Hear how they help! Blue Frontier's David Helvarg Rising Tide - The Ocean Podcast & Natasha Benjamin Filmmaker Sequoias of the Sea

In this episode, meet American award-winning journalist David Helvarg & Natasha Benjamin of the Ocean conservation and policy group, Blue Frontier in the San Francisco Bay Area and hosts of Rising Tide, The Ocean Podcast. 

David is an Award-winning American journalist, author, and an environmental activist. 

Natasha is a Peabody-award winning filmmaker whose documentary Sequoias of the Sea is being created Ana Blanco, the Executive Director of the International Ocean Film Festival. 

That’s up next, right here on Resilient Earth where we talk about critical issues and positive actions. 

Radio show and podcast Produced by Planet Centric Media (a 501 c) 3) non-profit) and Sea Storm Studios, Inc. at KGUA public radio studios on the South Mendocino Coast in Northern CA.

Music is Castle by The Sea from the ballet The Sea Princess created by Eric Allaman, an international composer and pianist living in the Sea Ranch, on the North Sonoma Coast in CA.

KGUA Public Radio Sonoma & Mendocino CA
KGUA 88.3FM is an independent public media station located in Gualala, CA on the Northern CA coast.

Planet Centric Media (non-profit)
Media production company promoting and creating community unity and environmental issues and action.

Mendonoma Whale & Seal Study
Founded by Scott & Tree Mercer to document the occurrence, diversity, & behavior of marine mammals.

Sea Storm Studios, Inc.
An audio/visual production company in the Sea Ranch, CA (US)

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Transcript

01;05;32;26 - 01;06;12;21
Speaker 1
Welcome to Resilient Earth Radio, where we host speakers from the United States and around the world to talk about critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking. I'm Leigh Anne Lindsey, producer and host, along with my co-producers and co-hosts, Scott and Tree Mercer of the Mendonoma Whale and Seal study. 

Today's guests are David Helvarg and Natasha Benjamin of the ocean conservation and policy group Blue Frontier in the San Francisco Bay area, and they are hosts of Rising Tide, The Ocean podcast.

01;06;12;24 - 01;06;53;03
Speaker 1
David is an award winning American journalist, author, and an environmental activist. 

Natasha is a Peabody Award winning filmmaker whose documentary Sequoias of the Sea is being created with Ana Blanco, the Executive Director of the International Ocean Film Festival. That's coming up next right here on Resilient Earth radio and podcast, produced by Planet Centric Media and Sea Storm Studios at KGUA, a public radio station on the South Mendocino Coast in Northern California.

01;06;53;05 - 01;07;19;27
Speaker 1
Music is Castle by the Sea from the ballet The Sea Princess, created by Eric Allman, an international composer and pianist who lives in the Sea Ranch on the north Sonoma coast.

01;07;19;29 - 01;07;45;22
Speaker 1
We are back with Resilient Earth Radio, where we are talking with people from all over about the positive things that they are doing for our environment, and for our planet. Today, we are talking with David Helvarg, who is the founder director of the Blue Frontier campaign. He's produced more than 40 TV documentaries that have been broadcast on PBS.

01;07;45;22 - 01;08;22;05
Speaker 1
He's author of six books and edited others. He wrote The Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide that was a first major publication of Blue Frontier. 

Natasha Benjamin is an associate director of Blue Frontier, and she's worked in ocean science, conservation and communications for over 20 years. She has a background in marine science, photography, and filmmaking, and is producing a documentary called sequoias of the sea with the executive director of the International Ocean Film Festival, Ana Blanco.

01;08;22;07 - 01;08;27;12
Speaker 1
Thank you both for joining us today here on Resilient Earth. Good morning.

01;08;27;15 - 01;08;29;11
Speaker 2
Yeah. Thank you. Leigh Anne.

01;08;29;13 - 01;08;31;18
Speaker 3
Good morning. Great to be here.

01;08;31;21 - 01;08;40;27
Speaker 1
Good to see you again. So tell me a bit about what Blue Frontier does. And when you got it started David.

01;08;40;29 - 01;09;09;17
Speaker 2
Okay. Well, Blue Frontier has been around for 21 years now. Hard to believe, but, you know, I've always been interested in the ocean. And finally, took the last many years of journalism to write my second book. First book was called The War Against the Green Stories about the environmental backlash of the 90s. Finally, I got to some time later write Blue Frontier about the state of the US oceans.

01;09;09;25 - 01;09;34;25
Speaker 2
And shortly after it came out, I got a call out of the blue from Ralph Nader, who read the last chapter. It's called the Seaweed Rebels, basically marine grassroots people who were working on solutions, but the solutions were at the local level. They needed to be scaled up. And he asked me if anyone else was working to herd wild starfish, as it were, and offered me to start a nonprofit.

01;09;34;25 - 01;09;56;00
Speaker 2
At the time, I had experienced loss. This was when George Bush Jr. was ginning up to invade Iraq. I was thinking of going back to war reporting as an antidote to depression. But I thought, well, we're also going to have wars. We may not always have kelp forest or coral reefs. And plus, I'd inherited a cat.

01;09;56;00 - 01;10;13;29
Speaker 2
I didn't know what to do with the cat if I went off to Iraq. So the cat who didn't even like getting her paws wet sort of was the determinant to commit the rest of my years to trying to protect our our blue planet.

01;10;13;29 - 01;10;42;17
Speaker 2
The first thing we did is try and identify all the citizen groups out there. We're now up to several thousand working on coastal and ocean protection. And now that our basic theme is, is protecting the coast, the oceans and the communities, both human and wild, that depend on them. And so we had a series of, Blue Vision summits bringing grassroots activists together with national leaders in DC, of agencies, senators, policymakers.

01;10;42;17 - 01;11;03;24
Speaker 2
This is there were two major ocean commissions that both had good recommendations that mostly were not followed. And over the following years, we tried to bring the pressure we could. In recent years, this involved partnering with the center for Blue Economy at the Middlebury Institute and building a coalition. When the Green New Deal came out, we saw there's no blue in it.

01;11;03;27 - 01;11;36;29
Speaker 2
So eventually we built a coalition and a movement that in 2020, we put out the Ocean Climate Action Plan. In 2022, President Biden put out the white House Ocean Climate Action Plan. That really mirrored the original plan. And we managed to get about $10 billion into the IRA climate bill earmarked for ocean and coastal works like 3 billion to, electrify our ports and 7 billion for restoration of coastal and offshore habitats, as well as resiliency for communities at risk.

01;11;37;01 - 01;11;59;01
Speaker 2
And today, we should have following up, Natasha and I, with what are some of the most critical ocean climate issues not being addressed or seen by the public? And of course, here in California, we've lost 95% of our kelp forests north of the Golden Gate. So Natasha's working on her film. I'm working on a book sort of look at the global state of kelp forests.

01;11;59;01 - 01;12;02;22
Speaker 2
And that and many other projects always underway.

01;12;02;25 - 01;12;27;15
Speaker 1
I was impressed, too, with the background that you had in Central America as a journalist. What you did back then, you were talking about covering wars and then you got into covering and caring about the environment. And look at how prolific you have been with all the publications you've done and the documentaries. And now this blue Frontier campaign, the billions you've raised.

01;12;27;17 - 01;12;41;09
Speaker 1
I'm so thankful you walked up to introduce yourself to me at the International Ocean Film Festival. You gave me one of your books, the most recent one, by the way, and could you just talk a little bit about that particular book?

01;12;41;12 - 01;13;11;08
Speaker 2
Yeah, the Golden Shore, California's A Love Affair with the sea because I spent some years in DC, moved back there 97 and came home to California in 2007. And we're always talking about the challenges the ocean faces from just, you know, oil, chemical nutrient, plastic pollution from oil spills and climate change and which is overheating and acidifying the ocean in ways that hasn't existed in millions of years.

01;13;11;08 - 01;13;34;21
Speaker 2
And so you have these massive problems. And people often would like, say, what can I do as an individual? So first you wrote a book, 50 Ways to Save the Ocean. When you do good for the ocean, it turns out generally to be good for you, for your health, for your well-being, for your sense of community. And at the same time, we have to grow our solutions faster than these massive problems.

01;13;34;23 - 01;13;52;13
Speaker 2
So I came on to California. I thought, wait a minute, were 40 million people were the world's fourth largest economy? We're doing really good by our coast and ocean. And so this book is sort of looking at all the reasons. And one of the key ones I came to conclude is because we sort of have a democracy of blue interests.

01;13;52;13 - 01;14;15;08
Speaker 2
Californians have the sense of entitlement to the ocean, but we're not like single industries. Coastal oceans decay, where single industry or special interests dominate. So in Louisiana, it's oil and gas. In Florida, it's the developers. And and in New England, the politicians think the fishermen own the ocean. That's why there's no cod off Cape Cod anymore. California. We have the Navy.

01;14;15;08 - 01;14;41;08
Speaker 2
We have the surfers. We have the ports and shipping. We have the research community and the homeowners who are committed. And and so it's like a family. We argue over something we love, but we tend to come out with good end points. And that's why California leads and things like reading ports, movement that started in the LA Long Beach Basin, where fenceline communities of color were suing the port and nothing was being done about the pollution.

01;14;41;10 - 01;15;04;27
Speaker 2
They brought in not only the first woman, but the first marine biologist to run the port. And within six years, they had a cleaner action plan that reduced pollution 70%. Because the pollution went down, the lawsuits went away. The port terminals were able to expand. And so the economy improved with $1 billion a day of of goods and services crossing those docks.

01;15;04;29 - 01;15;46;12
Speaker 2
So California sort of proof that by doing good for the coast and ocean, you do good for your communities, both economically and quite frankly, spiritually. Everybody, you know, you protect what you love. And people having that access that we developed with the Coastal Commission. And so it's kind of a pean to, the history and how we went from a late marine frontier with a lot of rough justice and injustice and killing of whales and otters to becoming a world leader in protecting our coast and ocean and unfortunately, as good as a model of California is, we got sideswiped with this marine heatwaves that took out our kelp.

01;15;46;14 - 01;16;04;06
Speaker 2
And like Congressman Jared Huffman, who I interviewed for both books, talks about, you know, this is something that we didn't expect. And now we're having to adapt and adjust and that's what, I think inspired Natasha to to begin work on sequoias of the sea.

01;16;04;09 - 01;16;17;27
Speaker 1
Thank you for all of those points, too. And I just want to give a shout out to Richard Charter, bodega Bay senior fellow with the Ocean Foundation. All of the work that he has done over the decades write.

01;16;17;28 - 01;16;32;20
Speaker 2
A winner, our Peter Benchley Ocean Awards, which were kind of the Academy Awards for the Ocean. They went into hibernation in 2017, and they're coming back to life next May and, 2025 at the National Aquarium.

01;16;32;23 - 01;16;38;05
Speaker 1
And we'll be right back right after this message.

01;16;38;07 - 01;17;12;27
Speaker 4
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01;17;12;29 - 01;17;21;28
Speaker 4
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01;17;22;00 - 01;17;29;22
Speaker 1
Back to resilient Earth Radio. Welcome, Natasha. I just love the phrase mermaid warrior.

01;17;29;29 - 01;17;56;07
Speaker 3
Yeah, I've been at this for a long time. It started a long time ago when I was a kid. My father took me snorkeling and that was it. I was hooked on the ocean, and I knew that I wanted to study and work and try to protect our oceans. As a kid, I just spent a lot of time in Florida in the keys, diving in the reefs down there, and watched that ecosystem change, which is kind of remarkable.

01;17;56;10 - 01;18;31;10
Speaker 3
We now know, you know, the Florida Keys has lost a tremendous amount of it's horrible. Yeah. But even 30 years ago, 30, 40 years ago when I was snorkeling, you could see the changes. The fish were getting smaller. You weren't you didn't see the beautiful staghorn corals anymore. And that has just continued, unfortunately. And then I moved out to California and started diving in our kelp forests here along the north coast, and then started to watch that ecosystem change, which was it happened even faster.

01;18;31;13 - 01;19;05;05
Speaker 3
As David and Leanne, you have both mentioned, this kelp forest loss is remarkable and we would never really seen anything like it. And what's even more remarkable is that most people, even in the ocean world, don't know about it. We've lost 95% of our bull kelp along the northern California coast, and this was due to a perfect storm of events, warm water, which triggered a disease that killed off the sea stars, which was the main predator for the purple urchins.

01;19;05;07 - 01;19;34;27
Speaker 3
The purple urchins took over, and it's been since 2014. 15. And we're not seeing kelp come back and I watch this happened. I started talking to folks and decided to bring my camera up to Mendocino and start filming. And I, Blanco and I and the director of the International Ocean Film Festival, and I started working together to try to tell this story, this really important local climate change story.

01;19;35;00 - 01;19;56;26
Speaker 3
This is an example of something that's happening all over the world, but we're focused on telling kind of our backyard story here, and we are in process. We are almost done filming, will hopefully be doing one more trip in the next couple of weeks, and we are editing and we hope to have the film out next year. And this kelp issue.

01;19;57;03 - 01;20;30;10
Speaker 3
David and I have been working together for years. I'm the associate director of Blue Frontier and realized that this is kind of one of our most important climate change stories, has gotten a lot of attention over the last 20 years. And, you know, rightly so. Like Kelp forest cover 25% of global coastlines and things are changing. And so now we're trying to bring awareness around this issue and talk about kelp as the new coral blue frontier.

01;20;30;10 - 01;20;38;16
Speaker 3
And David and I are working on building a kelp campaign with the film and the book to raise awareness around this issue.

01;20;38;19 - 01;21;01;13
Speaker 1
We just had our first Kelp Festival, and I talked with Celia Simmons, the executive director up at New Center for Marine Science, on one of our shows. About that, I was really glad to see that they pulled together a month long festival to educate and raise awareness about kelp and what had happened to the kelp along our coast.

01;21;01;16 - 01;21;25;06
Speaker 1
And I remember back in the mid 80s when I learned to scuba dive, I went to Monterey and I was diving through the kelp forests that were enormous and home to so much sea life, and they're just gone. Then I became an abalone diver, and then we've had issues with our abalone, but I haven't been a diver for a while.

01;21;25;07 - 01;21;52;03
Speaker 1
But when I was down there at the Ocean Film Festival and I was there because Scott and Tre, who do Mindanao Whale and Seal study, they study the traffic of whales along our coast. They also did that on the East coast. But we had sketched out the Resilient Earth Radio show in future podcast and to do more of my research, I saw this ocean film Festival and I was like, oh, I've got to go.

01;21;52;05 - 01;22;18;15
Speaker 1
And I learned so much from the panels alone. And then of course, all the fabulous films and then the people that I got to meet and the two of you. So I just felt it was very worthwhile, worth going to that and then to finally launch this show and to follow people like what you're doing. And it's so funny.

01;22;18;15 - 01;22;44;25
Speaker 1
I have never even heard of Sylvia Earle. And then the first documentary that I saw. By the time I got there, it was the one with her and Yo-Yo Ma. Yeah. And and I was blown away by her. And then Caro Driver, who works with her at Mission Blue, came up to me and the woman that was traveling with me to the event, she was coming down from Petaluma.

01;22;44;27 - 01;23;15;12
Speaker 1
I came down from the sea ranch and stayed in San Francisco. But that Cynthia Abbott, another filmmaker, and her foundation is the Every Second Breath Foundation. She won an Emmy for her three Ocean Advocates, and she really enjoyed being there and meeting all of you two. So Caro invited me to the two events after the film festival, and one was to the Environmental Awards at the opera House where I saw you guys again, and gold.

01;23;15;16 - 01;23;16;05
Speaker 2
Awards at.

01;23;16;06 - 01;23;17;05
Speaker 3
Goldman. Yeah, the.

01;23;17;05 - 01;23;39;26
Speaker 1
Goldman Awards, thank you. And there was Sylvia Earle up on stage again. And I was like, I'm so impressed with not only just her, but everybody that got up on that stage and everything that they were doing. And then to attend your event, the Blue Frontier event in Bolinas, celebration of the sea. And Sylvia Earle came to that in person.

01;23;39;29 - 01;24;00;06
Speaker 1
I got to hold her hand for just a moment, and I just I felt so honored. But thank you for putting that on and bringing her there. And Michael Stocker was there. He's been on our radio show and he's coming on next week again, as a matter of fact, to talk about sounds on the ocean. He was there playing a musical instrument.

01;24;00;09 - 01;24;23;07
Speaker 2
Yeah. Along with rambling Jack Elliot 93. It was like playing music for Sylvia. It was a very nice day on the beach because sometimes you just have to recharge yourself. Somebody said, how can you be optimistic? And I quoted Graham, she who said, you know, pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. I'm always a little more beyond concern.

01;24;23;09 - 01;24;45;22
Speaker 2
You know, we've entered the climate catastrophe phase of life on this planet, and it's major impact is being felt in a ever warming ocean and a warmer, more acidic ocean or less dissolved oxygen. We're seeing changes in the ocean. It literally haven't happened in millennia. And yet I'm heading down to San Diego to work. But also tomorrow I'll be body surfing.

01;24;45;22 - 01;25;05;24
Speaker 2
And whenever I come out of a session of body surfing or diving, seeing this this otherworldly, lives that we share this planet with, I can't help being optimistic. I always leave the ocean with a smile. So that keeps you recharged because you fight for what you love. And there's. There's just not enough people who like you or Natasha.

01;25;05;24 - 01;25;38;16
Speaker 2
I, who'd actually been in a kelp forest, you know, it's like Sherwood Forest. You know, the light streams down. There's multi levels of life. It's life in three dimensions. Yesterday I was talking on zoom with Craig Foster, who directed My Octopus Teacher. He's got a new book called Amphibious Soul, and he was talking about just all the differences between, you know, amazing differences between the California kelp forest and what he calls the African sea forest, which is fairly healthy.

01;25;38;16 - 01;26;08;02
Speaker 2
So, you know, at a global level, there's healthy forest, but still some species overfished in, in southern Africa and Chile, there's very healthy, Patagonia healthy kelp forest. But now, because of Chinese demand for kelp, for emulsifiers, cosmetics, there's an outlaw 80% of the kelp harvesting there. There's pirate harvesting where they're pulling out the hold fast and destroying the whole species at a time.

01;26;08;02 - 01;26;32;17
Speaker 2
So you have all these global challenges in, in LA, restoration is probably work better than anywhere else. They've they've restored 60 acres of kelp forest that was in there a decade ago. It's gotten back. Takes a lot of work in South Korea. They want to restore 30,000 acres by 2030. So I haven't reached out to them yet to find out how they hope to do that.

01;26;32;17 - 01;27;07;19
Speaker 2
But as I said, there'll be a chapter in my book called Kelp is the New Coral. And so of course, I talked to a couple of friends, one of them, Nancy Knowlton, one of the world's leaders on coral restoration. She says, yes, there are differences, but these are some of the largest, most biodiverse species and habitats on the ocean planet that are being severely impacted by heat, by the growing, marine heat waves generated because 90% of all the heat we put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is absorbed in the ocean.

01;27;07;21 - 01;27;26;07
Speaker 2
That's why the sea ice is melting. That's why the corals are bleaching. That's why we're losing kelp. And she talked about her own experience. She said it's very different when you're. And I could see it. She said when when you're in a coral reef, you're either above it or, you know, lateral position where you're going through it. With a kelp forest, it's like a forest.

01;27;26;07 - 01;27;38;10
Speaker 2
You're like in the center, trees looking up the canopy, looking down at roots. She says when she's on a coral reef, she feels like a fish. When she's in a kelp forest, she feels like a bird.

01;27;38;12 - 01;27;59;04
Speaker 1
Good analogy. And I just saw another news report where they pull out the ice cores and they study all the rings through thousands of years. And how rapid change has never happened before, like it is now. And we'll be right back right after this message.

01;27;59;07 - 01;28;41;10
Speaker 4
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01;28;41;12 - 01;29;06;01
Speaker 1
Welcome back to Resilient Earth Radio. One of the other things that I noticed was discussed a lot at the International Ocean Film Festival. That was at Fort Mason in San Francisco. They talked about MPAs. So the marine protected areas around the planet. There was a woman there giving a presentation. She's in charge of a lot of these MPAs.

01;29;06;06 - 01;29;19;16
Speaker 1
She was flying off to Greece that day. But that's also important to learn more about. What are these MPAs? How do you protect them? What are they doing to make a difference? I'm sure you can talk to some of that. David and Natasha.

01;29;19;19 - 01;29;25;18
Speaker 3
And you're referring to Sara Hamid with the Marine Conservation Institute. Sara Hamid.

01;29;25;19 - 01;29;26;23
Speaker 1
Hamid.

01;29;26;25 - 01;29;58;05
Speaker 3
Great and the Marine Conservation Institute has a global program recognizing marine protected areas around the world and giving them a status based on management and protection. We have these marine protected areas all over the world. Many of them are considered paper parks where they are on a map, but there's actually no enforcement. There's no monitoring that's happening. But we're really lucky here in California, we have some of the most highly managed, highly protected waters.

01;29;58;08 - 01;30;30;12
Speaker 3
California has kind of been a leader in the in the world, creating a network along the entire coast of marine protected areas, 124 separate protected areas that are all connected. And they were they were built as a network because fish don't know lines, larvae don't know lines and and boundaries. So we're very lucky here in California. There's a global movement right now to protect 30% of our land and waters by 2030.

01;30;30;13 - 01;30;33;11
Speaker 3
So this is the 30 by 30 initiative.

01;30;33;13 - 01;30;34;20
Speaker 1
She was talking about that.

01;30;34;20 - 01;31;05;23
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. And in California, we have 16% of our waters are considered marine protected areas. And there's different levels of management. But we know these marine protected areas and these underwater parks, these areas where we reduce fishing pressure, where we reduce human impact are critical. But as we've seen here in California, we have a network of marine protected areas, some of the most highly regulated in the world and protected.

01;31;05;25 - 01;31;25;20
Speaker 3
Yet we still lost 95% of our kelp forest in these same waters. So this is one of many tools. But in this new world of climate change and warming oceans and changing ocean conditions, we need more than marine protected areas. This is this is not it's not enough.

01;31;25;22 - 01;31;51;28
Speaker 2
We need to get off fossil fuels. And we needed to do it in 1988 when this issue was first globally recognized. As they say, if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. We haven't stopped digging, on the other hand, and I'm about to head south, talk about how California is still a leader in seeking solutions for ocean protection and to address climate locally.

01;31;52;01 - 01;32;20;03
Speaker 2
I live in Richmond, California, which is a predominantly low income communities of color. For 20 years we've had beautiful 400 acre headland called pine Melody that includes the healthiest, most pristine eelgrass beds, over 100 acres of eelgrass in the bay. And for 20 years we fought ridiculous schemes, first to build a mega casino there and then to sell it off for a high income condo development that nobody in Richmond could have afforded.

01;32;20;05 - 01;32;55;26
Speaker 2
In the end, while our former administration cut a bad deal with the failed casino developers to give them the development rights, but in the end, we just now, after 20 years of struggle, got an agreement where we're paying $40 million to make the failed developers go away so that we'll have East Bay regional Parks, will open up a world class regional park that will protect both the on shore native watersheds of of native grasses and wildlife, as well as the offshore eelgrass beds that are full of leopard sharks.

01;32;55;26 - 01;33;25;13
Speaker 2
And it's where the herring lay their eggs and, sea hares and and on onshore we that have a visiting mountain lion who keeps the mule deer alert. That $40 million. Four of it is from East Bay Regional Parks, and the other 36 million came from the state of California as part of their 30 by 30 initiative to, protect our lands and waters and in this case, to help out under parked, marginalized community, realized the world class kind of natural gem it is.

01;33;25;13 - 01;34;00;20
Speaker 2
And one of our Blue frontier projects is called the pine Melody Alliance. We've taken high school kids out there, and one time the health academy from Richmond High was doing water quality testing and one of the local Ospreys came down, grabbed a big fish while the kids spontaneously started cheering. And, you know, now this is like this is the possibilities to create these onshore and offshore protected zones because they're more naturally resilient, will have some additional resilience to the impacts we're seeing from climate and from loss of biodiversity.

01;34;00;22 - 01;34;06;04
Speaker 2
Healthy people are more resistant to disease. And the same goes for ecosystems.

01;34;06;07 - 01;34;43;20
Speaker 1
If you're just tuning in, you're listening to the voice of David Halverson, who is the founder director of Blue Frontier Campaign that he started over 30 years ago. He has written over six books and produced over 40 TV documentaries for PBS. He's journalist, private investigator. He's covered wars before Central America, Ireland, and he is here today talking with us on Resilient Earth Radio with Natasha Benjamin, his associate director of Blue Frontier.

01;34;43;22 - 01;35;12;02
Speaker 1
And they're both host of a podcast, too, called Rising Tide that we're now carrying on Sundays at 11:30 a.m. and PM. I'm Leanne Lindsay, host of Resilient Earth Radio morning show and afternoon shows, talk shows that are local here to our communities, and we're raising awareness about what the positive things that people are doing to address some very critical issues around our planet.

01;35;12;04 - 01;35;37;19
Speaker 1
And these two people are doing an amazing, amazing work towards that. We're talking about some of these protected areas, and I think that it was Sarah that was also talking about the Cordell Banks and the fair lawns and Natasha, you posted in one of your LinkedIn post about being on a panel with Maria Brown, who's the superintendent of that area.

01;35;37;22 - 01;35;41;03
Speaker 1
You were on a panel with her own World Ocean Day, I believe.

01;35;41;05 - 01;36;12;15
Speaker 3
Yes. Talking about all of these issues, about climate resilience and and how how we're kind of looking at the ocean in a different way. Not only does the ocean provide an enormous amount of oxygen that we need to breathe every second breath, we take comes from the ocean. It also sequesters an enormous amount of carbon. If the ocean wasn't healthy and sequestering all of that carbon, the temperature on the planet would be much, much higher.

01;36;12;18 - 01;36;32;12
Speaker 1
You know, when I was watching some of these Paul Watson videos to familiarize myself with this whole issue about him getting arrested in Greenland, and the connection we had was through sea Shepherd, because I had done an interview with Richard Ladd Kennedy, who had produced Sea of Shadows, and it aired up here at the Mendocino Film Festival years ago.

01;36;32;15 - 01;36;57;12
Speaker 1
Recently, Richard's been traveling with Jane Goodall, filming her, but Sea of Shadows showed the sea Shepherd and what they were doing in the Mexican waters. They're trying to fight the cartel down there because they were overfishing the vaquita, and because of the bladder that is used for a Japanese delicacy. Paul Watson in his videos he talks about how this is an ocean planet, and it does absorb all that carbon.

01;36;57;14 - 01;37;22;18
Speaker 1
We tend to think about our trees and how much carbon they sequester. But even when you look at just one blue whale, they can sequester up to 2000 trees over their lifetime. And that's a valuation that Ralph Twomey from an International Monetary Fund, and now he's doing Blue Green Future and Rebalance Earth Organization. He helps with valuation of our natural resources.

01;37;22;21 - 01;37;45;06
Speaker 1
Exactly what you were saying, Natasha, about what the ocean does and the inhabitants within it, the mangroves, the seagrass, all the stuff that's connected to our oceans. How much carbon they do. Sequester. And Richard Charter even mentioned it when he was talking about deep sea mining. And it will stir up all of that carbon sequestration.

01;37;45;09 - 01;38;07;27
Speaker 2
And literally a few days ago, the scientists just put out a report that they're discovering these manganese nodules generate what they call black oxygen, that their source of oxygen that, you know, it's like in the 1970s, we thought all life on Earth was photosynthetic. And then they discovered these these hydrogen sulfide, vents on the bottom of the ocean.

01;38;07;27 - 01;38;33;05
Speaker 2
And all this life around them that that actually lives off to us would be poisoned. But they have bacteria that convert it to chemosynthetic life exists in the universe as well as photosynthetic. And this is a similar discovery. We always thought oxygen came only from plants, and now we're discovering these nodules that they want to, like, mess with the deep ocean to turn into batteries actually are already batteries of life.

01;38;33;05 - 01;39;03;12
Speaker 2
They're generating oxygen. It's so amazing. You know, we're spending tens of billions to send probes to Mars to look for sources of life. In the first source of life we look for is water. And here's this whole water planet that's giving us new discoveries every day. Eyes speaking with with, as I said earlier, Craig, who's, his new project is identify 1001 species in the kelp forest there and they're finding they identify new species almost every time they go go exploring.

01;39;03;15 - 01;39;18;25
Speaker 3
Yeah. We only 5% of the ocean explored, and the surface of Mars is going to be completely mapped. We know nothing about this blue planet, which is over three quarters, you know, water and ocean. And yeah.

01;39;19;02 - 01;39;48;19
Speaker 1
It seems impossible almost, that we don't know that much about our own planet yet. We're spending all this money to study another planet. And, Natasha, I do have your sizzle cued up ready to play because I want to share that with the audience. Some of the interviews that you've held with some very interesting people who've talked about the decimation of the kelp forest and what that means.

01;39;48;22 - 01;39;55;17
Speaker 1
And is there anything that you'd like to say about it before I play? Just a maybe 2.5 minutes of that?

01;39;55;19 - 01;40;19;29
Speaker 3
Sure. So the our film focuses on Fort Bragg, Mendocino, and is really a story of the community there and how they've been impacted by the kelp loss. And it's a story of people coming together to try to bring back an ecosystem, whether that's possible or not. It's too soon to tell. But we have fishermen. We have folks from the tribes, the local tribes.

01;40;20;06 - 01;40;25;19
Speaker 3
We have scientists, we have community members coming together. And that's what this film is about.

01;40;25;21 - 01;40;30;22
Speaker 1
All right. We're going to take a listen, and then we'll be back on the other side.

01;40;30;24 - 01;40;41;22
Speaker 5
A few years ago, these kelp forests stretched all up and down the northern California coast. But they have been decimated. They are known as the redwoods of the ocean. And this is one of the last patches left.

01;40;41;24 - 01;40;49;02
Speaker 6
Destruction that's occurring. It's worse than the fire that burned down my house and 10,000 other homes in Sonoma County.

01;40;49;04 - 01;40;59;16
Speaker 7
How we would feel if we lost, you know, 96% of the big trees in the Sierra. That would be devastating to us. That would be front page news every day.

01;40;59;19 - 01;41;18;19
Speaker 5
The decline in the kelp has impacted, of course, our ability to gather abalone, not being able to fish, not being able to, you know, gather takes away our identity as Pomo, as a tribal person without kelp in the ecosystem. It's made it really hard as a commercial diver.

01;41;18;21 - 01;41;38;05
Speaker 7
Kelp covers roughly a quarter of the Earth's coastline, and they grow up to two feet per day. They're one of the fastest growing organisms in the world. Everything in the oceans circles around this ecosystem. All the fish, all the marine mammals, all the invertebrates. All of them are here because of the kelp forest.

01;41;38;07 - 01;42;05;26
Speaker 5
We've had a few beds come back over the last year or two, but maybe 5% of what we had for my daughter. It's it touches hard because she was actually born at the spur of this whole disaster. My name is Grant Downey. I am a California commercial sea urchin diver. Our red urchin fishery on the northern California coast has been declared a disaster federally for years now.

01;42;05;28 - 01;42;28;18
Speaker 6
Losing 96% of an ecosystem, mostly hidden beneath the waves can be difficult to visualize. But in 2015, most of it vanishes and then never recovers. But the kelp didn't just disappear. It's been devoured by purple urchin. Their natural predator, the sunflower sea star, was wiped out in 2013 by a pathogen.

01;42;28;25 - 01;42;55;14
Speaker 5
And are you seeing any return of starfish that is noticeable? To help address this. So, not to toot my own horn, but I have found, the only to pick the podia sunflower stars that have been seen on our coast. Well, we need them. I found the one sunflower star, and that was amazing. Obviously, for my video, I'm, like, screaming underwater.

01;42;55;16 - 01;43;20;09
Speaker 7
We're all interested in finding the best way to restore kelp forest. And I think that's really what brought Grant and I together. I try to integrate where I'm at in my personal life to where we need to go for kelp to make this ecosystem actually healthy again for for him and for all of us. And it's definitely humbled me quite a bit to have this experience paired with an environmental catastrophe.

01;43;20;12 - 01;43;44;08
Speaker 1
And we're going to stop there. There's a little bit more, but that is sequoias of the sea documentary that Natasha Benjamin here is producing and working on with Anna Blanco of the International Ocean Film Festival. She's the executive director there, and I got the chance to meet both Natasha and the other gentleman here on the show today, David Hellwig, at that festival.

01;43;44;13 - 01;43;55;24
Speaker 1
And we're now carrying their Rising Tide podcast on Sundays at 1130, and we'll be right back right after this message.

01;43;55;26 - 01;44;17;15
Speaker 8
If you're driving up the stunning North Sonoma coast on Highway one, don't pass up an amazing experience at two fish baking in the historic Stewarts Point store next to the sea Ranch, you'll find treasures galore in their ever changing eclectic shells like that candy you haven't seen since you were a kid, and gifts from local artists famous for their home baked breads, freshly made soups and handcrafted sandwiches like Ella's Thrilla at Two Fish.

01;44;17;15 - 01;44;39;21
Speaker 8
You can even grab some wine or beer to take to your picnic for dinner. Bakery Market and Eatery. That's two fish baking at Stewarts Point, a destination of deliciousness. Find out more at Two Fish baking.com, or call (707) 785-2011.

01;44;39;21 - 01;44;49;28
Speaker 8
That's (707) 785-2011.

01;44;50;00 - 01;44;55;25
Speaker 1
Welcome back to Resilient Earth Radio. So, Natasha, who were those people?

01;44;55;26 - 01;45;24;06
Speaker 3
We have Grant Downey, who's a second generation commercial urchin diver. The red urchin fishery on the north coast was one of the largest fisheries in California. Most of that urchin or loonie, for those that are familiar. And when we lost the kelp forest due to warm water, loss of upwelling, loss of all those important nutrients that kelp needs.

01;45;24;08 - 01;45;47;08
Speaker 3
Purple urchins, which are the red urchins, smaller cousin and not commercially viable because they're smaller. And they take that much more work to crack open and processed. So there's never been a commercial fishery for purple urchins. The purples took over and the reds got taken over by these purple urchins. And in addition to that, these urchins don't have any food.

01;45;47;10 - 01;46;14;14
Speaker 3
So these urchins are starving or what they call zombie urchins, and they're in hibernation. They have no gonads. There's no honey in them. So that commercial fishery was completely lost and devastated. These fishermen have lost their livelihood and now are working with scientists to become restoration divers, to remove those as quote unquote, zombie purple urchins. These purple urchins are native.

01;46;14;14 - 01;46;43;28
Speaker 3
They've always been there, but they've exploded in population and there's too many of them. So we've got Grant downy, the commercial urchin diver, working with Tristan McHugh, who's the kelp director for California with the Nature Conservancy. We've got folks from Reef Check that are trained in the tribes and divers to go and do kelp surveys. We have Jared Huffman, the local congressman, who's been talking about these issues.

01;46;44;01 - 01;47;05;17
Speaker 3
The other piece of the puzzle is that we used to have otters on this coast. We don't have otters north of the Golden Gate Bridge, and we see them in Monterey. There are a critical part of that ecosystem. We've lost them on the North Coast, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is starting to look at ways to reintroduce otters to the North coast.

01;47;05;19 - 01;47;29;24
Speaker 3
If otters were in the ecosystem, some things probably would have been a little bit more in balance. But again, this is a controversial issue because otters like to eat. They eat a lot. And the fishermen are very concerned that if you bring otters back, that they will eat the healthy things in the ocean, not the urchins, which are not healthy because they have no food, but they will eat the abalone.

01;47;29;24 - 01;47;37;13
Speaker 3
Whatever's left of the abalone, they will eat the mussels in the crabs. Right? So that's a piece of the story as well.

01;47;37;16 - 01;47;58;28
Speaker 2
And it's a fascinating story. I've written about the reintroduction for the LA times in the New York Times, about the state of the kelp forest in the 1980s, when Japan was also booming. There was this boom in the urchin fishery in California. I just got back from Maine, discovered it also was taking place there. But they overfished it to zero.

01;47;58;29 - 01;48;24;17
Speaker 2
In California, they managed the last 10%. When they overfished the urchin in Maine, the kelp forest came back and it created good conditions for juvenile lobsters and, along with the warming water at the time. So there's a boom in lobster. But now the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 97% of the world's water is because of that unique position in terms of its its oceanography and geography.

01;48;24;19 - 01;48;47;03
Speaker 2
And as a result, all the kelp forest has gone away again. It hasn't gone away. It's died off. It's been replaced by a buzzy, invasive algae that's nonproductive. That doesn't offer that. And so I was amazed. I talked with the chief scientist at Bigelow Labs on this subject that that at least in California, we recognized such a disaster in our waters.

01;48;47;03 - 01;49;17;05
Speaker 2
Or we're trying to grow that awareness between Maine and Nova Scotia. Complete collapse of their kelp forest. And hardly anybody notices, one, because it's not recreational divers. We've all dove in the kelp forest here. There isn't an ongoing industry like the recreational abalone. Diving brought 30 million a year to Northern California. And also their kelp, which is, different species that don't break the surface.

01;49;17;05 - 01;49;52;15
Speaker 2
They have sugar kelp and skinny kelp. And so you literally don't see those those pads on the surfaces, those, those beds visible. It's this global problem. You know, we and I think we're sort of splitting things where Natasha's really looking at the human impacts in one place. And I'm trying with the book to look at the global impacts of, of the loss of kelp and what it means, you know, we get so much from the ocean in terms of just recreation, transportation, trade, protein, you know, potential clean power and and oxygen.

01;49;52;15 - 01;50;15;18
Speaker 2
Every other breath we take that we really need to like, respect our mother, as it were. I mean, this is the source of life on our planet. And if we cannot respect the source of life, we cannot be a part of the ongoing, network that is, you know, recognizing ourselves as not apart from nature, but being an essential element in the natural world.

01;50;15;18 - 01;50;17;21
Speaker 2
And if it fails, we fail.

01;50;17;24 - 01;50;30;25
Speaker 1
Paul Watson again said, if the oceans die, we die. The whales and the seals and the dolphins, they can live without us, but we can't live without them.

01;50;30;28 - 01;51;14;21
Speaker 2
That's why we started up the Rising Tide Ocean podcast that that Natasha sometimes co-hosts, and Nikki Nichols Goldstein from the Inland Ocean Coalition also co-host. To hear from all the voices of the ocean. I mean, we've had your congressman, Jared Huffman on. We've had the head of NOAA, but we've also had whale wranglers and surfers and women who are trying to collect, like Danny watching and talking about, you know, Blue Waters and Black Lives and, frontline community activists, but also marine salvage ers who are talking about pulling plane wrecks out of the ocean, that there's so much out there and there's so few people who are living their lives around the ocean, that

01;51;14;24 - 01;51;29;23
Speaker 2
it's really important that we we hear those those voices. I mean, on any given day, there are 8 billion of us on this planet, and maybe 50 million of that 8 billion are out on the other 71% of the planet. That's salty and wet.

01;51;29;25 - 01;51;37;13
Speaker 1
I love the podcast you have with the artist and musician Ray troll, who is very.

01;51;37;13 - 01;52;09;12
Speaker 3
Interesting, a great episode. And I think, you know, another reason that we started the podcast is most people look at the ocean from the surface and it looks fine. They have no idea what's happening below the surface and what we're trying to do. A blue frontier of what we're trying to do through our storytelling, through the film, through the podcast, is take people below the surface and give them a little glimpse of what's happening to this whole area that most, you know, most people are not fortunate to be divers or live on the coast and get to go surfing and bodyboarding.

01;52;09;14 - 01;52;13;13
Speaker 3
So that's that's really our goal is to take people below the surface.

01;52;13;19 - 01;52;19;04
Speaker 2
Yeah. I've spent most of my life doing in-depth reporting and now it's literally in depth.

01;52;19;06 - 01;52;38;25
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, I really invite you guys to think about coming on this show maybe once a month, once every other month. I enjoy hearing about all that you're doing and these last few minutes. David and Natasha, why don't you tell us what you'd like to close with and let our audience know.

01;52;38;27 - 01;53;02;13
Speaker 2
We want to get people engaged? Please listen to our podcast Rising Tide Ocean Podcast, and look at our 50 Ways to Save the Ocean. Because as I said before, everything we do every day has an impact on the ocean around us. And and find when you start doing simple things in terms of your choices and food and energy, it has a multiplier effect.

01;53;02;15 - 01;53;41;06
Speaker 2
People sort of shift from reality TV to reality and begin to realize that that we do have power and a lot of what we do is just trying to empower people to take action that can turn the tide. So check out Blue front.org, check out the podcast, and then contact us or others. Got our blue movement directory lists 1400 groups, local and national and global, that you can connect with because we're more powerful when we work together, when we make policy choices, you know, both the coast and ocean, because the kelp and the corals can't vote, but you can.

01;53;41;08 - 01;54;05;11
Speaker 1
I've got some reading to do, reviewing all the different books you've written, David, and especially the one that you did for Blue Frontier, that one gives so many tips and information about how we can help. Natasha, I am so looking forward to you completing your sequoias of the sea documents tree too, and all the great work you are doing with that film.

01;54;05;13 - 01;54;23;20
Speaker 3
Yes. Me too. This has been a it's you know, making a film is a is a process. It started as a really a passion project that grew. We are very excited and we want people to see it with filmmaking and storytelling, it's hard to know when the story ends. And in this case, the story is not over.

01;54;23;27 - 01;54;42;11
Speaker 3
In terms of our kelp forest. But we want to get the film out there. We want people to know about what's happening with the kelp forest, and to start thinking about this as a local story that's really happening at a global level, like David was just talking about in Maine, and how to get involved and how each of us can really make a difference.

01;54;42;14 - 01;54;45;09
Speaker 1
And David, you're off to San Diego. You said.

01;54;45;12 - 01;54;54;07
Speaker 2
Yeah, I'm going to do some interviews at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, but I won't forget to make some time to go bodysurfing with my friend Charlie.

01;54;54;10 - 01;55;03;25
Speaker 1
I love it. I wish I was still diving and Caro said, you've got to get back into diving, because that's what she does too. And you do too. Natasha, don't you?

01;55;03;28 - 01;55;25;01
Speaker 3
Yeah. I started, when I moved to California. It took me a while to figure out how to handle the cold after growing up diving in Florida. But once I got a wetsuit, an old friend took me abalone diving in Mendocino. Yeah, and it blew me away. You know, it's not the coral reefs that we think of in the tropics, but the kelp forest was unbelievable.

01;55;25;01 - 01;55;32;21
Speaker 3
And there was still kelp at that point and used to be able to go collect abalone. And that's all changed.

01;55;32;23 - 01;55;34;16
Speaker 2
Almost like she's a surfer these days.

01;55;34;16 - 01;55;35;01
Speaker 1
Yeah.

01;55;35;07 - 01;55;39;14
Speaker 3
I spend more time at the surface checking, checking the bull kelp canopy.

01;55;39;17 - 01;56;00;29
Speaker 1
We have a few surfers up here in Point Arena, that's for sure. And I did that abalone diving too, off a van dam there in little River just south of Mendocino. Stewarts point, all down through the sea ranch and down through the rest of Sonoma Coast. But that was back in the 80s. That was back in the mid 80s.

01;56;01;01 - 01;56;22;17
Speaker 2
That I just dove at Casper Cove and stopped at Van Dam, and it was the first urchin Barrens I've seen. And it's pretty shocking as like all bare rock and purple pincushion urchins and people with hammers doing them, chopping them up one at a time. They cleared an acre at one end of the cove. It took them three years.

01;56;22;17 - 01;56;40;01
Speaker 2
They took out 150,000 urchin. But there's a little bit of kelp coming back there. And I saw some abalones, good fat abalones hanging in there. So we're, you know, people doing what they can and figuring out what and how to, make a difference.

01;56;40;08 - 01;57;07;18
Speaker 3
And the Waterman's Alliance is a great group to get involved in for your listeners that are on the coast, they meet monthly and they do urchin culling events at Casper Cove in Mendocino. I think it's called Casper Cove Project. Is there a website? And we've filmed them and their efforts. And you mentioned Liane the Kelp Festival, which was a great, unbelievable event of art and science and policy for a month in Mendocino.

01;57;07;20 - 01;57;32;16
Speaker 3
I said to one of the organizers, it's unfortunate that it took a collapse to get the Kelp Festival going, but now we've got this Kelp Festival. Hopefully that will continue. They also have the Urchin Festival up on the Mendocino coast every year, and it coincided with the Kelp Festival, so there's a lot going on. If you're a diver, join reef, check, you can go do kelp surveys.

01;57;32;18 - 01;57;50;13
Speaker 2
You know, I've been out and wildfires with Cal Fire and others and and we don't have the luxury to be pessimistic right now. We have to take action. I just say, you know, I'm not optimistic or pessimistic. I believe in triage. We're going to save what we can while we can. And that's that's what we need to do.

01;57;50;15 - 01;57;57;24
Speaker 1
Thank you. David Hill Varga and Natasha Benjamin. We look forward to playing your Rising Tide podcast on Sundays at 1130.

01;57;57;25 - 01;57;59;05
Speaker 3
Thank you. Bye bye.

01;57;59;08 - 01;58;16;10
Speaker 1
Thank you. Take care. This is Resilient Earth Radio on KGO in Walhalla, 88.3 F.M.. I'm Leann Lindsay. Thanks for listening.

01;58;16;12 - 01;58;47;01
Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to Resilient Earth Radio, where we talk about critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking. I'm Leann Lindsey, producer and host, along with my co-producers and co-hosts, Scott Entry, Mercer of The Mind and Whale and Seal study. Joining us today, David Helberg and Natasha Benjamin of Blue Frontier Campaign. Your contribution will help us here at Resilient to Earth Radio and Podcast.

01;58;47;05 - 01;59;39;28
Speaker 1
Continue talking about the critical issues and positive actions. Donate today and share this wherever you can. Produced in association with Planet Centric Media, Storm Studios and Kgou 88.3 FM, a public radio station on the Northern California coast. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and wherever you get your podcasts. Music is Castle by the sea from the ballet The Sea Princess, created by Eric Solomon, an international composer and pianist who lives in the Sea Ranch on the north Sonoma coast.

01;59;40;00 - 02;00;13;20
Speaker 4
Brought to you in part by the Surf Market Wine Department, where there's something for everyone. With more than 800 bottles to choose from, our curated selection of wines offers the best choices on the Mendocino Coast. Choose from delicious, locally produced California wines, wines from the Pacific Northwest, and an impressive collection of imported selections. We frequently offer complimentary wine tastings on Saturdays where customers can meet the winemakers, learn about various aspects of making wine, and experience new flavors and varietals.

02;00;13;23 - 02;00;19;28
Speaker 4
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02;00;20;00 - 02;00;24;22
Speaker 8
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