, fine, But but from a public lens standpoint?
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: From okay, that that I'm comfortable with. Yeah, there's always
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: trade offs. Over the last several decades, we've seen oil
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: and gas exploration, we've seen oil and gas, new oil
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: and gas leases. So if we're going on public lands,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: so if we're if we're going to use public lane
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: ends in the generation of electricity, why would we continue
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: to do that with fossil fuels and not transition to renewables.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: I can't really tell you.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: A thing that I would explore would be efficiency meaning
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: energy per unit of space.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's one way to measure efficiency, sure, but it's
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: also about containing the climate crisis and trying to curb
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: emissions and bring us to and and energy and an
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: energy sector that's not continuing to contribute to what we've
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: seen over the last several years. Runaway temperatures, species shifting,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: the distributions, all the things we just touched on. Are
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: you familiar? I can't remember who. There's a novelist. He's
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: a big birder.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: That's his name, read the French name Gay No no no.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: He's a contemporary novelist and he's a big.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: Burder, A novelist, not nonfiction. Who wrote the corrections? Was
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: it him? Either way?
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: Uh? But not leaves of.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: Either way? It doesn't matter. There's a perspective. His perspective
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: was this.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: This perspective was as the climate, the climate's changing, climate's
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: going to change. The best thing we can give wildlife
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: is sanctuary to withstand those changes. Wildlife places to be
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: wild and weather the storm and again, like I want
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: you like I just I don't want to like I'm
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: not I'm not looking to debate it. I'm just trying
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: to lay out my reticence and then I want you
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: just to go, Okay, but that's my my reticence is
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: that we would give up good funk like any amount
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: of good functioning, pristine wildlife habitat in it in exchange
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: for chasing a thing that I'm not sure we can get.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: But I'm sure we're gonna lose habitat and chasing it.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: We're not necessarily going to lose pristine habitat. As I mentioned,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: one of the alternatives in this Western solar plant only
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: includes previously disturbed lands. So we're not talking about cutting
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: out what is the definition of that.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: You'd have to look at the because you could go
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: to a ranch and say that's previously disturbed. Isn't it
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: not from wildlife perspective? Okay, So then Mikyle's not condos guy, gotcha?
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, this is so like I'll make the the bargain
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 5: with you right now. I'd be way more into it
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 5: if my version of disturbed right like these old well pads,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: the infrastructure that go out to you know, you know,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 5: you fly over you know, parts of the Red Desert,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 5: all that stuff, that type of infrastructure BAM gets replaced
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 5: with green energy infrastructure. I'm like, yeah, okay, I can
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 5: see that. Like we're not gonna in any sort of
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 5: good way be able to rehab that into the mixed
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 5: grass prairie that it once was.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: So the good news here is that the public is
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: involved in this process at every step of the way.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: Right now, there's a public comment period open for the
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: Western Solar Plan. This is going to drop April first.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: I heard.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: The public comment period is open until April eighteenth. There
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: right now, if you go to.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: Three days after the tickets going, yeah, get your tickets,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: get your tickets to the live show, and get a
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: couple days of recoup a couple days.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: Proceed right to the BLM's website. Take a look. There
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: will be recordings of virtual meetings that have already happened.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: But you can listen to the virtual webinars describing the
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: solar plan. Maybe somebody asked, what's your definition of disturbed lends.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: Maybe you can get a nice crisp answer from the
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: BLM on that, and then you can provide public comment.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: Tell them what you think, and that's that's the case
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: with any not just solar, that's the case with any
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: of these environmental impact statements, which every renewable or fossil
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: fuel related project has to go through an environmental impact statement,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: and that the public is involved in every step of
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: the way. The public is involved in narrowing down the
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: area that's opened, the public is involved in reading and
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: commenting on the proposal from the company, the construction and
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: operations plan, all the way through until the project is built.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 7: I think that there are six options if I'm not mistaken,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 7: like five different frameworks for the plan. And then if
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 7: I read this correctly, there's a no action status quo option,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 7: which I.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: Think theys thing happens. Yep, there's always a no action alternative.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 4: Is there any existing studies like where large scale solar
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: operations have been built, like on wildlife impact? Like are
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: they like what where are they basin what they're going
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: to do and what's going to happen.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: On that's a little out of my expertise.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it almost feels like we're like, hey,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: after you, but it's just like questians I have.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: No, that's perfectly fair. I mean there are ways that
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: you can mitigate the impact on wildlife to things like
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: a solar project. For example. Most solar projects are going
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: to have a fence around them. That's not great from
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: a migration standpoint, but you can make a permeable fence.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: Maybe not for an elk, but for foxes, Okay, for
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: desert tortoise you can. You can have openings in the
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: fence and allow them to move through that project even
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: though it's there, and they do. We actually have footage
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: of desert tortoises and swift foxes running along a solar
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: farms fence and cutting through.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: There's two things I want to do, and you'd pick whatever,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: whatever one you.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 6: Want now, and then we should move to off I want.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. One move is talk about offshore. Yeah, that's like
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: you'd explained.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: The other move is we have an election coming up
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: this November.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: What are you running for?
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: If well, if there's a if there's an administration somewhere
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: within this conversation, if there's a change in administration, how
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: much did this just becomes a non issue. I mean
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: Trump said he was he joked and was taken Like
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: everything he says he like makes a joke and actually
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: serious he joked that, Oh, no, I'm gonna be a
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: what do He said, I'm gonna be a dictator for
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: a day, just a day.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: He was he's joke.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: He doesn't have the authority, he said. Someone says, oh,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: everyone's afraid you're gonna be a dictator. He goes, no,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a dictator one day, and on that day,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna close the border and I'm gonna take some action.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: I can't remember how I articulated it takes some action
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: to increase domestic oil production. Then he says, then I'm
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: gonna quit being a dictator.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: Let's do the offshore one.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, we'll do off short. But I want to come back,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: like all the things we're talking about, how much does
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: this ride on? Like how much if you come back
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: next January seven, how much would everything we just discussed
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: become a non issue because there was a change in administrations.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: I can provide you with several names within the Nature
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: Conservancy who would love to come on this program and
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: answer that question.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 5: I got one more pragmatic question on here, and it's
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 5: okay if we just like leave it on the table.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 5: But there's a finite amount of public land and it's
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 5: declining of that public land habitat. A lot of it
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 5: is already in question. We and we've we're losing good habitat.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 5: What what's the private land existing infrastructure option to carry
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 5: out and get us to the same you know, net zero.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, point like if we did this in a willing seller,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: willing buyers.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: Like wind farms, I mean a lot of those are
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: on we could land.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: It's a great question. Kyle's not turbanes kind of.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: Turbineses.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: No, that's that I think that there is a lot
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: of ground to make up by putting this infrastructure on
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: private lands. And one thing that the Nature Conservancy has
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: done some analyzes towards this rooftop solar not not just
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: on homes but on big box stores things like that.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: An analysis was done that suggested that if thirty five
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: percent of all suitable rooftops had solar on them by
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: twenty fifty, which is aggressive but maybe reasonable, a third
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: of all roofs in the United States is going to
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: be hell on pigeons. That would meet that alone would
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: meet ten percent of our needs for electricity. What level
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: of compliance or what level of thirty a third of
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: rooftops covered by solar panels were it. That's already that's
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: ten percent. So that's a way. That's it right there,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: you go. Now, imagine there's a bunch of the problem
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: right there. It's a bunch of the problem. And I
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: think you recently said something about sports stadiums.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: Yep, just fill that whole thing in with solar.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: I would say the Bears, Chicago Bears Stadium first one
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: to go, great Minnesota Vikings number two.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: To any one of those things that opens up, it's
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: now closed, the top, the roof closed covered.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: What are you a Packers fan?
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 8: Who would pay for the BLM proposal? If they like
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 8: did this start doing?
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: A great question? Who pays for it?
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 8: I assume there's like some private individuals that are you know,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 8: footing the bills to these things.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: Do you mean who pays for the build out of
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: the actual infrastructure of.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 8: It, Like, you know, are we paying for some portion
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 8: of it? Or is it mostly private individuals who are
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 8: like standing to make money off this.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: Like they're going to sell the lease or what are
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: they gonna do? How's it work? Oh? Okay, so it's
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: a it's a win win. So I know it's a
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: win win. So the developer applies for a lease from
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: the federal government or in the offshore wind space, the
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: federal government holds an auction for the lease for the
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: rights to build a project on that ground. It might
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: go for ten million, one hundred million, whatever it depends
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: on the lease, depends on how big it is, where
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: it is. Whatever that money goes into the general treasury.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: That's in our pockets. Okay. The company then has the
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: rights to develop that ground generate electricity, and that goes
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: in their pockets once they start making money.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: Once they start pouring it into the grid.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: Which in the offshore wind space not a lot of
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: is happening yet, but it were on.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 4: The brink, so it would operate just like fossil fuel.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: From a from a economics, the BLM makes money off it, Yeah.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: The public makes money off it or cattle grazing, and
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: and I gotta feel it's more lucrative than the it's
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: definitely contract. Yeah. So as far as as far as
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: putting solar wind on private land, that does put money
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: in the pocket of the landowner big time. The companies
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: are really proprietary about how much money. But it's more
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: lucrative than cattle ranching or grown corn.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: I recently, I don't want to get into any details.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: I have a friend that is in conversation with the
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: solar people. It's life changing money. So there you go,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: like it's life, it's it's generation, it's generational money.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: So if you're listening to this and you got a
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: big patch of ground, you want.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: To turn the turn off? Please you big patch of ground.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: Turned it off.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 5: But I mean, we got all these buildings out there
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 5: that are already patched in to the grid somehow, some way, hmm.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 5: Like right, I mean there's going to need to be
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 5: like if you're generating some serious your juice, you know,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 5: but that ship I don't like, lay a big, gross
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 5: looking cable off the top. I don't care about that.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 5: Sure if it's fixing this problem. But like, you know,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 5: we I just came back from pheasant Fest, right, and
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 5: you know we talk a lot about grasslands, right, the
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 5: most imperiled ecosystem in North America. Right, And I'm like,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 5: what if you can say like this is the solution,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 5: then I'm like, oh uh, some trade offs, but I
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 5: really want it to be in these places that are
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 5: already messed up for wildlife. But if like we have
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 5: all this stuff that is never going to go back
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 5: to supporting anything but feral cats. Yep, Like let's slap
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 5: some slap some rough tops, hold around that stuff.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to get to I want to get
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: to offshore bad. But it's like just for your colleagues.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: For you and your colleagues, please just make sure you're
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: like really digging into like old junkie vacant lots like
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: just whatever, Okay, whatever you guys can find. Well, I
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: encourage you to actually parking lots that you park under
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: the panels.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: I've parked in those. I've parked in.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: Those, So it's not even that it's not even that
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: you lose the parking lot. Yep, it's covered parking.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: And what about agrivoltaics which we haven't touched on. But
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: you can grow especially fruits and vegetables underneath solar panels.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: You can graze cattle. Dairy cattle in particular produce more
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: milk when they are underneath solar panels, when they don't
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: have exposure to extreme heat, extreme sunlight. Great, this is
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: what I need to hear. I'm here for you. I
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: want to talk about offshore.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: What I don't want to hear about I need to
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: hear about all the alterns before we start talking about
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: going out onto perfectly fine ground and breaking it up.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: And I would say this, I don't give I'd say
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: that if it's coal, I say if it's gas, it's
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: just like, I just don't think we can afford to
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: lose habitat.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: We agree with you, we are looking for the lowest
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: impact alternatives. Okay, let's talk about offshore.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 5: And while I did, just a little tip for you,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 5: if you want to talk about offshore from an improving
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 5: fishing standpoint, that'd be a good way to do it.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: Is that where you want to.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: Start, what's the current? Give us where offshore for? Okay,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: do this explain what offshore means, because there's like there's
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: state offshore in federal offshore. Sure, and then what are
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: we currently doing for offshore wind and what are we
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: getting out of it?
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: Yep? Set the stage. So the distinguishing characteristic between state
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: and federal waters is the three mile line. So in
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: the Atlantic, so three miles from shore, the state has
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: fisheries management jurisdiction, leasing the bottom jurisdiction. Once you get
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: outside that three mile line into the edge of the
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: exclusive economics and the EZ at two hundred miles that's
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: federally controlled.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, I wasn't aware of the where it ended.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: Two hundred and then it's international waters, got it, yep.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: So three it becomes fed, and then at two hundred
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: it becomes sort of everybody.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: Three to two hundred, and then it's it's everybody, it's nobody.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: It's foreign fishing fleets, it's you know, offshore accounts. They're
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: out there somewhere.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, little piles of money floating around.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: That's a fish aggregating device right there.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the baiales of cocaine and yeah.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: Man, So here's where we are with offshore wind right now.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: As of last week, there are twenty four operational power
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: producing wind turbines in the United States Atlantic. Five are
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: actually in state waters off Black Island, Rhode Island. You know,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: they were the first Rhode Island thing. I think fished
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: it totally. Twenty seventeen they built five then off of
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: Virginia in federal waters. First federal project was built in
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty two turbines. Okay, how big in what? By
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: what metric? There's six megawatts each there.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: The circumference, What is the circumference of the thing coming
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: up out of the water where it comes out of
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: the water.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: I was what's today Friday. I was fishing around it
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: five days ago, close enough that you could reach out
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: and touch it with your fishing rod. Not that you should,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: because that would be trespassing. The diameter, which is easier
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: for me to estimate it is maybe twenty feet coming
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: out of at the surface of the water. It's bigger,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: of course, at the sea floor, slightly tapered larger at
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: the sea floor. The tip of the blade when it's
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: spinning and it's straight up and down is six hundred
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: and six fifty off the surface of the ocean. And
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: this is a six megawat how much water eighty five
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: feet eighty five feet of depth? Yep, yep. So how's
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: that sound, bitch anchored down? Well, we'll get into that,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: because that's that's important. But let me give you the
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: rest of the rundown here I won't spend too much
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: time on. Then. You've got a handful more projects that
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: are underway right now off of between like Long Island
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: and Martha's Vineyard, that little stretch of coast. One project
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: just finished up last week. Twelve is the number twelve
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: total turbines. Then there's another one that's underway. They've got five,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: so five, five, twelve and two, so that's twenty four.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: That's where we're currently in the Atlantic Ocean, and US
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: water US or state waters.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: Are power producing power twenty four right now?
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: Can I ask one more question as you set this
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: whole thing up, Yeah, can you compare the output of
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: one of because I think I know what. Most people
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: haven't seen that, but most people have been driving down
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: the road and they've seen a wind farm yep. So
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: in size and output, ye, how similar is it to
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: what you see off in the distance when you're driving.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: Down the highway? Offshore? It is way bigger. They're bigger. Yeah.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: So on land, your typical wind turbine generators three and
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: a half megawatts, So I just mentioned the ones off
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: Virginia six megawatts. That's the that's the pilot or research
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: project for that. Developer will begin building a commercial scale
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: project this May. They're going to be putting in fourteen's
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: fourteen megawatt wind turbine generators. That project will be one
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: hundred and seventy six turbines. Sure, it's going to power
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: six hundred and sixty thousand homes annually. Six hundred and
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: sixty thousand homes will be powered by those wind turbines
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: off Virginia. So that project that's fairly big. One hundred
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: and seventy six fairly big one in terms of what's
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: been leased right now. But Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: BOUM is the regulatory agency tasked with all of the
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: permitting and all of the everything with offshore wind. Their
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: current estimate by the year twenty thirty is just over
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: three thousand turbines in the US Atlantic. That's the maximum
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: build out. I think we're going to land a little
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: lower than that in the twos in the two thousand,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: What year twenty thirty, Yeah, it's twenty twenty four, So
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: six years from now three thousand, more like two to
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: twenty five hundred probably in the d that's about just
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: building the gold rush for well shit, there's there's a
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: supply chain that needs to catch up.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: So the maximum man, you need to get more kids
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: signing up for Vogue time school.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: So I'll give you what I mean by the maximal
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: build out. So take the Virginia project for example. The
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: maximal build out of that project was about two hundred
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: and eight turbines. They are only going to build one
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: hundred and seventy six. Where's the other thirty two going? Well?
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: They through a collaborative process with the public and with
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: the federal government, decided to lay off a couple locations
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: that were too close to important resources like shipwrecks, like
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: artificial briefs. They said, Okay, we could build one here
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: and it's not going to be on top of a shipwreck,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: but it's close enough, and this is a valuable enough
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: piece of bottom that people like to fish that we're
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: not going to build our turbines there. We're just going
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: to carve out a little box. And that type of
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: thing is likely to happen with a lot of these projects,
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: which is why I say the maximal build out three thousand,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: I think we're going to be maybe, I don't know,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: twenty percent lower than that.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: Can you hit me with Let's let's go to the
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: current ones. How many miles from shore are the current ones?
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: So the one I was fishing under five days ago
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: is twenty seven nautical miles from Virginia Beach, Virginia straight east.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: You're still only eighty five feet of water there.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The continental shelf is a is a mysterious mistress
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: and drops off at different distances from shore. I don't
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: know where you are. Off Florida, you have five miles
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: from the beach here in a thousand feet of water.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: But yeah, off Virginia, you gotta go a lot farther
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: to get to that continental shelf break, okay, and.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 5: Then to transmit this energy or transport this energy?
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, are.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 5: You trying to like bring things to a centralized cable
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 5: and then bring that on shore or what's the infrastructure there?
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 5: So sorry, we should hit Steve's quite of how is
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 5: that some bitch anchored down?
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: Which one you want to go to first transmission?
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: Or just real quick touch on. I'm just curious that
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: the engineering on it.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so again, I'll speak from the Virginia project that
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: I that I'm most familiar with. One hundred and seventy
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: six turbines will within that farm will spider web to
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: three offshore substations, which will then package up that power
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: into larger cables and shoot them to shore in a
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: cable export corridor.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: Are those substations above or blow water above water?
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: Yep? How big is that? I'm not sure. The oil
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: rig kind of look yeah, it looks like an oil rig. Yep, yep.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: And okay, now how do you anchor them down? Yeah?
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 5: That the footprint of the actual turbine the pole. Yeah,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 5: look pad, Well there's no pad, so here's okay.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So most of the projects that are under development
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: right now or will contribute to that three thousand by
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: twenty thirty number are built with what are called monopile foundation,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: which means you guessed it, one pull, one piling. These
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: are thirty ish feet in diameter and they're hammered into
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: the seafloor using a hydraulic hammer. A massive vessel comes
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: out there, holds itself. The vessel has like a power
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: pole to hold you in place, but on a much
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: bigger scale. Right, They anchor themselves and then they drive
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: them in and then around the base and this comes
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: into the fish habitat. Piece. To prevent what we call scour,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: they put scour protection. Scour is the idea that sediment
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: will move or road because of currents and tides and
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: things washing by. So if you go to the beach,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: take your shoes off, walk into the waves and just
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: stand there let the waves wash around your feet. You
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: become destabilized as the sand erodes from the pressure of
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: your feet pressing down on it. Same thing happens at
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: a much larger scale offshore. So they put rock or
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: rubble around the base in a doughnut, around the base
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: of the piling, and that can make the sound of
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: that I know it, And that can extend let's see
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: sixty to ninety feet maybe from the edge of the pole.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: It's a big donut.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: Where does that material come from?
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a good question. So the Nature Conservancy recently
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: put out a report about different materials that can be
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: used to enhance scour protection. And when I say enhance,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: I mean from an ecological standpoint, to maximize the amount
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: of positive ecological benefit that we're getting out of this
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: material that's being placed in the water. If left to
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: their own devices, the developers would rely on two criteria
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: to decide what they're going to use as scour protection,
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: and those would be the cost of it. We want
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: to keep it cheat because these are ten billion dollar
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: projects we're talking about, and does it accomplish our engineering objective?
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: Does it do what it's supposed to do. So there's
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: an opportunity here as we sit an inflection point on
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: the build out of offshore wind with twenty four in
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: the water almost you know, two thousand plus still to come,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: there's an opportunity to influence what material is being used
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: as scour protection. If we can demonstrate that there is
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: something to gain by switching it up. What they would
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: use if left. Their advice would be like quarried rock.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: It would depend on your geography. It could be limestone,
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: could be grantite, whatever they get their hands on. Another
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: option is repurposed concrete. If somebody rebuilds a bridge or
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: an overpass, all that material that's being busted up, you know,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: put that on a barge, take it out there. It works.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 8: What's the lifespan of one of these things, and like
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 8: how long? What percentage of its life does it's been
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 8: just trying to pay for itself.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: So the leases are generally for twenty five to thirty years.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: Most wind turbines pay for themselves within six months or
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: a year. What, yeah, man, that's efficient?
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: Is that the same with the ones that we see
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: on out here in the west.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: Belief cell, Yeah, I could believe it there more and
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: I could believe what you're talking about that just seems
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: like a bigger pain in the ass, building it out
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: in the ocean, big pain.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: In the ass.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 8: What happens at the end of that twenty five years, We're.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: Not really sure. So I know you guys have spearfished
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: around the remains of oil and gas platforms in the
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: Gulf of Mexico. There's a program now.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: Which is hilarious because can I get kind of lay
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: this out? Really, there's thousands and the golf there are
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: just like you're talking about thousands, twenty three hundred roughly
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: in the goal. There are thousands of oil platforms from
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: offshore oil rigs and many of them are being retired.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: And so to kind of give a little bit of
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: a window into where this conversation is going around this
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: wind development, is these oil rigs made.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: The golf bloom.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, the oil rigs created a fishery. You're shaking
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: your head. They altered they created a fishery. Now there's
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: a debate around. People are saying, well, now that they're here,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: please leave them here, because it they generate so much fish,
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: they create so much habitat, they create all these vertical reefs,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: and so now people that might have lamented them coming
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: in because of the disturbance, increased boat traffic, pollution, are
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: now have gotten used to them. The fishery is built
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: up around them. Anglers have gotten that's how they fish.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: And now they're fighting to keep some not everybody. Some
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: people are fighting to keep the rigs in place to
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: preserve the fishery that the rigs.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: Created, and that's likely to happen with offshore wind too.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: The fight. I don't know all those fights, and I
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: don't know. No one knows what's going to happen twenty
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: five to thirty years from now, the decommissioning thing. At
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: this point, I believe that technically that the fine print
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: says that the developer will take it down to the
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: substrate and leave it looking like it did before they
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: got there, which means removing all that scour protection material.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: To a body mind said, when they remove an oil
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: rig in the golf, he said, it's not even a
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: beer can down there.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, probably cleaner leave no trace.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: No, it's like they come in with like high test
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: sownar and when they're done, there's nothing nothing. It's cut
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: off wave below the surface and everything's gone.
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: And think of the expense and think of the loss
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: of what may very well be extraordinarily valuable fish habitat.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: So that's a fight that we're probably going to have
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: in twenty five or thirty years. And how much of
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: a fight that is, I don't know. But the opportunity
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: that we have now is to demonstrate whether these are
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: valuable habitat, and in all likelihood for certain species they
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: will be. Whether they produce new and animals or simply
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: attract animals from elsewhere is a matter of open debate.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: My suspicion is that two thousand plus of these structures
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: we will see for certain species and uptick in production
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: of animals, especially species that are habitat limited or recruitment limited.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: Black sea bass for example, might be one. But where
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: we are right now is that this whole thing is
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: in its infancy, and we haven't.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: Well, how in its infancy can it be? If it's
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: gonna be it's twenty twenty.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: Four, right. What I mean is we're any.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: Time how many by two thousand and thirty?
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: What couple thousand?
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, well it can't be that.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: I mean. What I mean is it's in infancy for.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: Us six years to build a couple thousands.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: But from a scientific study standpoint, we don't have any large,
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: full scale operational turbines that can be used when far
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: that can be used as a study location.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: So the biology is in its infancy, or the ecology
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: is in its infancy.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: Correct. And there's a lot of money going into collecting
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: before data right now as we're in the for many
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: of these leases, in the waning hours of the before
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: period m hm, we're trying to scrape together data that
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: will be valuable comparison down the line when these wind
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: farms are fully built out.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: Man, imagine if they had done that in a really
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: good way in the goal of Mexico, how valuable that
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: information would be now.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: I can imagine.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: So if you could go like, well, let's take a
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: look now that it's all done, let's take a look
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: at what we want and what we lost.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: Yep. And so a lot of a lot of scientific
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: a lot of really cool fisheries work being done.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 4: When you compare this to oil rigs providing habitat and
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 4: like fishing around defunct oil rigs, is there like is
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 4: there gonna be travel restrictions in these areas for like
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 4: the average recreational fishermen like wanting to run right under
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 4: an operational because you can tie off.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 5: Well, that's said you can't touch them. And I was like,
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 5: there should be anchor points on there so you can
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 5: put your bungee line on there.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: You're not supposed to touch them. My understanding is that
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: there won't. My understanding is there won't be any restrictions
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: as far as how close you can get. Now, there
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: may be, there may be. There may be day to
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: day restrictions. If there's a maintenance of something going on
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: on a specific turbine, the developer won't allow you to
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: get up to it. But by and large, I think
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: the recreational fleet or the charter fleet, or any hooking
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: line vessel will be able to transit right up into
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: that scour protection, right up into the good habitat.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: They need to get real clear on that point. If
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: you're gonna want fishermen to buy in on it, you're
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: gonna have to really clarify that point. And I would say,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: put a couple of mooring cleats on the side of
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: that thing.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: I'll uh yeah, I'll place a call to the cleats.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 8: In twenty twenty one, Joe Soimelli Road an article on
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 8: the media dot com about wind turbines off the coast
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 8: of New Jersey and the Atlantic Shores manager Doug Colpland said,
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 8: you're welcome to fish by the structures. We just asked
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 8: that you don't tie up to them. And in general
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 8: it seemed like they were like kind of supportive of
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 8: like yeah, like come hang around him, just like, don't
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 8: touch them.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: And they are supportive, and they have to be because
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: it's this is a collaborative process in which the public
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: is engaged and they need as many of the stakeholders
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: and stakeholder groups on their side as they can get.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 4: They should set up some bait and tackle shops out there.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 6: I want that, Yeah, that floating barge and feed, so I.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: Could get on board, Like from the access point, that's
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: a compromise. I could see fisher you want. Don't touch
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: it seems fair. If it winds up being like don't
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: go near it, you can't be within two hundred yards
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: of it, I feel like that's going.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: To cause a lot of tension. I don't think we're
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: going to see that though, And I like the idea
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: of a tackle shop up out there. I was thinking
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: on Sunday when I was fishing underneath them that I
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: was putting tags on fish. Oh, we're asking for so
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: you know, with tagging studies sometimes you ask the angling
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: public to participate in some way, either call the tag
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: in or release the fish. In this case, we're asking
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: people to release the animals. I was thinking it'd be
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: great to get the developer to let us put a
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: big billboard up there, big sign says hey, if you
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: catch fish looks like this, got a red streamer tag
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: on it and a little electronic transmitter hanging off of it,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: would you please do us the favor of tossing that
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: one back? Got it?
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 7: So?
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 5: Is there a big gripe from the commercial fishery here?
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 5: Like where I mean there's We're haven't gotten nearly as
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 5: contentious as with putting this stuff in good bird habitat,
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 5: buck habitat.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 3: So like we got to get back to the fight here.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 3: What's Yeah, it's all positive.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: That's what I want to return again to my the
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: oil development and the golf. The shrimpers didn't like them.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: No different different critters, just the amount of debris they're
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: after something totally different. Shrimp don't care about the rigs.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: It's all that much more debris. It's more stuff you
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: got to avoid. So like winners losers, red snaper dudes, winners,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: shrimpers losers.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: And there's uh an important parallel in the Atlantic too.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: You're right that the there are commercial sectors of the
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: fishing industry that aren't enthusiastic about some of these wind farms,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: especially the toad gear trawlers, uh, scallops.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 4: Bottom clams like bottom trawlers.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: Yep, and the trawling for invertebrates. Yeah five alums. Uh,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: they're not enthusiastic.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: When that's not the I mean, I don't want to
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: cast judgment, but that's not always the friendliest.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: The ones that I know a great guys, I don't
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: mean friendly, like not great guys. They get, they get,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: they catch it.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 4: They indiscriminate.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: If you go talk to you an anglers having a
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: bad day of ficient and go like, what do you
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: think is the main reason you're having a bad.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 2: Day of fision, he might say, well, Okay, this is
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: a discussion for another time.
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: I mean to talk about how people blame their bad
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: day officient and stuff.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, and I just said it's a discussion for
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: another time. But I'll say one thing on, which is
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: that for some species of fin fish, the recreational sector
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: is a responsible for the majority of the mortality, not
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 2: the commercial sectors. What we want to hear about that,
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: that's not what we're talking about here, because we're talking
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: about trawlers who are potentially upset about wind farms and
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: on that topic they may have a case. Uh. And
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: to that end, developers are offering let me think about
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: how to phrase this, the developers that are at that
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: stage now are offering compensatory mitigation to commercial fishermen who
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: can demonstrate certain criteria. For example, within timeframe A to B,
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: I drew ex revenue from the area that's within your lease,
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 2: I'll pay you not to fish exactly. Well, I'm going
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: to pay you because you can no longer fish here,
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: but you can continue fishing elsewhere. So there's actually a
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: financial opportunity here for these people because they can draw
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: two revenues, one from their usual job and then they
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: can catch the check from where they used to fish.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 2: It's more complex than that an individual basis, but in
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: any case, there is there is mitigation involved for the
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: commercial angler. The commercial fishermen who.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 5: Are yeah, yeah, I mean we can we can assume
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 5: two ways. Right, it's pretty easy to prove your bad fishermen.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: Well. One other thing to mention is that, just like
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: with on land renewable development, the sighting of offshore wind
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: is an iterative process that takes into account things like
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: where people are fishing. Okay, we're always looking for the
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 2: lowest impact. We're always looking to put the energy infrastructure
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: in the places where we weren't using that location for
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 2: a whole lot of other stuff.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: When it comes down to onshore wind development, you're looking
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: for these places that are you know, these high wind
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: plateaus or whatever. Right, there's a micro site selection.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a resource and you want to extra.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: You'd be like, you know, you can't just put one
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: anywhere you want one, and it has like very consistent
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: wind windy spots right kind of areas to develop, you know,
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: it can't have like huge topographical features, right, Right, So
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: is the Atlantic is the Atlantic Coast? Does it have
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: all these sort of micro wind channels or does it
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: wind up being more a sort of more ubiquitous constant
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: wind no matter where.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: You go, it's in between that. Okay. I don't think
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: it's as micro as on land, where you have topography,
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: ain't much topography twenty seven miles from shore, but you
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: do have areas that are windier than others, consistently windier
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: than others. The New England, the northeast is consistently windy.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: That's where a lot of off shore wind's gonna wind up.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: But we're talking about sort of large.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: You have large areas that are consistently windy, not like
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: little teeny pockets that are consistently windy.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah that's right, Yeah, yep. And when you get that
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: far from shore, that's right. Uh.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about winters and losers, all right, from a
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: species standpoint, Yeah, humans winners? Yeah, what what's your guess on?
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know, right, Whales, sword and fish like whatever?
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 3: Like who who's a big part of the this sucks?
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: I'll address cows. Comment about birds. So it's hard to
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: avoid migratory pathways. When migratory pathways run through the Atlantic,
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: a lot of these wind farms are likely to be
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: in places that historically have been migratory pathways for some species.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: So I want to just real quick talk about this
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: study that my colleagues at TNC Virginia are doing. Where
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: they're putting satellite altimeter tags on a couple species of
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: shore birds altimeter, meaning we get the altitude of the
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: animal in addition to the lat loan. That's interesting and
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 2: it's super It's three dimensional, right, it's three dimensional. It's
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: critical to know that information because you could say, oh, well,
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: fifty percent of the wimberles that we tagged went right
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: through this wind farm area and think that, hey, maybe
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: we need to not build it there because this is
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: critical for the migratory pathway. But without knowing how far
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 2: off the surface of the ocean those animals are relative
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: to where those turbines are.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what does that mean? Yeah, I can see that.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: That's not something it would have occurred to me.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: But yeah, and so nailing down again, it's about building
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: that foundation of scientific knowledge such that we can reduce
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: the impacts as much as possible to all species, including birds.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: Give me a couple of species that are out twenty
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: some miles off cruising through fish species.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: No birds, Give me a couple of birds. Oh man,
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: I'm not a Yeah, gannets, mers, razor bills depending on
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: the time of year, a lot of let's see sheer waters,
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 2: things like that. I'm less of a burder than I
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: am a fishermansood sort of armchair ornithologist. You know why.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you a little something about sheer waters. I
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: don't know if you're much into etymology. Okay, he's sheer
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: in the water. I can tell you where he's at.
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: That's right, he's licking it.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: Yep. So you know there's a lot there's a lot
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: of birds out there, a lot of different species, and
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: that that's some maybe winners. In fact, you know, there's
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 2: speculation that the habitat created by offshore winterbines will create
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 2: good forage for birds that eat fish, got and invertebrates. Yeah, same,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 2: it is true. Submarine mammals, smarine mammals, harbor seals, gray
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 2: seals in the North Sea. I think I have those
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: species right have started feeding around wind platforms. They go
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: right to him. God, but you got that all that activity,
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: a little food chain in there. It's an oasis. Yeah,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: so what about go ahead, bro?
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 3: No one that was drew in a breath of air
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 3: to ask a question. Do they ever think talk about
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 3: like you was talking about, to prevent the scouring effect,
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 3: you do this thing, it creates some habitat, Like is
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 3: there's someone else going like, oh, well, here's ten other
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 3: things that you guys could also do and it might
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 3: not even be beneficial to the turbine turbine, Yeah, but
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 3: it's going to be really beneficial. It's all these things
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 3: that swim around here.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: I like where you're going there totally hey while you're
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: out there.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So we have there's a process where from an
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 2: impact standpoint, the first thing you want to do is avoid,
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 2: Then you want to minimize, then you want to mitigate, right,
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 2: and so that hierarchy is coming into play with all
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: of these construction projects. There may be mitigation that these
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 2: developers can partake in that would result in things like
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: fishing opportunities. It might be scour protection enhancement, or it
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: might be something that's off site from the wind farm
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: but that they pay for, like oyster reef restoration or
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: other habitat restoration still in the marine or estuarine environment
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: and close ish to where the wind farm is off
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: exactly but not necessarily at the wind farm.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: Have they kicked around drape sheathing those suckers and something
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: that's really good for Bui valves to hang on to.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: Or don't they want bui a valve growth on.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 3: It, Yeah, like the drag or something.
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think they want a lot of bivalve
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: growth on it. I think, you know, that can actually
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 2: destabilize the structure. The amount of biomass you're talking about
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: could destabilize the structure. So I think they're they're actually
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 2: cleaning bi valves off of certain parts of these things.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: Can I tell you something about the oil rigs. I
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: just can't help but bring this background to oil rigs.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: Come on, those old oil rigs are encased in life. Yeah, no,
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: one's when you put your hand on them, you can
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: just sit there and break away and it's like barnacles,
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: but all these vacated barnacles that are full little fish,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: and you can actually sit there and crumble some of
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: that stuff and watch fish coming up from the depth.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: They just see it coming down and they're so used
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: to just chunks of the stuff breaking off.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're coming up to meet it. Use that as
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 2: a little bait for your spearfish and extras.
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: They're encased in life.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean that'll happen if you leave something
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: in the ocean for a while. So if these wind
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 2: turbine guys are listening, what's it like you fished under one.
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 3: Now, I mean, that's obviously a very big part of
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 3: the whole contentiousness of this whole thing, right, is what
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 3: it looks like from shorts. I'd like you to speak
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 3: to that, like the distance they put them out and
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 3: how that's been worked on. But then when you're out there,
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, obviously, like my some of my well one
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 3: memory that I have now that my father in law
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 3: is for years wanted us to go and do. He's like,
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 3: you'll never experience a sunrise like the sunrise you experienced
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 3: when you're fifty miles off shore. And he's right, like
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 3: when that song breaks that horizon and there's just just
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 3: ocean around you, it's amazing.
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: It's amazing.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 3: If you're in the middle or near a wind farm,
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 3: it's not the same.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: I'm sure that's the case. I haven't experienced a sunrise
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 2: on the on the seas underneath a wind farm. I've
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 2: experienced it many times elsewhere. I would suspect that, But
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: you get my point. I do get your point. There's
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 2: nothing uglier than the wind farm.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: There's a building.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: I guess there's an aesthetic, there's an aesthetic loss of that,
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 2: you know, it's that sunrise observation.
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: That's part of why they want to put him way
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: out right.
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 2: That's part of it the whole because people don't so
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: you don't.
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 4: Have the nim's sayings a mile off shore of mon
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 4: talk like.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you to like, oh no, we're going to put
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: them right off shore in Nantok. You see how many
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: people also aren't pro alternative energy.
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: But you can see him from sure, you can, you can,
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: but they're not big.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 8: So twenty seven miles out and they're big structures.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: Man, Yeah, you got the curvature of the earth, well
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 2: depends on Yeah, that's so.
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So what distance are they visible? Not visible?
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 2: You can see him from short from twenty seven miles,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 2: but they're small and there's not much to them, and
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 2: if they weren't moving, you would need a crystal clear
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 2: day to even really know this.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 8: Do you have to look for him to find them?
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: Or you're like very aware you'd have to look for
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: him for sure. In fact, we took our first tagging
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: trip for this project a couple of weeks ago, and
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: the guy that I had volunteering to help me tag fish,
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: he and I were in the hotel room in Virginia, beach.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: There's a fairly high floor. And we stood at the
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: window and I said, oh, I see him. And it
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: took him a minute. He's like, where man? Where? So?
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: So what I would say is this might sound a
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: little cynical, but if you want to observe a sunrise
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: on the ocean near wind farm, just anchor up used
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: to the wind farm and then watch the sunrise in
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: that direction. Mm that that state, it's not gonna go
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 2: over well.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 3: No, I mean when you're out there fishing underneath the
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 3: wind farm, like what, after a day you're like, oh,
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 3: it's just normal to have this big blade spinning above
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 3: my hand.
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, after after the first couple of fish, you've forgotten
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: about it. How loud is it? I can't hear it? Really.
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: You might hear the wind rushing around the you know,
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: you know, over the blades like anything. Yeah. Yeah. What
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: about whales? Whales loving it or hating it? I han't asked,
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: having asked the whales, how deep you want to get
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 2: into this? To the bottom? You got the wrong guy. Okay,
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 2: serves level whale.
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, let's say let's say all you remember earlier
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: I said to that that I'm primarily interested in one thing.
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: I'm primarily interested in, not in anything.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: That would pass up. Okay, let me put this way.
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: My primary interest when it comes to conservation is sacrificing
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: the least amount of acres of productive wildlife habitat. Yeah, okay,
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: that's my primary Like I'd be like, my primary objective
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: is saving productive wildlife habitat, whether it's a cattle ranch,
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: whether it's a.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: Brushy ditch. I'm with you. Okay.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: If my whole thing was like, I'm a whale guy,
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: top to bottom, all I care about is whales, would
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: I be like real sweating it about these wind farms.
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. It's been in the news a
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: lot that allegedly offshore wind development is harming marine mammals.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: We're experiencing an unusual mortality event for whales on the
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 2: East coast. Is it right whales or what does it happen?
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: The North Atlantic right whale is an endangered species. There
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: are something like three hundred and fifty animals left in existence.
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: Humpback whales have also experienced unusual levels of mortality over
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: the past eight years. It's extremely difficult to pin down
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: the cause of mortality for a whale. One reason is
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: you usually don't observe the whale until several days at
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: least after it's perished. When they wash up dead, they
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: were probably they probably expired many miles from the beach
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: and various states of decomposition by the time they hit shore.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: A knee cropsy has performed on every stranded marine mammal
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: where it's possible to do so, and that includes North
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 2: Atlantic right whales, it includes humpback whales in pursuit of
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: clues to what might have caused the death of the animal.
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: The majority of these animals bare signs of vessel strikes.
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 2: Some of them bear signs of recent vessel strikes. And
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: it could be blunt force trauma, it could be propeller marks,
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: it could be broken bones from blunt force trauma. But
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 2: good luck determining what vessel hit that whale because of
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 2: time and space. So and how long is this going? Back?
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 2: For the unusual mortality event was declared in twenty seventeen.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: It started in twenty sixteen. But there's no evidence that
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: any offshore wind development. It was Trump that year you
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: killed my SoundBite. There's no evidence that any offshore wind
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: development has resulted in the death of even a single whale. Okay,
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 2: but I mean you asked me how deep we want
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 2: to go. We don't need to go terribly deep.
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: But was there like a signific can increase in offshore
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: wind development in twenty sixteen.
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: Well, remember, at the beginning of this part of the conversation,
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 2: I told you it's only twenty four turbines in the ocean,
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: and half of them were just built. So in twenty
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: sixteen there were zero. Twenty sixteen there were zero. There
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 2: was survey activity going on at the time, and it
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: has been claimed that some of these survey boats, the
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: survey gear could have disrupted or disturbed these whales in
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: some way. Most of the doing seismic surveys, they're doing
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: surveys with gear that is far quieter and a much
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 2: higher frequency than the seismic surveys that are done for
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: oil and gas. So this geotechnical and geophysical survey gear,
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 2: most of it is actually outside the range of hearing
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 2: of these whales.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: It's but blunt fords trauma you're talking about. They're physically
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: getting banged.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: Up, yep. Okay, boats are hitting them.
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: So it's not no one's speculating that it's the noise
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: of the seismic survey that's it's being speculated, and I
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: don't want to add any fuel to this fire.
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 2: It's being speculated that the survey noise could have disrupted
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: the normal activities of the whales instead that then eventually
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 2: resulted in put.
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 5: Them in different channels like commercial channels that they disorient from.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: Right, and so a couple more things on the vessel
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: strikes an offshore wind every offshore wind construction vessel and
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: survey vessel is required and they do carry protected species observers,
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 2: trained individuals who are looking for whales, dolphins, sea turtles,
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: any protected species. All of those that I just mentioned
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 2: are obligate air breathers. They got to come to the surface.
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: If and when a protected species observer sees a marine mammal,
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: they have the authority to up down the operation of
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 2: that vessel, whether it's the survey gear, whether it's the engine,
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: whether it's all the above, or divert course or pull
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: it way back to neutral or whatever. Most vessels that
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: are transiting or fishing or doing anything in the ocean
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 2: do not have protected species observers on board. The argument
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: could therefore be made that offshore wind vessels are less
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: likely to strike marine mammals because of the presence of
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: these trained individuals who are looking for protected species with
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 2: the express purpose of reducing negative interactions with vessels.
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 3: While you're thinking, Okay, how much how much wind does
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 3: it take to spin a turbine? Turbine? Gosh, I don't
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 3: know why you got that in my head.
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: Now take that turbine right off the top.
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 2: Of your head. I hear both ways all the time.
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 2: They stop spinning below about five miles an hour. They
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: could spin at that, but there's a break that stops
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 2: them from spinning because it's a net loss of electricity
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 2: to spin the blades. At that low level, they also
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 2: shut down. I think above fifty five or sixty they
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 2: just start spinning too fast and that not gonna work.
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: My kids like YouTube compilations of wind turbines falling apart and.
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: Very very popular.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you a really complicated question. I'm ready,
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: and you might have to do one of those things
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: where you defer to your colleagues.
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm ready for that too.
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: In discussing the border wall, oh God, to return to Trump.
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: In discussing the border wall, I would often bring up, Okay, one, I.
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: Believe we have a border crisis.
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: The border wall makes me uneasy because of the wildlife impact.
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay, mountain lions.
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: Jaguars, mulitary analyope, whatever that. If you make an impenetrable
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: barrier YEP, basically separating.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 2: Cutting the bottom third of our.
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: Continent offp and you make an impenetrable land barrier isolating
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: our portion of the continent from the rest of North America,
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: Central America, South America from travel, and you look at
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: the long, deep history of wildlife movements as well as
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: the short history of the need for wildlife to move around.
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 2: I get uneasy.
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: People then go, well, your job hasn't been taken by
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: an immigrant.
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: I'm like, be that ad as it may. This is
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: a thing to think about, Okay, it's a thing to
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: think about, the same way if I said we're gonna
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: go on family vacation and someone said, but that costs
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of money, I would say, correct, that's a
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: thing to think about in considering this though, We're gonna
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: go on family vacation recognizing that it costs money.
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: With whales, are you so confident in our need to
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: do this that you would say, I get it, it
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: sucks for whales, but we need to do this anyways.
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 2: Are you there in our need to build offshore wind. Yeah?
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: Would you be like, yeah, you know what, It's just
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: like how we're blocking off jaguars, Like in pursuit of
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: border security, we're going to kind of say goodbye jaguars
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: in our country. Would you be like, would anybody say,
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: in pursuit of alternative energy, goodbye the northern right whale.
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 2: I believe that the people who are best suited to
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 2: answer that question no, No, you don't think you think
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 2: you know I'm going with this video are the ones
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: who are involved in that decision making process. They are
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 2: the scientists, the marine mammal scientists who have dedicated their
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 2: careers to understanding the biology of these animals. They're the
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: people who are doing Marine Mammal Protection Act consultations for
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 2: the environmental impact statements for these projects. And if they
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 2: thought the answer was no, if they thought the answer
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 2: was building out offshore wind is going to drive a
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 2: species to extinction, they would not play ball. You don't
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 2: think so, No, these people, these people.
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: Just counter that with how many species are going to
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: go extinct. If we're if we change the climate faster
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: than wildlife can adapt to it, how many species are
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: going to go extinct?
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 2: Anyways, there's a value judgment that is made when you're
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: making that statement on which species are more important than others.
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 2: That part of this process of the buildout of renewable
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 2: energy is consulting with the people who are best qualified
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 2: to make those determinations, and those determinations are being made,
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 2: and it has been determined that the build out of
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 2: renewable energy is unlikely to drive these animals to extinction. God,
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: so that's where we are.
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: Is the ESA, The Environmentals and Danger Danger Species Act
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: is the Danger Species Act. That's got to be powerful
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: enough inapplicable to federal.
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: Waters, right definitely, as is the Marine Mammal Protection Act,
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 2: which they go hand in hand. Got got so.
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: If there was like a real demonstrable risk of extirpation
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: or extinction, yeah, or.
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: You would have you would have it would have got
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 2: shut down, or even the loss of a single animal
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: in the case of the North Atlantic right, Well, if
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: it was suspected that any of these activities would result
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: in the loss of even a single animal, it would
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 2: have been shut down.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 8: And when it comes to it, like when it comes
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 8: to the essay, I think you know, everyone's where like
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 8: the US fish widlifts Servius sort of manages it and
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 8: oversees it. But the other party is Noah Noah Fisheries, right,
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 8: Like they're the ones who decide on all the ocean stuff.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 8: So they are like directly overseeing that. Probably more there's
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 8: like equipped to make calls on that than maybe the
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 8: US fishal Wildlife Services on terrestrial things even.
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 2: Definitely the protected species division of no Offiicieries are the
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: ones who make those determinations. And again, these are dedicated people.
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 2: They've dedicated their careers, their lives to understanding the biology
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 2: of these animals to the extent of the science and
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 2: that horizons are growing being pushed every day on the
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: extent of marine mental science. And they're the ones making
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 2: the calls. They're the right people to make the call.
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: They could have a built in bias, you know what
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like, hear me out, this is going to
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: put you in a bad situation. No, no picture this.
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: I wonder, this is like psychology st science. I wonder
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: if you task those same individuals, Let's say you had
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: an alternate universe, and you task those exact same individuals
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: with determining whether an oil development was appropriate in this area.
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: I wonder what answered those exact same individuals.
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 2: That have given you. But there is there has been
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 2: offshore oil development development, and that people who administer the
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 2: Marine Mammal Protection Actor involved in all of that too.
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 3: Shit, you, the alternate universe exists.
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 4: I am.
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 5: To weigh into this, like I shouldn't. I think there's
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 5: so many people that want to point to this particular
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 5: project and be like, that's what's.
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 3: Killing the whales. Don't.
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 5: Don't look at what's going on over here, that's what's
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 5: killing the whales, which people are those There is some
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 5: nasty shit going into the oceans at increasingly large amounts
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 5: every single day. And when we're doing these nekruptcies on
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 5: all sorts of marine wildlife, like you're pulling out pounds
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 5: and pounds of shit, garbage, yeah, plastic, yeah, And and
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 5: some of that is a societal shift.
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: So mountain mountain dew is like, listen, it's not us.
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't point out mountain dew. The plastic bottle companies.
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 5: Plastic bottle companies, but I mean that's just like a
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 5: small layer of things, right. But I think we've learned
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 5: over and over again in the conservation world, like it
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 5: is so rare to point to one thing and be like, oh,
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 5: that one thing is the thing that did it.
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 4: But it's also interesting that that, like for the longest time,
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 4: like pointing the finger at fossil fuel, whether it's from
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 4: the ESA or just pollution in general or whatever, like
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 4: that was like just the way things were. But now
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 4: you have this environmentally friendly energy source that's having to
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 4: contend with the same right attractors that.
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, and every kids movie it's big oil
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: is a bad guy.
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 2: Is there gonna be a I don't know that.
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 8: Give me an example.
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 2: I don't I don't watch kids.
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 9: Okay, there's there's the avatar basically just about a guy
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 9: that's a big There's like a big guy that like
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 9: he's a scientist and he gets turned into a bigfoot.
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 8: What's the oils relationship?
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 2: That one? He goes to Alaska to fight big oil.
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: Big oil is a very common villain in kids movies.
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: I'm wondering if there will be if there would be
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: a future Pixar or whatever Disney movies in which Big
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: Wind is where Big Wind is the villain, you know,
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: because Big Oil has served as like you know, like
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: Kurt Vonnegut, was it, Kurt Vonnagut. Yeah, Kurt Vonnegut said,
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: when the Third Reich designed their uniforms, it's like they
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: knew they would always be the bad guys in movies.
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: And uh, and like big Oil has served as sort
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: of the Big Oil has served as the global villain
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: for for decades. It's interesting to see if the whale
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 1: community is after Big Wind. It's just a real ship.
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 4: Like Environmental is fighting environmentals and kind.
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 2: Of I think you, I think you would find that
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 2: the whale community may actually be at least somewhat the
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 2: big oil community.
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: M Oh, there's people that might not like where this
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: is going.
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 4: They're whale decoys.
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 5: Well look at oh yeah, the green green whale decoys.
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 3: I mean conco.
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 5: Phillips does a hell of a lot for the old
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 5: prairie chicken and the sage grouse.
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I think, well as they maybe. I think
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: I heard something about that a different podcast being that
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: in Dangerous Pieces are I mean, well, in dangers pieces
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: are bad for business, yeah, right, like an industry. I
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: mean if you're a long playing If you're a long
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: playing player in an industry, generally and dangerous piece has
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: become a headache. And so as much as you can
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: head that off, yep, that's smart money, I think. But
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: to head off something that's going to wind up shutting
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: your industry down.
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 5: This particular discussion, right is like, are we going to
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 5: be fifty years down the road and be like Jesus,
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 5: I wish we would put all that smart time energy
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 5: money into uh, nuclear energy at that point in time.
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 2: That's the last thing I want. There's two last things
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 2: I want to ask, right.
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 5: It's like, should we have just gotten more efficient with this.
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 6: Federal government past them?
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I think that, like eighty ninety plus, I think that.
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: Uh, I think we're missing the boat. I think we
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 1: should be doubling down on nuclear. But I want to
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: ask you a question. Can you tell me through the
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: Nature Conservancy what's your mandate?
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 2: I know the Nature.
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: Conservancy's work through. Remember I've been pounding on this idea
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: of habitat protection. I know the Nature Conservancy as a
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: major player and habitat protection and also a very even keeled.
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 2: Other than me.
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: No, it's organizationally, Yeah, yeah, really good about access. Don't
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: go out of your way to mess with hunters and
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: fishermen and like, really focused on habitat.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: That is us. So our mission is to protect the
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 2: lands and waters upon which all life depends. Okay, lands
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 2: and waters. We are primarily a land protection organization. Got
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 2: four thousand staff of four thousand dedicated individuals globally, about
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 2: four hundred scientists, including myself. We work on virtually every
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 2: ecosystem on the planet, and we work in the ocean.
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 2: We have one hundred and twenty five protected one hundred
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 2: and twenty five million acres. We currently protect one hundred
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five million acres of land worldwide. In this country,
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 2: we own two million acres. We have conservation easements on
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 2: another four million acres. We've transferred ownership of fifteen million acres.
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: That's the number I wanted to focus on because what
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: that explained, What that just tell people what that.
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 2: Means, transferred ownership of fifteen million acres to agencies, federal
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 2: and state agencies, meaning you're making public land.
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: You guys manufacture public land.
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 2: We are making public land. And if Mike, oh.
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: Well, I've always i've always, I've always loved you guys mission,
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: I should have gotten that up up top.
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 10: Anyway that after you beat them up a little bit, Well,
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 10: I want to I want to point out that you
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 10: guys had on this podcast, asked a colleague of mine
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 10: named Nelis Johnson who lives here in Bozeman, had dinner
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 10: with him last night.
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 2: On episode two sixty one, there's no such thing as
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 2: a free lunch YEP with Renewable Energy talked. It covered
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 2: a lot of ground on that episode, including a deeper
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 2: dive into what the nature concernacy is and what we
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 2: do so go ahead and dial wow.
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 8: Yeah, usually we got to like work that in.
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 2: But your guest.
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: Comes now, I wish I would have started out with that,
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: that's okay, And before we get into why, I want
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: to just hear a sort of not necessarily your take,
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: but sort of someone who's who's focused on energy, like
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: why not nuclear? But first, uh, walk me through the
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: steps of I guess we should have done this up top.
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: How How did your mandate get directed? How does your
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: mandate get directed into sort of like watching this project
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: and making sure this project's done effectively?
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 2: Which project.
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: Your involvement in offshore wind?
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Okay, so let me head off the nuclear thing.
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 2: I'm not equipped to address that. So you can bring
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 2: Nell's back on if you want to talk about the
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 2: nuclear thing. He's a much better guy. So the Nature
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 2: Conservancy is heavily involved in the buildout of renewables in
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 2: the United States and elsewhere. We recognize that offshore wind
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 2: is an area where we can make a lot of
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 2: gains in terms of the amount of electrons that are
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 2: flowing into people's homes. We also recognize that just like
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 2: any energy source, building out offshore wind may does have
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 2: ecological impacts, and that we want to be involved. We
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 2: want to be at the table to help minimize those
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 2: impacts on nature to result in the best outcome for
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 2: nature and people. And so I've worked for the Nature
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 2: Conservancy for two years, a little over two years. I
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 2: was involved in offshore wind from the day I started.
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 2: I'm a fish guy, though as a grad school to
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 2: study fish. So that's the angle from which I approach
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 2: renewable energies in offshore wind in general. And I've mentioned
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 2: a couple of times this project I was working on
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 2: last Sunday under the wind Turbines off Virginia tagging project.
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 2: This is a project that's funded by the federal government,
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 2: funded by no officieries, aka funded by the taxpayer. So
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 2: thanks everybody. And we have a couple goals of the project,
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 2: but essentially we're looking to understand to better understand the
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 2: impacts of offshore wind construction activity on some species of
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 2: economically important fish. And I'm happy to get more into
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 2: that if we have time. But that's that's my involvement
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 2: in offshore wind. I sit on a variety of advisory
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 2: panels research advisor for a couple of organizations that are
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 2: consortiums of folks thinking about offshore wind working on offshore winds.
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 2: Some of them involve stakeholders, some of them involved developers, fishermen,
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 2: city council members from some coastal jurisdiction where they're going
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 2: to bring powers or things like that. There's a lot
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 2: of What I like to say is we take a
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 2: field to table approach. At the Nature Conservancy. We're in
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 2: the field, we're doing the science, but we're also at
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 2: the table. We're at the policy making table. We're weighing
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 2: in on things like the environmental impact statements. We're working
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 2: behind the scenes to identify research needs, research priorities. Sometimes
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 2: we're out there collecting data in pursuit of those research
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 2: needs and priorities. Well, it's got something.
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 7: I have a thing to add. The other week, the
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 7: House in the Senate released final twenty twenty four fiscal
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 7: spending bills, and appropriators allocated this from an article. Appropriators
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 7: allocated Z point twenty five billion to the Department of Energy,
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 7: about one point eight billion above the fiscal twenty twenty
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 7: three enacted level. And there is a ton more going
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 7: to nuclear research and developments. So it looks like it
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 7: includes one point sixty nine billion for nuclear energy research
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 7: and development, which is about two hundred and twelve million
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 7: more than where it is now.
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 2: That'll be the next show. Why not nuclear?
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 3: Why not nukes?
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 2: I'd listen.
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 5: I want to point out the biggest mistake I made
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 5: the show is the easy layup of instead of run
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 5: to DMC, it's run to TNC.
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 2: Oh I heard that one.
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah, such a bummer when you said that.
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: For some reason, my kids have gotten willing to clean
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: in their shoes, which is driving me insane.
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 2: Cleaning their shoes the like, washing their crocks with a
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 2: scrub brush.
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 4: It's a stranger.
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 2: I don't even know about this.
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 1: And I made a joke beause like you guys think
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: you're like run DMC because never had.
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 2: Their whole thing. It was like those super white shoes.
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 4: Was like, oh my god, they have no idea what
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 4: you're talking about.
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: Of course, where would a nine year old get the
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: idea that he needs to clean his crocs off?
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 3: Does that?
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 2: It blows my mind?
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 6: I don't know either. Did they do that to their sneak?
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 3: I don't I don't understand. When they come in from
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 3: the field, aren't you like clean your ship?
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 2: No?
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: No, no, they're like cleaning them cleaning, like not cleaning
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: them off like mud.
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 3: Like they want to go to school with fresh.
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 2: No, not fresh fresh crops. It's insane.
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: Steve also declared that your crocks look new.
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 8: Steve also declared this morning in the parking lot that
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 8: he doesn't like states who have too many license plates
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 8: off up and Tannis specifically said, he said, you can
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 8: learn a lot about a state, but kind of a
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 8: license plate.
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 2: How lin plates? Yeah?
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: I said, there's an inverse correlation my native state, the
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: greatness of a state and how many license plates it offers.
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 2: My native state, Maryland leads the nation and the number
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 2: of license plate they are got something like eighty, something
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 2: like eighty license plate. I don't support that.
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 8: My last thing I have is we got to get
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 8: to trivia. Everyone's running the one you can.
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: Stay for trivia?
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 2: He is, yeah, what are you to throw him a
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 2: bone about?
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 8: The first guests who's ever asked like, hey, are we
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 8: gonna play trivia? So yeah, you know, I think he'll
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 8: do well.
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you coming on. We were we were all
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 2: over the place. It's great.
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: We're talking about tech. We were talking about uh, theory, philosophy.
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 4: We didn't get to Barrow trauma, which we're talking about.
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 6: Maybe you can hit that for like two minutes in trivia.
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 2: Got two minutes, we'll hit it in trivah in trivia?
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: Sure, Oh yeah, can you intro with Barrow Trauma.
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 8: We'll see what the schedule looks like.
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on. It was probably frustrating for you.
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 2: No, it's great, happy to be here. It felt like
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 2: a PhD defense all over again.
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: But I get it, man. I mean it's like, yeah, uh,
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: in developing alternative energy, it's like everything is again, everything's
• 2:18:21
  Speaker 1: going to be a little bit painful. It's just like
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: where you can get the least amount of pain in
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: the biggest amount of gain.
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 3: Well, so you would love it, Steve, right, if we
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 3: if you could just do a clean trade, uh, and
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 3: just what we're already developing for fossil fuels, if we
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 3: could just trade it out and do the win.
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: Be like and it'll be even more energy and great,
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 1: let's stop talking about it.
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 2: And I just want I just want to remind the
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 2: public that it's important to be involved. And there's a
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 2: public comment period open right now, and you might bring
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 2: something to the table that hasn't been said before. Because
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 2: one of my favorite quotes, Mark Twain quote I think
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 2: is a fresh set of eyes finds more beings, finds
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 2: more beans. Yeah, you need more eyes on this situation,
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 2: more fish, and sell the damn T shirts out.
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 6: Well, you're supposed to be wearing it if.
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 2: You want a sweet T shirt.
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 11: Okay, shirt like this is all very complicated? Is this
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 11: still like warranted? Just walk around going hey, make sure
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 11: you turn your lights off. Definitely all complicit.
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 4: Due half my day at home is spent walking around
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 4: turning lights off and.
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: Shut them all off, and five minutes later I come
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: out there all back on again.
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 2: Turn your lights off and don't get balloons for your
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 2: next birthday party. I saw I say balloons every time
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 2: I go off short every.
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 6: Year can Texas.
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: You can go to the top of the highest mountain
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: on Earth. There's probably a birthday balloon sitting there.
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 5: There's a lot of complaining balloon, a lot of complaining
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 5: about federal overreach.
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 3: But I mean, I think there's a room for more.
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: A band of broad scale balloon band a sea turtle bait.
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 8: Right there, except for you know who you're going to
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 8: piss off, big buck white tail. A lot of them
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 8: will say that if you find a balloon in the
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 8: woods that tells you what the wind drafts are doing,
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 8: then that's where a big buck would like to bet.
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 3: Guys, thinks to phil Off.
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 12: Got a botber in the water, toastuck in the mud.
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 3: It's a perfectly for sitting soaking up the sign. Dad
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 3: came up and asked me.
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 12: Baby's wishful thinking, Yes, son, are you getting manny?
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 3: I said, no, I'm just fishing boat. Just lost the
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 3: anchor and the breeze.
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 4: It's blowing slow, so.
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 12: I'm just out here sending snagging.
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 3: Some trees and getting the stone jogged around and a
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 3: can of.
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 12: Worms in the sun drinking down.
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 4: Sure, got a few hours to my I said, that's
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 4: what fishing for.
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 12: Turning around and a candle, words and sign creeping down
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 12: the shore. Got a few hours to myself.
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 4: That's what fishing for.
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 12: Well, maybe you're on the water casting from.
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 4: The shore, time just seems.
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 12: To fly by. Maybe you want it, always seems your
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 12: last cast is really the first of many, whether catching
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 12: the fish, catching the buzz beat's not catching eddie. Some
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 12: folks they don't understand and know just what they're missing
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 12: because you don't. There's the the be out here fishing
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 12: turn around and a can of worms in the sun,
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 12: creaking down the short got a few lives to my settling.
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 3: That's what fishing for.
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 8: I got a few lives to my symblings.
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 12: That's what fishing is for.