Hold My Beer - Evan Tuohy (Isla Mar Research Expeditions)

In this episode we are headed to Rincón Puerto Rico to talk with Evan Tuohy the Co-Founder of Isla Mar Research Expeditions. 
Ethan & Evan talk about their student marine biology programs, turning beer bottles into concrete for coral reef restoration, diving 160 feet down into the ocean, and how it was to stumble upon manatees mating. 

Buckle up because it's a WILD episode.  

Transcript

Ethan Leaman (00:01.966)
Hey everyone. Welcome to season two of wild and unprotected. We have a very special guest, for the kickoff episode of this season. Everyone meet Evan Touhy, the co -founder of Islamar Research Expeditions down in Puerto Rico. 

Evan Tuohy (00:19.882)
Hey everybody, how's it going? 

Ethan Leaman (00:22.734)
Now this one's particularly important to me. My family is from Puerto Rico. I've been wanting to do this for a while. One of our board members referred Evan over to me for the show. We've been trying to connect and we finally made it happen. This one is really cool, near and dear to my heart. So Evan, thanks for making the show. 

Evan Tuohy (00:41.898)
Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thanks for reaching out. We're definitely excited to do this and you have a great organization, great thing going. So we're definitely happy to be a 

Ethan Leaman (00:51.47)
Yeah, I appreciate it. It's a lot of hard work and a lot of time sitting here on a mic talking to people. So, it could be a lot worse. It could be worse. I could be in the water 24 seven, which I would like to do, but I got to admit I'm sitting pretty on this side of things. 

Evan Tuohy (00:59.178)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (01:07.818)
Yeah, yeah. 

Ethan Leaman (01:10.51)
Well, all right. So to kick us off, tell us a little bit about yourself, Evan. 

Evan Tuohy (01:16.106)
Yeah, so, you know, as you said, I'm Evan Touhy. I'm co -founder of Isla Mar Research Expeditions. And basically, Isla Mar is an entity my wife and I created in 2015. We moved down to Puerto Rico 13 years ago now. And I grew up in Florida. So I moved from Florida. My wife and I met in our undergraduate degree at Florida Tech in Melbourne, Florida. 

Evan Tuohy (01:42.346)
And then we made the decision to finish up our graduate degrees and get our PhDs from the University of Puerto Rico here in the Department of Marine Science. And during that time, we were still kind of working with some professors from our undergraduate degree who was bringing field courses of students down here and he would hire us to basically lead those courses. And through that, you know, we kind of realized like, hey, maybe we should start. 

Evan Tuohy (02:11.434)
trying to do this and incorporate it at a little bit larger scale. And so we created Isla Mar Research Expeditions and basically we host and run field courses for undergraduate and graduate students who have an interest in tropical marine ecology, fish and corals. And we give them basically a crash course in what it's like to be a field marine scientist. From the point of developing a question, 

Evan Tuohy (02:40.202)
narrowing down your hypothesis, going and collecting the data, which is the fun part, but then analyzing the data and getting your results and your discussion. All of that we kind of do in -house and give, you know, the up and coming prospective marine scientists kind of a taste of what it's like, you know, everything in their toolbox to really make this happen. And it's really great. It's really fulfilling. It's evolved a lot in that time, you know, I guess in almost 10 years now. 

Evan Tuohy (03:09.738)
And yeah, we're really happy doing it. It's been a great opportunity and we look forward to the years to come and more expansion. 

Ethan Leaman (03:18.638)
Yeah, that's awesome. I love programs that give back, you know, kind of to the next generation. That's one of the reasons that, you know, we started this show was to encourage the next generation, kind of in quirky means. this, this isn't, you know, your traditional conservation podcasts where we really dive deep into kind of the science behind it. We want to tell, you know, the, the real life stories, the wild stories and things like that. So it's really cool to see. 

Ethan Leaman (03:42.254)
a program that's really similarly driven in regards to working with students, working with that next generation. And seeing how it impacts them, how did you get into research and conservation? What was that path like? 

Evan Tuohy (03:58.474)
Well, so we were lucky in the sense of even in our undergrad and our graduate degree, we had the opportunity to get out into the field, especially in our graduate degree. Being here studying tropical marine ecology and biological oceanography for our PhDs and being here in a Caribbean island and primarily working in a research station, we had, I mean, we literally could go from the classroom. 

Evan Tuohy (04:26.922)
walk out of the classroom, walk to the dock, pick up a scuba tank, hop on a boat, and in 10 minutes, we're immersed, completely immersed in it, diving on coral reefs, counting fish, working on projects. And so that really gave us an opportunity for a lot of different projects and kind of developed that whole research side of it. And, you know, I said before Isla Mar, basically we do the field courses, but that's only like part of what Isla Mar is. We also, 

Evan Tuohy (04:57.45)
apply and obtain our own funding for research projects that we do independently throughout the island. And we do that either just as Islamar as ourselves, or we collaborate. We have a great network of other researchers here in Puerto Rico that really allows us to kind of get like have a more island wide impact to really help bolster some of these research projects and some of these conservation components that we do. 

Evan Tuohy (05:22.666)
But yeah, it all kind of just given the opportunities, never saying no, you know, during our undergraduate and graduate degree. And that just kind of allowed us like one project, you learn a new skill, you learn how to apply that to something else, you meet new contacts, you know, it just kind of snowballs into one thing after another. And, you know, we're really fortunate to have those opportunities and, you know, kind of have the opportunity to continue that on and be here and, you know, 

Evan Tuohy (05:51.818)
live in an area where we can be in the field as much as we do. 

Evan Tuohy (05:58.186)
It's amazing. 

Ethan Leaman (06:01.774)
Yeah, it sounds so horrible that, you know, your backyard is the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic ocean living in Puerto Rico. 

Evan Tuohy (06:09.898)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. 

Ethan Leaman (06:15.598)
I think one of the points that you brought up there that I'd like to unpack a little more is kind of the funding portion of it. We don't get to talk a lot about conservation funding here. How did going through that funding stage impact the early days of Isla Mar? 

Evan Tuohy (06:26.442)
Okay. 

Evan Tuohy (06:35.114)
yeah, it's tough. like just to give you an idea. So we're independent scientists. So at Isla Mar, it's the untraditional. Usually you get your PhD, you work in academia, you know, you work for a big organization like NOAA, something like that. And, and based on, you know, a lot of the opportunities in our experiences that as we were, you know, throughout our graduate degree, we decided to stay and be an independent scientist. And. 

Ethan Leaman (06:54.51)
Mm 

Evan Tuohy (07:03.21)
What that means is we don't have a salary. We don't have a 401k. We don't have health benefits, you know, that we're, you know, a health package that we're paying into, you know, so what that it's a hustle, you know, we're constantly writing grants, whether that be for mostly federal funding from, from the U S and NOAA, because Puerto Rico is. 

Evan Tuohy (07:27.274)
you know, a territory of the United States. So we do, we can apply for, for United States government funding. but then also some local resources like the department of natural resources here. And, and also we, you know, have collaborated with some private entities as well. some other companies that support our work, which is an amazing opportunity as well. But yeah, I mean, just to answer your question, it's a hustle. we're constantly writing, you constantly have ideas or. 

Ethan Leaman (07:44.558)
Mm -hmm. 

Evan Tuohy (07:55.402)
or proposals on deck that you kind of have to tweak and flip in a short amount of time and get it out and to meet a deadline to be able to acquire funding for the next year or two or three or four years of that. It takes a lot of time. It can be very frustrating because nothing's guaranteed. You can spend 10s, 20 hundreds of hours on a proposal. 

Evan Tuohy (08:22.602)
and there's no guarantee that it's gonna be funded. So if it doesn't get funded, you lose all that time, you don't get paid for it. So we're constantly trying to evolve, constantly taking, like recycling some ideas because it might be a good idea, it might be worthwhile, but hey, it might just not meet into that funding cycle or that funding entity's ideas, or they have... 

Evan Tuohy (08:50.474)
two or three or four other really good ideas that they want to fund other than that. It doesn't necessarily mean that it was a bad idea or it was a crap proposal, you know? So, you know, we kind of just try to evolve and it's just a constant hustle. But it's more frustrating in the early days. I'm not saying it's not any less frustrating now because rejection is real and it hurts a little bit. But especially 

Evan Tuohy (09:17.294)
when you feel like, this is... 

Ethan Leaman (09:17.294)
Yeah 

Evan Tuohy (09:19.786)
you my heart and soul is going into this and then, you know, you get a bad reviewer and it burns sometimes. Sometimes you have to read a proposal, read the reviews and shut the computer and not look at it for a couple of weeks, you know, because, you know, it could be frustrating, but in the same sense, it's, you know, it's really fulfilling. It allows us to really diversify. You know, we have to diversify our career paths and what we do. We can't just focus on one thing. It allows us to work with. 

Ethan Leaman (09:33.518)
Thanks for watching. 

Evan Tuohy (09:49.194)
amazing group of people, local researchers here on this island. And it also allows us to help support, you know, students and citizens that would like to do the same and really want to, you know, help out, especially, you know, like you said, your family is here in Puerto Rico. But that's the one thing that, you know, I love about being here and that I loved about, you know, local Puerto Ricans is they really do love their island, you know, and they. 

Evan Tuohy (10:16.266)
you know, and they're really, if you need help, they're always happy to help and they're su everybody's super eager and you know, and it's great to be able to give back in that way, help support, you know, the local resources, local people, and then local students as well, and help, you know, give back and give them opportunities as well. So, you know, it's really fulfilling, you know. 

Ethan Leaman (10:16.366)
Mm -hmm. 

Ethan Leaman (10:43.79)
Yeah, a lot of how I explain that kind of thing to people is you really get paid in sunshine and love doing the kind of work that you're doing, especially independently. Because it is not for the faint of heart at all, because there are some tough days when you're trying to get funding, you get that rejection. The way I like to explain it to people when people ask me about, you know, kind of the funding process with nonprofits. 

Evan Tuohy (10:50.314)
Thank you. 

Evan Tuohy (10:55.274)
Mm -hmm. 

Ethan Leaman (11:12.238)
is I like to compare it to a product organization, you know, like an Apple, like a Samsung or some type of organization that sells something. And you are constantly having to create the next thing. The next product to pitch, the next product to push out, because that's what garners interest from organizations, you know, whether they're private, public, whatever it may be to back your organization with funding or the government itself. You are. 

Evan Tuohy (11:39.626)
Mm 

Ethan Leaman (11:41.582)
constantly having to be looking forward just as much as you're looking at what you're doing. And it creates kind of this interesting paradox of work. There's one foot constantly in the future looking at the next project, the next grant, the next funding meeting. And then another foot is in the current present day. 

Ethan Leaman (12:07.31)
looking at, you know, what we're trying to accomplish now to make sure that what we're doing is, you know, factual in our case, creating the right content that's, up to date, that's actually sending out the right message and not, you know, pushing out something that's not factual anymore, or, that is, that's not impactful. And in, in your case, you know, something, you know, that's, that's not scientifically correct. so it's, it's really interesting to try and explain that to people. And I'm really glad you hit on that. 

Evan Tuohy (12:32.81)
Thank you. 

Evan Tuohy (12:36.842)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah. 

Ethan Leaman (12:39.918)
Let's talk a little bit more about the student program. And one, how do you get students? 

Evan Tuohy (12:43.69)
Mm -hmm. 

Evan Tuohy (12:49.162)
Yeah, so generally we do it in a couple ways. So we've done some field courses here on the island that are just solely for local students. One of the things that's kind of interesting about Puerto Rico is you would think like, being surrounded by water must be like a marine biology mecca. 

Evan Tuohy (13:12.874)
The university system here in Puerto Rico doesn't have an undergraduate degree program for marine sciences. The closest they have is like coastal marine ecosystems. So there's a lot of students that are, yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of local students here that are, that's their dream and it's a great dream to have and you know, like. 

Ethan Leaman (13:23.854)
Blows my mind. 

Evan Tuohy (13:34.954)
that was my dream to be a marine biologist, you know, but they don't really have the opportunity even here living on like a tropical marine island surrounded by the ocean. So they a lot of times they have to either take, you know, they have a great program for the coastal at the University of Puerto Rico, Humacao for the tropical marine or coastal marine ecosystem. So they have to take that for an undergrad or they take general biology. So they're really, and then you can... 

Evan Tuohy (14:02.218)
transition into, if you want to stay here in Puerto Rico, the Graduate Department of Marine Sciences and the University of Puerto Rico system. So they're really not getting the opportunity to have that hands -on exposure to marine science until they make that decision to go to graduate school. So after having four or five years of undergraduate degree. So... 

Evan Tuohy (14:27.114)
We started doing some field courses for local students, so we do that part of the time. But then we also partner with universities in the States as well, and bring students from the United States also, because that's a big part too. They have the undergraduate programs, but they don't have the reach, they don't have the tropical marine environment. So it's appealing for those students to come down and fully get a chance to immerse themselves. 

Ethan Leaman (14:47.918)
It's appealing for those students to come down. 

Evan Tuohy (14:53.258)
in this environment to which they have to travel to. It's not their backyard. So, you know, we either do, yeah, the local field courses, you know, every other year, or we do, you know, every year we tend to partner with universities from the states as well who bring students down here. So, you know, that's more or less how we get the student base. 

Evan Tuohy (15:20.138)


Ethan Leaman (15:20.174)
Yeah, that's 

Ethan Leaman (15:20.774)
awesome. I love that you're, you're double dipping essentially, you know, taking some of the locals that you can, that are in the position to be able to do that, but also utilizing, you know, the, the universities in the States. I mean, I would assume, you know, there's, there's a lot of interest there and that's probably where a lot of the money I would assume comes from too, to be able to put on a student program like that. 

Evan Tuohy (15:27.53)
Mm -hmm. 

Evan Tuohy (15:43.466)
Yeah, exactly. You know, that's the reality of it. You know, to where is like we're not affiliated with the university period. So for instance, when we do the local courses here, the cost is much different. Because one, just the pay scale here on the island is drastically different than what the pay scale is and the amount of resources, you know, monetarily and otherwise here that's available is much... 

Ethan Leaman (15:53.55)
in the C period. 

Evan Tuohy (16:13.002)
much different than what's in the States. So yeah, the cost is different, but also too, when it's run through a university in the States, they're paying university tuition for the course. So they're paying, it's much more inflated for them. They're paying per credit hour like you would at a normal university. So, you know, so. 

Ethan Leaman (16:16.814)
Mm -hmm. 

Ethan Leaman (16:38.158)
So, 

Ethan Leaman (16:39.086)
you know, so the university likes it because they can, they can, you it helps them, it allows them to do that. But then, yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (16:39.498)
The university likes it because it helps them, it allows them to do that. But then yeah, we kind of do have to double dip and 

Evan Tuohy (16:48.278)
have two almost separate programs just because just the reality of the matter and the different availability of resources from the actual mainland United States and the island here. It's the best way that we could make it work. 

Ethan Leaman (17:07.886)
Yeah, well, I got nothing but respect for that. You know, I feel like a lot of organizations don't like to face reality. and then on top of it, don't like to talk about it when it's an important piece of how they function. so I got nothing but respect for that. even in your willingness to talk about it. So I appreciate that. to keep us moving, what, what should the students expect future students, who want to be a part of the program? What's, what's, what's the program like? 

Evan Tuohy (17:16.297)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (17:19.05)
Mhm. 

Evan Tuohy (17:25.354)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (17:34.218)
Yeah, that's kind of usually, that's a great question because everybody like I think you have in the field and especially, you know, your first time experience, everybody kind of sees like the National Geographic funded expeditions and opportunities and thinks it's this great, glorious, I'm going to be on a ship for two, three weeks straight and you know, everything is super high funding and high paid and cozy and comfortable and... 

Evan Tuohy (18:02.538)
Yeah, it's definitely not bad. You know, what we like to do exactly, no, no, no, for real. Like, you know, a lot of times we're on smaller boats, 20, 20 foot or less boats, 25, 30 foot or less boat in the sun all day, rough conditions, beat up, bruised, you know, waterlogged all day. And we like to do a lot of stuff. We're really fortunate the area we live in. 

Ethan Leaman (18:06.222)
Yeah, you're on some sh** dingy that just left the worst dock ever 

Evan Tuohy (18:31.786)
on the West Coast here, we can do a lot of things from shore, which cuts the cost a lot, and it makes it a lot easier. So we can do a lot of shore dives as well and shore snorkeling. So I would, you know, to expect it's gonna be fast paced, long days in the water, in the sun, you know, like, and we try to keep you moving and busy. You don't get a lot of downtime, which I think a lot of people get. 

Evan Tuohy (18:58.506)
are a little surprised with, but we like to keep you take advantage of the opportunity, get as much out of it as you can. We don't wanna have you just sitting around. But typically a day would start seven in the morning, which is kind of late for us, but we gotta realize they're students. So we gotta give a little bit, but we'll do a quick. 

Ethan Leaman (19:19.374)
 haha 

Evan Tuohy (19:24.298)
Recap of what we'll be getting in 

Ethan Leaman (19:24.794)


Evan Tuohy (19:26.034)
the water for we get in the water spend at least I would prefer to spend you know minimum two three hours in the water non -stop But that's you know, usually that's kind of hard for everybody especially when you're that four or five six days in a row snorkeling or diving Doing the monitoring work, you know, usually we typically try to do some coral reef or fish monitoring 

Evan Tuohy (19:50.09)
do photo quadrats or some measurements of restored coral colonies. We'll do that for a couple hours, get out of the water, have lunch, and then typically we tend to go right in the classroom and start doing some lectures, analyzing the data, talk about different subjects we'll be introducing the next day. So yeah, it's pretty long, pretty fast -paced, and you know, yeah, it's great, but we do see, you know, like, 

Evan Tuohy (20:20.65)
You know, we realize it is a lot more intense than what a lot of students think the marine biology program is, but that's the reality of it. It's small scale. This is what the majority of marine scientists are doing all the time. It's small boats. It's work from shore. You're scraped. You're beat up. You're sunburned. You know, like all of that stuff is the reality. And if they're long days and you're tired and... 

Ethan Leaman (20:29.134)
Marine Biology program is, but that's a reality of it in a small scale. This is what the Mickey Boyer... 

Evan Tuohy (20:46.986)
You know, that's what you can expect, but it's super fulfilling. You're gonna see things you've never seen before, do things that you didn't even think you could do before. And that's one of my favorite things, you know, from, and the most fulfilling part about the whole process is asking students what they think at the beginning and then seeing what they think at the end. And it's, you know, it's amazing. It's great, you know, and just to see, you know, that students evolve, the majority of the time is... 

Ethan Leaman (21:11.662)


Ethan Leaman (21:12.334)
reality of it too, sometimes people are like, we hate this, this is not what we wanted to do. 

Evan Tuohy (21:13.034)
this is the best thing ever. You know, we're totally going to do this as a career path. And that's great. And that's amazing. Like that's what we want to see. But then the reality of it too is sometimes people are like, we hate this. This is not what we, not what we wanted to do. And then that's fine. Like, 

Evan Tuohy (21:29.13)
you know, I'm glad you were able to have that and make that choice now in the beginning of your career, not a couple of years into it, because you know, that's, that's, it is what it is. 

Ethan Leaman (21:41.038)
Yeah. I mean, and, I think that's a great point to bring up because most people, I feel like don't get that opportunity to experience, you know, almost like a Marine biology bootcamp. and they'll, they'll go through their graduate degree and they'll, they'll be excited. They'll go into their PhD program and be like, my gosh, this is what I want to do the rest of my life. And only have been on the water, you know, a handful of times. And then there, they finished up that program and they're a year into it and they're like, what the f*** did I do? 

Evan Tuohy (21:52.586)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (22:09.69)
Yeah, yeah. 

Ethan Leaman (22:09.838)
Did I make a mistake and gave 

Ethan Leaman (22:13.098)
up, you know, six years of my life? 

Evan Tuohy (22:15.578)
Yeah, I mean, like, think about it, you know, like, seasickness is a real thing. And a lot of times you don't experience it until you're out there on the water, you have no idea, or you're out in rough conditions, which the reality of is, you're not out, you have to go out, you know, when it's rough sometimes. And, and I have great friends, great colleagues that are amazing scientists that get seasick in rough conditions. And it's kind of one of those things and you could hate it or you love it. You know, the first time you get seasick, some people are like, 

Evan Tuohy (22:45.354)
this is not for me, like get me out of here, I'm not doing this anymore. Well, imagine being five years into a degree and then realizing that, you know? But, you know, that could be make or break for some people. They could be absolutely miserable out there in the field and never wanna do it again. So it's great to get that opportunity early on. And I mean, I don't wanna deter anybody either because that's the great thing about marine science is it's such a diverse field. Just because you might not, 

Ethan Leaman (22:54.99)
Exactly. 

Evan Tuohy (23:15.338)
be, you know, you don't, you find out you might not like the field setting doesn't mean there isn't a thousand other paths you could do with the marine science or a thousand other things that you could do that's still amazing and worthwhile and cutting edge, you know, work that, you know, blows my mind all the time. That doesn't involve being on a boat or in the field or, you know, doing the dirty work. 

Ethan Leaman (23:37.71)
Yep. I mean, just look at this conversation that we're having now. I mean, we both technically could say we're both in conservation in the same field, but you know, my, my end of things is essentially, you know, a media nonprofit business, which incorporates all the fields that you would learn in business. You know, it's, it's, there's little to no science outside of making sure that we understand what's being talked about. I'm lucky because I do have a Marine biology background, which allows me to hang in these conversations. 

Evan Tuohy (23:50.57)
Yeah, yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (23:56.138)
Mm -hmm. 

Ethan Leaman (24:07.246)
but there's so many pathways, within this line of work. so I'm glad you hit on that because that is something that is, I feel like so overlooked. You know, there's people who could work in the finance segment of this. We need people, that understand the numbers and how to make a business run, how to bring in money. we need people who can create, you know, educational content, but in on top of, you know, being able to work in science. So that is such an important point. I am so glad you brought that up. 

Evan Tuohy (24:26.442)
I think you're right. 

Evan Tuohy (24:37.322)
Yeah, yeah. 

Ethan Leaman (24:40.942)
But I think with that, I think we're at a good place. We have to take a break. So we'll be back in one moment. Sponsor break. 

Evan Tuohy (24:49.074)
Yeah, yeah. 

Ethan Leaman (24:55.246)
So right after this, we'll dive into Coral. 

Evan Tuohy (24:57.578)
Okay, cool, cool, yeah. 

Ethan Leaman (25:01.486)
And we'll give it a couple seconds of silence here and then I'll say, and we're back and then we'll dive into the choral stuff. 

Ethan Leaman (25:17.454)
And we're back. So for this next segment, I wanted to talk about Isla Mar's coral projects. Can you tell me a little more about what you guys do with coral in Puerto Rico? 

Evan Tuohy (25:27.466)
Yeah, so as I was saying, being independent, you have to really diversify and it allows us to have a pretty wide range of expertise in areas that we work in. But for instance, my wife and I are, who started this company, started Isla Mar we're fish biologists. But we also do a lot of work in coral reef restoration. 

Evan Tuohy (25:51.658)
And so basically we have a couple projects with some great collaborators like Icer Curribee and HJR Reefscaping here on the island. And we work with these different entities to do restoration efforts to help restore degraded coral reefs around the island of Puerto Rico. And typically how we do that, the more like quote unquote traditional way of doing it is, there's two ways really. You can do it by, 

Evan Tuohy (26:22.122)
taking broken corals. So you can take like a big disturbance event, a ship grounding, a big hurricane, a big swell event, which we get here on the west coast of Puerto Rico that has a tendency to break some of the corals. And we go in after those disturbance events and we basically collect all those coral fragments. So coral reefs are living, your corals are living organisms. Some of them have like branching growth forms and those branches can break. All right. And they break and they fall onto the reef. 

Evan Tuohy (26:51.786)
naturally those corals can re -cement themselves so the organisms can actually re -cement themselves to the reef and that little fragment then grows into a whole new coral. All right. And potentially helps regenerate the coral reef. But we all know coral reefs worldwide are now at a basically like a turning point or a potentially a tipping point where they need our help. So there's lots of great restoration work, not just here in Puerto Rico, but... 

Evan Tuohy (27:19.626)
throughout the world that goes in and we're basically helping those reefs regenerate themselves. And so what we do then is we take advantage of that natural process of fragmentation and resementation. We go and collect those fragments and we cement them using a hydraulic cement, like it looks like normal cement that you would use to make a house or a sidewalk. And we basically put a little handful of that cement on the reef and press that coral fragment in there. 

Evan Tuohy (27:48.714)
And in 45 minutes to an hour, it's solidified. And then that basically makes the survival rate of those fragmented corals go much higher. So anywhere from naturally might be like 40 to 50%, depending on the area, to where it can be 80 to 90 % with restoration intervention. So that's primarily what a lot of the work that we do here around the island. The other way would be taking coral nurseries. So... 

Evan Tuohy (28:16.01)
There's institute and land -based coral nurseries which grow the coral fragments and grow corals in those nurseries. And you can actually take in fragments, break fragments off of those corals, and then you take them into either the nearby reef or into the water and re -cement them themselves. And basically, we're at a point where reefs need our help, corals need our help. 

Evan Tuohy (28:43.626)
And so we're basically taking that natural process and we're kind of just like giving it a nudge, you know, basically we're able to get higher survival rates and make it a lot more worthwhile than what potentially could just be the natural process. You know, we're taking advantage of that, but then also kind of like making it on steroids a little bit, you know, getting it to go faster, more effective, more efficient. 

Ethan Leaman (29:15.118)
Yeah, that's awesome. And I don't think people understand the impact that the reefs have on a lot of the ecosystems around there. I mean, it's not only, it's a home to, you know, millions of fish. But also, you know, it has impact on tourism and I don't think people, you know, see that the surf breaks don't come from nowhere there. And that is a really important part to me, along with, you know, 

Evan Tuohy (29:16.33)
out. 

Evan Tuohy (29:27.786)
Mm 

Evan Tuohy (29:36.746)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Ethan Leaman (29:42.606)
millions of other people that visit Puerto Rico. This is really important work. If you want to have those famous breaks off Rincón, we need this sh**. 

Evan Tuohy (29:49.914)
Right. 

Evan Tuohy (29:52.154)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, 100%. That's what a lot of people don't realize. You know, it's not just, you know, corals don't just benefit other corals or coral reef or coral reef inhabitants. You know, it's much, much, much more than that. And it's crazy to think about it. Like, yeah, they create surf breaks. So if you think of it from like a tourism point of view, like here on the West Coast of Puerto Rico, tourism is huge, especially surf tourism. So. 

Evan Tuohy (30:18.026)
None of these waves would be here without coral reefs. But it's not just that. The island wouldn't be here without the coral reefs. The beaches, even if you don't surf, the beach wouldn't because they act as a natural barrier to break up wave energy and suppress erosion. So a lot of those million dollar beachfront properties wouldn't be there. The beaches wouldn't be there. It creates a... 

Evan Tuohy (30:46.41)
It's a source for potential medical and pharmaceutical devices. Anybody who eats fish, I guarantee you there's in one way, shape or form that fish is closely associated to a coral reef environment. So with not having coral reefs is going to significantly affect what's on your plate as well. You know, so it's, it's just, it's crazy to think about it. And I mean, everybody's heard about it. coral reefs are the rainforest of the sea. 

Evan Tuohy (31:14.794)
That's true. They are a biodiversity hotspot. A single coral reef supports thousands of millions or thousands of different organisms, tens of thousands of different organisms. And the corals themselves, they are the foundation of that whole ecosystem. If you remove the coral, so in the Caribbean we have less than a hundred species of coral. If you just remove... 

Evan Tuohy (31:41.322)
You know, and a lot of times you don't see all of them, you know, so it might be 12 different corals that make up a reef in a certain region. So if you remove those corals, those 12 species, it potentially impacting thousands of other species, you know, they're without the corals, we're not gonna have any of it. And if you think of it even at a larger scale, like coral reefs in general, they make up less than 1 % of the ocean surface. 

Evan Tuohy (32:09.546)
but they support up to 25 % of all known life in the ocean. So it's crazy to think about, you know, the consequences of potentially losing that ecosystem. It's not just gonna affect coral reefs or tropical marine ecosystem. It's gonna have a global effect. And so like, it's so important that these conservation efforts and there's a lot of great restoration work that's going on and has been for decades now. And you know, it's, you know, I'm... 

Evan Tuohy (32:38.858)
we're really happy to be a part of it. 

Ethan Leaman (32:43.63)
Yeah, I know you guys have done a lot of work and I think there's a particular process or project that you guys have worked on that's particularly interesting. It's actually how you were first introduced to me was this particular process. Tell me about your bottle process and how a process involving, you know, glass bottles in particularly, you know, I think it's. 

Evan Tuohy (32:48.714)
Yes. 

Evan Tuohy (32:57.322)
Thank you. 

Evan Tuohy (33:01.322)
It's 

Evan Tuohy (33:08.842)
Mm 

Ethan Leaman (33:11.022)
It's a good place to say this is for all our beer drinkers out there. You guys can very much help our coral reefs with this process. What is that process? 

Evan Tuohy (33:14.474)
Yeah, yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (33:17.706)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (33:20.386)
Yeah. So, so basically, and that's one of the things being able to apply for our own funding and do that, it lets us kind of branch out and do some, some more unorthodox projects. And this was definitely one of them. So yeah, we were all kind of just sitting around, throwing around, which is a huge part of the collaborative process. We sit around in groups sometimes. 

Evan Tuohy (33:44.49)
and try to think about the next idea, the next RFP or call for proposals and think of different tweaks and interesting spins that we could take on it. And this one was, you know, we use cement to restore corals, but the process of making cement is fairly bad to not just the coral reef, but the island environment itself. If you've ever seen like, you know, 

Ethan Leaman (34:08.014)
Heheheheh 

Evan Tuohy (34:13.097)
mining of sand using for cement, like it's pretty degrading to the island itself, which in turn creates more erosion, which ends up in the water, which then hurts coral reefs. So what we wanted to do is come up with a way to like, how do we reduce some of our dependency? And by far the restoration efforts far exceed, you know, like what's going on with any of that process of using the cement. But we wanted to say, okay, well, how can we... 

Ethan Leaman (34:18.446)
Mm -hmm. 

Evan Tuohy (34:41.898)
reduce our dependency on some of the more harmful aspects of what we're doing. And we had the idea, we were sitting around drinking beers one afternoon and being like, well, hey, big part of what they're doing for cement is sand and this beer bottle, all glass is made of sand. Is there a way that we could incorporate glass? 

Ethan Leaman (34:48.974)
So, sitting around here is wonderful. 

Evan Tuohy (35:01.866)
made from sand into some of the mixture to reduce our dependency on that mined sand that they use in cement. And with some research and contact from other collaborators and friends, we were put in touch with a company in New Zealand who makes a glass bottle crushing machine. And not just large scale, huge industrial ones, but this is a portable, semi -portable one that we can kind of bring around to sites or use in our offices at home. 

Evan Tuohy (35:30.442)
and basically it takes the glass bottle and pulverizes it back into sand. And for anybody who doesn't know, all glass is made from sand. They basically take sand and melt it down and then you can form it into the, know, because glass is actually considered a liquid and basically you're able to melt it and form it into a vessel, you know, to hold water, beer, anything that you can think of. 

Evan Tuohy (35:56.426)
And so, you know, we wanted to kind of like, okay, well, that's it. Let's see, you know, how we can incorporate some of this and into, you know, some of the restoration work. And, you know, it also, we're on an island, there's limited space and it not just reduces our dependency on mined sand, but it reduces the volume of things that are going into the landfill here on the island as well. 

Evan Tuohy (36:22.25)
So it was kind of just like a great positive thing that we were like, hey, let's try, let's do this. Let's see if we can do it. And we had some great support. With this, we actually reached out to a local beer company, Medalla here on the island, which is huge. Anybody who's been to Puerto Rico knows Medalla. It's the local beer company. It's the largest beer company here on the island. And they were like, 

Ethan Leaman (36:49.006)
Yep. 

Evan Tuohy (36:52.106)
so hugely supportive. Like, and I'll give you an idea of, you know, kind of bring this full, full scale. We originally applied for this project because we're scientists. So we didn't just want to go and, and say, Hey, we're just going to throw a bunch of this glass sand into, into, into the cement and. 

Evan Tuohy (37:11.242)
And then that's going to be it. Like we're scientists. We developed the project to see exactly how much of that RGS recycled glass sand we could put into the cement mixture to achieve the same results. So we didn't want to do anything harmful to the environment. So we developed that project, applied for some funding for that from a call for proposals. And we were denied. That's just part of the process. There were lots of other great proposals that, that, 

Evan Tuohy (37:41.034)
that beat us out for that call for the project. But we had reached out to Medalla to ask just, hey, where does your sand come from? Where do you get the sand to make your bottles? Because that was important to the whole process. And they were so amped on the project that they kept, even before we were like, you know, what can we do to help? What can we do to help? And we were like, well, hold on. 

Ethan Leaman (37:59.886)
so and from the project. 

Evan Tuohy (38:06.122)
Let's see, let's get, let's let the, see, you know, the outcome of our proposal that we submitted before, you know, we really say what we need or what we don't need. And after six or eight months, we got the rejection notice and we reached out to Medalla and they were like, it doesn't matter. What do you need? You know, we'll, we'll fund this project. We want to do it. You know, we want to do what's best, you know, and try to reduce our impact from our company, you know, and help. 

Evan Tuohy (38:34.954)
sustain some of the important resources on the island and they supported a whole year of the project. We were able to go out and do our experiment just like we got, you know, scientific funding to do it. And they also had like a huge social media component, did videos, they got Pedro Capo to come out and he was a part of the video as well and got to help with the restoration and it was like an amazing experience, you know, it's definitely weird. 

Evan Tuohy (39:02.57)
us and our other collaborator, HJR Rescaping, we were all out of our element because we're just used to going out and diving and then having to go do the video stuff as well. It was a trip for sure. But yeah, so that's turned into, yeah, sorry, I'm rambling, but that turned into, you know, going out and now we're using, we're incorporating these beer bottles into the cement that we use to, to. 

Ethan Leaman (39:13.998)
But yeah, so that's it. And then do our. 

Ethan Leaman (39:19.918)
No, you're good. 

Evan Tuohy (39:29.13)
to cement the corals back to the reef. So, you know, it's a cool process for sure. 

Ethan Leaman (39:36.43)
That is so awesome. I mean, just the innovation that spurred from that, you think about it, it all started from, you know, knocking back a couple of cold ones and, you know, probably sitting in a circle, you know, shooting the sh**, trying to figure out what ideas might work, you know, could lead to something so innovative and so impactful and so many different work streams. I mean, you're, you're, you know, helping with overall erosion and restoration of 

Evan Tuohy (39:45.29)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (39:57.482)
Mm -hmm. 

Ethan Leaman (40:03.726)
You know, some place that is a home to me, you know, that one of the most beautiful islands I think in the world, probably a lot of bias there. You're helping the reefs. You're, you're helping, you know, not, not overfill landfills because a lot of beer is consumed on the island to Puerto Rico. A lot of it. So, I mean, it impacts so many different streams. And I, I for one am super appreciative and that is just so d***. 

Evan Tuohy (40:21.178)
Yeah. 

Ethan Leaman (40:32.174)
cool. So I don't care about the rambling. That's just cool in general. And I think it's something, you know, that can attract, you know, different, different audiences to this line of work. I mean, how many people can you go up to now and be like, you know what, no matter where you are in the States, if you're on the West coast, you can go up to someone and be like, Hey, you know, drink this Corona and you know, this could be helpful to the environment. And the looks you would probably get on people's faces like what? 

Evan Tuohy (40:33.226)
you 

Evan Tuohy (40:36.202)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (40:58.89)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (40:59.714)


Ethan Leaman (41:00.622)
I'm going to drink this beer for coral reefs. And you're going be like, yes, you need to, you need to down it now. And they would be so stoked that that's how they can help the environment is drinking beer. 

Evan Tuohy (41:03.562)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (41:07.498)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (41:10.922)
Yeah, right. 

Evan Tuohy (41:12.562)
Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure, you know, and it's like, there's so many other uses to it. Like if you think of all the stuff that cement is used for, especially like here in Puerto Rico, like the majority of the homes are built with cement. You know, like, walk around and look at how much cement is used, you know, around you on a daily basis. You know, like what we do for restoration events, that's just a drop in the bucket for the overall large scale. 

Evan Tuohy (41:37.93)
potential and scaling up of this as a recycling process. So it's got a huge potential, especially here in areas where space and resources are limited. Innovation in projects like that are just so important. 

Ethan Leaman (42:00.782)
Yeah, I agree. And I also, I think it's funny, looking, looking back on what we've done on this show so far. So now we have, in regards to coral restoration, we have the use of glass bottles. And of course, you know, we want to push that towards beer bottles for coral restoration. And we have dead family member ashes that have been used for coral restoration. So this is, this show is off to 

Evan Tuohy (42:14.602)
Mm 

Evan Tuohy (42:25.258)
You know? 

Ethan Leaman (42:27.47)
a hell of a start in regards to coral restoration and, and how we continue to innovate there. 

Evan Tuohy (42:34.474)
Yeah, yeah, that's one of our collaborators. He's done that in the past for memorials for some of our colleagues and generations before us in the marine science field here in Puerto Rico. He's made little kind of either statues or relics under the water where you've incorporated that, their ashes into the actual artificial reef. It's amazing. 

Ethan Leaman (43:01.518)
Mm hmm. It's pretty cool. Well, I feel like that is a good time for us to dive into our favorite segment in the show. And I know you got a couple of pieces for this segment, the wild story segment. So so what do you have to kick us off with that one? 

Evan Tuohy (43:18.474)
man, yeah, like we're in the field a lot. So, you know, there's a lot of funny and wild things. The majority of our work, you know, there's a lot of it's computer based behind the scenes, but we're really fortunate and we do a lot of diving and we're in the field a lot. So, you know, everybody kind of thinks about, they have an idea of, you know, diving. 

Evan Tuohy (43:43.53)
working in the field. It's not always being chased by sharks. It's not always, you know, that even though that does happen, that's not the reality. 99 .9 % of the time, it's completely, you know, benign, safe and, you know, but then sometimes some hairy things do happen. So yeah, like some of the wild stories is one of the methodologies that we kind of help develop and advance that, you know, I did some of my graduate work with was developing. 

Ethan Leaman (43:47.182)
It's my show. 

Evan Tuohy (44:13.002)
a form of in situ tagging for fish using closed circuit rebreather. So closed circuit rebreather, I'm not gonna get super crazy into it, but it's different than what you would think of normal diving. So if you see a scuba diver, you exhale and you lose the bubbles, the bubbles go out into the environment. Basically, this is more or less what the astronauts use when they're doing their spacewalks. 

Evan Tuohy (44:40.17)
It recycles our gas, analyzes it for depleted oxygen, and then redelivers a fresh breath of air for us that's the right oxygen concentration for the depth that we're at. So it's really like advanced technology to use, and what it does is it allows us to dive deeper. So we do a lot of work in... 

Evan Tuohy (45:04.042)
fish spawning aggregation, so reproductive events of a lot of the commercially important species that everybody knows like snapper and grouper. And so part of that, a lot of the work is really important is monitoring their movements in relation to those reproductive events. And so what we did was we helped develop or help advance a way of in situ tagging, which has been done in the past, a lot of it's been done in Florida, but at shallower depths and. 

Evan Tuohy (45:31.786)
but our aggregations typically tend to occur a little bit deeper in like the 150 to 160 foot range. And so we needed to use those closed circuit rebreathers to help insert acoustic tags into the fish that we were tracking. And so, yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (45:50.41)
The site that we dive is pretty crazy. It's a seam out in the middle of the Mona channel, which is off the West coast of Puerto Rico. And you can think of it's like a mountain that rises up from the ocean floor. And that's in the middle of the Mona channel and the Mona, which is known for really strong currents. So you basically have basically all huge volume of water hitting a mountain and being diverted left, right, up, down, all over the place. And so, you know, 

Evan Tuohy (46:19.826)
besides the inherent dangers or potential for danger of doing surgical operations of fish underwater, seeing sharks and eels coming up to you and being attracted to what you're doing to the fish, cutting them open and stitching them back up. But being caught in some of the down wellings on a rebreather, we have this big backpack on our back, bailout tanks on our sides. 

Evan Tuohy (46:48.042)
It's really important as you're coming up and down that you maintain for the decompressions, the depths for certain periods of time. You can't just be at the bottom at 160 feet and then come up. Sometimes we have an hour of decompression or longer. And so coming off of that seam out, getting caught in those down wellings, you know, it can be in 120 feet of water kicking your butt off and you just look and you're losing ground. 

Ethan Leaman (47:14.022)
looking loose and proud. You know, you're getting quality. 

Evan Tuohy (47:14.442)
You know, you're getting pulled deeper and deeper and deeper and 

Evan Tuohy (47:17.198)
deeper and you're just like, like this is not good, you know, especially on a rebreather. And so that was kind of hairy. And then the same thing being caught in upwellings because we have decompression, we can't come up too fast. So the exact opposite happens. We're sitting here with all this equipment on, you have to stay at a certain depth for a certain amount of time. You can't exceed that depth or you can get the bends, decompression sickness. 

Evan Tuohy (47:41.93)
And then next thing you know, you go from being ripped down, you know, kicking as hard as you can for a couple of minutes trying to get out of the downwelling and you hit the upwelling and it's doing the exact opposite, trying to push you up to the surface as hard as it can. So yeah, it gets pretty hairy. You know, it's been crazy, you know, and then seeing, you know, some sharks down there, which sharks normally never bother us. You know, we're not fishing, you know. 

Evan Tuohy (48:07.05)
more or less we're in their environment. I have the utmost respect for sharks, but you know, there's been times where we were doing that tagging and then we have one of our divers who just, safety diver watching everything and I hear her being like, Tiburón and I look up as I have this fish upside down and I'm implanting a tag into an incision and there's a six foot shark swimming directly at us. And we're just like, like please turn, please turn, please turn. At the last minute it does turn. 

Evan Tuohy (48:36.49)
So, you know, that was kind of pretty scary, but the other probably one that would just be, you know, the shallow water, you know, diving experience would be my wife and I. We were collecting fish for another project in La Paguerra on the south coast of Puerto Rico. And we both of us got caught in the middle of a mating group of manatees. 

Evan Tuohy (49:05.802)
So that's always a story that is kind of embarrassing, but everybody gets a kick out of it, because it's so unorthodox. Not many people can say that. So basically when manatees mate, it's generally one female or two females and a whole group of males, 10 to 12 to 20 or 30 males. And we were collecting the fish that we needed to collect. 

Ethan Leaman (49:07.438)
So that's always a study that is kind of embarrassing, but everybody gets a kid. 

Ethan Leaman (49:16.494)
Say that. 

Evan Tuohy (49:34.09)
And I turn around because I hear, and we were in like 50, 60 feet of water, you know, down on the reef slope. And I hear my wife scream like, get away, get away. And I turn and I just see this manatee coming right at her. And I like, you know, so we like grab each other and we kind of push it off. You know, I had the blunt end of a pole spear, not the pointed end, the blunt end. And I kind of just like, you know, push it up against the manatee's nose to redirect it. 

Evan Tuohy (50:01.386)
And then all of a sudden it was like, okay, that just happened. That was one, that was a fluke thing. Let's continue the job. Let's do what we're doing. And then the next thing I know, again, it happened two minutes later, and it wasn't just one or two, it was multiple. We're like, what the heck is going on? And we have these like manatees basically like rushing towards us, you know? And I don't know if they just got caught up in the moment or felt threatened because, you know, they thought we were trying to go after their female or. 

Evan Tuohy (50:30.154)
or if they were just like, hey, get away from us, you know, being aggressive, you know, they didn't hurt us or anything, but it's kind of scary. They're big, strong, you know, they are gentle giants, but you know, they're heavy, strong organisms, you know? And so, you know, we were like, crap. So we started making them, you know, we're getting charged by a group of male manatees, you know, and they, you know, come and they go away for a little bit. We're like, all right, let's get back to the boat. 

Ethan Leaman (50:32.174)
or if they were just like, hey, get a... 

Ethan Leaman (50:46.414)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (50:58.442)
You know, and so we start making our way back to the boat, kicking, kicking, kicking, and boom, they show up again, 12 different manatees. We have to stop, get down close to the reef, you know, kind of hunker down, and then they pass. We finally make it to the anchor line. We go up, we have to do our safety stop on the, close to, you know, where the boat is. And I look and no joke, where's the group of manatees? Around the boat, so we couldn't even get to the boat. 

Evan Tuohy (51:22.506)
So we had to wait till they leave, you know, to get back to the boat, go up the anchor line, throw all our equipment in the boat, get in the boat. And then finally, we were like, okay, we're safe, you know? And so, yeah, that was definitely an interesting kind of hairy, hairy experience was getting involved in the group of manatees. And the funny thing was, was... 

Ethan Leaman (51:26.894)
We gotta wait till they leave, you know, to get back. 

Evan Tuohy (51:45.13)
Because not a lot of people have ever experienced that, thank God, like I do not highly recommend that experience at all. But a lot of our friends here and colleagues that are experts in marine mammals were like, you need to publish, like write down and publish that account because you have some really good information that is really could help the scientific community because not that many people have been able to make those observations before. And so yeah, we did have to publish, not have to, we were happy to do it, but. 

Ethan Leaman (51:52.974)
Hahaha. 

Evan Tuohy (52:14.602)
wasn't the most glorifying experience to have in print, but it was a good experience overall. Needless to say, my wife hates manatees. This isn't her first bad experience that we've had together with them, but that was her last. She doesn't want anything to do with them. Not happy to see them, doesn't want to be in the water with them, and just like, get me away. 

Ethan Leaman (52:36.238)
Haha 

Ethan Leaman (52:43.438)
Understandable. I mean, it sounds like the moral of the story is don't walk in on a manatee gangbang. 

Evan Tuohy (52:49.546)
Yeah, 

Evan Tuohy (52:50.586)
exactly, exactly. 

Ethan Leaman (52:53.282)
It might not end well. my goodness. That is, that's a hell of a way to start our season of wild stories. 

Evan Tuohy (52:57.322)
Thank 

Evan Tuohy (53:00.17)
Yeah, 

Evan Tuohy (53:02.99)
for sure. Yeah, but you know, it's, yeah, it was by far one of the more out there and crazy experiences that we've had for sure. 

Ethan Leaman (53:13.422)
I would say that that's pretty high up on the list of what I've heard. Could you imagine if you did like really document that and, you know, submit that to some of the research studies out in Florida and it blows up and you get famous because you just happen to swim by manatees that were mating. sh**. 

Evan Tuohy (53:26.57)
future. 

Evan Tuohy (53:34.41)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (53:38.058)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Like, yeah, 

Evan Tuohy (53:41.084)
it's pretty crazy, you know, but it's, you know, in the end, it's, yeah, it's that we'll remember for the rest of our lives. So, you know. 

Ethan Leaman (53:56.494)
I could imagine, well, I think that is a hell of a way for us to start to wrap up this 

Ethan Leaman (54:02.89)
episode and talk a little bit more about your organization and how people can get involved and really send some support your way. 

Evan Tuohy (54:02.99)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (54:09.29)
Mm 

Evan Tuohy (54:15.466)
Yeah, yeah, so, you know, like, we're really fortunate. Like I said, it's Isla Mar Research Expedition started just basically an idea, you know, like my wife and I have. 

Evan Tuohy (54:30.666)
And for the longest time, we were just running it out of our house and it's still really small scale. We're branching out all the time and growing organically over the past nine, 10 years, which we're super fortunate. We have an amazing group of contractors that help us with our diving, our projects and research projects. We have interns, all of our projects, because it's so important that we support the local communities, we always try to... 

Evan Tuohy (55:00.586)
to create some type of community outreach to bridge that gap between the scientific realm and the public. So they really are able to digest the work and the importance of the work that we're doing. And we always try to incorporate funding for interns to help have volunteers as much as we can, but also pay prospective students for their time because the work that they're doing is so great. And so if we can help out any way that we can. 

Ethan Leaman (55:21.966)
Mm -hmm. 

Evan Tuohy (55:29.162)
And we try to every year and every other year as we can, we develop a seed fund to support graduate students in marine science to help support their research that they're doing because funding as a student can be hard to come by. So yeah, any way that we can help, we're about to become officially a 501c3 non -for -profit. 

Evan Tuohy (55:58.634)
And yeah, it's great. You we, you know, so we'll anything, you know, if you want to donate to any of those programs, we also have a youth program too. The past year and a half, we started a youth program with our youth program coordinator, Leslie Wade. And that's really taken off. And what we're doing is teaching marine science and sustainability and conservation to young. 

Evan Tuohy (56:26.922)
students, the next generation that basically from ages 6 up to 12 and 13 and they're taking you know semester -long after -school programs to where you know they're fully immersed in tropical marine science and conservation here on the island and sustainability and learning about it for their age group which is great because that's so important. And you know that and we're able to support the tuition for those students as well. 

Evan Tuohy (56:54.282)
to help pay for some of the overhead of those programs as well. So all of that's amazing. But even, not even that, I would say, you know, helping, what you could do to help the oceans in general starts at home, you know, and it's not just helping Isla Mar, it's not just helping me, Evan, or, you know, or anybody else we're affiliated to, or the researchers worldwide. 

Evan Tuohy (57:21.386)
It's basically all you can do things at home that you don't even think about throughout the day. Like just being a responsible consumer, knowing where your food comes from, knowing if it comes from a sustainable source, if it's seafood, if it's products that are grown with less pesticides or environmentally friendly pesticides that are not. 

Evan Tuohy (57:43.722)
doing it in a way that's harmful to the surrounding environment that promote erosion, which could then decrease water quality in the oceans. Limiting the amount of petroleum gas you're using, limiting amount of the petroleum products that you use, like plastic bags, things of that nature, all of that, as a planet, everything is connected. So your actions... 

Evan Tuohy (58:09.642)
You know, your upstream actions, your actions on land definitely affect the downstream environment and the ultimate downstream environment is the ocean. So all of the actions that you're doing, even if you live 500 miles from the nearest ocean, you have an impact. So think about, you know, things that you're doing with petroleum, things that you're doing with plastics, you know. 

Evan Tuohy (58:28.874)
All of those things have an impact on the environment. And if you could just be more conscious, a more conscious consumer and think about that and try to limit, just in time, I'm not saying go plastic free, that's super hard. And the people who can do that is, you have my 100 % admiration, but not everybody can do that. But just be a little bit more conscious, try to limit it, ride a bike. 

Ethan Leaman (58:52.014)
and admiration for not having to do that. Be a little bit more conscious. 

Evan Tuohy (58:56.618)
you know, once a week or anything like that. If everybody at the masses grouped together and kind of took that mentality, we would have a huge, know, the next generation would be a huge, huge, huge environmental impact to the good. That wouldn't just help marine scientists, but it would help everybody. 

Evan Tuohy (59:19.338)
So, you I would say, you know, like definitely reaching out, volunteering at organizations like Isla Mar. If you have the financial means to donate to, you know, nonprofits or organizations that are doing good in your area or other areas that you might be interested in. That's amazing. Like, please do that. But there's little things at home that you could do that, you know, is going to help everybody, you know, and just, you know, try to just be a little bit more conscious for that, that conservation and sustainability minded and it will, you know. 

Evan Tuohy (59:49.13)
leaps and bounds better for us and our next generations because we're leaving this planet to the next generation. So we do have the responsibility to kind of not leave it, leave it better than how we inherited it, you know? 

Ethan Leaman (01:00:03.67)
Yeah, I don't think I think you wrap that up perfectly. I don't think I could have said it better yourself or myself I just I just say clean your room That's it. Clean your room. You're taught it as a little kid clean your room. That's it You do it as a little kid. You could do it as an adult 

Evan Tuohy (01:00:08.394)
Yeah. 

Evan Tuohy (01:00:15.85)
Yeah, clean your room. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's perfect. 

Evan Tuohy (01:00:24.17)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, clean your room. I love that. 

Ethan Leaman (01:00:30.382)
All right, Evan, that was an amazing episode. I appreciate your time today and everything that you do when it comes to, you know, your innovative practices, when it comes to, you know, bottle use, all that you do for the island of Puerto Rico. That means a lot to me. That hits me, you know, straight in the heart. I really appreciate it. And I am so d*** excited that we got to finally record this. This is a good one. Thank you. 

Evan Tuohy (01:00:55.214)
Yeah, 

Evan Tuohy (01:00:55.826)
yeah, thanks for putting up with my schedule. It's pretty erratic if the weather's good, you know, we're out in the water. But, you know, and thank you. Like I want to thank you so much for the opportunity. You know, yeah, yeah, for sure it is, it is. But, you know, thank you very much for this opportunity and you're fulfilling like an amazing role because, you know, as I said, the science, it's not easily digested to the public. So we need, you know, like what you're doing is amazing. And... 

Ethan Leaman (01:01:04.974)
That's the conservation life. 

Evan Tuohy (01:01:24.106)
you know, reaching out to organizations like us and giving us a chance to kind of just nonchalantly talk about what we do and what we love and the importance of it. So, you know, thank you so much. 

Ethan Leaman (01:01:37.39)
Yeah, you're welcome. And that's, that's, this is the fun part, you know, when, when I get to tell people, you know, what, what have you, you know, kind of dedicated your life to it's, you know, telling digestible and humanizing stories about whale poop. people tend to give me, you know, a funny look, but you know, it gives a platform and, you know, I'm, I'm incredibly humbled that I've been able to work with some of the organizations, that I've been able to work, with over the last year and a half since we really started this. 

Evan Tuohy (01:01:50.954)
Thank you. 

Ethan Leaman (01:02:06.766)
and it's, it's only looking up. I mean, there, there's some really, really fun stuff we got planned for, for not only wild and unprotected, but Wildscape as a whole. So I really appreciate you highlighting that and, it's going to be a d*** good season. And this is just a hell of a way to kick it off. 

Evan Tuohy (01:02:20.354)
Yeah, 

Evan Tuohy (01:02:22.794)
yeah, awesome looking forward to it 

Ethan Leaman (01:02:26.766)
Alright, I think that's a good place to wrap the episode. Thanks everyone for listening and we'll see you in the next one. 

Evan Tuohy (01:02:33.962)
See you guys later, thanks.