Beyond Jaws: A Deep Dive into Marine Conservation - A Conversation with Andrew Lewin

Host Amy Farrell speaks with Andrew Lewin, a marine conservationist and self-proclaimed “ocean-preneur.” Andrew, the CEO and President of Speak Up for Blue, dives into his background as a marine biologist and his transition to becoming a passionate science communicator through blogging, YouTube videos, and eventually podcasting. Throughout the episode, Amy and Andrew explore everything from plastic pollution and marine protection to the impacts of climate change on the ocean. Andrew provides practical advice on consuming seafood sustainably and shares valuable insights into the process of finding jobs in marine biology and conservation. 

Speak up for Blue Podcast Network
Seafood Watch
CITES Species List

Join our free platform: SolPods
Check out the SolPods Website: www.solpods.org
Follow us on Instagram: @solpods.earth
Follow us on Linkedin
Follow us on YouTube

For questions, email us at: hello@solpods.org

Transcript

Lucy 00:03

Welcome to SolPods Studio. We're not your average social network. We're a community of professionals, enthusiasts, and students taking sustainability to the next level. Join us on our journey and get inspired by Earth Heroes just like you. 

Amy 00:17

Welcome back to another episode of SolPods Studio. I'm Amy Farrell, and I'm based in the Bay Area of California. Today I'm sitting down with Andrew Lewin, a marine conservationist and self proclaimed ocean-preneur. I love that term. CEO and President of Speak up for Blue, host of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast, co-host of the Beyond Jaws podcast, and founder and host of the private podcast, Build Your Career in Marine Science in Conservation. And these are all your side hustles, right Andrew? Welcome. I love it. I love it. You must not sleep at all.

Andrew 01:07

Very little.

Amy 01:08

I'm so excited to have you here because I love podcasts and I find it's one of the best ways for me to learn about a topic. And you have been at this for so long. Gosh, and your podcasts, your platforms in general, they, you know, they raise awareness of ocean science and conservation projects all around the world. I've listened to people you've interviewed, gosh, from Australia to Europe, Canada, the US, everywhere. And I guess the fact that you're covering news studies, marine mammals, sharks, seabirds, I mean, you name it. It's an amazing assortment of topics. And you've been at this for what, over a decade?

Andrew 01:51

Almost. Yeah, I think this will be my 10th year. 

Amy 01:54

Holy cow. So you were early days in podcasting, I guess, back it up and tell me a bit about your background? Because I know you have a science background, and what led you to wanting to use the medium of podcasting? 

Andrew 02:08

Yeah, for sure. Well, first of all, I want to say thank you for having me on the podcast, this has been this is a real treat. So I appreciate that. You know, it's always been a dream of mine to be a marine biologist. Since I was 14 years old, I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I wanted to do throughout university. And then, you know, I although I knew what I wanted to do, as a marine biologist, after university, a lot of things happened, you know, where, you know, I worked on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico had a great time came back did my master's degree, in I live in Canada, So my master's degree was at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. And, you know, I still didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. And so with that, you know, I met my wife, and well, she became my wife, and we settled back in Ontario. And since then, you know, I've always had a, you know, trying to find a way to stay with the ocean, because most rational marine biologists will live along a coastline and do that. And I, I just decided to say, no, no, that's ridiculous. Why would I want to do that? I'm going to make my life a little more difficult and challenging. And I'll be a marine biologist living in Ontario. And I'll be honest, I've been able to do a pretty good job at it. You know, in terms of finding jobs, and so forth, I was an environmental consultant for a long time. And then I worked for the fisheries department, Fisheries and Oceans for the federal government here in Canada, mostly on the Great Lakes. But there was always something for me that I wanted to stay with the ocean, that was my passion and continues to be my passion. And so I started a blog right after, or right around the same time as the BP oil spill. Back in 2000. Was it 2010, 2011, I think, and April, I believe, and so that my, my website launched with that, and I decided, like, I'm gonna write news, because what happened was, I was talking to a lot of my friends and family. And people were asking me questions like, what's this climate change thing? You know, people were very much still in the denial stage like is this real, is it not? And I had to explain to them what I knew and what I was learning in class and school, and throughout my career, and so forth. And I quickly realized that even my family and friends, you know, friends of a marine biologist, you know, family members of a marine biologists, they still didn't know a lot about what was happening with the ocean. And so I was like, I need to, you know, be able to put that forward and say, I'm going to put out as much information as possible. There were websites and blogs that had some great, great content on this. It's just that I didn't find it. And so it was difficult. If I couldn't find it, how can other people find it? And so I started a blog and I started to you know, I said, I'm going to do a story once a day, and like five days a week and I realized quickly that I was not a writer, and I didn't like writing five times a day, it was a lot of work. And I'm the kind of, I'm the kind of person who will throw everything up against the wall and see what sticks. And so I did blogging, I didn't like it. I did YouTube videos. And at the time, I had my two children who were younger, they were toddlers. And so they would go to bed around like, you know, depending on what age they were, it was either, you know, 7:30, 7 o'clock, or 8:30. And then after that, I would I would do, I would just go and record videos, and I started a YouTube channel. And, I quickly realized that it's a lot of work to do video editing, you know, to do your audio and video editing together. And I just didn't have the time or just the patience to do that wasn't at that spot right now. Now, granted, this was always done on the side. You know, I did this as a side hustle. I always like to think that it was my full time job. And I had a paying job as a side hustle. I still, I still think that, but it was my passion and the videos just didn't click at that time. And so I was just like, I think, you know, I gotta find some other way. And I talked to a number of people. And they said, have you tried podcasting, and I didn't even know what it was at the time. And this is around 2012-2013. And so I started listening to podcasts and business podcasts and entrepreneurial podcasts to get me going with a business of talking about the ocean and so forth. And it just kind of clicked one day when I was listening to a podcast. I'm like, how come there aren't any ocean podcasts? There were a few, maybe a handful, not even. None of them were active at the time. And so I decided to start my own. And I did and then I started recording in 2014. I didn't publish until 2015. And then it was just from then on, it was just crazy podcasting all the time. 

Amy 06:47

Can you just talk a little bit about some of the specialists or research that you've done yourself? I believe you even interviewed the individual who pulled the straw from a turtle's nose. Is that right? 

Andrew 06:59

That's right. Yeah, he's, he's a good, he's a good friend of mine. And he was the individual who actually pulled the straw out of the sea turtle's nose. And yeah, he's Dr. Nathan Robinson, that actually changed the course of his career, because he was a pure research scientist for sea turtles. And on that trip, because of the power of, of what that did for sea turtles, for plastic straws for plastics in general, based on the science communication, he shifted his career more towards science communication and research. And, it's been quite a career. Four months later, after I talked to him, he called me and he said, Hey, I found another turtle, this time with a fork, a plastic fork and its nose. Right, and it's just about 70 kilometers down from the beach, that he found the original or near the original area was found at sea, but close to the shore. You know, you know, we see pollution all the time. When you're out on the ocean, as a scientist we see it, you know, we see it along the coastlines, we see it in the rivers, you know, we see it when we go out to sea. Sometimes it's really difficult to see because microplastics are what they are, they're micro and when they're micro, they're almost even more dangerous because they have a larger surface area. And they can leach out chemicals. And so it impacts everything from the smallest plankton to the largest whales. And there have been a lot of times where, whether it's been microplastics, or large plastics that have suffocated whales, or suffocated seabirds, and so forth. We see it all, and it's all out there. And so the key in those types of campaigns and that type of science communication is to say, we got to prevent this stuff from getting out there, the first thing to do is to refuse those plastics that you don't need. The single use plastics, you know, when you go to coffee shops like Starbucks, they're all in plastic. Bring a reusable bottle. Buy a reusable bottle and bring it everywhere you need to go;  they'll pour those drinks in there, you know, for the most part, you know, pandemic, you know, notwithstanding, but it’s the idea of like, the plastics is almost an easier thing to communicate to to an audience because there's something that they can do right away, and it makes them think. It makes them think of how easy it is to grab single use plastics, how easy it is to use those. And so that makes you think a little bit more because as you start to be more aware, you start to realize that, hey, we could actually do better and I can actually make better decisions that would directly impact the ocean. 

Amy 09:51

What about as voters what sort of steps are, you know, elected leaders taking in terms of protecting the ocean, or where do you think there's not, not enough has been done?

Andrew 10:04

It's always an interesting case, when we talk about the ocean, you know, the major thing that we need to look at from an ocean standpoint is what are the ocean uses in specific areas? In Canada, for instance, we have the longest coastline in the world, we have we, we border on three oceans. And we also have the Great Lakes, which have some very interesting, you know, freshwater, but oceanographic processes. And so we have a lot of water. And you know, we don't have a lot of resources to protect them, but we have a lot of people using them. And up until, say, the 40s, or 50s, there wasn't a lot of management of those resources, in terms of protection and conservation. So it was pretty much the wild, wild west, you know, if you think about what people are able to grab, and what be like fishing, and, you know, fossil fuel drilling and ocean mining, and so forth. And then, of course, development along the coastline. And water pollution in forms of plastic as well as in forms of actual like, you know, liquid pollution, nutrients and, and chemicals and so forth. And so, it's been, it's been a very difficult process to kind of gauge like, where we need to focus on and we need to focus on all of it at once. And we've done it in terrestrial areas where, and this is in the US as well, where, you know, we manage terrestrial areas, we have zoning, you know, there's certain zones, where it's residential, there are certain zones where it's commercial only buildings, and then there are certain zones that you can't touch, it's environmental, they’re national parks, or local parks or state parks or in Canada, provincial parks, and we've been able to manage that, like fairly well, you know, overall, you know, there's, there's obviously improvements that we can make in a lot of places, but the ocean is still a difficult place to manage. Because on land, you can be there, it's easy to find people who are doing bad things  to these parks. On the ocean, it's very difficult to be everywhere at once. And so enforcement is a difficult process. But putting in the legislation and putting in those protections, is extremely important. And we've seen a lot of strides over the last 50 years, especially over the last 20, looking at marine protection. In this decade, the decade of the ocean, this is the decade of the ocean from the UN, it, you know, the focus is and you've probably heard this is to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030. Right 30% of the ocean and the terrestrial. And so a lot of countries have been really running with that into their own national waters. And so the US is increasing their percentage, Canada's and increasing their percentage. In fact, when Trudeau got in government, he went from 1% fully protected to 15% fully protected within five years. They really accelerated that. So you know, and then the US is doing a very good job as well. It all depends on the type of protection though, you know, a true marine protected area, there's nothing allowed, no extractive services are allowed in it. A lot of protected areas that are deemed marine protected areas are not true protected areas, in that they allow extractive services. So they allow trawling, they allow for some types of fishing, they allow fossil fuel extraction, you know, all these different types of things. So there needs to be more done on that and organizations are working towards that government agencies are working towards increasing those protections, and which will eventually increase that percentage. And that's happening all around the world as well, just sometimes not as fast as you would like. And it really, at this point, unfortunately, it really depends on who's in power in the government, because some parties will completely ignore it, and other parties will go straight on and hit it head on. The other thing is climate change is making things really difficult to manage. And, and so although there's legislation to decrease and reduce climate change, we need more, and we need it faster. And that's really where it comes down. And same with ocean protection. Same with environmental protection all over. We need all of this to happen now or yesterday really is the big thing. 

Amy 14:28

In previous podcasts, you've mentioned The Cove, the film about dolphins, you've also talked about Blackfish. Do you typically interview people who are involved in those documentaries or bring in the scientists who are behind some of these? 

Andrew 14:45

Sometimes it's very difficult because they're very popular at the time. And so I'm a podcast, a smaller podcast and I don't necessarily have the connections but what I do is I piggyback on it and take different aspects of, you know, Blackfish or The Cove or Sharkwater. And start looking at the projects that people are doing that they may not have heard from the movie, but have to do with very similar things in the movie or even add on to some of the the good projects, the optimistic projects that are happening where we're actually seeing, you know, some of the conservationists do some interesting things in conservation. You know, I have, a good friend of mine and colleague, Angelo Villa Gomez, who works for the Center of American Progress right now. He is, he's a guy who's just he's always been amazing at campaigns. And he had worked with a group that came up with this figurine, almost, it was like a paper figurine called Shark Stanley, it was like a hammerhead shark. And theciti campaign was to get Stanley to get people to take pictures with Stanley on social media, and so that they can collect all those pictures. And what you would do is you would just, you can go online, and you can print off the paper, and they would have kids from all over the world, you know, cut out the the shark, Stanley color, whatever they want, and then take a picture with it and say, I want to protect sharks. And so what they did is they printed out all those pictures, and they brought it to the CITES meeting, which is a legislative, international legislative body on trading animals. And so a lot of times if you're on the CITES list, depending on what appendix you're on, you're not allowed in certain countries, you're not allowed to bring that across in certain countries. And so what they did is they added that they use that portfolio and they gave it to the people who were voting with a certain shark would be on the list or not, and gave it to them. Right before they went on. So they opened it up, they see all these pictures of all these children and people all around the world to say, hey, we want to protect sharks, we love sharks. And so they think that influence at that point, I think they had like 13 Sharks listed on CITES that that day, which was before that, we've never seen that before. We have never seen legislation like that, international legislation like that. So it was a huge win. And so having people like that on to talk about Shark Stanley talked about those campaigns to inspire other people to do similar things when they are faced with the same kind of perils, is sort of what I like to do and also bring in the science, you know, I did talk to Dr. Naomi Rose about the science behind Blackfish. Because when Blackfish came out, the captivity industry were in like in full force, their PR machines were in full force, trying to essentially, you know, just just tear apart the science in Blackfish. And so I had a scientist, one of the leading scientists and activists on orcas in the business and orca captivity. And she went through all the points and we went through it together. And there's one of my biggest episodes ever was to talk to Dr. Naomi Rose. These movies allow people to make decisions with their dollars. You know, if you don't like if you don't like orca captivity, just stop going to SeaWorld, stop going to Marine Land here in Canada, that was an easy thing for a lot of people. And that movie did it for a lot of people. And it made SeaWorld and Marine Land and a lot of governments change their minds on whale captivity, big time. 

Amy 18:24

We didn't talk very much about seafood. Andrew, can you just touch on how we can think I know that right here in California, that Monterey Bay Aquarium has a seafood list of what foods to avoid? What would be your recommendation, you know, as we're thinking about which seafood to buy? 

Andrew 18:47

It's such a difficult thing to get, like as consumers, to get our heads around, is you have to do a lot of research. And we are very, very fortunate to have programs like Seafood Watch from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and others that are around that help you make those decisions by telling you this is preferred, or this is a fishery to avoid. And that's a great thing to have. Essentially what happens is just to give your audience a description is if you if you go to a supermarket, or you go to a restaurant, and you see that there's a specific type of seafood that you would like, you can look it up on the app. And you can kind of just type it in and you're like, okay, well there's tuna tuna steak on the menu. And I would like to see if I can have this tuna if it's sustainable. And so you put in the type of tuna and it's like, okay, great. And then it almost says okay, if it's tuna from the northeast shore of the US, that means it's usually caught by pole and line, a sustainable way of doing it. And it's very right. It's like it's heavily managed by the government. So it's very sustainable. You can you can have this type of tuna. However, if it's a tuna that comes from a particular place, say in the Pacific, middle of the Pacific, well, maybe that tuna is not, you know it, it could, the way it's caught, it could be taken with a long line, which, you know, a lot of other endangered species or potentially endangered species are being caught on as well, you know, sea turtles, dolphins, whales, and so forth. And so that kills a lot of those dolphins. So it says to avoid those, right? There's great information, there's a lot of information that goes on, a lot of scientists contribute to that. The Marine Stewardship Council is another one that's more international. And really, really great. But the problem is, is when you ask the person, the waiter, or you ask the chef, or you ask the person behind the seafood market counter or the grocery counter that’s selling in the seafood area, they don't know, they don't know where it came from, they don't know how it was caught. The good chefs do because they care about sustainability. Like if you go to a high end chef, there's more, there's a good chance that they'll know, and the waiters will be, you know, informed. But a lot of them don't know. And so in those cases, I always say, well, thank you, I appreciate it, I'm not gonna go for the seafood because I don't know where it comes from. And I want to make sure it's sustainable. And just to avoid using the seafood at all, to hopefully make the owner of that restaurant or the grocery store say, if people want, if we want people to buy this seafood, we should know where it comes from. And it's very difficult for some retailers to track where that fish came from or where that seafood came from. Because the supply chain is not transparent. And that's the good thing about programs like the Marine Stewardship Council is they follow where that like from, from being caught all the way to the plate, they follow that process, and they make it transparent, they go through each and every part of the supply chain. And they say, hey, you know what, this is actually sustainable. Not everybody agrees with all of their, what they say is sustainable. And that's fine, you can make that choice yourself. But it is documented. And it does make it a lot easier. The other thing, when in doubt, is to go right to the fisher. There are more and more ever since COVID, there are more and more community fisheries, it's like you pay a fee. And then you put down what seafood you'd like. And they'll go out and catch it. And they send it to you right to your door in like a frozen package. And a lot of times it's done seasonally, you can get like a whole freezer full if you want. And it's and you know, you're actually sometimes they'll send you the picture of the fisher that you're actually supporting, and that actually caught your fish and your seafood. And so it's a great alternative, a great way to support local artisanal fisheries, you can support indigenous fisheries as well, because some of those are sold through indigenous fisheries. And it's just an amazing program. And I highly recommend them. 

Amy 22:59

I love that we're giving practical tips here because sometimes it's overwhelming, right and hearing about everything that's going on with the ocean, but knowing that there's some very practical steps you can take, I guess pivoting slightly because I know you with your private podcast, you actually give a lot of advice to individuals who want to move into marine conservation. I mean, what are some things that you highlight? What would be some tips, whether it's students who are thinking about pursuing, you know, education in that area, or even people who are mid-career and want to pivot? What do they need to do besides join your private podcast?

Andrew 23:41

Yeah, absolutely. You know, this is something, I started the program, because when I first when I was an early career scientist, I had trouble getting the job that I wanted. And there's a particular way to apply for a science job, and a marine biology job, even a conservation job that is not, it's not considered a normal way of doing it, or traditional way of doing it in the business world. And so it's a lot more descriptive. And so what I always suggest is, you know, when you're when you're planning out in front, before you apply for jobs is to plan out your career, a lot of people graduate, like I did and just be like, I'm ready for anything, I just want to help sharks or I just want to help dolphins or I want to help, you know, protect the ocean. Well, that's not niche enough, right? You know that saying the riches are in the niches. You have to be more specific, you have to start picking the career path that you want. And so I always suggest right off the bat is, What would you do? What do you see yourself doing, you know, at the age of 35, or the age of 40? What do you see yourself doing in the ocean? What type of job would you like to work on? Do you want to work for a job that is mostly like in politics and working on policy? Or do you want a job where you're mostly in the field or, maybe a little bit of both? All those differences matter and it helps you, it helps direct you towards the career path that you want. And then once you get that job that you want, you can start to reverse engineer the skills and experiences you need to have to attain a job like that, and where you should follow and where you should make your networks and how you should focus on specific aspects of that job. And so that's the biggest thing. The other thing is as how to actually, you know, create an application, write up an application, what to put on your resume, what to put in the cover letter, just tips and tricks that have helped me in the past, because when finally someone helped me, I was able to get the job that I wanted, I was able to apply to the jobs that actually qualified for. And then I was able to get the job that I wanted. And that was with the Fisheries and Oceans. And ever since then the jobs that I applied for that I know, I have the skill set for and the experiences for, I get interviews, I don't always get the job, but I get interviews, and I even go through the program even go through, like you know how to sit down for an interview and how to prep for an interview, and so forth. 

Amy 25:58

How do you get access to that? What's your private podcast called again? How do you get access?

Andrew 26:04

Yeah, it's called Build your Career in Marine Science and Conservation. It's a bit of a mouthful, but I want to be as specific as possible. To get to it, you just had to go to Speak up for Blue.com forward slash career, okay, and, and be able to, and then you can sign up for that program, it's $5 a month, I try to make it you know, just basically enough to pay for the hosting fees and everything. But it's a private podcast, it's dedicated a lot to early career researchers, or the career scientists who don't know where they want to go with their career, or even people who are still students, and they can, you know, build that career based off that.

Amy 26:40

And, you know, we've covered a lot of ground, which is fantastic, could you with our very last question, because we always end the podcast with a little creative question. So could you put on your creative thinking cap? And I want to ask you, if you could have a sustainability superpower, what would it be?

Andrew 27:04

Oh, dear. I think that that's sustainable. Like, if I'm looking at a real superpower, I would, I would hope I would just have a superpower that would make every business sustainable. You know, from the supply chain, like every existing business right now is just making it like all the materials are sustainable, and they didn't have to worry about paying for it or where the money is going to come from where the supply is going to come from is just, everything's the whole supply chain. Everything is sustainable. You know, because I'm sick of seeing just plastic water bottles being you know, drunken on other podcasts, and people are like, still using that and like I just don't get it, especially in North America, most places in North America, where you have clean drinking water. I don't understand how we're still drinking out of bottles drives me nuts. 

Amy 27:53

Well, that's a great superpower. I'm with you. I also hope we we can your superpower works and we can get people to make those businesses to make those changes. Well, this has been so great, Andrew, I mean, I've really enjoyed talking with you. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your podcasts. I've learned so much. I love the guests. I love just when you speak directly then you know on certain topics without the guests. So keep doing what you're doing. I know it's a side hustle. I know, you've got a day job and everything else you're managing, but it's really making a difference. So yeah, please keep doing what you're doing. And thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. 

Andrew 28:36

Well, I want to say thank you for having me. I mean, this has been it's been a real treat to be able to speak to you and I love you know the community that you've allowed me to be a part of in the SolPods community and it's just it's just a lot of fun to be able to interact with with a variety of people who are interested in the same kind of goal and to be more sustainable and to learn as much as possible. So I appreciate you offering that community and nurturing.

Amy 29:04

Thank you so much.

Lucy 29:08

SolPods Studio is made possible by listeners like you. Join the free SolPods platform to become a part of our virtual community of changemakers. Links to our social media, website, and platform can be found below in the show notes. If you enjoyed the show, feel free to rate and review our podcast. Thank you for listening and for your support.