Adventure Travel with Juli Berwald - Tela Coral

Juli Berwald

Author & President
Tela Coral

Marine invertebrates stole my heart on my first snorkel in the Red Sea during college. Hoping to study the ocean forever, I spent seven years building mathematical algorithms to interpret satellite imagery of the ocean, receiving my Ph.D. in ocean science.

My husband stole my heart next, and I drifted away from the ocean to Austin, Texas to be with him. Over the years, we added two children and a couple of dogs to our family.

Landlocked, I began writing textbooks and popular science articles for National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times, Nature, Science, The Wall Street Journal, Discover, The Smithsonian, and Texas Monthly among others. Eventually, the story of jellyfish led me back to the sea. Once there, I stayed, writing a book about corals as well.

One day I received a message from a reader in Tela, Honduras who told me that the coral reef he co-managed was healthy. Impossible, I thought. But when I visited I discovered a dozen endangered species thriving. To help understand why, I co-founded Tela Coral, a non-profit whose aim is to understand the mysteries of this unexpected beacon of hope, a place nicknamed the Rebel Reef.

Juli’s Website

summary
In this episode of the Big World Made Small podcast, host Jason Elkins speaks with Juli Berwald, an author and marine biologist, about her journey from a childhood spent rockhounding in the U.S. to her current work with Tela Coral in Honduras. Juli shares her transformative experiences with marine life, the importance of coral reefs, and the challenges they face due to climate change. She discusses her books, the connection between personal growth and marine conservation, and the exciting developments in Tela, where a unique marine conservation effort is underway. Juli emphasizes the need for awareness and action regarding ocean health and invites listeners to support her work.

takeaways

• Juli's childhood experiences shaped her love for nature.
• The ocean can be a transformative experience for many.
• Coral reefs are vital to marine biodiversity.
• Climate change significantly impacts coral health.
• Juli transitioned from math to marine biology after a life-changing experience.
• Writing became a way for Juli to share her passion for marine life.
• Jellyfish can teach us about efficient movement in water.
• Coral bleaching is a critical issue for ocean health.
• There are hopeful restoration efforts for coral reefs.
• Awareness and action are essential for ocean conservation.

Learn more about Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Marketing and join our private community to get episode updates, special access to our guests, and exclusive adventure travel offers on our website.

Transcript

Jason Elkins (00:01.326)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the Adventure Traveler. We've got a special guest today. We're going to discuss something a little bit different, but very important. We've got Juli Berwald here. Juli is an author and the president of Tela Coral. Juli, welcome to the show.

Juli Berwald (00:18.336)
Hi Jason, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jason Elkins (00:20.346)
So happy to have you here. We chatted, I guess it was probably a few weeks ago or so, and I was just really intrigued by some of the things you're doing. So I appreciate you coming back to record the conversation for everybody else that needs to hear the story, I guess. Juli, we're going to discuss how you got from where you were to where you are now. But before we do that, let's give our listeners the 30 second elevator pitch.

Tela Coral, what is Tela Coral just so people can kind of have an idea what that is before we continue with the conversation.

Juli Berwald (00:53.454)
Tela is this place in Honduras. It's on the North Coast, which faces the Caribbean, and it's a really big bay. And it's sort of in this place where the Banana Republic started. So it's been polluted, it's been industrialized for longer than anywhere else in the Caribbean. And it's just this crazy place where the coral are healthy. And I don't know if a lot of people have been diving a lot, but...

Coral reefs in the Caribbean are really struggling right now. And this place has a dozen endangered species, including Elkhorn corals, which are just thriving. And it's a big, mystery, and it's a big, huge place of hope. And so it's one of the places I've been working a lot lately.

Jason Elkins (01:39.599)
Very, very cool. So that kind of gives a kind of sets the frame, I guess, for how we're going to end up in the conversation. But now that we've got that kind of we've answered any of those initial questions people might have when they when I introduced you, let's figure out how you got there. So let's go back. I don't know how far we need to go, but usually people that I have on the show here have an interesting route for however they got where they are. So how far back do you think we should go?

Juli Berwald (02:06.542)
Yeah, it's a long and windy trail. guess that's probably pretty typical for people who adventure into the world. I guess I can just start with, like, I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, farthest from any ocean that you could get. But I will say, like, my dad was this really interesting guy, well, is still a really interesting person.

He's a physician, he was drafted during Vietnam and there was this lapidary workshop on the base and he got really into rocks. so like, yeah, lapidary is, yeah, cutting and polishing rocks. yeah, so my dad got really into that. And then basically every family vacation was like dragging us around the United States.

Jason Elkins (02:43.308)
Okay, Lapidary, help me out here. If I don't know what it is, I'm guessing, so what is Lapidary?

Okay, all right, cool.

Juli Berwald (03:01.166)
knocking on someone's door and being like, can we dig up rocks in your backyard? And the farmer or the rancher would be like, sure, five bucks a bucket. And then we would be child labor digging, but digging up rocks, which we would then haul back to St. Louis and my dad would spend the rest of the year cutting and polishing.

Jason Elkins (03:20.378)
I'm curious. I'm curious about that because I grew up in the West and I've spent a lot of time in the Southwest and that's the thing. Right. You drive down the highway and you see the big rock shops and I'm imagining you guys stopped at like every rock shop between Los Angeles and St. Louis. I'm sure at least once.

Juli Berwald (03:30.946)
That's right.

Every rock shop, yeah. Well, in fact, I mean, talking about travel, we went to every state and every province. we were, yeah, I mean, it's quite something. Like by the time I was 18, I'd been to all 50 states. So that was like really, yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

Jason Elkins (03:54.469)
So was this a summer thing or were you homeschooled on the road or how to, mean, cause I'm envisioning summers.

Juli Berwald (03:57.354)
Yeah. No, no. No, my dad, yeah, summers, we would take off for three weeks in the suburban and drive around. And my dad would like spend the whole year mapping out these trips. And we'd go to like every national park and, you know, along the way, wasn't just digging rocks, but we did a lot of rock digging.

Jason Elkins (04:18.042)
This resonates with me because I spent my summers with my dad traveling around the country and I'd been to all 50 states. I was 20 before I got to all 50 states, but.

Juli Berwald (04:27.468)
Yeah, and I probably am lying because I didn't get to Alaska till I was in grad school. So yeah, that's true. So yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (04:33.142)
Okay. All right. So a lot of, lot of, we have a lot of similarity there. And I remember, I remember sleeping a lot in the truck or in the back of the truck and rest areas on the side of the road. every other, every weekend we'd be in a town, we were doing the hotter balloon thing. So we would travel around the country and fly balloons and we'd go to festivals, new festival every weekend.

Juli Berwald (04:51.918)
cool!

Jason Elkins (04:56.376)
So usually on the weekends we had a place to stay because the festival would sponsor it and you know give us a room but other than that we were pretty much sleeping in the truck. Were you sleeping in the suburban with your dad? Okay, lucky you. huh, alright.

Juli Berwald (05:05.797)
No, my mom wouldn't do that. But it was a lot of motels, know, like, yeah, motels and yeah, little towns. yeah, yeah, I mean, to get into it, like, my dad had built this, it was a suburban, so my dad had built like a box behind the backseat.

Jason Elkins (05:20.206)
Did you have siblings doing this with you?

Jason Elkins (05:32.569)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (05:33.702)
And that's where we put all the rock hounding tools and stuff, like the sledgehammers and all of that stuff. And my little sister had to sleep on top of the box. Like we put a sleeping bag there and like literally no seat belts or anything. And had my dad ever step short, boom, right through the front window. My brother, who was sort of the king of the kids, got like the back seat. And then I was on top of the suitcases on the way back. So it was, you know, yeah, it was definitely, but you know, we did.

Jason Elkins (05:43.651)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (05:47.938)
You

Jason Elkins (05:59.385)
Wow.

Juli Berwald (06:03.342)
It was family time and there were a lot of really good memories from that time.

Jason Elkins (06:08.93)
You speak pretty fondly of it. I'm curious, your siblings and especially your mom, was she all on board with that or maybe your dad's going to listen to this.

Juli Berwald (06:17.23)
Okay, he knows, he knows. I speak fondly of it, but also I was like, I didn't want, I really didn't want any part of the rock hounding. I would go to, I was just a really voracious reader. And so I would go to the library and check out, I would get an extended checkout of 40 books and I would bring 40 books with me and just like read while everybody else was digging. Cause I refused to dig at some point, but

Jason Elkins (06:26.522)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (06:45.476)
All right.

Juli Berwald (06:47.094)
Yeah, so I, but I will say you're right. And I do speak fondly of it because I think what it did was it really gave me a sense of nature and the immensity of our continent and how just the sense of awe about the world that you don't get unless you're just seeing it like in person, touching the ground.

you know, walking through the forest or whatever, know, stumbling, falling, you know, all of the things that happen when you go outside. So I, yeah.

Jason Elkins (07:20.91)
Now, I think you're absolutely right. And it's people that have an experience that it's just like that concept of traveling around and seeing that many places and having those experiences just not part of their normal life. And when you grow up with that, it just becomes kind of normal. don't know. Do you remember going back? Do you remember going back to school at the end of the summer and like people, what'd you do on your summer vacation?

Juli Berwald (07:40.024)
Yeah.

Juli Berwald (07:45.514)
Yes! Yes! Exactly! Exactly! We went to Hilton Head. Yeah, exactly. And I really, we were somewhere in Wyoming. Exactly. Yeah. But, know, on the other hand, I recognize now it was like an enormous gift. And also to meet people, meet all kinds of people, like not just people who were

Jason Elkins (07:46.594)
Right? And did you think you were weird because everybody else is like, well, we went to Disney. Yeah, I remember that.

Jason Elkins (07:59.782)
huh.

Juli Berwald (08:14.37)
Disney or Hilton Head or whatever, but like you would meet the most interesting people out there. And that was also a gift was to not to get outside of the bubble where I grew up in a suburban, you know, neighborhood of St. Louis and just to kind of meet people from Maine and meet people from New Mexico and how different they're not just the geography where they lived, but like the way they spoke and the things that mattered. It was, it was a great gift.

So.

Jason Elkins (08:43.576)
Yeah, yeah. Do you feel like, so when you were back at school, I'm just curious because that is a different way. In my experience, it was a different way of growing up and people, people that didn't have that experience. Sometimes I honestly, had a hard time relating with them sometimes in school. Did you, did you have issues with that or challenges or did that, are you just able to kind of be a chameleon and fit in or?

Juli Berwald (08:53.346)
Yeah.

Juli Berwald (09:07.286)
Yeah, yeah, I think I became more chameleon-like. I think that's kind of natural to who, to my personality also. And I think that something about it like fed my optimism because I felt like there's all these, there's all this coolness in the world. how could you not, like if something's bad in your life, like,

There's alternatives everywhere. you know, it kind of gave me a sense of like, there's ways to fix your problems because of this massive diversity of ways of living on our planet. That's a little Pollyanna I recognize, but I think it definitely informed my view of the world in a way.

Jason Elkins (09:37.197)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (09:46.2)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (09:55.971)
No, I like it. just it's just well, the name of the podcast is Big World Made Small. It is a big world, right? And there's there's so many different ways to connect and things to to go and see. And it just kind of opens up your your mind, I think. Growing up like that and having those experiences opposed to and I'm not knocking it. You know, lot of people live in the same town that they grew up in and they haven't maybe even left their state and they're perfectly happy and that's fine.

Juli Berwald (10:02.423)
Right.

Juli Berwald (10:10.594)
Bright.

Juli Berwald (10:15.691)
Right.

Jason Elkins (10:22.958)
But it's when you do have those experiences, it opens things. That's why we're having a conversation today about a place in Honduras, right? I I asked you how you, I asked you, I know I asked you how we got from where you were to where you were to where you are. And we've spent 10 minutes just chatting about rockhounding in the US, which is cool. I love that. That's cool. All right. So what was the next step?

Juli Berwald (10:29.902)
Which I haven't even gotten close to. I haven't even gotten close to.

Juli Berwald (10:43.63)
I know exactly. So anyway, basically amid all this wandering as a kid, I really had never seen the ocean. I mean, I'd seen the ocean. We'd walked up to the ocean. We'd traveled from coast to coast, but I never stuck my head in the water. And in college, I got the opportunity to go on a study abroad program. I went to Tel Aviv University and I was

Jason Elkins (11:12.058)
Juli Berwald (11:13.022)
pretty miserable there. It was a rough, I just wasn't fitting in. I wasn't fitting in with the people. I struggled with the classes. didn't like that much. I mean, I just was not happy and I was, I could see myself eating too much, like basically falafel off the side of the street and not like, and so I guess maybe there was the sense of like, I need to do something about this.

And I saw sign on the side of a building and it was like Marine Ecology course one week over, you know, October break. And I was like, sign me up, you know, like I need to do something. So we got on, I got into the class and we got on this bus, we drove through the desert, we get out in a lot, which is on the Red Sea. And I was like, where am I? Like I had never seen anything like this place. The mountains are bright red.

the ocean is bright blue. It's just that you feel like you're suddenly on Mars or something. Like it's this very strange physical place. It's like nowhere else. And then the teachers in the class, they're like really abrupt and they're like, here's a mask, here's a snorkel, here's some fins, go, go, go, go, get in the water, go. And I'm like, I don't know how to do that. So they're just like, go, go. Like there was no excuses. So I just did it. And I put my face in the water in a lot, in the Red Sea in general.

Jason Elkins (12:20.334)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (12:40.642)
the corals are very close to shore. You kick maybe like a hundred feet, maybe a hundred yards. And suddenly you're face to face with this like incredible reality, which is this architecture, this jungle, all these fish and colors and textures and forms. And I was like, what is this? And then you have a recognition that even though you're looking at a jungle,

Jason Elkins (13:04.152)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (13:10.762)
It's all animals. These aren't plants. And they're animals with nervous systems and digestive systems. And they reproduce like we do, you know, and they're like us, but they are like living this life that's so different from ours. And I don't know, my brain was blown. And so I got out of the water and I was like, I've never, this is unlike anything I've ever experienced.

We had an amazing professor in the class and he's like, okay, you're gonna memorize 20 species. Tomorrow we're having a test on it. You're doing experiments after that. And it just, it created this excitement in me that I didn't expect. And I was a math undergrad. And so one of the things we learned was how to predict like population sizes of these different corals using these equations. And I was like, wait, what? You can use math for real life? And so I...

I just got out of the water and I'm like, I'm gonna be a marine biologist. And it was crazy. And so I got back to my actual college in Massachusetts and I was like, I wanna be a marine biologist. And my college was like, we don't have that major. And so I ended up staying a math major, but I did do like a independent study on coral my senior year. And then I was like, I'm gonna apply to grad school to study coral because...

Jason Elkins (14:13.656)
Wow, wow, that's so cool.

Juli Berwald (14:38.904)
They're just these incredible animals. And okay.

Jason Elkins (14:39.066)
All right. So I have to ask, this is a profound thing, obviously, and for those folks just listening to it that don't see the look on your face, they probably hear it in your voice, but this was a moment. This was a moment. So I'm curious, when you first went to university and you're like, I'm gonna major in math, what was your thinking and your plan? What were you gonna do with that?

Juli Berwald (14:45.922)
Yeah.

Juli Berwald (14:51.114)
Okay. Yeah.

Juli Berwald (15:03.246)
With math? Oh, I don't know if I had a plan, but I, what happened was I had, when I got to my college, I was completely out. I had a public school education and I had gotten into a really selective college and I was outclassed by everybody there. Like I couldn't, I didn't compete. I wasn't prepared to compete except for in math.

Jason Elkins (15:29.784)
Okay.

Juli Berwald (15:33.386)
In math, I had had an incredible math teacher in high school. so I was like the only thing I was ahead of the game in. my first essays I turned in, I got terrible grades. I didn't know how to write an essay properly. so anyway, I just chose math basically because it was the only thing I could do. So there was no plan except for survival. So yeah.

Jason Elkins (15:41.786)
I got it.

Jason Elkins (15:53.723)
Okay. No, that's I get that. I mean, that's that's not an uncommon thing to do. And I guess if if you're going to be pushed, I shouldn't say push, but if you're going to end up in one particular area, it, you know, math is a good one. Right. Because because it yeah.

Juli Berwald (16:10.558)
It was fine, yeah. And I liked it. I had sort of a sense that, and I still do to this day, math is this sort of beautiful structure, especially these higher level of maths when you're not dealing with numbers anymore and you're just dealing with ideals of infinity and zero and how do these things map onto each other? How are they connected with each other? There's this sort of like, you're touching something that's perfect.

Jason Elkins (16:28.418)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (16:38.51)
And that appeals to, I think, a young mind that doesn't want to deal with the sort of BS of the world. think there's this sense of that.

Jason Elkins (16:51.83)
Interesting. Do you think there's a difference? I don't know why I'm asking this, but what I hear is very kind of high level, kind of just conceptual type of stuff as opposed to maybe when somebody hears math major, they think accountant. And I'm not knocking accounting, but it's like what you just described as the exact opposite of accounting, but it's still math. That was interesting. Okay.

Juli Berwald (17:03.106)
Yeah.

Juli Berwald (17:07.075)
no. Right, right, right.

Right. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, this stuff was like, kind of, right, I'm terrible with numbers and arithmetic, actually, my whole family makes fun of me because I can never calculate tips. But like, but like, yeah, exactly. Exactly. You could be right with us at a dinner table. But, yeah, no, this stuff is more in the, it was called

Jason Elkins (17:26.586)
the math major. I'm sure I can hear those jokes. Uh-huh.

Juli Berwald (17:41.73)
topology, it's more about ideals than it is about numbers. But if you follow math through calculus, you get to this stuff.

Jason Elkins (17:46.947)
Okay.

All right.

Jason Elkins (17:55.279)
So you gotta get through the basics before you get to that, sounds like. Yeah.

Juli Berwald (17:58.44)
Yeah, yeah calculus is sort of the edge of it and then once you go through calculus you get to this other weird stuff like creep springs and fields and it's cool but it's...

Jason Elkins (18:06.042)
All right. Are you I'm curious. I'm just curious. Do you have kind of an inkling for or I guess an aptitude or interest in music as well?

Juli Berwald (18:17.746)
I'm very, no, I wish I did. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (18:19.746)
No, just I know there's sometimes they talk about the connection between math and music and I was just curious if sometimes the people that but maybe that's more on the I don't know. But anyway, just curious.

Juli Berwald (18:24.48)
Yeah. Yeah.

Juli Berwald (18:29.996)
No, I think you're right. There is a connection. Like if you read like biographies of kind of mathematicians and physicists who are sort of also dabbling in these more ideally sort of places. Yeah, they all are musicians, but I'm not, I'm not talented that way. Yeah. So anyway, so choral. So then I came back on the one, I want to work on choral. Couldn't work on choral.

Jason Elkins (18:37.242)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (18:43.938)
Okay, I just guess. Now you've got other things going on. I get that. All right. So, so.

Juli Berwald (18:55.66)
because I was completely unqualified to get into grad school as a biologist. But I finally got into grad school working on satellite imagery of the ocean because of my math. And I really, it was early days of climate change. Like we, it was in the 90s, so we knew climate change was a thing.

Jason Elkins (18:59.972)
Hmm?

Juli Berwald (19:20.75)
The question was how much was the ocean contributing or mitigating climate change? like what climate change is caused by is burning fossil fuels and producing carbon dioxide. What photosynthesis does is use carbon dioxide, mixing it with water and making sugar. that's, you so you're taking up the carbon dioxide. So the question was how much photosynthesis is going on in the ocean?

Jason Elkins (19:39.834)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (19:46.926)
And it was around the time we had the first satellites up that could look at, if you look at kind of, I mean, in a simple way to think of it, if you look at how green the ocean is, you can say, oh, that relates to how much phytoplankton there is and how much photosynthesis is going on. So we started trying to come up with numbers to calculate how much the ocean was helping us out. And it turns out about 30 % of the

Jason Elkins (20:00.93)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (20:15.778)
fossil fuels we put into the atmosphere every year get taken up by the ocean. So it's a really significant mitigator of climate change. And so that was what my dissertation was on. It wasn't political at the time. No one was questioning. Like this was just like numbers, like how much, yeah, how much carbon dioxide is going up? How much is going back into the ocean? And so that's what I worked on. And then I got that, I got, and then...

Jason Elkins (20:33.828)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (20:38.746)
All right.

Juli Berwald (20:43.714)
Basically, I met my husband at the end of grad school and he got a job in Austin, Texas. And I had a postdoc in Santa Cruz, California, but it was one of those like, was gonna make more money than me. So we moved to Austin. And sometimes you, know, practice, he was in business. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (21:00.92)
Yeah. I'm curious, what did he go to school for? And OK, kind of well, OK, yeah, I got that. All right, very cool. So you move to Texas.

Juli Berwald (21:12.568)
So we were really different and we moved to Texas. And basically this, I fell out of the academic world at that point. just, there wasn't anyone doing satellite imagery of the ocean. The satellite imagery in Texas was about like land subsidence because of oil drilling. And I just wasn't interested in it. So I actually fell out of academics and got a job at a textbook company.

Jason Elkins (21:41.272)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (21:41.622)
And I started writing, doing something that I had been terrified of in college, but somehow I found that I loved it. And so I started writing like physics books and calculus books and biology books. And very slowly I started writing magazine articles. the more I wrote like mainstream stuff, the more I liked that.

Jason Elkins (21:47.065)
Wow.

Juli Berwald (22:10.25)
And I got a little gig along the way writing for National Geographic. And just like the front of the magazine, there's like these little teeny articles that are like 200 words long. And I started writing those and that was like so much fun. And I started calling up the researchers who were usually behind whatever the little article was about and getting back into the world of research science. And I loved it. I loved talking to them. I loved...

Jason Elkins (22:14.99)
Okay.

Juli Berwald (22:38.99)
crafting these articles and making them fun to read. And somewhere along the way, I started thinking like, what do want to leave on this planet, like when I'm gone? And I was like, I kind of mentioned how I've been a voracious reader and I still am. And I was like, what if I could try to write a whole book? And so that idea kind of popped in my head and I was like in my forties. And I...

Jason Elkins (22:59.716)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (23:09.612)
was asked to fact check an article about ocean acidification, which was being written by Elizabeth Colbert, who's a New Yorker writer. one of the things that carbon dioxide also does besides warm up our planet is when it mixes with water, it makes the water acidic. And that makes it hard for things with shells to grow their shells. Because we've heard like if you drink Coca-Cola, it's acidic.

Jason Elkins (23:35.898)
you

Juli Berwald (23:39.392)
it'll etch your teeth. Coffee, acidic, it'll etch your teeth. Like same thing, like acids tend to etch at calcium carbonate, things that are.

Jason Elkins (23:49.477)
So is that what we refer to as bleaching of the corals? Is that basically what that is, or is that different? OK, I'm sorry.

Juli Berwald (23:54.464)
No, that's different. I'll get there. Yeah, I'll get there. But yeah, no, this is for all things that make shells. And so many things in the ocean make shells, clams and crabs and oysters. And, you know, a lot of things in the ocean have shells. So the question was, like, what was this ocean acidification going to do to these animals in the ocean, which are so shelly?

Jason Elkins (24:16.578)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (24:18.69)
So in that article, which I was asked to just back check, I wasn't writing it, there was like a winners and losers graphic in it said, which animals are going to be winners in a more acidic ocean and which are going to be losers. And on the winner side, there were jellyfish. And I was like, okay, sure, jellyfish don't have shells, but certainly like the acidity must mess with them somehow. Like how much research has been done on that? So I went to look into the scientific research and there was like,

nothing done, but there was this huge debate about whether jellyfish were taking over our oceans or not. I was among the scientists, like they were fighting with each other, like, you don't have any right to say this. You don't have any right to say this. Like it was very out of place for scientific articles. And I'm like, what is going on? So I Googled it and it was like, there was all these people saying jellyfish were taking over our oceans in like

Jason Elkins (24:55.802)
Hmm.

Juli Berwald (25:15.874)
the mainstream press and I was like, wait, what is going on here? So then I was like, maybe this is what my book is about. And I took a note from my dad and I started like making all of our family vacations around jellyfish. I, yeah. So there would be like jellyfish scientists I'd want to talk to and I'd be like, okay guys, we're going to Alabama, you know?

Jason Elkins (25:32.218)
I bet your kids love that.

Jason Elkins (25:44.346)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (25:45.4)
So I just started very slowly to sort of accumulate knowledge about jellyfish and what was happening to them and who was studying them. like, we ended up going to Massachusetts to Cape Cod because they were making some jellyfish robots there. And we ended up going to Denver because one of the best jellyfish paleontologists was there. So like, I just created this like...

jellyfish journey for my family.

Jason Elkins (26:13.23)
I Juli, I don't think I can let the conversation go without asking you about jellyfish robots. I like I would not be a very good podcast host if I didn't ask what is a jellyfish robot.

Juli Berwald (26:23.356)
Juli Berwald (26:27.52)
Yeah, so it turns out, I hope I'm not getting too sciency here, because I know this is a travel, but okay. Okay.

Jason Elkins (26:35.532)
No, to me adventure travel is about opening your mind, expanding your mind, and learning new things. And I'm just here to have a conversation with you. Hopefully everybody's enjoying it.

Juli Berwald (26:40.333)
Okay.

Juli Berwald (26:44.31)
Okay, yeah. So the jellyfish robot story is really cool because it turns out jellyfish are the most efficient swimmers in the ocean. And they learned this by looking at jellyfish robots. So people, like the Navy was interested in jellyfish robots as like spy, for spy tools or for monitoring. And so there was a group.

Jason Elkins (27:05.515)
Mm-hmm. wow, yeah.

Juli Berwald (27:11.256)
funded to kind of try to make a jellyfish robot at Woods Hole, or actually was at the Marine Biology Lab in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And so I showed up to talk to these guys. Basically, the story is this, they created a robot out of silicone, kind of, and it's like an umbrella-shaped thing with actuators underneath. Actuators are the robot word for muscles. And basically, you know,

Jason Elkins (27:37.954)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (27:41.004)
The reason jellyfish are so efficient because they squeeze closed and that creates a jet which pushes water out behind the jellyfish. And then the blubber part, the watery part of the jellyfish opens it up for free. So you don't have to use a muscle to open it back up. you only have to use half the energy basically to make a motion because the watery part of the bell, the water does the work for you for free. It's like squeezing a water balloon.

Jason Elkins (27:48.942)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (28:00.826)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (28:04.339)
huh.

Juli Berwald (28:10.742)
it pops back open on its own. that's it. So basically they tell me this story, which is I think really fun. So the first time they put the robot in the water, they put it in, they squeeze the actuator, closed closed, the jellyfish jets forward like they expected. And then the release the actuators, it opens back up and the jellyfish goes back to where it had been before. And it was like a yo-yo just going back and forth between these two.

Jason Elkins (28:12.761)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (28:33.242)
Mmm.

Juli Berwald (28:38.894)
two places and they're like, man, our robot's not working. And then there was like the student who was like, well, we didn't actually have time to finish building the robot. And you know how a jellyfish has that sort of elegant little peplum on the bottom? It has that thing that kind of flips out and then floats down and flips out and floats down. You've kind of seen that on a jellyfish. So they were like, well, we made something like that, but we never glued it on to the.

Jason Elkins (29:01.806)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (29:07.992)
to the robot. So the student was like, yeah, so they pull it out, they glue that on. And it turns out that's everything. So when they turned on the robot again, went boop, boop, boop, boop. It just like just across this little swimming pool they had it in. And it turns out that little flip creates a little turbulent eddies that swing around the top of the bell of the jellyfish.

Jason Elkins (29:08.096)
apparently that part's important.

Juli Berwald (29:34.24)
and actually create a low pressure that pulls the jellyfish through the water. So the wiggle is everything. And if you think about it, what the people who study this stuff learned was that like in water, everything wiggles. If you think about it, a fish wiggles, everything wiggles. There's no moving without wiggling in the water. And that creates huge efficiencies in terms of movement. But because we come from a land,

Jason Elkins (29:38.436)
All right.

Juli Berwald (30:03.502)
based thinking, every boat, every submarine, everything we've ever built underwater, except for fins when you go scuba diving, they don't wiggle. They're rigid. Yeah. So we haven't taken advantage of the wiggle underwater.

Jason Elkins (30:12.004)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (30:17.956)
They're rigid or sturdy or yeah, they're yeah, exactly. Yep.

Jason Elkins (30:26.02)
So we need to get rid of our rigid thinking to better understand the ocean. That's what I heard, right?

Juli Berwald (30:29.548)
That's right. Yes. Yes, exactly. And I couldn't have said it any better. the jellyfish were really instructive. Well, they taught the scientists about all of that. So that's the jellyfish robot story. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (30:35.609)
You

Jason Elkins (30:40.666)
All right. That's very, very cool. I'm happy I asked that. I just learned something I'd never heard of before. And I think we can take this conversation and break it up into little clips that are going to go viral on TikTok and teach the whole world about the how jellyfish move. So very cool. you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. All right. Cool.

Juli Berwald (31:01.006)
The problem of rigid thinking. Yeah, problems with rigid thinking. I love that. Yes. So anyway, eventually I had enough, I had enough jellyfish stories to propose a book about jellyfish. so, and along the way what happened was I realized that I wasn't just learning about jellyfish, I was learning about myself because that always happens, right?

Jason Elkins (31:27.406)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (31:29.408)
And I also realized that I didn't want to write a book that was just 10 chapters of jellyfish science, because who wants to read that? And so I ended up pitching a book that was science mixed with memoir. It was stories about what I learned from the jellyfish, but also like kind of how I learned to share my voice and how I learned that my voice mattered. And the book ended up being called Spindeless.

And it's the science of jellyfish and the art of growing a backbone. yeah, and so it's, yeah, it's a mixture of science and memoir. And I'm not gonna lie, I had a hard time getting an agent who would take me on. But once I did and we got it out to the publishers, it turned out great. And I have the best publisher, I think. And I had a great editor and the book.

Jason Elkins (32:00.197)
Ooh, nice. All right, that's cool.

Juli Berwald (32:25.876)
really did well and it found an audience and it was very exciting. So the publisher was, had an option on my second book and I was finally like, I think I'm ready to go back to the coral. And which I had fallen in love with, you know, and it turns out coral and jellyfish are first cousins. They're both part of the same phylum, Cnidaria. And if you take a jellyfish and you turn it upside down, you get what's called a polyp.

Jason Elkins (32:39.788)
Okay, okay.

Jason Elkins (32:53.743)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (32:53.846)
which is kind of like a sea anemone, but if you put a bunch of them together and then build a skeleton around them, you get a coral. So corals are these colonial animals. And what makes them so magical is that they have this, they're like basically a jellyfish, but they've added a magical touch, which is that they have a symbiont that lives inside of them, which is a phytoplankton.

So it's what I studied in grad school, which does photosynthesis. the corals live in the tropical parts of the ocean because they have to supply those symbionts with as much light as possible for as much time as possible. And so in the tropics, you have the most sunlight. And they also live close to shore because they have to be near the surface to also

Jason Elkins (33:25.466)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (33:40.228)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (33:52.3)
have enough light for these symbionts. what they do, those little algae, they live in the, basically in the digestive system, in the skin of the coral, and they photosynthesize and they make a ton of sugar and they feed 90 % of that sugar to the coral animal. So the coral animal gets most of its energy from these algae just pumping away inside of their bodies.

Jason Elkins (34:11.098)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (34:19.332)
So the coral, 90 % of the energy from the phytoplankton or the whatever you call it, goes to the coral. I gotta ask where does the other 10 % go? yeah, okay, I guess it needs to, all right. Okay, that makes sense. All right, that makes sense.

Juli Berwald (34:27.456)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, Simba, he... Yes.

to the algae itself. has to keep it systems ago. It has to keep photosynthesizing. So like coral are solar powered animals, largely. And that's so much energy that they are able to build stone. So they take, they harvest calcium and carbon from the water and they merge them together and they make the coral reefs.

Jason Elkins (34:46.244)
Hmm?

Jason Elkins (34:58.639)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (35:03.641)
Right.

Juli Berwald (35:03.884)
And those reefs are these magical places that I first saw when I first put my head in the water. And they're the only biological structures that can be seen from space. And they support, like it's a disproportionately important part of our ocean. So the coral reefs only take up less than a percent of the ocean because like I said, they have to be near the surface and they have to be in the tropics. But a quarter of all marine life, something like 860,000 species.

depend on coral reefs. it's really, they're like, they have an exceptional importance to our planet and to the health of our oceans and to the health of us. So a billion people depend on coral reefs as their, for their primary source of protein. There is a healthy coral reef can diffuse 98 % of wave energy coming towards shore that can be really destructive, especially during strong hurricanes. So coral reefs are like,

Jason Elkins (35:35.044)
Wow, okay.

Jason Elkins (35:41.316)
Okay.

Juli Berwald (36:01.952)
incredibly important. And what bleaching is, to get back to that question, and this is part of the reason I like hesitated to write a book about coral, was that because our planet has already warmed about a degree and a half, the symbiosis between the algae and the coral is really weirdly thermo sensitive. And when the reefs, when the seawater warms by

Jason Elkins (36:07.257)
Mm-hmm.

Juli Berwald (36:32.792)
say two degrees for four weeks, the algae will leave the coral. And that's what bleaching is. Right. So when the algae leaves the coral, the coral's tissue is clear. It doesn't have any color. And what you're seeing is the calcium carbonate, the bones underneath the coral, the skeleton. And so that's why it's called bleaching because the coral suddenly looks really white because you're seeing its skeleton. The tissue is

Jason Elkins (36:39.098)
Okay, so that's the bleaching. Okay.

Jason Elkins (37:00.644)
Does, right. Does, so I've been fortunate enough to do some diving and snorkeling around corals and it's not all green. So when I think of phytoplankton and photosynthesis, I think of green, but I've seen corals of all different colors. So is that, does some corals just appear orange because of something else? It's still the, it's still the phytoplankton.

Juli Berwald (37:01.678)
clear on top of that skeleton.

Juli Berwald (37:17.965)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (37:28.186)
I gotta quit saying phytoplankton.

Juli Berwald (37:29.088)
Yeah, it's still the yeah, we can call it, we can call it- people call them Zozanthellae, which is one word, it's kind of an antiquated- it's not so easy! Phytoplankton's fine. Yeah. Some people call them Symbiodinium, which is the scientific name- anyway!

Jason Elkins (37:34.266)
I'll stick with phytoplankton. We'd have enough time in this conversation for me to expand my vocabulary.

Okay. But there's different colors.

Juli Berwald (37:50.722)
There's different colors. They can have accessory pigments that change the color of the algae can change its color.

Jason Elkins (37:54.583)
Okay, so you can go from a coral reef with multicolors to white because it's just okay.

Juli Berwald (38:01.888)
Yeah. And to be fair, some corals do also have some pigments in them too. But when they're bleached, they're clear. And actually the coral, like you'll see, like if anyone's watched the movie, Chasing Coral, the coral can become like kind of fluorescent highlighter colors. That is the coral creating its pigments. Those are sunscreens that they create right before they bleach. They'll create these sunscreens to try to keep their symbionts.

Jason Elkins (38:25.352)
okay.

Juli Berwald (38:31.626)
inside of them, but usually it doesn't work. So basically when the algae goes away, the coral is on starvation rations because it doesn't, it's not used to eating. It can eat, but it doesn't, it's not used to it. It's used to just living off of its solar panels. And so that's why half the coral in the world have already died. And so it's pretty grim.

Jason Elkins (38:34.202)
Too late. Yeah, okay.

Jason Elkins (38:48.676)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (38:57.732)
So once it bleaches, once it gets to the point of, this is a bleached reef, can it come back if the temperatures drop again? OK.

Juli Berwald (39:07.136)
Yes, yes it can. And that happens a lot. And I mean, to get like a little nerdy, there's actually been some evidence. So it turns out the coral can make associations with different kinds of phytoplankton. And some of them are more thermally tolerant. They'll keep the association longer, but they're a little more selfish and they only give like 65 % of the sugar they make to the coral. But a lot of corals around the world are making the trade.

Jason Elkins (39:23.706)
Hmm.

Jason Elkins (39:27.811)
Hmm.

Jason Elkins (39:32.728)
Okay.

Juli Berwald (39:35.96)
They're saying like, hey, we'd rather have a symbiont. Yeah, yeah, we recognize as landlords that the air conditioner isn't working, so we can't charge us higher rent any longer. But at least we have a tenant. So that's kind of one of the things we're seeing out in the oceans right now. Anyway, but it's bleak. mean, the corals are definitely.

Jason Elkins (39:40.522)
65 % of something than 0 % of 80 % of nothing.

Jason Elkins (39:48.89)
That's a good analogy. Yep.

Juli Berwald (40:05.934)
in a tough spot. And so when I was considering writing my second book about corals, I knew that and I was really worried. I didn't want to write just like an obituary for the coral reefs. Like I just knew I couldn't sustain that given my sort of like low lying optimism as like a person. So, but.

Jason Elkins (40:21.37)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (40:29.998)
I getcha, yep, yep.

Juli Berwald (40:33.486)
It turned out, I found there was this meeting in Florida when I was like kind of thinking about writing this book where people were talking about what could we do to help coral reefs out? And the meeting was called Reef Futures and I went down there and I found all these people around the world who were doing really exciting things to like support the health of coral reefs. And so the book turned into like, can we do? What are the possibilities?

And I ended up going, traveling around the world to see some of those restoration sites and to interview those scientists. And, and, and I was able to sort of piece together a, I think a book it's called, my God. It's called life on the rocks because coral are life, you know, that make the rocks, building a future for coral reefs. And so it's.

It's really about like these things that people are doing that are trying to support the health of coral reefs. But what happened along the way was I was headed to Australia to go on this really exciting demonstration project where they're actually trying to make the clouds brighter over the Great Barrier Reef by shooting salt.

into the clouds, see sea salt into the clouds. Like base, yet the simple way to think about it is adding glitter to the clouds. and it reflects the sun back. it will, you know, if the sun's shining down on a cloud, that's glittery or more glittery, it will reflect the sunlight back into outer space and cool underneath the cloud. And that can cool the coral reef. And so there was this really cool project I got invited on to go.

Jason Elkins (42:04.058)
Okay.

Juli Berwald (42:25.038)
to a demonstration project that it's called cloud brightening or marine cloud brightening if you want to like look into it. But it's an idea that could be used on kind of a regional scale to cool something as big as the Great Barrier Reef. I was invited on the first demonstration project and I was super excited except for I was supposed to leave for Australia on March 23rd of 2020. And yeah.

Jason Elkins (42:32.195)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (42:40.388)
Wow, okay.

Jason Elkins (42:52.103)
yeah.

Juli Berwald (42:54.04)
So everything shut down. And at the same time, as I had been working on this choral book, my daughter had been going through a lot of struggles herself. And we realized she had severe OCD. it was, we were trying to fight, and this wasn't part of the book at all, but basically her world had been collapsing and collapsing and collapsing on her.

as I had been working on the coral reef. And I started to see these parallels between what was going on with my daughter and what was going on with the coral. And basically what I saw was that our mental health is so foundational to who we are that everything rests on top of it, just like with the coral reefs and how many things in the ocean rest on top of their health. I also saw these parallels in that both things are so invisible.

Like if you would have looked at my daughter as she was suffering from severe OCD, you wouldn't have known how sick she was. But she had lost her friends. She wasn't able to go to school. She wasn't able to wear very many kinds of clothes. She couldn't even at the end turn on the television. She looked fine, but she was so sick. And we as terrestrial animals, as terrestrial beings, don't think about our oceans very much. They are so invisible to us.

And at the same time as my trip to Australia to study the coral reefs fell apart, my daughter had to go to a residential facility for her mental health. And we had to drive her to Wisconsin because there wasn't a place in Texas or anywhere else that was able to treat how sick she had gotten. And so at the same time, we were driving my daughter to get her the help she needed in Wisconsin.

The guys who were doing this cloud brightening project in Australia had bubbled up against COVID and they were driving a thousand miles also to try to like do this pilot project, which could maybe help the health of the coral reefs. And so the two stories like in time and space became parallel. And I ended up after we dropped my daughter off, which was one of the hardest things we'd ever done. I couldn't write without including.

Juli Berwald (45:22.102)
what was happening in my own life as a mother into the story.

Jason Elkins (45:26.938)
I don't know how you could do anything without including that. Your story resonates. Right around the same time I had similar issues with my child. I drove him a thousand miles to a facility as well. Thank you for sharing that.

Juli Berwald (45:32.002)
Yeah.

Juli Berwald (45:39.959)
Wow.

Juli Berwald (45:44.373)
Wow!

Juli Berwald (45:49.344)
Yeah, so the book became Life on the Rocks for more than one reason. But what happened was she did get really good care in Wisconsin and they were able to teach her these tools that are not easy, that are dreadfully hard, that will require intention and funding for the rest of her life, but which allowed her to become functional again. And similarly, what I

Jason Elkins (45:53.142)
Yeah, I get it.

Juli Berwald (46:19.084)
have saw going around the world for the Coral was that we do have tools. We can solve these problems. They are not impossible problems to solve. They just require intentionality and funding and us caring and supporting these things that are not easy. There's no silver bullets in this game. And so the parallels got written into the book and I sent it to my editor and I was like, I don't know what to do because

I can't seem to pull these things apart." And she was like, nope, let's just go with it.

Jason Elkins (46:53.518)
Well, and at that particular period in time with COVID and things that were going on in the world.

That was a common thread for a lot of people. That awareness of mental health and the oceans and our fragility as people for a variety of different things. mean, it all tied together really well, probably. Yeah.

Juli Berwald (47:06.7)
Yeah.

Juli Berwald (47:11.758)
Great.

Juli Berwald (47:20.5)
Yes. Well, I mean, I thought it did. Yeah. So the book came out and it was, you know, it got, yeah. I mean, I'll just, it was an LA Times Book Award finalist. it really, think that because of these connections to us as humans, mean, look, science is interesting, but like, unless I think you can connect it to

Jason Elkins (47:38.265)
Yeah.

Juli Berwald (47:50.008)
the human experience, doesn't resonate as strong and it was impossible for me to pull it apart from this experience. So that's what happened. It's a tough book though. mean, it's not, and these aren't easy things, but ultimately I think they're hopeful. Hopefully they're hopeful. But finally, let me wrap it all up with by saying, coming back around and saying, first of all, my daughter is doing great.

Jason Elkins (47:50.266)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (48:02.888)
yeah.

Juli Berwald (48:19.022)
And she's in college now and she's like, yeah, she's an advocate for OCD, for people to talk about OCD, to care about OCD and to get the help they need. Because luckily with OCD, there's exposure response prevention therapy, it really can work. And so there are tools.

the good news, you know, it's not easy.

Jason Elkins (48:49.338)
That's beautiful. I'm happy you mentioned that. And I wasn't really aware of your book, honestly, before we had this conversation, because I like the spontaneity of showing up and just having a conversation. So I appreciate you sharing all that. And it's a super important thing that I want people to hear because of my experience as well. My son's also doing well. it's just, it's a, yeah, no, he's doing better than I ever could have imagined. And you're absolutely right. I mean, with

Juli Berwald (48:54.19)
Yeah.

Juli Berwald (49:07.466)
Yeah. Great. I'm so happy because I wanted to ask. Yeah, I'm so happy to hear that.

Jason Elkins (49:21.496)
guess where I'm going with this is just yeah there are happy endings you know there are if we're purposeful and intentional about about solving things then you know so it just sounds like what your book is about so beautiful thank you thank you for sharing that

Juli Berwald (49:30.669)
Right.

Juli Berwald (49:36.416)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So anyway, this guy in Honduras read the book and he called, he like emailed me and he was like, Juli, you have to come. And I want to say, I think some of the story about my daughter's resonated with him as well. He, you know, has some anxiety and he, he felt those connections and, but also he happens to be the, the

Jason Elkins (49:53.53)
Hmm?

Juli Berwald (50:06.35)
co-manager of this reef in this strange place where you wouldn't expect a coral reef to exist. And he's like, you have to come see my reef. It's really healthy. And I was like, impossible, because like, like I said, the Caribbean is probably had more disease and more bleaching than any other place on our planet. He's like, come see it, come see it, come see it. So my husband and went down there and I got, I went underwater and just like when I had gone in the Red Sea, I was like,

What is going on here? Like this cannot be happening. Like what is happening? Because it was a bustling, rich, colorful architectural reef. And that looked like it was from the 1970s. And so since then I've gone back six or seven, no five times. I'm going back in March. Five times it'll be my sixth time in March.

started this nonprofit called Tela Coral in order to understand like what is going on? Why is this place so healthy? We are in the midst of, I know we're like, I've been talking so long, I'll kind of like go a little faster, but we are in the process of building the first Marine Biology Lab on the mainland of Honduras. We bought some property with, the guy who called me, his name's Antal Borksock. He's amazing, he's a visionary.

Jason Elkins (51:13.89)
Yeah, take your time.

Juli Berwald (51:30.578)
recognized how important this reef was, made it a marine protected area, but also realized that's kind of a fragile protection. So he built the first free public aquarium in all of Central America to let people know what's out there. And it's 100 % free. People line up all day long to go see the corals and all the fish and the act, whatever else is in the tanks.

And then he supports it by a coffee shop, a restaurant, an event space and gift shop. But it's free to go in and every, it's like the biggest tourist attraction in Honduras now. So working with Antal, we've built, we've bought a piece of property to build this Marine Lab on. We're gonna get the corals into what's called a bio bank, which is a safe place.

on land where they will be able to live forever in case who knows what happens out in the ocean. We also got one of prize to make a documentary about Tela, which we're going to be filming in May. And we're just kind of taken off. And we've already discovered through a collaboration with the University of Miami that the corals in Tela, which are

Jason Elkins (52:35.236)
So.

Juli Berwald (52:57.684)
rare and I mean so rare I can't even tell you like the Elkhorn corals there which are used to be the most abundant corals in the whole Florida. If you went snorkeling in Florida you would see Elkhorns everywhere. Now there are only 37 colonies left in the whole Florida reef track but in Tullah there's thousands and all of those Elkhorns have made that trade I told you about. They're all made the trade

to the more thermotolerant algae. We just discovered it unlike any other elk horn in the Caribbean. So they're doing something different there. And we are really excited to keep like trying to understand what's going on, trying to understand why, trying to tell people about this reef. And yeah, that's what tele-coral is all about.

Jason Elkins (53:45.019)
Do you feel like, it a balancing act to tell people, here, I guess, let me back up. Because I've done enough scuba diving and snorkeling and been around long enough to know that sometimes the biggest threat to a reef, I don't know if it's the biggest threat, I probably shouldn't say the biggest threat, that's a big claim. A threat to the reef can be increased tourism and people kicking the reef with their fins or standing on the reef or doing all these things. Is that?

Juli Berwald (53:50.552)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (54:13.454)
So guess the question is, is that a challenge when you've got a place like this that you want to increase awareness, but at the same time, you know, tell us more about.

Juli Berwald (54:23.5)
Yes, it's an interesting problem. think we do need people to know about it or it's not going to be protected. like kind of case in point, soon after the, soon after the Antal and, you know, what he did alone and the other local people in Tela created the Marine Protected Area. this Chinese mining operation came into Honduras and was going to set up a mine on a river.

That was like about 20 kilometers away. And had that happened, the reef would have been killed. So in a way, tourism protects that kind of destruction, that more industrial scale, yeah, destruction from happening. And I think that in Tela, it can be managed because you can't dive there all year round. The winter, they have a severe rainy season.

And so diving is really limited to between March and August. And so there's a little bit of built-in protection, just because of the visibility. Yeah. Because the visibility. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, and I've been there when the visibility is bad and it's really bad. Like you can't see it. It's, you can't see anything. So I think that, that there's that.

Jason Elkins (55:28.674)
It was a kind of like a rest, a resting period because the rainy weather, the visibility is low and you probably could dive there, but who would want to probably, right. Okay.

Jason Elkins (55:43.778)
Okay.

Juli Berwald (55:49.41)
There's only one dive shop in town, which Antal owns. there's a little bit like right now, there's a little bit of protection off on that as well. But the aquarium is really a place for education and teaching people and making coral reefs less invisible. So yeah.

Jason Elkins (56:06.212)
That's very, cool. Well, we don't have the ability since it's a podcast, we don't have the ability to show maps and, you know, to help people figure this out. lot of our listeners may have, maybe if I want to put this into perspective and discuss a little bit about where it is, how to get there, if somebody wants to go there. so we've heard of, you know, Roatan is quite kind of the popular, the well-known place, I guess, to go diving, diving in Honduras.

Juli Berwald (56:12.651)
Yeah

Juli Berwald (56:26.872)
Yes.

Juli Berwald (56:30.658)
Right.

Right.

Jason Elkins (56:34.658)
So divers, snorkelers, people that are familiar with Honduras, how would you tell them about how to get to Tel Aviv? What should they know?

Juli Berwald (56:43.086)
So, yeah, so there is, well, I'm gonna give a little boost to Adzentures, who I've partnered with to, yes. Yeah, exactly. So, Lindsay and I run a well, we've been running a trip once a year. Actually, if last minute anyone wants to get on the trip in March, it's that we still have a couple slots. Adzentures.

Jason Elkins (56:51.918)
which is how I connected with you, Juli. As you know, Lindsay was on the show, so yep.

Juli Berwald (57:10.562)
We'll, I think, continue to run a trip once a year. And it's really fun because we'll do a little bit science, look for some coral babies. We've discovered that there's babies growing in the Bay, which a lot of coral reefs in the Caribbean aren't producing babies anymore. And we found baby corals, so we'll look for them again. And we will do some diving and it's a really great trip. And then I think Lindsay is planning to make some like guides.

for if you wanted to go to Tela. You could fly into San Pedro Sula, which is easy. mean, all the big carriers fly there, and then it's an hour and a half drive. And you can get a taxi, you can a car. If you're in Roatan, there's a ferry that goes from Roatan to La Ceiba, and then you can take a taxi to Tela from there. So it's right on the, you know, it's not hard to get around in this part of Honduras.

the Caribbean side. And if you, you know, if you want to go, you can contact me through telecorral.org and I can hook you up with some taxi drivers and stuff like that who are, who are great. And then a lot, there's a really, really wonderful like hotel tourism board in Tela, the tourism board, can contact them too. And they can give you all kinds of information. They're very

Jason Elkins (58:24.538)
Cool.

Juli Berwald (58:38.41)
very delightful people. So it's not like it's not already a tourist place. It has a lot of tourist pressure on it already, but it's all Honduran.

Jason Elkins (58:42.362)
All right.

Jason Elkins (58:50.714)
Okay, very cool. I wanted to share that because anybody that's listening to this that's interested in, should be everybody interested in the raves, right? As we've kind of touched on. Juli, we've discussed a bunch of things. I think we've covered quite a few things and absolutely fascinating conversation. I'm sure that people are still listening to this. They find it just as fascinating as I did. Thank you so much.

Juli Berwald (58:53.643)
Yeah.

Juli Berwald (58:58.067)
Yeah

Juli Berwald (59:03.556)
I know.

Jason Elkins (59:16.376)
I'm curious, what did I forget to ask you? What should I ask you? Or is there anything else that you want to share kind of with the audience right now before we wrap it up?

Juli Berwald (59:27.372)
I I guess if you have an interest in Tela, we are a 501c3 nonprofit. We are trying to build this biobank to protect these really special corals. So if you want to check out our website, we keep a pretty good blog of our activities. It's telecoral.org. If you want to make a donation, hope it's okay. can ask, but it would be great. And also just like, I hope

Jason Elkins (59:49.594)
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So

Juli Berwald (59:56.43)
to people, I would ask people to just pay attention to our oceans. are really critical to all of the weather patterns on our planet. They are really critical to our health up here on land. I think that, you know, we spend 250 times more on space than we do on our oceans and our oceans are right here on our planet. And I worry as we...

move into a time when climate change is going to become even more critical that we are paying less and less attention to our oceans. So just remember we're on a blue planet.

Jason Elkins (01:00:36.748)
Important message that also parallels we touched on mental health as well. That's a good thing to pay attention to as well. There's a lot of parallels there. Juli, I look forward to reading both of your books and they sound fascinating. I love it. I'm so happy that conversation came up and look forward to collaborating with you on projects in the future. We will have the website, you mentioned the website, addressed a couple of times. It's going to be right at the top of the show notes. So...

Juli Berwald (01:00:40.952)
That's right.

Juli Berwald (01:00:47.925)
Thank you.

Jason Elkins (01:01:02.906)
I would encourage anybody listening to this go into the show notes, go take a look at Juli's website and do whatever you can to support what she's doing. Thanks, Juli.

Juli Berwald (01:01:12.45)
Thank you, Jason. This was so much fun. I really appreciate everyone who listened to this too. Thank you to all your listeners.

Jason Elkins (01:01:14.667)
It was, it was. All right, thank you, Juli.