Naval Science, Oceanography, and the Blue Economy with Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet PhD, CEO and Founder of Ocean STL Consulting about Naval Science, Oceanography, and the Blue Economy.   Read his full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes: 

2:11  Nic and Laura talk Halloween

8:51  Interview with Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet starts

10:08  Tim talks about Naval Science

14:43  Tim discusses Oceanography

34:18  Tim's leadership advice

38:57  Tim talks about blue economy and his podcast

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rear-admiral-tim-gallaudet-phd-us-navy-ret-b18185149/

Guest Bio:

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, PhD is the CEO and Founder of Ocean STL Consulting and host of the American Blue Economy Podcast.  Between 2017-2021, he served as the Acting and Deputy Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and before that he served for 32 years in the U.S. Navy retiring as the Oceanographer of the Navy.

Music Credits

Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa

Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcript is auto transcribed

[Intro]

Nic 
Hello and Welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiasts, Nic and Laura. On today's episode. Laura and I discuss Halloween. We also sit down with retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet. He is the CEO of Ocean STL Consulting, we talked to him about the military, oceanography and the blue economy. And finally, horned lizards, will shoot tears of blood out of their eyes. When threatened, and I get that it can be the difference between life and death for them but it still feels like an overreaction. I just any other fluid would have been fine I think just spit, you know that's what llamas do so.

Laura 
That's so perfect for Halloween. Yeah, that's a really sick costume. Right like I'm a horned lizard. Gotcha.

Nic 
It totally would be. Oh my gosh, That's brilliant. So, yes, if I see you dressed like a horned lizard I will duck.

Laura 
Just don't threaten them.

Nic 
Right, yeah. Gosh. With that, hit that music.

[Shout outs]

Laura  
All right, today we're bringing back the shout outs, and we are going to celebrate Ron Deverman. He was recently appointed to the Transformative Leadership Advisory Council for George Washington University School of Business in Washington DC. Congrats, Ron, we appreciate you on our leadership committee here with NAEP.  And upcoming for NAEP the registration is open for the October 27 webinar, Environmental Rulemaking, featuring panelists, Jayni Hein, with the Council on Environmental Quality, Michael Drummond with the US Department of Transportation, and our own podcast alum, Ted Bowling with Perkins and Coie, LLP, it's going to be extremely insightful especially in light of the Phase I updates from CEQ on and NEPA regulations sign up  at www.naep.org. Nic, I love doing this show and if you love it too and would like us to keep doing it. We need your help. We can't do this program without our awesome sponsors so please be sure to head on over to environmentalprofessionalsradio.com and check out the sponsor forum for details. Now let's get to our segment.

Nic
Awesome.

[Nic and Laura's segment]

Nic 
Okay, so you want to talk, you want to talk Halloween, though do you want to do it now. Yeah, that means coming up, we're allowed to do Halloween this year, I think so.

Laura  
You think, yeah,

Nic 
I think I'm not sure.

Laura
I think we are.

Nic
I think we are too, yeah so

Laura 
I think people are doing it, whether they're allowed to or not.

Nic 
Yeah, you're probably right. You're probably right but no like you have to have good memories of Halloween right it's like the best holiday for kids is like, yeah, I actually got the flu on Halloween one year, the worst, worst day of my job, I mean like it's 103 so I had no chance, none of going out right. And so my brother and I, as I was gonna be a baseball player, I had my hat on uniform everything all set up and I'm like, I'm fine, you know, my mom's like, no you and I are saying I love you, but I'm a nurse. So they go up my brother and my dad go out, and he comes back, and he's so gloating he's like, I got all this candy. You didn't get any.  And my dad to his infinite credit he just lets my brother go for like five minutes, and right as he's about to wrap up my dad puts his hand right in the middle of the candy and shoves it off to one side, he goes, that's Nic's, that's yours. The look on his face is still, like, one of my favorite memories right you know he's like, I never once thought this could happen. So that was a good one that was a good one from from my dad.

Laura 
Yeah, I love that. I don't know I think I know a lot of people who just love Halloween, and I think it's becoming more of the more popular ones.

Nic 
Yeah. I love that it starts in August now, like that's when you start seeing like the like, it's almost fall, let's celebrate Halloween and I'm  like Fall's another month and a half away, what are we doing.

Laura 
Well it's cool being up here in Syracuse, where you can have a Jack O' Lantern or pumpkin out on your porch for months and it stays a pumpkin or jack o' lantern. In Florida after two weeks it becomes a ball of mush that stinks sitting on your porch.

Nic 
It's not the same here. That's so funny. Yeah and I mean like even Fall starts earlier for you up there too and like, we still have all leaves in our trees for example, none of them change colors and Yeah, it's still humid here, actually, which really frustrates me,

Laura 
It's been exceptionally warm up  here. And still  is, but the leaves are changing. Yeah, and it's fine I mean apple picking season which is cool.

Nic 
Right, so I'm telling you Fall is the best season for all kinds of reasons, but yeah I love the change in leaves I love the

Laura 
Are you a PSL person?

Nic  
I knew you were gonna ask. I am not, I'm not, but I'm a sweets person either like I don't like sweet things nearly as much as I like, I'm so sorry for offending you. No, I'm a salty person so if you give me like a bag of like honey barbecue chips I literally won't chew. I'll just inhale and yeah so those are great but like I don't do the PSLs I can appreciate it. It smells nice, you know, but it's not my thing. I love pumpkin pie, though, that's like my thing, that was like my version of cake cause my birthday is also like right before Thanksgiving every year. So,

Laura
Oh, every year it is?

NIc
 Every year, if you can believe it's at the same time. Stunning I know.

Laura  
I'll have try to remember that.

Nic 
Yeah, if you could if you could actually I think everyone's birthday is at the same time every year, you know. You know what I mean, I don't mean literally we all have one birthday that'd be ridiculous, but yeah, I'm a smart person, I swear.

Laura  
Yeah. Do you have any plans for Halloween.

Nic 
No, no, I don't, I want to say that there I have a friend of mine who is throwing a house party, so I may show up as a skeleton.

Laura
Classic.

Nic
Right yeah I've just, I just mean that because I'm very skinny and that's not in costumes. Now, so maybe that that's on my list of things to do for Halloween. But yeah, I don't have kids, and I don't have. I'm not single, so I feel likethose are the prerequisites for Halloween. Are you doing anything crazy.

Laura 
Also have an invite to a party I don't know that I'm actually going to show up yet.

Nic 
So we're both boring is what we're saying.  Cool.

Laura 
I do like to be home and hand out candy. I like to do that part, I live in a neighborhood where lots of kids come, so it's pretty cool. And I just play a blast Thriller through the window on repeat all night.

Nic  
Gosh,

Laura 
my boyfriend likes to set up a projector and a sheet and play like the old Disney Scary videos through the window, so we make a little,

Nic 
I'm sorry old Disney scary movies, what, what are you talking about.

Laura 
I don't know what they're called there's like the dancing skeletons and,

Nic 
yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, those little shorts.

Laura 
And I think there's a little Mickey Mouse, scary episode or something I don't I don't know I'll have to send you some videos.

Nic 
Yeah. Yeah. But yeah,

Laura 
I don't know. Yeah, I'm working the homebody angle there.

Nic 
I know but you know what though, I can be maybe we can, this is the angle for this saying yes is a good thing. It's a good thing, generally speaking we should both go to these parties like you know this is, this is going back. So if we're telling people to do, you know, your career is, you know, is to say yes when given an opportunity because you just never know, right, it's like that happens all the time, I don't want to go out and you go out and have a great time. Right. It's the same thing in careers, the same thing. You know it's like I don't know if I want to go to Alabama for three months but, you know, being away from family and all that but it ended up being a great career thing for me, and I'm glad I did, and despite how difficult it was. So I don't know if we should follow our own career advice

Laura 
Good job tying  that into career advice. I'll just say Nick say, PSA drink and drive responsibly, of course, Uber home if you need to. Yeah, let's do it. I'll go if you go.

Nic 
Alright, done. We'll report back on our misadventures there we go.

Laura 
and I need to have at least one photo of this skeleton costume.

Nic 
Okay. Dang, she's onto me. All right. I'm not doing the full makeup thing, I'm not doing it but I got a mask I can put on.

Laura 
Yeah. All right everyone, Have a fun, safe Halloween. And do it responsibly. Let's get to our interview.

Nic
Alright.

[Interview with Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet starts]

Nic 
Welcome back to EPR today we have Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, who is the CEO of Ocean STL Consulting, the host of the American Blue Economy podcast, and a federal Senior Executive Service coach and mentor with the Mason Harrman group. And we're really excited to have you on the show, Tim, thank you.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Hey Nic It's great to be here, thanks for having me.

Nic  
Yeah, so you were a Rear Admiral with the Navy, which is a two star Admiral, and I want to know what what inspired you to join the military, how were you able to become a Rear Admiral, and how is that experience shaped where you are today.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Well yeah it's it's relevant to this program because I fell in love with the ocean, growing up in Southern California, hitting the beach, swimming, surfing, and I just knew from an early age I wanted to study it and work on it, and do things to protect it. So that was my kind of goal and I led me to the Navy because the Naval Academy in Annapolis Maryland has a great undergraduate oceanography program, and there weren't that many back in 1985 programs like that around the country. And, you know, My dad had served in the Navy and so I kind of combined my belief and ethic of service with passion for the oceans, and I went there and I became an oceanography officer after I graduated, and serve for 32 years and really just loved every bit of it.

Nic 
Yeah, and it's really you completed your military career as the oceanographer of the Navy, so you're on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations, right. So you say you grew up living by the beach and that's kind of what drew you to oceanography, but how did you turn that interest into a very successful career.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
Well, sure. The Navy has a great need to conduct ocean science and apply it, as well as environmental science in general, for example in meteorology. And so that's what I did in the Navy, I worked in various jobs I was either mapping the sea floor in the Arabian Gulf or I did weather forecasting in the Mediterranean on and on several ships, notably during the Iraq War and the Afghanistan Campaign, and I also work with Navy SEALs who use weather ocean information like nobody else in a high precision way. So I worked on kind of through the ranks and yeah my last job in the Pentagon was the head oceanographer of the Navy, and that was kind of where I did a lot of policy and budget type kind of actions if you will, that's sort of what you do in the Pentagon, so I kind of met all levels, you know, it's been great.

Nic 
Yeah, so, so when you're a senior oceanographer, you know when you're the lead there is, what's your number one priority for supporting the fleet and they say policy but what specifically are you doing

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Well, there are a couple things you know, one of the priorities we had I had was advancing technologies to help us do our job better so I mean the priority is keeping the fleet safe and effective because the weather can cause mission kills all the time. And so it's just advancing our ability to not only know what's happening, that's through observations in the oceans, the atmosphere, even in space, but also to improve our predictability in our modeling. So weather and ocean modeling and you hear a lot about that. Now with respect to climate, big mission of the Navy, and I oversaw the people doing that and using advanced technologies was one of my priorities so autonomous systems drones, both aerial, surface, mountain and undersea is something I advanced that's helping us know the ocean, really now better than we ever have.

Nic 
So how has that changed I mean, I imagine, technology's gotten better, so we've gotten better, but is there anything specific that you used to do that you no longer have to, because we have that advancement.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
Well let me an example. So one of my jobs, early on after I got my first degree at Scripps a master's degree, was I was a hydrographic survey officer on a ship in the Arabian Gulf. It was right after the first Gulf War and we didn't, our charts of the region were really poor. And so I was serving the area both the mapping sonar and updating the charts. Well, we had a vessel with about four or five sailors on it, a small boat, we have actually four of them, and we towed a side to scan sonar to look for wrecks and hazards, navigation, nowadays, and I'm actually working for a company called iXblue that automates that entire capability of the unmanned surface vehicle that's called a DriX, and it can tow a sidescan sonar there were more vehicles called flip X, and it's like a totally automated. And that is the way of the future, if you look at what Amazon's doing for delivery. What I did previously and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration after I left the Navy, and you're just seeing autonomous technology and artificial intelligence just proliferate in the areas that environmental professionals are working in, and it's actually just creating great opportunity and our ability to understand and manage the environment is really at a level we've never seen before.

Nic 
And that's incredible and it's really cool,

Laura 
It is, it's super cool. Okay, so that leads perfectly into the follow up question to that is, what do you see as the Navy's biggest challenge in regards to climate change impact on national security.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Yeah, Laura. First off, interestingly, another job I have in the Navy as the oceanographer, the Navy, I was I was also the director of their task force, climate change, and I established it under my boss Admiral Dave Titely. I was his  deputy director and we stood it up in 2009, and then I ended up taking over that job and being the director of that when I came the oceanographer, the Navy, and our priorities were the same as they are today, and that was ensuring our installations are ready and can withstand things like sea level rise and increased warming, and increasingly intense storms, as well as operations, making sure we can stay operationally ready. Severe storms can affect training and certainly the conduct of any type of activity whether the strike missions or humanitarian assistance, which we're seeing, you know, we conducted all over the globe and so being weather and climate ready, it was a priority then and we were established for that reason, and it remains today and you might not not have seen that the Department of Defense, and all the agencies under the Biden ministration did at least climate adaptation plans for the reasons, like I just described.

Laura 
Oh, that's all fascinating you do you've mentioned so many different specialties and technologies and different lines of science that someone could get into so if, if someone is just starting their career and is interested in getting into marine science or oceanography, what kind of advice do you have for them just starting out,

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
That's a great question. I love that you asked that asked us on most of your episodes were really the one one piece of advice I'd simply put is do what you love, you know, like you would love policy, go that route, if you love doing the science do that and, depending on what it is to the ocean, and what is in the ocean is a fish or coral, it's just find what you really love to do, and then there won't be work. I think that's the best advice I can give anybody,

Laura 
Right. I see Nic smiling so

Nic 
I'm just very happy to do agree and just that you know you actually sparked me a little bit on question he's talking about all this stuff the Navy does. And I think what you said, may surprise a lot of people listening because they're like wait, there's all kinds of science, there's different things and even like the Navy even does studies on marine mammals, as well so I don't know if there's another way if there's different to give you another opportunity if there's anything else from a science perspective that the Navy does, it's worth telling our listeners.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Well sure you know in this show I think they'd be most interested to know that the Navy has takes very seriously the responsibility to protect the environment. Now of course there's laws they have to follow like the National Environmental Policy Act, The Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Navy doesn't very seriously and I'm working with a really terrific company that also works with NOAA my other organization on the part of, they're called Lynker technologies and they're real leaders in doing things like environmental impact assessments, and we are working to potentially do some of that work for the Navy and you know environmental studies out in the Pacific region. And so yeah, the Navy is actually a very serious environmental steward, but not by law but also by principle because they're, they need to maintain the public trust. And so all that pristine coral reef and habitat we have on Guam and Hawaii that the Navy is working to protect and preserve those, those really great places that happens not resides beside some of their installations.

Nic 
Wow, that's great.

Laura 
Love to hear that. All right. So how long were you in the Navy.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
32 years, I count my time at the Naval Academy because I had an identity card and I was subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice so that counts.

Nic
Yes it does.

Laura 
You have a very youthful aura I would have to say. When I saw retired on there, I was like what, how.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
Some people they expect me to be a little more silver haired but

Nic
Right, right. Yeah,

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
I have three daughters and they keep me young.

Nic
Great.

Laura 
That's good. Sometimes you hear the opposite.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
Really speaking of their the next generation and I'm really excited that my wife who also graduated from Scripps Institution of Oceanography with a graduate degree in oceanography, like me, We both really want to impart on our girls that love for the oceans and environment and they've taken it on, they all scuba dive and snorkel, and we were just recently in the Caribbean and we did a great dive with Caribbean Reef Sharks, right there it was really fun.

Nic
So awesome.

Laura  
So 32 years, you must have done a lot of traveling and I, I'm guessing you still do a lot of traveling, maybe not last year, but

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Well actually I'm just picking that back up I did I did a lot of travel, I've been around the world. Join the Navy see the world. And then, then when I worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for four years after the Navy, I travel a lot there to a much committed Pacific to Europe, really just promoting with the United States as a preferred partner in environmental programs, and I think that's really important today as the globe faces so many challenges. I prefer not to use the word crisis in terms a lot of people off they've, you know, we are seeing threats to habitat all around the world with warming and, but these are solutions that collectively we can get after and solve.

Laura 
Awesome. And then, we always like to find out so we can daydream about our next trips. So what is your, do you have a favorite spot or a favorite dive that you've done.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Well shoot, I have many but ultimately when I was working as the Deputy Administrator of NOAA, I had a side job called, I was the chair of the US coral reef Task Force, which is cool or what it does. It was great. And for that job, I went to the Republic of Palau, for a meeting of that task force because the US. The US states are members of the task force that have coral reef like Florida and Puerto Rico and Guam and the territories, and as well as the compact states they call them Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands they're members of the too, key partners of ours. And so we are in Palau, we're having our meeting where we actually we identified a really important need and that was to not have to allow the spread of this tissue, or this coral disease in Florida called stony coral tissue loss disease to spread in the Pacific. So an action item from that was to take, and we developed a strategy at NOAA, and that we're acting on now to prevent the spread of that disease and respond to it, but ultimately, in that meeting we had a chance to go dive at there National Marine Sanctuary and I did dive there a few times, and that is like the, the, it's like the redwood forest of corals, they're just magnificent and centuries old structures and just the beauty and yeah so that experience in Palau caused me to reach out to that country and work with our sanctuary in American Samoa and have them sign an agreement to work together on coral conservation and restoration that has there's really a good and important agreement.

Nic 
Wow, that's really great and you see you mentioned NOAA a couple of times so you were the Deputy Administrator for NOAA, and when you're at that level, it seems like there's an overwhelming number of responsibilities. So, how do you manage all of that. What else were you doing with them but beyond what you just mentioned.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Sure NOAA's  a big agency, I actually was the acting administrator for a year and a half and my permanent job as the deputy, and it is it's a 20,000 person organizations about 12,000 Federal and 8000 contractors. They have a global footprint, they have a fleet of 16 ships, nine aircraft, some of which are deemed hurricane hunter aircraft that fly through hurricanes, 400 boats. 400 technical divers, very good technical divers and just 1000s of scientists, many with PhDs and oh shoot, not to mention 18 weather satellites and eight supercomputers. This is, this is really America's Environmental Agency, The EPA is a regulatory agency but the environmental science agency that just monitors, our climate our weather our fisheries or our oceans is NOAA and I loved it I loved working there. There are a number of responsibilities but it really like I told you with coral reefs, every one of them I just love. I mean it was just really great to oversee, for example Fishery Science management. The weather satellite program is incredible. These are just amazing pieces of technology that are monitoring hurricanes and saving lives, that could talk, multiple episodes long about how great that agency is.

Nic  
Yeah, but I mean it's really interesting stuff though and I think it's really helpful for people to learn, like you say that that's what, you know, multiple avenues and multiple areas of expertise. So we just maybe talk about weather for a minute. And so NOAA as you say, NOAA works with hurricanes, how do they do that, what are they actually studying.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Well, it's a great question, Nic, so the NOAA has under it, the National Weather Service, and this is America's weather forecasting agency, and there are offices all around the country with forecasters, doing what I did in the Navy, I did this function on two ships, you know, up 24 hours, seven if you will 365 providing life saving warnings and forecasts, all types of weather blizzards, wildfires, hurricanes, and there's some special centers that are focused solely on certain types of weather like the National Hurricane Center, which issues those famous cones of uncertainty and trajectories. That's it, they're out there, they're, They're a fantastic organization, and again they save lives through these are forecasts, and they all rely on some high powered numerical models run on supercomputers, and one of the interesting things about all this work that we were doing like that weather forecasting is, how much we've been increasing our partnership with the private sector, because now commercial weather companies and ocean and weather tech companies that provide the observations, there have been really advancing the state of the art in the technology field, and for example I also work with another company called Tomorrow io and they are, they're basically provide these high precision forecasts, and their customers including companies like Ford and Uber and Jet Blue, who need just like to the minute to the, you know 10 meter square grid you're on what the weather is going to be, you know, you think about airline operations, I'll depend, they are just timing the flights. And so, that company is really terrific and you're seeing them work now more with NOAA's National Weather Service and the Air Force, they just got a contract with the Air Force, $20 million. So this is an interesting sort of development in terms of modern environmental professional work is that the private sector has really expanded its positive impact and I think that's a new dynamic, in addition to the technology that we talked about,

Nic 
Oh man. That's 100% Yeah and that's like, yeah, so when you don't have turbulence on a flight. That's where it's coming from.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
That's right, exactly. You are routing the planes Yeah, exactly.

Nic 
That's awesome.

Laura 
It is and you have mentioned several companies and organizations that you work with. There's another one called the Explorers Club that you are a fellow of just wondering what do they do and what's your involvement with them.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
Oh, that's nice of you to ask Laura. Yeah they're neat, of course because their membership includes people who climb Mount Everest and done all these amazing expeditions, they'd like to focus on science so when they sponsor expeditions they really want to ensure they're not really like someone's self glorification but more to learn, and spread knowledge so they have a really good purpose and mission. And, yeah, I joined them because of my background and experience sailing around the world. And, in particular when I was with NOAA one of the programs we were, we I was a champion of and we were able to achieve some really significant growth in is their ocean exploration program. So think about this, the oceans only about 5 to 10% of the volume the oceans have been explored, and think about that we're putting billion dollar platforms into space, but we still even know our own ocean, and about the sea floor we haven't even met 50% of the sea floor. So we took it on, it was one of my top priorities to develop a program they now call the National Ocean mapping and exploration and characterization program, it's got as a strategy or plan a council, and it's going to be established in law, with a, an act that's being worked on in the US Congress, but it's a form of program that that we were able to get the White House to support and that was really I think it is reported and they're advancing it still so it was able to go through two administrations with bipartisan support, which was great, and it's just about knowing our oceans, you know we there's so much to learn, think about it, there's all this wind energy is being development well we can't do it unless we've mapped the sea floor understand that making sure it doesn't interfere with critical fisheries habitat, there's marine minerals that are really important now because we're so dependent upon it in large cell phones and laptop battery technology are all dependent upon that. The sea is a potential source we need to map and explore it, and then there's just the neat thing about the science we discovered 25 new species last year, new animals, unknown to the world in the ocean. So we think of how exciting that is one of them was a great, no kidding. A new type of killer whale in in Antarctica. Think about that.

Nic 
Yeah, I'm a super nerd, so I totally read about that. Yeah, it's Yeah, great. Yeah,

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
I love the program they're still doing it and and so that brought me into contact with several exploring organizations, and that therefore led me to the Explorers Club one of them I thought was really interesting, he is a gentleman named Victor Vescovow who  is a Navy Commander and also a private equity investor. He has performed, the Explorers Club grand challenge he has climbed all the seven highest peaks on the comments, and he skied to the North Pole and the South Pole. And that is if that this wasn't enough, he got it into himself that he was going to go build a submersible, a human occupied submersible, and dive to the five deepest points in all the oceans of the world, and no one no one had done it, so he ended up working with a company Triton submersibles to build this never before was happening twice before diving to the deepest part of the planet but not repeated. And he ended up building this rig Sub called The Limiting Factor, and he's got a ship called the Pressure Drop, and this ship was a former NOAA ship, and basically invested $50,000,000. 25 to build the commercial and outfit the ship and 25 to take 25 Extra to take it all around the world, and he dove the Marianas Trench the deepest point forward 35,000 feet and repeated times he's taken several scientists out to that too. And then the four others all around the world. And what was great about this and so he's. He is a legend in the Explorer Club. And that's kind of what brought me to them is my friendship with him and his name is Victor Vescovo company's Caladan Oceanic, and it was great is NOAA partnered with him because we didn't have this capability to government would never be able to invest in something like that, and we kind of piggyback off what he did and got his mapping data, and we're able to use it because it was the most precise map of the deepest point of the ocean that had ever been made, and we put our hydrophones down there that were helped allow us to calibrate and do some math and backwards engineering to determine to that precision that that depth, so it was a great partnership and those partnerships are something that led me to join that club and a long answer to your question, Laura.

Laura 
That is amazing.

Nic  
Really is Yeah oh my god, yeah.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
If you Google Five Deeps, and there's a book of value called Exploration Deep Ocean by Josh Young and there's a series on the Discovery Channel about it, and you'll see it it's just fantastic and people do glamorize space travel but boy, I tell you that was for me as an ocean person that was really the depth of sort of achievement.

Nic  
Pun intended.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
That's exactly right.

Nic
Yeah I mean gosh that's such a great thing and I love the idea of that public -private partnership where you're seeing, there's this thing event going on but you're taking advantage of that, you're saying okay, this, you're going to go down to the deep, do you mind if we tack on some science equipment and I don't know if you've seen that a lot is that has it changed a lot over the last couple of years, or a few years, I would say

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
it's been growing right and that was a big priority of mine at NOAA and he was starting already in a good way and I supported it like, here's a good example. Let's call I think the Ocean Race now used to be known as the Volvo Ocean Race and it was a kind of a world ranging sailing race, and our bright researchers noticed researchers at the Atlantic oceanography and meteorology lab, Miami, Florida partnership with them, to have them carry some of our buoys and deploy them into really remote parts of the globe, where we can never have access ourselves, and therefore give us some data that we can use for our modeling and monitoring mission. And I mean that was just did that on their own dime knowing they could benefit from our weather information because that's what the sailors do. And so it's just a brilliant win win. And then we work to expand those in every area of our mission,

Nic 
Yeah, that's fantastic stuff and we'd love to hear about that. And you know, we also though, if we can pivot a minute love asking our guests about funny moments in their careers, and you spoke at the Our Oceans conference in 2016 Right after President Obama, and Leonardo DiCaprio which I just how on earth do you manage to follow that.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
That's exactly right. And also, this is a big deal. In fact, leading up into it, you would talk about my kind of lack of aging, I guess. And also I'm sitting in a meeting with Secretary Kerry, who is now, this, this is in the Obama administration that now you know he's senior climate adviser for President Biden but anyways we're in a meeting, preparing for this conference on the oceans as big as it was run by the State Department and he was the Secretary of State, and it was a it was a great event, all the countries who came make commitments to do work and to make investments to preserve our oceans. And as we prepare for what we were going to say I'm in this meeting with Secretary Kerry, and every has given their all the departments department the best Department of State, etc, are all getting their kind of Spiel to him about what they plan to talk about and he's concurring and saying it's all great he gets to me and I talked about how the Navy contribution was going to be to help counter illegal fishing, which is a scourge across our oceans right now especially from China, and it was then, it is now. He looked at me and paused, after I stopped and he said Tim. Since when did the Navy start recruiting Admirals right out of high school. And I didn't know what to say to that. I looked a lot younger than the other people around the table I'll say that, but that the funny part, the funny part was no after so I'm in, I'm in the big event, I'm just kind of sitting on the side. And again, President Obama gets up and speaks, you know, Secretary Kerry, thanks to him and introduces Leonardo DiCaprio and he speaks, you know because he has a foundation dedicated to the environment and he reads his thing and walks off, and my assistant actually left me alone because she went to run and get his autograph.  And I couldn't because it was my cue to step up on stage and follow him. Right. And so as I got up there, I kind of made a fictional story that sort of break the ice and I said, Well, it's great to be here but I haven't tell you I'm a bit intimidated trying to follow the most recent Academy Award winning Best Actor. He had just won it for the Revenant. Oh yeah, yeah, that's right, and so on and so it was quiet a huge audience, hundreds of people. And I said well you know because this is our oceans conference and I, my wife is an oceanographer like me, and theTitanic was her favorite movie, I figured I would ask her, and Karen said to me, Well Tim, you might want to point out that the only difference between you and Leo is that none of your ships ever sank. Everybody. Everybody laughed out loud and give me a round of applause. That was fun to do. What a cool story I mean it was great to be in that audience then. It was fun.

Nic 
It's a good joke too. I like it.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
Humor you know, humor is actually it's just such a magical grease in getting the gears on when you're working in life, you know, and it's, you can find ways to include it i I know when I was running NOAA, I always tried to make sure that we had sort of those light moments meetings, just it's just that I mean things are always, there's always a reason to be serious, but there's also reasons to not be too serious.

Nic 
Right. Yeah, I couldn't say it better myself. That's great.

Laura 
Yeah. Nic, he will try because he's a comedian so he tries to say serious things to people.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
I'm a little older than you so yeah just, you kinda have to cultivate that skill in the room. Right, right. Yeah,

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
Keep it up.

Nic
I'll try.

Laura 
And that again is a good pitch for the next question. So, you know, I'm super interested in all of your leadership initiatives and I've looked at some of your documents and things that you have going so tell us a little bit about that, what's the basis for that goals of that work that you're doing.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Thanks, Laura. Well sure, like you and the Role Model Way which I need to learn more about, but when I was with NOAA, I had noticed how hungry people were certainly junior people to learn about leading and leadership, and I was constantly being asked about it and because I had a career in the Navy and exercised quite a bit of leadership, and then was the Navy promoted, when the Navy is very serious about promoting leader development. And so I saw I had that background, I saw the need for it among Junior supervisors who would be thrown into new supervisor positions, having never had any leadership training, which is not really good. So you can just imagine the outcome sometimes. And so I took it all myself to kind of do what I did in the Navy, all commanding officers and Navy will develop the leadership philosophy, and they'll propagate it, and their commands and it's a good thing to do and this is basically, here are my leadership principles, I believe in. Then, when everyone knows what to expect that fosters more trust and respect, faster, and so I did the same thing at NOAA, and I put together a one pager, and there's a lot of people who write books. I won't say leadership books are bad, but I say the number of really good ones are fewer, because I just think they're best when they're easy to remember. And when they're from authentic experiences. And so in this like one pager I have is that is that it's easy to remember, and it's from all of my integrated experience, and if you can kind of remember it because the sort of the top line is all in all good and all for one. My three principles we're all in is about being committed to your people in the mission, all goods, is about positivity, and I think that just is so critical and leadership. You don't want to follow negative leaders, or harmful ones or toxic ones, and then the all good is about teamwork, and all the things that involve good teamwork like diversity and inclusion and humility in leaders and things like that. And so, this one pager was pretty popular because people liked having something to learn from, and easy to remember and a lot of people ended up hanging in their offices and that was, and I was kind of humbled by that but also glad and like you aura I'm writing a book on it now, because like this story with Leonardo and President Obama I have a lot of great experiences that I think are worth sharing and might be able to do some good for people and help them learn a few good examples.

Laura 
That's awesome and now you have a reader right here, I'm ready for it. My favorite leadership book actually is also already a navy book, if you might be able to guess what that is.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
Well this step role to say a navy book being by a Navy officer. Well you know one that I think is easy. How about the Admiral McRaven let me read that book, Make Your Bed.

Laura 
No, I'm going to  write it down. Yeah, there we go. No, the one my favorite book so far is the Turn the Ship Around.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaude
Oh, I know that I know that book.

Laura
I am terrible at remembering names so I can't remember the author's name, but

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
the commander. That's right.

Laura 
I lost, I read it for the second time just last week.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Oh, Good for you. Well, there's some great ones out there, Admiral McRaven is very famous. He's the four star Navy SEAL who commanded the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, but he was also the Chancellor of the University of Texas at Austin and I met with him there, and we had a lot of common friends from my time working with SEALS and he's just a great leader. That is one of my mentors and role models. These key he's kind of featured in the prologue of my book, and I'll send you the first half, which I completed. If you're interested, because he gave me some guidance early on when I was with NOAA. You know I wasn't uniform anymore, it wasn't the Navy, I wasn't sure really what to do and he's, he gave me some great advice that that if were to sum it up, it was just do the right thing. And then you know when you're doing the right thing and when you're not, and that was really helpful.

Laura 
Yeah, I'm super excited to talk to you more about, about your book and read the stories that you have to tell because you've done so many cool things and I have already like I said, a fan of leadership stories from the Navy, so it's gonna be good.

Nic 
Yeah, for sure.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Well, I'm happy to do this anytime. In fact, I mean maybe once I publish the book I'll come back,

Nic 
Absolutely, we'd love to have you, So you know it's funny though because somehow with all of this that you're doing, you also still have time to host a podcast called American Blue Economy. And I think the the concept of blue economy is really interesting, but many people may not know exactly what that is. So could you kind of walk through what what is it and what can we learn from tuning into your podcast.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Thanks for asking. Nic, that's that's a great questions, and one of our priorities that when I was working with NOAA was advancing America's blue economy. And what that is and means is the sustainable, which is a key word contributions of our oceans coasts in Great Lakes to our national economy, and by sustainable What I mean is, you know, like, does not harm the environment. So, sustainable fishing for example where fisheries are managed to not over fish, and something that they should be subject over fishing, or any other kind of activity marine transportation that doesn't, isn't harmful to protect the species like the North Atlantic right whale, and so on and so forth so I'll just America as a, as a powerful ocean based economy, and over 300 million and millions of jobs actually ensuring that we can do in a sustainable way and that's what we promoted, and there's so many cool aspects of it, the five pillars we focused on were tourism and recreation, which happens to be the biggest one, then I love to go to the beach and aquarium, and you know that kind of thing. And then there was also this ocean exploration area and Discovery and Science which is field by a really awesome blue tech industry. That's another one I mentioned marine transportation so shipping it's big in the news right now with these bottlenecks like at the Port of Los Angeles. Right. There's also coastal resilience, ensuring our coastlines our populations our communities are resilient to things like sea level rise to increasingly intense storms, and then of course, fishing and seafood and that's just the whole industry, and culture that is worth preserving, and there was all an intricate balance among those and now this podcast, what I do is I bring in people on that, and I just talked about ways that blue economy can succeed fuel our post pandemic recovery, but also do so in a way that's positive and promotes cooperation rather than conflict, because that's a big aspect of our economic growth in the oceans right now there's potential conflict like fishermen or wind farms, that's not in a great way right now and so part of the things, what I want to do with a podcast is bringing people and figure out Win Win solutions.

Nic  
Yeah, which is excellent and that's all the more you have the perfect reason to have a podcast so I do want you guys to check it out American Blue Economy, and wherever you can listen to podcast.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Yeah, it's on coastalnewstoday.com And you look for the yellow podcast, it's the American shoreline Podcast Network. And just to make a little plug. I've had a lot of fun doing it. I've had some some celebrities, the founder of pro surfer, sort of post surfing, Ian Cairnes, have had a famous free diver named Meghan Heaney-Grier who is also had her show on Discovery Channel. I had a USGS director former Director Jim Reilly, who also was a three times shuttle mission command specialists, and five times spacewalk veteran and the director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Peter de Menocal is a good friend of mine and on and on. I've had some fantastic guests, So, be sure to check it out.

Nic 
Yeah, sounds great. We'll definitely have to.

Laura  
Yeah, that's great. So everyone listening, go and check it out,

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet  
But there was, there's one guest, I had a special episode on one of my heroes and that's the Discover of the Titanic, Dr. Robert Ballard. Oh yeah, well we known each other, and if you don't have the time or interest to listen to that one episode the kind of long story short is this. So, when I was a midshipman at the Naval Academy, a sophomore, I was in the audience when the entire student body, heard him give a lecture, less than a year after the Titanic, he discovered it, And I was just in thrall and seeing all the technology where he did, and it was there and then and I committed to become a naval oceanographer and yeah and it turns out though coming full circle, as the oceanographer of the Navy. He invited me to go on is this new ship he has a ship that does exploration called the Nautilus, just like Captain Nemo in the 20,000 leagues. Yeah, that is actually his email as Captain Nemo and it was like his hero as a kid, but you know he was my hero, and then now I ended up sailing with him and diving on a, on a ship wreck of a US aircraft carrier on San Francisco. And then when I came to NOAA no kidding that ocean exploration program I talked about, we funded him through that, to the tune of about $6 million. So the joke is, you know, you may have been my hero when I was a midshipman, but by the time I reached NOAA, I was his $6 million, man. But we're great fans and the episodes terrific because we have so much in common and so many comments, friends and interest so check that out.

Nic  
And if you want people to get in touch with you what's the best way for them to do that.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
Sure, I have a website it's been my daughter actually built it. Communications major at Nova Southeastern Fort Lauderdale, and with a marine biology minor she made sure she did that, of course. And it's ocean stl.com

Laura 
Perfect. Tim, this has been awesome. Is there anything else you'd like to add that we didn't get to ask you

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet 
No, I just want to thank you for what you're doing. I am an environmental professional, and I'm glad that you host a venue that brings together, environmental professionals and educates them. So I think it's good work, I think, the more American more Americans now, care about our environment, and finding ways that they can do something about it and learn more about it is important, and you're doing just that. So let me give you both Nic and Laura a round of applause virtually, and thanks for having me.

[Outro]

Nic 
Thank you so much Tim for being here, and we really appreciate having you on. And that's our show. Thank you Tim so much for joining us. It was really great talking with you and getting to know a little bit more about what you do and how you do is really, really incredible career. I'm really thankful to have you on. As always, please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. See you everybody.

Laura
Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai