4ocean (Plastic Islands & Panic at 150 ft.)

Summary

In this episode, Tony Ernst from Four Ocean shares his journey from waste management to leading ocean cleanup efforts. He emphasizes the importance of transparency in their operations, detailing the extensive documentation required for every cleanup. Tony discusses the equipment and partnerships that enable their work, the daily operations in South Florida, and the human element involved in their cleanup efforts. He also shares insights into the types of trash collected, the sorting and recycling process, and the challenges faced in waste management. Finally, Tony recounts personal close calls in diving, highlighting the importance of safety and respect for the ocean. In this engaging conversation, Tony Ernst shares his experiences with sharks, emphasizing their majestic nature and the importance of understanding them. He discusses the mission of Four Oceans, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ocean cleanup and fighting plastic pollution. The conversation delves into the challenges of ocean conservation, the role of consumer behavior in sustainability, and the need for transparency in nonprofit operations. Ernst highlights the importance of community engagement and the innovative ways they are addressing the plastic crisis, including creating products from ocean debris. In this conversation, Tony Ernst discusses the critical role of personal responsibility in waste management, the innovative technologies being utilized for ocean cleanup, and the impact of river pollution on marine environments. He emphasizes the importance of community involvement and the role of nonprofits in addressing these issues. The discussion also touches on the intersection of politics and environmental efforts, the challenges of scaling cleanup operations, and the emotional toll of working in this field. Ultimately, the conversation highlights the passion and dedication of those involved in the cleanup movement and the need for continued awareness and action.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Four Ocean and Tony Ernst
02:50 Tony's Journey to Four Ocean
06:28 The Importance of Transparency in Cleanup Efforts
10:05 The Equipment and Partnerships Behind Four Ocean
12:56 Daily Operations and Community Engagement
14:42 The Human Element in Ocean Cleanup
15:58 The Volume and Types of Trash Collected
17:21 Sorting and Recycling Process
19:34 Challenges in Recycling and Waste Management
20:52 Close Calls and Lessons Learned in Diving
31:03 Shark Encounters: Understanding the Majestic Creatures
35:10 The Role of Four Oceans: Business and Nonprofit Dynamics
39:13 Navigating Ocean Cleanup: Strategies and Challenges
43:41 The Plastic Crisis: Addressing Production and Recycling Issues
48:01 Convenience vs. Sustainability: Changing Consumer Behavior
51:03 Facing Criticism: Transparency and Community Engagement
56:48 The Importance of Personal Responsibility in Waste Management
01:00:42 Innovative Technologies for Ocean Cleanup
01:01:59 Addressing River Pollution and Its Impact on Oceans
01:05:20 The Role of Community and Nonprofits in Cleanup Efforts
01:07:30 The Intersection of Politics and Environmental Issues
01:09:35 Scaling Cleanup Operations: A Vision for the Future

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:00

all right guys here with me today i have tony ernst from 4ocean and i'm sure everybody out there uh if you're on instagram facebook whatever you're probably getting the ads for the really cool bracelets i know that's where i first heard of 4ocean but we are all in for a treat today folks um no pun intended We're going to deep dive into what it looks like to clean up the world's oceans. I'm fascinated at so many levels. I have so many questions for you. But first off, Tony, what I want to know from you is how do you even get into something like this?

SPEAKER_01: 0:39

Funny story, actually. I at the time was working within a large waste management company and I wasn't really vibing with the role there. I was super focused at that time on trying to institute, you know, solutions for large corporations that were using a lot of single use plastic. And ultimately that kind of was my niche with that company. And when I went to training in Maryland, came back, felt pretty confident about what I was going to be able to accomplish. And unfortunately, recycling doesn't align with fiscal, I guess, requirements that they have on their end. And there's just not a lot of money into it. So they tried to steer me in a different direction after I came back. And it really didn't align best with what I thought I was going to be able to accomplish. So I knew I needed to kind of find something else. And I didn't know what it was going to be. And I received a few messages, but from people I hadn't spoken to in like a decade or more, like people I hadn't spoken to since high school. And they're like, hey, saw this job posting, thought it would be perfect for you. And so I literally didn't even click it, didn't respond or anything. And then I started to get it from more people. And I started to get it from people I knew. Then I started to get it on Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram. And so literally it must've been weeks that I was getting these, what I thought were like spam and I click it and I saw a job listing for fleet operations manager for 4ocean which was going to basically oversee the team and the fleet of south florida operations

SPEAKER_02: 2:27

um

SPEAKER_01: 2:27

we had at the time six boats on the water that were going out seven days a week and um i thought well this is the perfect job for me and i clicked on it and took about six interviews in about two months but but ended up getting that job yeah and um Again, if I would have never have clicked on that link, someone else would be sitting in this chair today, but lucky as me.

SPEAKER_03: 2:51

Yeah. Now, what about, so leading up to that, I mean, I would imagine you have some kind of certifications, you know how to dive, you know how to go underwater, you know, ecosystem, all that stuff. Help me understand a little bit about your background.

SPEAKER_01: 3:06

Yeah, so at that point, I had already had the military on my resume, so had some proven leadership and managerial skills, obviously.

SPEAKER_03: 3:15

Hold on. What did you do in the military?

SPEAKER_01: 3:17

Sure. So my primary MOS was 2841. It's actually phased out now, but basically it was communication technician. So I was in Marine Corps. Okay, Marine Corps. Yep. And I was basically able to fix communication gear that was being used out in the field. Now, initially, I thought that that meant I was going to be sitting in a nice air conditioned office. That was not the case. You found that out quickly. Very, very quickly. Yeah. So they basically certify you to different echelons. And some of the echelons are literally like repairing down to like a resistor level in these air conditioned offices, you know, way back in the back. And Yeah, no, my first duty station was with an Amtrak battalion. So basically think like a tank, but that is able to go into the water. So they have jets and buckets on the back and they pretty much go like 90% in the water. Only the very, very top of it sticks out of the water and they're amphibious assault vehicles. So they're made for like beach landings. Yeah. And so I was a little bit out of my element in that. So that was a quick learning curve. And then later on became a project. primary marksmanship instructor and that is what really opened up my world to be able to scuba dive because it's a very short window that you work as a primary marksmanship instructor the range is like 0 500 to like 0 900 and then the rest of the day um you know you're free you're on liberty so um that's really what allowed me to kind of get into scuba diving while serving

SPEAKER_03: 4:54

Yeah, and are there some kind of certifications that you landed or got through the military or had to do afterwards? How does that

SPEAKER_01: 5:01

work? Yeah, so in the military, one of the prerequisites to become a primary marksmanship instructor is you need to have qualified on the rifle range, which is an annual qualification. You have to qualify expert at least twice. And then, of course, there's some written exams and so forth. It's a two-week course that I went through, again, being eligible for having been expert twice beforehand. And that worked out. I think if I remember correctly, they came in and said, hey, we need someone to fill this billet who's been expert twice. And in that unit, everybody was relatively new to the military. And so some people only had been certified two or three years. I think I was one of the only people that raised their hand. And so I was just kind of lucky on that one. And then after the military was the manager of a prominent dive shop here in South Florida. And that's really where I got my experience working with fleets of boats and understanding, you know, how to work within and with teams that are going to go out each day with a specific task. Again, at the time it was to take people out for snorkeling and scuba diving adventures, but still kind of helped me. So between the leadership of the military and working with the fleets of boats in the dive industry that kind of gave me, you know, a good head start into what my first initial role at 4ocean was.

SPEAKER_03: 6:28

Yeah, that's awesome. When we had our pre-interview, you told a story that I just love, and it was about the photography, right? How you all, like, you can't just take a picture from an iPhone because it won't be... dated properly and timestamp, like all those things.

SPEAKER_01: 6:51

Sure. I

SPEAKER_03: 6:53

want, I know I'm getting right into it, right? I'll meet weeds. And I just, my mind is like spinning. Like I'm going to really, cause I, cause I'm thinking, oh my gosh, guys, just wait everybody out there till you hear some of these stories. So tell us about that. The photography part.

SPEAKER_01: 7:12

Sure. So we're very heavy on transparency here. If you don't have transparency, you have nothing. And ultimately we're spreading all this awareness and what we're trying to do is, um, You know, we want that to resonate with people and we want people to look at us as a credible source. So every single pound that we've picked up from day one, from 2017 on, if we don't have photo documentation of the before of the area before we cleaned it up, of the cleanup in action and the area after we've cleaned it up, and then photos of all of that material on a weight scale where the weight is legible and clear, we don't count it. So when we talk about, yep, we just don't talk, we'll literally reject that entry. If there's any type of, you know, spot where somebody could say, I think there's a doubt that you just did what you say you're doing, then we just don't even submit it. We want to be beyond reproach in what we're doing. And so extremely transparent. So to date, 42 million pounds have been removed from the rivers, oceans, and coastlines in the areas that we operate in. And we have photographs of every single bit of it.

SPEAKER_03: 8:28

42 million pounds. 42

SPEAKER_01: 8:31

million.

SPEAKER_03: 8:32

That's so cool. It looks really cool where you're sitting right now. Tell me about what, what's going on behind you.

SPEAKER_01: 8:38

Sure. So this is what we call the shop. So this is in South Florida. We're headquartered in Boca Raton. And ultimately this is where we have all of the assets that are related to what the South Florida operations team has access to. Um, we have a lot of partnerships in place that help us do what we do and be as successful as we are. Um, So we have blue systems right here. These are basically surface-applied systems that allow you to go maybe 10 or 15 feet deep, which a lot of what we're dealing with is within that range. Then, of course, we have CEDU and BRP assets. They've helped us basically by giving us access to Sea-Doo Switch pontoons. And these fish pros allow us to go out and scout and go out and collect as much debris as we can. And then of course we have the side-by-side for when we're doing shoreline and beach cleanups. So we're very lucky to have the partners that we do that essentially kind of power our operations. And then of course we have Halcyon. Anytime we need to go deeper, a lot of the diving operations that we have in South Florida are in about 70 feet of water. Back in the 70s, the science at the time supported that it was a good idea to take two million tires, band them together, and then throw them offshore in 70 foot of water right between the first and the second natural reef line. And it worked for a little bit. And then saltwater mixed with the metal banding strap Corroded it. And now all of those tires are just acting independently like bowling balls and destroying the natural reef on their way up. They've been found as far north as the Carolinas and even in the northeast, like the New York area. So yeah. They estimate there's about 700,000 still in the water, but they're migrating every single day with any extreme weather system, hurricane or tropical storm that comes through. But we could tell that it's an Osborne tire because they're unique. Most of them are white wall because that's what they were using in the 70s. But they also have a very unique groove that's cut within them in three different spots where they put the banding straps through. So on Monday, we did a cleanup in Lake Boca, about 20 miles north of where the tires were initially thrown in the water. And sure enough, it's an Osborne tire. It has those very identifiable marks on it. So in the last 50 years, that tire somehow has made its way 20 miles north through an inlet and into Lake Boca where I found it on Monday.

SPEAKER_03: 11:17

Unbelievable. All right. How does this How does this work? You guys are there in an office and you wait for a phone call to happen for somebody to say, hey, we see something. Can you come get it?

SPEAKER_01: 11:28

There's a little bit of that. Mostly what we do is we're on the water in some region of the globe pretty much every single day of the year. Right now in Florida, we have a contract with the city of Boca. The city of Boca is really on the leading edge of trying to be as conservation-minded and as sustainable as possible. So we've had a contract in place with them. It's basically an invitation to bid that they put out every few years that we were just recently re-awarded for. And so three to four days a week, our team is just out on the intercoastal waterway removing as much trash from the Boca waterways as absolutely possible. In addition to that, we'll do what we call strike missions. And strike missions are usually cleanups that We'll kind of rally the team together. And ideally, we'll have an influencer or a celebrity also attend where we're trying to get as much awareness to these issues as possible. I mean, South Florida as a whole, especially Boca Raton, Palm Beach County, very affluent area, tons of infrastructure in place. And so when you think about the amount of trash that we're able to find here when it's affluent and there's infrastructure in place, it really really kind of lets you know how much trash is everywhere else where the infrastructure isn't as strong and where they might have some, you know, fiscal issues that are contributing to, you know, plastic and debris being on the beaches and within the waterways.

SPEAKER_03: 13:02

Yeah. Do you have certain equipment technology that if you're just driving in open waters, if you're just boating in open waters, that it'll beep, chime, go off? Hey, there's something 30 feet down. This is like fishing in a sense.

SPEAKER_01: 13:17

So there has been some technology that we've used, but what we've really found is that human element is sometimes the difference of, you know, finding turtle hatchlings that you're able to now save and release and give, you know, the ability to live versus if we were using machinery or technology in some of these instances, maybe we wouldn't have those results. There are ocean cleanup companies out there that are having massive impact, and we absolutely champion and support them. We choose to do it a different way. Everything we do is by hand. It's done by nets. It's done by humans. Everything that we do, we hand sort afterwards. And as a result, there are many instances which we've been able to save dolphins, turtles, birds because of our kind of hands-on approach. Is it the most efficient in terms of pounds? Probably not. But, you know, being... as eco-friendly to the environment and to the aquatic life that is in the area in which we're cleaning, that is just as important to us as the amount of debris that we're removing each day. So we're kind of setting our ways, even though, you know, some people will look at it and say it's a little archaic and a little simple, but we just find that it's where we feel comfortable working and, you know, offers a good balance between getting out as much debris as you can, but still being as safe to the aquatic environment that we're interacting in at the

SPEAKER_03: 14:59

moment. What's like the craziest thing you could remember pulling out of the water?

SPEAKER_01: 15:05

I mean, I don't know if I'd say the craziest thing of pulling out of the water because that would just be the trash in general. The amount, the volume of trash, I think is just what's mind blowing. There are times where we're in Guatemala where we had plastic intercepting booms in place where the plastic would be so dense that you could literally walk on it. And we would have five or six crew members standing on this plastic that was two or three feet deep. And it felt no different than being on land. It was sturdy. It was stable. So, you know, that's something that that came to mind where we were just looking at each other thinking, like, how are we going to now extract this from the shoreline and just take one step on it and realize it's as solid as concrete? And so we were literally cleaning up this kind of plastic island while standing on top of this plastic island. It's pretty, pretty mind blowing.

SPEAKER_03: 15:58

Well, I mean, what are, okay, what are some day-to-day things? So you go to a cleanup. Sure. I mean, are we talking plastic water bottles that people throw on the side of their, like, overboard? Or what are we talking about?

SPEAKER_01: 16:11

I'd say in this region, the most popular thing that we find would probably be single-use water bottles, like you described, single-use plastic bags. a lot of single-use cutlery and bottle caps. We find a very large amount of bottle caps in this region. Internationally, it'll be a little bit different. I think you're finding more of the film and packaging. So think paper chip bags, snack food bags. But here, bottles and bottle caps for sure are a majority of what we're finding in this region.

SPEAKER_03: 16:54

Like literally a beer bottle cap, a single cap that small? What kind of caps?

SPEAKER_01: 17:02

Yeah, so like soda, water bottle caps, just like a 20-ounce bottle cap. We're finding them probably more than any other thing in the South Florida area. It's bottle caps.

SPEAKER_03: 17:16

Okay. You bring this stuff back to your shop then where you're sitting. We do. Then what happens with it? Sort

SPEAKER_01: 17:24

it out? Absolutely. So, you know, that's... The beginning step of what we do is just removing it from the environment. Once we get it back here, everything is what we call reverse sorted. So in the end, we want the waste to be what's left in the pile. So we're pulling out any metal that can be processed and recycled, aluminum cans, we're pulling out glass, we're pulling out any plastic that can still be recycled. A lot of what we find, unfortunately, is beyond what can be recycled, either through UV degradation. It's either legacy trash that has been on the water for so long that the sun has just been beating up on it for so long that when you squeeze it, it will discolor, or it'll have a smell to it, or it'll just crack and flake. What's an

SPEAKER_03: 18:16

example of that? Give me an example.

SPEAKER_01: 18:18

Sure. So if you have a clear water bottle, And it's been beat up by the sun for, let's say, six months before we got to it. When we find it, we'll get it. If you fold it in half, it'll kind of discolor where you just folded it. It'll become white. Maybe it'll be discolored from the get-go. It'll be yellow or have like an amber hue to it. Or you'll squeeze it and it will literally just start to break apart. So we would call that degraded. And unfortunately, they don't want that in the recycling stream. So we would have to process that as waste the same way we would with plastic that is like medical waste, which we sometimes find. or diapers that are comprised of some plastic or, you know, syringes or anything along those lines, while the material itself is technically recyclable material in its form factor and in the way that it was used or found, it's just unable to be recycled at that point.

SPEAKER_03: 19:16

Huh. So 40, okay. 42 million pounds recycled to, or removed, removed. Yes. What's a, rough breakdown of what you guys can recycle versus what gets i'm guessing then just discarded

SPEAKER_01: 19:35

right No, I wish it was. I wish it was. Unfortunately, it's much less than that. In terms of weight, it's probably a very low number simply because plastic is also the lightest thing that we find. So if we have a 55-gallon bin, which is what we traditionally take on cleanups, and it's full of only single-use plastic bottles, it will hold about 250 bottles, and it only weighs 13 pounds. Where if we were to pick up you know, other materials in a way more, um, But the odds of it being recyclable are far less. So like some of the metal that we find wood will remove wood if it is pressure treated wood because there's chemicals in there that could leach into the environment. Or if we find wood that has the ability to be a hazard to aquatic life or to people. So if it's got a bunch of nails sticking out of it or anything like that, we're absolutely going to remove it. So it's not a threat to sharks, turtles, manatees or anything else in the area.

SPEAKER_03: 20:35

Yeah. Okay. Makes sense for you personally. And it could go back as far as your first time in the water. Sure. Tell me a story or probably a couple of stories. I would guess close calls, danger situations. I

SPEAKER_01: 20:53

have a few. Yeah, I have a few. So the first one that comes to mind is when I first got certified, it all honestly happened by just pure luck. And I'm thankful for it. I think about it often because it, I didn't know at the time, but it completely changed the trajectory of my life. And I was in the military, scuba diving wasn't even on my radar. And my staff sergeant at the time had went and bought all of his gear for him and his wife. What year was it?

UNKNOWN: 21:28

Just so we can- Sure. So-

SPEAKER_01: 21:30

This is, I guess, right around 1999, 2000 area. And he comes up to me and says, listen, I bought full gear for my wife and myself, paid for the courses. We got into the pool and my wife went underwater and she decided at that moment that this was not for her. He goes, but the classes paid for, the gears paid for. And I would love to give you an opportunity to jump into this class, take this gear and Pay me what you can until the gears paid off. And I said, all right. And I don't even know why I said, okay. The only thing I could think of is, I mean, I grew up in South Florida. I grew up on or near the water. And I remember as a young child, we would go to Venice Beach and there was a diver that would always go in solo. which, you know, kind of frowned upon. But he would go in solo and come out of the water an hour later with just massive shark's teeth. I mean, literally massive shark's teeth. And I remember thinking that was cool. But aside from that, I really didn't have a connection to scuba. But I guess maybe enough of it was underlying in my subconscious that when I got this offer, I was like, All right, let me give it a go. And I immediately fell in love with it. It was really cool because not a lot of people were divers. So it felt like I'm kind of in this exclusive club where I'm able to do and see things that, you know, majority of people don't necessarily have access to. And so I got certified and didn't really think anything of it at the time. But aside from being at that time, you know, a 19 year old who was was in the Marines and thought he was indestructible. About a week after getting certified, found another Marine that was certified. And we were like, oh, what's the deepest you've been, right? Because everything, unfortunately, in the military is a competition. And what have you done that I haven't done? And I could do it too. And so we just started talking like Marines do. And he's like, oh, I've been deeper than you. And no, I've been deeper than you. And we were like, hey, let's just jump in the water and see how deep we can go, not even knowing what we didn't know and how potentially dangerous that could be. So I didn't know this guy previous to that. We go diving together. Again, looking back, not the best recipe. Ideally, you want to kind of know who you're diving with or do some intermediate dives with these people if you don't know each other's skill set, so to speak. But we get in and we say, listen, thinking we're being safe, we're like, look, We're just going to go straight to the bottom, whatever it is. We're going to touch the bottom, and then it's only going to be a minute or two in. We should be perfect, and we'll spend the rest of the time doing a nice, slow ascent to the surface, and everything's going to be cool. And then we'll have this cool story at the end of how deep we went, right? So the whole purpose of this dive, get in the water, go straight down immediately, touch the sand, come up. All right. So we jump in, we're in Okinawa, Japan, which is basically a piece of coral that sticks out of the ocean, right? So there are some areas where it's three, four, 500 feet deep immediately. Thankfully, that is not where we went in, but it was still deep. So we go straight down and probably takes maybe a minute or two. And we are 156 feet deep in the water. So we touched the sand says 156 on our computer. And at that moment we're as stoked as people could be. Right. We think that we just did something amazing.

SPEAKER_00: 25:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 25:14

And immediately he looks at his, you know, how much gas he has left in his tank and he's got like 500 PSI left, which is, you're supposed to be back on the boat. You know, we're back at the shore with more than that even. So he looks at me and I see his eyes become this big and I look and I'm still good. And full panic sets in. And also you get nitrogen narcosis once you get past a certain depth. Again, we don't really know about this because we're just open water certified. The recreational limit is 70 feet. Usually nitrogen narcosis does not play a part at that depth. It's normally 90 to 100 feet. It's different for everybody, and it's different for everybody every day. It's based on a lot of factors. How much sleep? How healthy are you? How hydrated are you? Is that your first or second dive of the day? All of these things play a part in it. But we don't even know this exists. And what we start to find is in class, we went over it enough to know that if you just go up a few feet, it goes away. And it feels like the best way to explain it is it feels like you're drunk. Well, what we hadn't realized at that time, and I didn't unpack this until way, way later, was we had probably had that happen at 100 feet. But since we were descending so quickly, we were going so deep that as we came up 10 or 15 feet thinking it's going to go away, we were still in an area where it was coming on more. And so we're coming up, and as it starts to come on thicker and thicker and thicker, full panic now sets in for us both. And he is now... out of gas entirely. So we're swimming up. We're probably 130 feet at this point. Your mind is telling you, I have to get to the surface. But now we also know that there are rules to this and you cannot just shoot to the surface.

UNKNOWN: 27:13

Lung overexpansion injuries, the bends, which I'm sure people have heard of. And so we know that we need to get up there as fast as possible. We need to go up there as slow as we need to safely. He's out of gas. Now we're at about 100 feet.

SPEAKER_01: 27:30

There's no way to communicate underwater, right? We're just doing this all with eyes and just whatever body language. And when he runs out completely, he's now coming to me. Perfect. I have an octopus. I hand it to him. Well, now it's two people, elevated breathing rate. Now I'm down to like 800 PSI, and we're still at this point probably 80 feet from the surface.

SPEAKER_03: 27:51

With two of you on the same tank at 800.

SPEAKER_01: 27:54

Correct, correct. So we start to come up. I'm trying to go up as slow as what I think is safe, but as fast as I can. And we get to a point where we're probably at 40 feet of water, which may as well be a mile at that point, right? And I'm down to where it looks like I have maybe a few hundred pounds left. And these gauges aren't, they're not super accurate. So you could have 500 pounds and really be at zero and it could say zero and you could have 500, right? So we're coming up to the surface and we get to a point where I realize that I have to make the decision that when I look at him and see him take a breath in, I have to now put my fin on his chest and push him away from me and struggle with him for a little bit because at his breathing rate, there's not enough for us both. And if something happens to me now, that's, that's something happened to us both. Like I have to be okay to get us to the surface. And my thought is I might have to get him to the shore, resuscitate him, give him CPR, who knows what has to happen at this point. But I know that if something happens to me, that's an issue for us both. So yeah, I'm literally putting my fin on his chest and just kicking him as far away in the water as I can. Now we're at 30 feet. And he comes back. He grabs the Octo. He doesn't grab the Octo. He grabs my regulator out of my mouth. Full panic. I put the Octo in my mouth. I see him take a breath in. I kick him away. We finally get to the surface. My tank is bone dry. Needless to say, it was a silent attack. afternoon and car ride back to base. And I don't remember ever seeing him again. That was a one and done. And probably to that point in my life, one of the scariest things that I had ever gone through. Thank God that it ended up the way that it did. One of the things I think it did do for me that helped me later on in life is from that moment on, healthy respect for the ocean. Never took any of that for granted. And really, as I became a scuba instructor many, many years later, you know, I was kind of the safety guy at that point because, you know, I had a very close brush with something that could have got tragically wrong. Some things to unpack after that. At 180 feet-ish, regular air becomes completely toxic. So had the sand been 30 feet deeper, we could have had an issue and convulsed at that depth, and that could have been the end of everything right there. So not my proudest moment, but here to speak about it and here to let people know that there are rules to this and they need to be followed. Yeah, 100%. Wish that was my only close call, even being super safety-minded, but it wasn't. And, you know, we could talk about those if time allows.

SPEAKER_03: 31:03

More, yes. Stories. I want stories. Close calls. How close were you to a shark, a boat? I don't know, anything. Whatever you got. You got more

SPEAKER_01: 31:13

stories? Yeah, so sharks. I, for some reason... They're not scary when you're in the water with them. It's wild. There's just a feeling of... I don't even know the right word to use. You just feel like you're in the power or in the presence of something with so much power. They're very majestic. They're beautiful. Something kind of overcomes and just gives you a sense of... that it's okay. And anytime I've ever seen a shark in the water, I've actually done my best to approach it, to try and get closer, to get a better picture of it, to see it closely. They keep their distance if they want. They come right in if they want. But sharks are not an issue. And if that's something people could take away from this, it's, you know, sharks are not there to hurt humans up until maybe, I don't know, 80 years ago or so, they didn't even see humans underneath the ocean surface. So we're new to them. You know, they've been around a lot longer than we have, but they, they mean us no harm. They're curious like anything else and they don't have hands. So if they're going to touch you, they're probably going to use their snout or their mouth. And, and you can simply just put your hand right on their snout and redirect them. And you know, they may circle back, but they're not there to do harm. And it feels really, really, just good and pure when you're in the water with some of these creatures. It just feels good. There's no sense of, you know, being nervous or threat at all.

SPEAKER_03: 32:59

Yeah. Do you have a shark story? One that comes to mind?

SPEAKER_01: 33:04

I mean, my best shark stories are working with Guy Harvey Research Institute. I've been lucky enough to be able to do shark tagging with them and really work with them, install tags on them so that they could use that for the purpose of data and understanding how they migrate. So my interactions with sharks have all been really from the scientific and diver side. So everything good on that end. Yeah, I don't have any negative things to say about sharks. They're beautiful creatures. They mean us no harm. And, you know, the sooner humans could come to that realization and realize that they're not there to hurt us, the better.

SPEAKER_03: 33:46

So what's gone on over the years that brings these sharks so close to where vacationers are at? What's changed? Something's got to be changing, right?

SPEAKER_01: 33:55

I don't know. I think they've always been this close. You know, when we were doing the shark tagging adventures, we're primarily catching these sharks in 50 to 70 foot of water. And these are big sharks. These are, you know, one that I personally tagged was a 12 foot nine inch tiger shark. So that's a big girl. And she was within where you could shout to the shore and people would hear you. So close enough to shore that people, you know, are recreating, swimming, diving, snorkeling right within those areas. They've always been there. I do think that there are some things that people are doing where they're maybe chumming the waters and trying to get some of these sharks closer for the purpose of tourism and so forth. I don't necessarily know that. I love that. I prefer to see a shark in its natural habitat without any kind of human persuasion, so to

SPEAKER_04: 34:53

speak.

SPEAKER_01: 34:55

But You could argue that when people are able to get close to sharks, even if you don't love the methods in which they were exposed to that shark, but if they can see that shark and get close to the shark and realize they're not as dangerous as people think, maybe that's somebody that becomes an advocate for that shark and changes kind of the thought process and behavior. So there is some potentially good that comes from it as well. But me personally, I prefer to deal with them in their natural habitat and not... partake in sort of that kind of chumming of the waters to get them to come in.

SPEAKER_03: 35:29

Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Let's go back to the business and the nonprofit side of Four Oceans. So somebody gives a dollar, five, whatever, five dollars. Where does it go?

SPEAKER_01: 35:45

Five bucks, probably going to go get lunch. No, I'm kidding. So, you know, that's a huge misconception and it's actually steered a lot of kind of negative conversation. So glad that you brought that up. We have just recently opened up the Four Ocean Foundation. It's literally in its infancy form right now. It has two employees that are really trying to get the legs under it and they're going to do amazing things. So we have Jack Leighton, who's the executive director, and we have Melinda on the team as well. And ultimately they're going out and getting that first round of seed money to really get it off the ground. But to 2025, there was not a nonprofit that was in place and active, but people assumed that we were. That caused some issues because people having expectations or assumptions that are maybe inaccurate, that's never a good thing. So previous to that, we were a public benefit corporation, and we still are. We work in tandem with each other as sister companies within this space. But the public benefit corporation never took donations. Everything, any fiscal contribution that the PBC had was either from... direct to consumer sales on our website, our wholesale offerings, like if you go to Ron John and you see our products there, or through our partnership programs, which have really exploded over the last year or two. And that's pretty much it. That's where our revenue streams come from. And all of that revenue 100% goes in one way or another to fighting the ocean pollution crisis that we fight day in and day out. Now, might be admin teams, might be keeping the lights on here at the shop. It might be in disposal fees. It might be fuel for assets. So, you know, it goes in every which way that would support this mission overall. But donations are a new thing. And glad that you gave me the opportunity to speak on that.

SPEAKER_03: 37:48

Yeah, okay, that's awesome. Do you all get government grants at all?

SPEAKER_01: 37:53

So we do have some government contracts in place. So like I said, City of Boca, we have an invitation to bid that we were awarded. We remove between 20,000 and 30,000 pounds of debris from Boca waterways every single year. And we would love to do that more. A lot of that is educating these municipalities that this type of service even exists.

SPEAKER_04: 38:15

And

SPEAKER_01: 38:15

then helping them understand how they want to put that bid out to begin with, because it could just be, hey, we want someone to come to the city of Fort Lauderdale and remove debris. But they might not understand that you could also ask for that material to be processed a certain way. You could also ask for certain documentation and data and GPS tracking. And so that you could get that to drive that. You know, municipal legislation to drive different programs that they have in place to educate the community and the constituents that they have on different things that they can do. So there is the ability to offer a service above and beyond just the debris removal themselves. And that's what we're working on now is trying to get in front of these different cities and say, hey. Did you know that there's a service that we offer? And this is what we can do to kind of bolster your city's ESG goals. And we can be a turnkey solution for you.

SPEAKER_03: 39:14

Wow. So if you have oceanfront property, how many miles out do you have to go until it becomes federal versus city versus state? Are you familiar with any of that stuff?

SPEAKER_01: 39:26

So great, great question again. We really focus on everything that is here at the shoreline. When we have done the kind of analytics on taking a larger vessel way offshore to remove the plastic, sometimes it's hard to find. It will also be within like sargassum seaweed, which a lot of like turtle hatchlings will use that for protection. So when you're getting into the natural sargassum seaweed environment, It makes it very difficult to remove the plastic that's within it. And what we find is the carbon footprint, the cost associated with that, and the amount of plastic that we get back to shore is much less than if we concentrate on what is basically being brought in from high tide. So high tide will come in. It will deposit a ton of trash on the coastline. And we have X amount of hours to go retrieve it before it comes back to remove it. Also, the intercoastal waterways, any rivers, all of those waterways, if we can collect it there before it has an opportunity to get to the ocean, that's a very high focus of ours.

SPEAKER_03: 40:34

Yeah. How is AI affecting, whether it's positively or negatively or both, if you have situations, how is that coming into play for you guys?

SPEAKER_01: 40:44

Yeah, so there have been some AI companies that we've spoken to, and one of the things that they're able to do It's kind of in a real time track where it's at. The problem is by the time that we get to it, the plastic is moved. It's very migratory. It's based on winds, currents, conditions. So weather, you know, absolutely plays a large part in that. So what we find is Nothing is better than just having teams in the areas that we've already identified as hotspots and just picking it up as they're finding it live. Unfortunately, we never have a problem finding trash. So it's never been an issue where we're kind of trying to diversify how we find it. It's just there. It's there and it's everywhere.

SPEAKER_03: 41:30

Wow. It reminds me of the Disney world. story of their trash. I don't know if you ever watched the beginning makings of it, but Walt Disney, his theory was, I don't want to be able to walk the length of eating a hot dog and not reach a garbage can. Smart man. His vision on the garbage. But I've talked, I talked to a guy, I need to actually get him on this show. He has an environmental engineering company and one of his contracts is Disney. And he was explaining to me, and I wonder if this is applicable, probably not because of how you said the trash moves, but they're using GPS and satellite to track garbage. And that's why when you go to a place as large as Disney, you can try as hard as you want, but you can't find garbage on the ground. Then the weird part is you can't find anybody cleaning it up either. So you're like, how are those two things happening? But is there a sense looking out like, Can we ever get there? Can you ever pull up a screen and see a bunch of dots and this is live time where the trash is in the bottom of the floor?

SPEAKER_01: 42:42

I sure hope we can. And then I also hope that we're able to put whatever that technology is that exists to allow us to do that, that we use that for the purpose of just trying to work on shutting off the tap. So we look at this as imagine if you have a broken faucet that you can't turn off, right? And it's overflowing. So we look at it as we're the mop. We're cleaning up the water that's coming out of the sink or out of the tub, but we're never going to be able to mop up all that water to where that faucet being on isn't an issue. There's no silver bullet for that. And while we know that we're having a positive impact, this cannot be and will never be the end all be all. This is just a stop gap. Obviously, while you're cleaning up with the mop, you want someone trying to fix and turn off that faucet. And then those efforts will kind of meet in the middle. So that's kind of our thought process. Ultimately, the plastic industry has a lot of things that they need to work through in order for there to be seismic shifts within this space. Number one, the plastic is being produced each and every year, regardless of there being a demand. So that's something that I think people don't necessarily understand. Most things are driven by supply and demand. There's a supply, you make it. Plastic is kind of the opposite. They're looking for things to make from plastic because the supply is basically completely fiscally subsidized by the petroleum industries. And it's a byproduct of refining those petroleum materials. So it's basically like for anyone who's at a saltwater tank, you have a protein skimmer, that kind of skimmer, gives that foam off the top. Or if you've ever seen like a jacuzzi, a hot tub, you'll get all that foam at the top. Yeah. That's plastic when you're refining petroleum. And so it's ultimately free. And so that's why it's really hard to get people to buy into recycling and to use post-consumer recycled materials because it's added cost for a material that might not be as easy to extrude because it's dirty. It's contaminated, has some UV degradation. It's already been dyed a certain color. It's been, you know, it was a gas tank or an oil container or a vegetable oil container. So it's got some type of interaction with some chemical already at that point. And so virgin plastic is sometimes just easier to use. So I always say we have to vote with our wallets. If there is a pair of shorts that's made from virgin plastic polyester and there's a pair of shorts that says it was made out of 13 recycled water bottles, maybe five dollars more for those shorts. But if people don't vote with their wallet, then the companies who are trying to be pioneers in that space and do the right thing, they're not being encouraged or rewarded to do so and so there are some solutions that are in place that if we don't exercise them and adopt them then we're kind of telling people that we're not interested in it and that's going to hurt us so um but instead of you making single-use plastic if they made plumber which is basically like plastic lumber if you're seeing decking material you know let's use the fact that plastic never ever goes away. And that's another misconception. People say, Oh, it degrades in two to 400 years. No, it doesn't. It's just become such a small piece of material at that point that it's kind of out of sight, out of mind. It's gone. It's not gone. It's still there. It's just, you know, microscopic microplastic at that point. So if we're going to make this plastic regardless and it lasts forever, Let's just start to make things that we want to last for a really long time. Roof tiles, park benches, you know, every single place that there's a deck, anything that's currently made out of wood right now, two by fours, any of that. I would love to see that being made out of this plastic. So now we're using it to our advantage. Hey, this is going to last two to four hundred years. be really cool if this roof lasted two to 400 years instead of making it out of materials that are going to end up in a landfill in 20. So that's some of the things that we need to do to really curb some of the issues that we're dealing with. And then people need to just adopt it. And I always tell people, look, you're not going to listen to this podcast and then make all of these changes overnight, right? There's a Morgan Wallen song, like one thing at a time.

SPEAKER_00: 47:14

So

SPEAKER_01: 47:15

I don't want anybody to take away from this that you could never use a single-use plastic bottle ever again, never use plastic cutlery ever again, but you got that Yeti right there. Let's face it, that Yeti is keeping your drink cool or warm much better than a single-use plastic bottle. If you got that water from your fridge or that coffee, you made it at home, far less expensive than you having to go out and buy it for five bucks from from wherever you decide to get it from. So it's cheaper, it's more environmentally friendly, it's more convenient, and it's gonna be hot or cold an hour later when you sip from it. So why are people not doing it? And it's ultimately a matter of convenience. And so what we need to do is we need to make it convenient for people to do the right thing. Like you mentioned, there needs to be trash receptacles where people are. Wherever humans are, there's trash. And we need to have recycling right next to it because I've witnessed people, they'll have something that's recyclable. The recycling receptacle is 10 feet further and they're busy, they got a lot going on, whatever it is, but they'll put it into the one that is 100% going right to a landfill. And that item could have been recycled. So anytime that we're putting recycling receptacles, it has to be right next to a traditional waste stream receptacle. If there are friends or family that you know that don't use a reusable water bottle, buy them one for their birthday or for the holidays. Everybody has that weird fork that ended up in their drawer at home. They don't even know where it came from. Put it in your glove box. Put it in your lunchbox. Put it in your pocketbook. Whatever you need to do because single-use plastic cutlery is something that we could literally stop using yesterday, and it would impact nobody at all.

UNKNOWN: 49:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 49:10

And then straws, you know, using a plastic straw. You're using that Yeti without a straw. I have my reusable water bottle, no straw. So, you know, I don't know that the alternative, and I think sometimes the paper straw, it seemed like a good idea, but I think it worked against us because it was so bad at being a straw

SPEAKER_03: 49:29

that- There's my straw. I don't do it for the environmental reasons, but now you're teaching me there's another benefit to doing it that way, right?

SPEAKER_01: 49:43

Absolutely. I mean, that's interesting. Yeah. And like I said, the paper straw, there's not a personal, listen, I live, eat, breathe, trying to be as sustainable as possible. I really try to not use single use plastics. And there's some things I do that people will look at me and think I'm crazy, but I also hate a paper straw. Nobody likes a paper straw. And I think that that was something that made it where people felt extremely comfortable with now using a plastic straw and they'll die on that hill. And if a paper straw is the alternative, I mean, I'll give you your platform to argue, but the end thing is just don't use a straw at all or use a reusable bottle. Or use a metal or silicone straw. There are alternatives that are better than a paper straw.

SPEAKER_03: 50:37

Yeah, makes sense. All right, you guys are out there doing good all day, every day. I can't see anything negative in here, but I know the way the world works. And I know when I put out a show or an episode that I think is just all good. you'll get those people that'll comment in there.

SPEAKER_04: 50:55

Sure.

SPEAKER_03: 50:56

They'll find the little, you know, they'll find the little tiny hair fracture in the egg or whatever it is. Sure. Who's out there, who's fighting against you guys? Who doesn't want this to happen? Who's rooting against you? Who's picketing against you?

SPEAKER_01: 51:10

Or anybody. Yeah, I mean, thankfully, I've never had anybody outside of here picketing, but just as early as last week, so Saturday,

SPEAKER_04: 51:21

Mind

SPEAKER_01: 51:22

you, I'm on salary, right? So working a Saturday, I'm not being compensated extra for that, and that's okay. But I was working an event on Saturday, that was a few hour event that the city of Boca was hosting. And it was before a monster event that we were hosting that afternoon with Margaritaville here in Hollywood. And I still said, you know what, I'm going to show up to this because if there's an opportunity to talk to children, which I absolutely love because they haven't necessarily created their behaviors yet and it's easy to impact and influence them and inspire them. So I went. And we're handing out free swag and getting people stoked about the clean ocean movement and ultimately trying to make cleaning the ocean cool so that more people will do it. And we're there and a lady walks right up. Mind you, she grabbed a few of these bracelets, more than what would be used for just her. She grabbed five or six, so I imagine she's giving them out. And then while doing that saying, I heard you're nothing but a scam. And I think... People thought that was going to get a rise out of me. But I love the ability to have transparent conversations with people. And I said, listen, would you like to have a conversation now? And she's like, no, you know, I'm not prepared. There's other people around. And I said, I'll have this conversation right now in front of everybody. Are we perfect? No, nobody's perfect. Are we doing really good things? I think so. And anytime I have an opportunity to, you know, talk about and champion our teams, I'll do it. They're some of the hardest working people I've ever seen, what they are dealing with day in and day out. There are some videos that are out there that are on YouTube, very easy to find. We've reached out to those people and said, hey, we'd love to invite you to come and see what we do. And the truth of the matter is sometimes negative things go viral and the way that people are compensated for views and so forth, there are some people that put things about us that even if we proved to them that what they think is going on isn't or whatever, they've basically told us in his few words that they're gonna keep it on there because these videos are paying their mortgage and so be it. They always have an invite here. I would love for them to come out and see what we do. I don't know if it will change their thought process and their ways, but every single thing we do is completely photographed. More so, we just actually debuted a new app in the last few months that it won't allow photos from the camera roll of the device to be used. So they have to be taken while the cleanup is active within the app. It timestamps over it. It GPS stamps over the photo. So every photo now has a timestamp and a GPS stamp that's part of that photo and cannot be manipulated. And we understand our credibility is everything. And we're asking people to purchase these bracelets, which, by the way, are made now out of the debris. that we remove from the ocean. Wow, that's so cool. It didn't start that way. To be honest, when we started, they were made out of post-consumer recycled materials, and it just served as an awareness piece initially, and that's what it was. But over the years, we were able to kind of crack the code on what materials do we find are not degraded to the point that they could still become fine thread and still go through extruders.

UNKNOWN: 54:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 54:59

Like this one in particular, not only is this made from all of the water bottles, but in this is inset with derelict fishing gear and nets that we've pulled out of John Penny Camp State Park. you know, something like this, this bezel is inset with microplastics that we have actually removed from the ocean. And we have one that also contains the tire crumb from the tires that we've removed from Osborne, which we spoke about earlier in the

SPEAKER_03: 55:25

seventies.

SPEAKER_01: 55:26

Exactly. So ultimately we want people to wear these, be proud to wear them. We want them to be conversation starters because you never know the spider web of, you know, behaviors that change downhill from conversations when they're able to happen.

SPEAKER_03: 55:43

That's awesome. So I didn't catch that, that they're made from actual recycled products.

SPEAKER_01: 55:49

Every bracelet now is made out of material that we've removed from the ocean.

SPEAKER_03: 55:54

That's so cool. Let me read this. This is fascinating. I've recently read that it would take 80,000 years to clean up all the particles of ocean plastic pollution using today's conventional methods. So... I'm going to ask you, are there any are there any speed up solutions that you guys think about, talk about barriers or like help me understand that?

SPEAKER_01: 56:18

Yeah, I mean, ultimately, like I said, people need to that number is going to keep increasing if we keep using plastic every year. The latest stats are something about. Let me see. I had this written down. 14 million metric tons of plastic are entering the ocean annually. So, you know, 80% of what's in the ocean came from land are the estimates. 20% are being derived from ocean activities, whether it be derelict fishing gear and other maritime industries, but 80% of it is originating on land. And so understanding that using less and then being more, a little bit more responsible with it. So, you know, back in my day, it was, if you bring it into the woods or to the beach, whatever you pack in, you pack out. And I think we've kind of strayed away from that a little bit because some of the plastic that we're finding on these beaches, it's like, who brought this here? Why is this here? And if you brought it here, sure. Why didn't you bring it with you? Why didn't you take it back? So that's something that that's a conversation where we just need to have that with ourselves and say, A lot of us just aren't doing the right thing. And that's going to go a long way in it. I think a lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about recycling. So that is underutilized, where that's something that we could do to leverage the existing technology that's out there in a better way. You know, some people will say, oh, I don't want to clean this out. I don't want to have to remove the label. So I'm just going to throw it away. But, you know, If they reach out to their local recycler, they might find out how it is here. You can actually throw a single-use water bottle out with a label, with some contents still inside, with the cap on it, and with that trim ring still on it. They're going to put it into a system that is going to blend it, and then they're going to put it through a wash tank where the HTP materials will float. and the PET will sink. And so they have a way to separate the label, the bottle and the cap with infrastructure that already exists. But people think that they have to do these processes beforehand. And so that becomes a hurdle for them to just do it in the first place and they don't. So I would encourage everybody, Let's find out and leverage the technology that's already being used in the areas that we live and that we work because you might find that it's way easier to recycle than you think and that ultimately there's technology in place that we're just under utilizing. In addition to that, there are companies that are out there and while their methods are different than ours, we look at them as brothers and sisters in the space and we recognize that Everyone has different methods. So there are companies that are going out with these massive boats, massive trawlers to where, you know, they're going out to these patches of debris, which, by the way, it's not just an island of debris that's out there like people think. It's soup. It's literally like soup within the ocean. There's a ton of plastic, but it's not just all in one spot to be able to just go there and clean it up. But There are companies that are using different machinery and larger vessels than we are. But like I said, we really feel like we found kind of our niche is hands on local to coastlines, low carbon footprint, small vessels, and really that human to trash hands on connection. But there are other companies. technologies that are out there there are harbor and marina skimmers that are like sea bins that are put in that are kind of like the filter you have in a pool that you'll pull out that crate you know every it'll be full of leaves they have things like that for the ocean those are being used in conjunction with our methods and other methods that are out there there are um we have a what we call the pixie drone but it's ultimately a roomba for the ocean so It's a drone that you put in the water. It's got a camera on it. It has a typical remote, like an airborne drone. And we're able to go around and collect plastic with it that's kind of hard to reach. Or if it's in an area that's not a navigable waterway where we can't deploy a vessel to it. So yeah, there are technologies that are out there and they're getting better and better every day. But ultimately that human touch and just trying to use less and using the infrastructure that's in place is probably our best foot forward at the moment.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:54

Yeah. What about the river systems that feed the oceans? Is there anything that can, like what can change there?

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:00

Thousand percent. Yes. So we were in Guatemala for many years. For four years we were there, we removed over 4 million pounds. And most of that primarily was coming from the Rio Matagua. So what happens is there are times where there's not a lot of rain and plastic will accrue all along the banks of the Rio Matagua. And then they'll have flash flooding. And what will happen is that will then pick up all of the plastic and then bring it down the river where there have been times where we've removed 20,000 pounds in about two days from our plastic intercepting boom that was there in the Rio Matagua. Whatever we don't catch, unfortunately, goes out the mouth of the Rio Matagua and ends up in the Caribbean Sea, a lot of which ended up back on the coastlines in an area called San Francisco del Mar, which we had a team there for many, many years. And there was a time that I visited Guatemala where that entire coastline was so littered with plastic that you could not see the water. You saw waves. It looked like a wave pool, like at your favorite water park, But you couldn't see water. It was just plastic. And then six months would go by where we would have teams of 20 to 30 going out there every day, backbreaking work in the heat, in just that relentless sun. Whatever rain would come down, they were working through it all. And they would fill up super sacks and they would remove hundreds of thousands of pounds of debris from that beach. wouldn't be another piece of trash on that beach and then two weeks would go by and it was like they had never been there at all and you couldn't see the water again and it was wild so we went through that cycle many times over the four years that we were there and we brought enough awareness to the space that the non-profit the ocean cleanup also came to that region and And they put in these massive multimillion dollar booms that were a little bit outside of what we were able to implement in that area. They're a nonprofit. They have some amazing supporters who have thrown tens or hundreds of millions of dollars towards their NGO. And so they put in these massive boom systems on either side of our boom that are now collecting so much trash that it allowed us to kind of refocus our efforts in different regions now. And it was great that we were able to bring that area to light and kind of put it on a world map for other NGOs to say, wait a minute, this is a huge problem. It's great that you've identified it. It's great that you've been working there. We would like to come there and work there as well. And so now we're looking for new regions that we could have this massive impact and redirect those efforts from the Rio Matagua now that we feel like that's being properly managed to other areas. And right now, we're mostly focused in Indonesia. Super cool story there. We started to implement some boom systems there, which we call plastic intercepting booms. And the team... I'll never forget it. I came into work and they said, check out what we did. And they found derelict fishing gear and derelict nets and they rebranded them. They painted them. They rebuilt them, took them apart, restrung them. And within 24 hours of pulling out that stuff, that was at that point a threat to all aquatic life.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:40

They rebuilt it and turned it into a boom system, had it in a river. And within 24 hours of initially pulling it out, it was in the ocean or in the river intercepting, about 500 pounds of plastic per day that now is not reaching into the ocean. Yes. So, you know, we always talk about, you know, people think recycling is the first thing to do. The first thing is refuse. The second thing is to reuse or repurpose if you had to use it in the first place. And then the third thing is recycling if you had to use that plastic in the first place so that just embodies everything that we stand for here at 4ocean to see them repurpose what was once a threat just a day prior and now it's been removing 500 pounds average per day and um globally we're removing 16 000 pounds on average of debris out of the ocean rivers and coastlines day in and day out Day in and

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:41

day out. Day in and day

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:42

out. We're averaging right between.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:43

16,000 pounds. Draw a picture of it. Is it a pickup truck full? Is it five pickup trucks full? Give me a feel for what 16,000 pounds is.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:51

Yeah. So one 55-gallon bin is 13 pounds. So when you talk about 16,000, it's a lot. Wow. They always say Americans are... Good at using anything but the metric system, right? So we measure things and it would stand up and be 17 Empire State Building. We're really good at doing that. It's hard to conceptualize that visually. 16,000 pounds, I could tell you, it's a lot. The other day we pulled 300 pounds out on Monday and it filled an entire 10 by 10 tarp. You couldn't see any of the tarp. It was just full of debris as we were sorting. So it's a lot. And we're averaging that day in and day out across all of our fleet. The first million pounds we ever removed took us 18 months. And now when I started here in August of 2019, I'll never forget. We have a ticker. like a live ticker and it was reading 6 million pounds. And now here we are, we're at 40, 42. We're pulling between six and 7 million pounds out per year. And because of our partnership programs, we're hoping to get those numbers up and try and double them here in the next year or so. You know, our partners are kind of really helping us exponentially grow our operations. So big shout out to them. They are directly funding expanded cleanup operations in some of these new regions that we're identifying.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:23

Yeah. Do politics play a role in this at all? Does it matter who's in or who's out?

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:30

You know, the issue at its core is, is bipartisan as anything, right? This is a human issue. Good. They're doing, you know, research on people's brain and on their blood, and they're finding microplastic in 100% of the brain matter and of the blood that they're analyzing. So not only are we eating plastic, I think it's something like a credit card's worth of plastic per month or something that each human is ingesting, but plastic is a petroleum product. So whatever chemicals are in that plastic, we're also leaching and absorbing as we're consuming these items. So, no, I hope that politics don't play a part. They do. You know, like I bought a Tesla and, you know, there's a lot of people that will say that that was amazing. That was for the environment. And then there's just as many people saying, you know, mining the lithium batteries and you have to drive it so much before it will work. start to have a payoff of just using you know an ice an internal combustion engine vehicle and and my argument to that is i didn't necessarily get it to be environmentally friendly i got it because i just loved the vehicle and what it's capable of but yeah if nobody adopts these things that are not perfect but are progress then we're never going to get to that area where it's on a large enough scale that it could have the impact and influence that we hope that it has. So that was my driving force. We say at 4ocean all the time, never let progress, or I'm sorry, never let perfection get in the way of progress. And that's what these EVs are now. Are they perfect? No. Are they the end-all be-all solution? No. They have their uses and there's some things that they have that are significant drawbacks and they're not for everybody, but I bought one to just play my part in adopting it because somebody has to take that first step or we'll just never get to that end result that we're complaining that it's not already today.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:35

Yeah, that's a great point. All right, last Four Ocean question, then I want to ask you a couple more personal questions. Sure. So you finished this podcast today. You get a knock on your door. It's a donor who says, here's$100 million. Do as you please. How do you deploy that?

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:57

That is an excellent, excellent question. I mean, ultimately, it would be a rapid expansion of our full-time captains and crews. That is at the core of what we do. They are out there busting their butts, grabbing every piece of non-organic debris that they could find. So identifying regions where we know we could have massive impact and we would literally just grow. And there's CapEx that's involved in that. So we need to understand that. Wherever we go, we're going there because it's trashy, which means there's a lack of infrastructure. And oh, by the way, that lack of infrastructure now causes some significant burdens for us and what we're able to do with the debris that we're collecting in these regions. So we're not going to places where there's all of these responsible methods of disposal. We're going to the exact opposite. So that's something that we have at the very top of our understanding when we're looking for new areas. We know there's going to be a lack of infrastructure, but how much of a lack of an infrastructure and how much is that going to burden us? But ultimately, we want to get more boots on the ground You know, so that would be exactly what a majority of that would go to would be rapid expansion of our full time captains and crews that are the backbone and lifeline of the clean ocean movement here for ocean.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:23

All right. How do you mention the word hotspot a couple of times? I think it's I think it's pretty obvious. It's where you recognize a bunch of trash, a bunch of breakdown in infrastructure. How do you go about recognizing or finding that then? You're just making phone calls? Are you putting emails out? How do you find hotspots?

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:42

Yeah, so the hotspots for us have been just we've been in these same areas for so long that we know exactly what's going on. And I remember to call back to our time in Guatemala, they would know. they would have about 24 hours of heads up. So as soon as they were getting a certain amount of rain in Guatemala City, which was way upriver from where we were, they would know that about 24 to 36 hours later, there were going to be droves of plastic coming down and they would get ready for that. They would deploy the teams. They would bring additional booms and resources assets to those locations, understanding that, hey, this is kind of our Super Bowl and we're going to need to, you know, need to get in this water and remove it. Same for Bali. Their rainy season, which is about to end over there, that's where they make a majority of their impact. And so these teams know the trends, the weather patterns, how rain impacts these things, and they're on it. They are just consummate professionals on understanding how environmental changes will impact them, where the wind's coming in from, what the ocean and the currents are doing, and they're on it. So a lot of the hotspots have been identified just through brute force and understanding of the work that we've done to date. But we also do get tagged on social media or phone calls or emails, and we try to respond to those when we're in the area and have the ability to do so.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:16

Yeah. All right. I want to focus on you for a little bit and find out when do you drive home from work frustrated? And when do you drive home from work going, oh my gosh, we got to celebrate.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:34

Yeah. There's probably any given day could be any of those times. Sometimes you know, what just is soul crushing is we'll be out here. And when we're doing clean emissions here, these aren't short days. These are 12 and 14 hour days where we're driving down to the keys. We're bringing four or five boats in tow. We're bringing a whole crew down there and we'll come up and I'll be on the highway, like you're saying. And I will literally see somebody take, you know, their fast food cup and just throw it out the window. And I can't tell you, it's just, gut wrenching to see something like that, that, you know, knowing that we have these issues, knowing that it's affecting all of us on a, on a brain and blood level that they're finding this microwave stick and then seeing people still in, in, in 2025, just with no care, knowing that they're doing it in front of everybody and just taking that stuff and throwing it right out a window. It sometimes makes you feel like you're on this treadmill that's speeding up and it's never going to slow down or stop. So some of those moments, um, hurt. When I go to places that seem like they're trying to do the right thing and there's just a nuance or two that are just making it not the right thing. So like there are places where I'll purposely go to places that are selling water and aluminum that are using paper instead of plastic. Some places will automatically put all of your food in a to-go container. And if you eat it there, you're throwing away that to-go container there, or you're taking it home just because it's, again, convenient versus having to wash those plates or pack it for the people who don't finish their meal. And so when I see that, and I'll go to a place that has aluminum that they're using, but they only have one garbage can, So now, yes, you're using and potentially selling something that's more responsible, but you don't have a recycling receptacle here. Some of the people that work there or that go there are going there because you're using that aluminum versus plastic. But I would rather you use plastic and put it in a recycling bin than use aluminum and not put it in a recycling bin. So I think that ultimately, you know, the whole recycling industry is kind of in place to confuse people. And it, and it's done a very good job of that. So like, if you look on the bottom of anything plastic, it'll have what people think is a recycling symbol. It's not, it's a resin code. And that resin code was strategically made to look like a recycling symbol, but it's not, it's just no way. Yeah. So people will go and they'll buy something and they'll say, Hey, I put out curbside containers every week. And anything that has this recycling symbol on the bottom, I wash out. I put it in there. I'm doing everything right. And because of that, they have no reason to not use that plastic because I'm doing the right thing. I put it out for recycling. I wash it out, whatever they do. And so there's no kind of onus to change their behavior. But... none of that stuff necessarily means that it can be recycled. So primarily resin code, not recycling code, resin code one is PET. Resin code two is HDPE. Then you have LDPE, which is by nature, the material itself is absolutely recyclable,

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:13

but the

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:13

form factor it's in Nobody wants to touch it with a 10-foot pole because it gums up all of their machines and causes significant issues at the MRF, which is the material recovery facility that all of these large infrastructure waste haulers are using. So think of a shredder that you have for like a paper shredder at home. Now think of that on an industrial scale that's massive. And when the plastic bags get in it, it gums them up. They have to put a human being inside it to clear it, which means lockout keys. It's shutting down every part of the... you know before and after within that that factory so to speak everything has to shut down for a human being to have to go into this remove it there's all these processes in place so they just don't want it at all even though that ldp is absolutely recyclable as a bag nobody wants to deal with it same with straws straws are made out of a material that are by nature recyclable but in that form factor it'll just gum up the machines or fall through the sorting machines and tables that they have The other one that's very in high demand right now is resin code five, which is polypropylene, PP. That's your coffee, clear coffee cups that everyone's getting every morning from, you know, your weapon of choice. And so people think this has a resin code seven underneath. Oh, it's recyclable. It's really not. And the codes... really could never become, that material could never become that code or a code above it ever again. So usually resin code one PET bottle, if it's recycled, it'll usually end up becoming a lower resin code because it's either being mixed with other materials or it's being, you know, commingled with something where it could become like a roof tile or a park bench where aluminum could become itself over and over again. But resin codes, not so much. It usually has to become a lower resin code. Like sixes and sevens are just at that point, a myriad and a mix of a ton of ones, twos, threes and fours and so forth.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:18

Yeah. Is the job physical?

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:22

It can be very physical. You know, a lot of times we're in waist-deep water. If we're dealing within mangroves, it's hot. It's hot as could be. We're, you know, I think that's the biggest, you know, physical thing is that we're just working in an environment that is hot and it's day in and day out. So yeah, it can be very physically demanding. And then of course, if you're removing 16,000 pounds, you're now moving 16,000 pounds. And then when you get back, now you're sorting through it piece by piece. It's very labor intensive.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:58

Yeah. Mostly retired people that work there, people out of school, mix of everything. Who's

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:04

the right candidate? The right candidate is somebody who is absolutely just passionate and enthusiastic about doing the right thing. Unfortunately, if you're in this business as a cleanup crew member, for the money, you're not going to last long because it's such a hard job. Like any job where a teacher, first responder, those are labors of love, right? There's no teacher that's going to tell you that they're a teacher because they're rolling in dough. It's quite the opposite. They're trying to be there to inspire and change people and help people. And every single person that's on our team, they're here Right. Right. your child have drawn a picture of you in a four ocean shirt on the beach. And they're like, Oh, you know, look at this is dad saving the world, saving the ocean. Um, and that's what we're all here doing it for is, um, just trying to inspire people and, um, make people aware of the issues. And it's just something we're truly passionate about.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:25

Yeah. It's incredible. All right. Well, one hour and 20 minutes and i could stay on for four hours with you i mean it just i mean never ceases to amaze me just blows my mind what people do how they do it why they do it i mean it's this is incredible this has been eye-opening um to say the very least so i want to say thanks for your time i'd love to shake your hand if you were here but we'll get to meet and thank our good friend um I wanna say thanks to Keith as well for introducing us.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:57

Keith, he's a large part of really encouraging me and how I was able to recognize this niche while I was in the dive industry. I mean, ultimately, I didn't have a lot of buy-in when I first did this. The dive industry in itself, it's hard work. And so when I added like, hey, let's also do a beach cleanup. Let's do shoreline cleanups. Let's do all of these things. You know, a lot of the people that were already working 10 and 12 hour days, I didn't get much buy-in from my coworkers. But Keith came into the shop and he was like, hey, if you ever do a beach cleanup or anything, like I don't need anything. I don't need money. I'll volunteer my time. And- A lot of that coming to life and a lot of me getting that to happen was 100% Keith on his free time helping me. And yeah, no, big credit to Keith for encouraging me and supporting me and helping me through what could have just been an idea that never came to fruition. But now here we are, you know, so many years later. And now I'm impactful and able to work with teams that have removed millions of pounds. And it all started back then with Keith.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:03

Yeah. Yeah. And then he comes full circle where you're the couch story in his story.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:09

You're the

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:10

couch that was the couch story in his story. And now he's going back to you going, hey, you should go on this podcast. So it's just so neat to watch it all work. I agree. I want to really say thanks for taking the time here and wish you guys all the best down there. And we'll be in touch.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:26

Absolutely. I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:28

Yeah, I appreciate it. As a reminder, Ben, stay on. It's over.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:31

Perfect.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:32

Stay on for a couple minutes here. Um,