Exploring Marine Pollution with Dr. Judith Weis Professor Emeritus Biology Rutgers University / Author Marine Pollution "What Everyone Needs to Know" 2nd edition (Oxford University Press)

In this episode of the Resilient Earth podcast, we talk with Dr. Judith Weis, a marine pollution expert and professor emerita at Rutgers University about the critical issues surrounding marine pollution, including the various sources of pollution, the importance of estuaries and marshlands, and the impact of climate change on ocean health. Dr. Weis also shares insights from her recently published second edition of 'Marine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Know,' highlighting the growing concern over microplastics and the significant improvements in the New York / New Jersey Harbor area, which has been designated as a Hope Spot for marine conservation by Dr. Sylvia Earle's organization, Mission Blue. Book is published by Oxford University press.

We delve into critical environmental issues, with a focus on coral bleaching, the impact of microplastics on photosynthesis, and the historical context of fish tumors. We also address the regulatory changes affecting water quality, the long-term effects of oil spills, and the implications of climate change on marine life, particularly sea turtles. We also discuss the importance of ocean acidification, conservation efforts, and the role of scientists in shaping environmental policy amidst concerns over budget cuts and regulations.

takeaways

• Marine pollution encompasses various types, including nutrient, metal, and oil pollution.
• Microplastics have become a significant focus in marine pollution research.
• Estuaries and marshes serve as vital ecosystems for marine life.
• The Clean Water Act has led to significant improvements in water quality.
• Coral reefs are crucial for food security in tropical regions.
• Climate change is causing coral bleaching

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Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:00.206)
Music intro

Speaker 2 (00:10.254)
Welcome to the Resilient Earth podcast where we talk with speakers from the United States and around the world about the critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking. From the tiniest of actions to the grandest of gestures so that we can continue to thrive and survive for generations to come. I'm Leigh Anne Lindsey, producer and host along with co-hosts and co-producers Scott and Tree Mercer of Mendonoma Whale and Seal Study located on the south Mendocino and north Sonoma coasts.

Speaker 2 (00:52.29)
The music for this podcast is by Eric Allaman, an international composer, pianist, and writer living in the Sea Ranch. Discover more of his music, animations, ballet, stage, and film work at EricAllaman.com.

Speaker 2 (01:14.338)
You can find Resilient Earth on Spotify, Apple and Amazon podcasts, iHeartRadio, YouTube, SoundCloud, and wherever you find your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:55.202)
Today on Resilient Earth, have Dr. Judith Weis, Professor Emerita of Biological Sciences at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.

Her research focuses on estuarine ecology and ecotoxicology. She has published over 200 scientific papers, as well as books on salt marshes, fish, crabs, and now a second edition of Marine Pollution, What Everyone Needs to Know, published by Oxford University Press.

It's written for the general public and she is interested in stresses in estuaries and their effects on organisms, populations and communities. She is on the editorial board for Bioscience, is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Indonesia.

She has been on advisory committees for the EPA, NOAA, and NAS. She served on the boards of C-TAC, the Association for Women in Science, and the American Institute of Biological Sciences, of which she was the president in 2001.

She received the Merit Award from the Society of Wetland Scientists in 2016, and she's very proud that her nomination to Dr. Sylvia Earle's organization, Mission Blue, of the New York, New Jersey Harbor Estuary as a Hope Spot was successful, and their estuary is recognized for the vast improvements in water quality, biodiversity, restoration, and public access.

Speaker 2 (03:55.214)
We'll talk about that and more, coming up next.

Speaker 2 (04:05.922)
Welcome to Resilient Earth radio and podcast Judith. We are glad to finally get a chance to meet you.

Speaker 1 I'm delighted to be here, thank you.

Speaker 2 You have written the second edition of this book about marine pollution and we're so interested to find out more about it. Scott and Tree have ordered the book and we'd like to hear from you say a general overview of what you were trying to capture and how you wrote it and maybe some of the updates that might be in the book.

Speaker 1 I wrote the book originally 11, well, probably 12 years ago. The original first edition came out in 2014. The main way it's organized.

is different chapters focus on different types of pollution. One chapter about nutrient pollution, metal pollution, oil pollution, et cetera. And I include a chapter on biological pollution, i.e. invasive species, which is not always thought about as a type of pollution. And I also have a chapter on climate change.

Speaker 1 (05:21.71)
which is not always included on the list of types of marine pollution, but I thought they were important enough to be included. And the second edition has a whole new chapter on microplastics, which was not there in the first edition. Since then, in the years since then, there's been a real explosion of research.

on microplastics, which was just really noticed and talked about for the first time 20 years ago. And the research came along and then just basically exploded about 10 years ago. it seems like hundreds of papers coming out every week from all over the world.

and the initial places they were looking for them and where they found them and then continued looking was in the ocean. And then sort of, people started looking in freshwater and then people started looking on land and they started looking in people and they looked at the top of the highest mountain and the...

The Marianas Trench, which is seven miles down in the ocean, you know, and wherever you look for them, you find them. And so, you know, you see a newspaper headline, microplastics found here. another, you know, microplastics found inside, blah, blah, blah. And the fact is, it's not news. They're everywhere. I would find it exciting news if someone did a good research project, did it well, all the proper procedures and didn't find it.

That would be news. Anyway, so that's basically how the book is organized. Within each chapter of each type of pollution, it starts out with where does it come from? And then there's a section on what does it do to living organisms? And then there's a section about what can we do about it? So each chapter is organized that way.

Speaker 2 (07:07.334)
I know.

Speaker 1 (07:33.29)
Within that, it's a question and answer format. As the second edition, it's the Oxford University Press. You can buy it from Oxford University Press. You can tell your local bookstore to stock it. You can buy it online. If you frequent Amazon, you can get it there, but I'm no fan of Amazon and I don't recommend them. There are other places that you can get it.

and tell your local library to get it too, please.

Yeah, that's a great idea. And I think so too. We've got a couple of great little bookstores here and great libraries. Let me just ask you to help the general audience understand what marine pollution is. Like what are some of the key sources for marine pollution? And then we can delve into some of the broader sources too.

will do that.

Speaker 1 (08:35.637)
If you want to know the sources, tell me, are you talking about metals or plastics or nutrients or what sort of pollution? Because the sources will be different. Nutrient pollution is coming from sewage and coming from fertilizers on lawns. That's very different than the various types of chemical pollution that's coming from industry.

and the oil pollution that's coming from tankers or deep sea drilling, submarine pollution is coming from the atmosphere. I mean, you have to specify what sort of pollution and we can talk about where it comes from.

I know that when you were talking with Andrew Lewin and his podcast, you were talking about four top sources, such as textiles, tires, paint, and plastic pellets being four top ones.

Those are the top sources for microplastics, the top sources for pollution in general. The chapter on microplastics are the four major sources of microplastics.

okay.

Speaker 2 (09:45.333)
It's within...

Speaker 1 (09:55.276)
So when you're talking in general about all the different sources (host means Types of pollution), can be anywhere from oil spills to sewage to fertilizers and pesticides, things like that. those have their own kind of sources. Pesticides are sprayed on farmland and run off. Pesticides can also come out of factories that make pesticides. Pesticides are sprayed in people's gardens and run off. So you got to talk about what type of pollutant we're talking about, so then talk about where it comes from.

Speaker 2 Well, you certainly have a long background in studying these things in the course of your lifetime.

Speaker 1 Right, it's been quite a long time.

Speaker 2 Can you give us a bit of an idea about your background, some of the other places that you've worked in DC and things like that?

Speaker 1 (10:54.478)
Most of my research, I was on the faculty at Rutgers University Newark for my whole career. And I focused my studies there on nearby bodies of water like Newark Bay, Hackensack Meadowlands, all part of the New York, New Jersey Harbor area, which at the time when I was beginning this research,

in the late 70s, early 80s was highly polluted. It was a really stinky place. And a lot of the studies, sort of a theme that went over the years was comparing the functioning of the animals that were tough enough to survive in those very polluted places, how they make differ.

from the same species living in a cleaner place. So we would go to South Jersey or Eastern Long Island to get relatively clean environments to compare the fish and the crabs and so forth with the ones that were living in the local polluted places. So that was one theme that sort of went over a long period of years.

Tree can relate, right, Tree?

Speaker 3 Did you do any much research on the Long Island Sound? I lived along there.

Speaker 1 (12:23.852)
Not Long Island Sound. sometimes were spent summers further out in Eastern Suffolk County. And at one time there was a lab at Montauk that we were at. That lab didn't last very long. And then there was Southampton College. And we were summer guests there for quite a few summers. And that was a source.

of some of the clean fish. then other clean sites was Rutgers has a field lab in Tuckerton, New Jersey, which is just north of Atlantic City. And that was a source later of a lot of clean fish or crabs or shrimp that we would get.

But tell us why estuaries and marshlands are so vital, it's such a vital ecosystem. Tell us why.

Marshes are our salvi, salt marshes. It's just the marshes I've studied are nursery grounds for many, species that later live out in the ocean. A lot of ocean animals will come in and breed in the estuaries. Some even on the marshes. Some fish will lay their eggs on the marshes of one of the fish we studied a lot.

was the mummy shogger, common killifish. Gets to be about that size. I guess you've got killifish in California also, different species. Anyway, they actually lay their eggs up in the marshes and fairly high up in the marshes during high tide. So they breed every two weeks when the tide is the highest, you know.

Speaker 1 (14:18.56)
And then the water will not get up that high for another two weeks. And the two weeks is the time by that time the embryos are ready to hatch. So it's very well timed with the whole tidal cycle. I'm straying away from your question. The question was why are marshes important? A lot of things breed there. Marshes also are wonderful sort of green infrastructure that will absorb pollutants

will absorb carbon dioxide. We're often told plant trees to help combat climate change. You get a whole lot more bang for your buck if you have a marsh or mangroves or seagrasses. Those habitats are much more effective than forests and trees in absorbing carbon dioxide.

So, I mean, not every place can restore a salt marsh because there's a lot of country that's not near the coast. But if you're not near the coast, you got to do trees. But if you're in any coastal state, restore your marshes. Make sure they are in good health. And if you're further south, mangrove occupy the same intertidal habitat as salt marshes. They're extremely important for climate, for vitality of marine life.

and they're way very much underappreciated by most of the population. We are losing them for a number of different reasons. For many years, they were not understood to be important and they were filled in for development. Here in New York, we have three major airports right near the water, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, all of which were built on former salt marsh.

and many, many neighborhoods were built on filled in salt marshes. If you look what Manhattan looked like when Henry Hudson first came up, the southern part of Manhattan was a lot skinnier than it is now because all of that development, including Wall Street and the whole lower piece of Manhattan, and it's not unique to New York City.

Speaker 1 (16:43.264)
many of the coastal cities on the East Coast, I'm not sure about the West Coast, but built on filled in marshes. So we lost the whole lot that way. And we are still losing marshes due to continued development on marshes, which shouldn't be allowed in my opinion. And also sea level rise, which we can't do anything about. We can't stop sea level from rising. What we can do

in some places, but can't do other places. In places that are not highly developed, give them room to move backward. They can move back, but in New York City, they can't move back. There's houses and streets right behind them. So they're stuck. And the only thing people can do, really, there's a thing called thin layer deposition where sediment is brought up from the bottom

and put up on top of the marsh. So you're increasing the elevation, but you've got mud here, you've covered the grasses, and it will take a few years for the grasses to come up or you can put more seeds there. It's a relatively new type of restoration, and it seems to be doing pretty well. It's only been done for maybe 10, 12 years, 10, 15 years, but...

That's interesting.

Speaker 1 (18:10.784)
I think in order to save the marshes, this is going to have to be done in areas where there is no room for them to move back. So marshes are in great trouble. spend a lot of time worrying about marshes when I'm not worrying about the government doing horrible things.

Thanks.

I know. You had also brought up Tree about estuaries and that was one of my questions is what compelled you and what it took to work with that New York, New Jersey Harbor estuary area and get that designated as a hope spot and what has happened since.

Well, I told you that about 50, 60 years ago when I started, that whole area was highly polluted. Then in 1970, the government passed the Clean Water Act. And over the subsequent years, it's been getting better and better and better. And now we no longer have heavy industry along the coast.

don't have raw sewage coming in except only when there's a lot of rain and I can get into that later, but it used to be full of raw sewage. Now we only occasionally get raw sewage. We don't have heavy industry dumping chemical wastes into the water. It's not smelly anymore. The heavy industry there is gone. People now want to come to the water because it's pleasant.

Speaker 1 (19:50.636)
The birds that were not there have come back. The fish that weren't there have come back. And about 15 years ago, the whales came back. We got whales in New York Harbor. You can go fishing. You can go whale watching from Brooklyn. Whale watching company in Brooklyn. Now, if you had said that to me 30 years ago, or to anybody in New York City, they would think you were nuts.

Yeah.

It's true.

You them. You got them.

A remarkable improvement. And that was the basis of my submission to Mission Blue nominating our harbor as a hope spot. I mean, we are not a pristine place by any means, but the amount of improvement that has taken place over the past 50 years is just amazing and wonderful. We have along the waterfront

Speaker 1 (20:51.756)
Waterfront parks on the New Jersey side, on the New York side, everywhere. Brooklyn Bridge Park, Hudson River Park. They call Liberty State Park in New Jersey and walkways at Hoboken and Jersey City. And these cities that used to be, you know, try to stay away from their waterfront are now wanting to be by the waterfront. They're dining restaurants right there on the waterfront.

And know, Rip Van Winkle went to sleep in 1970 and woke up now and you told him there were restaurants along the water. know, would be just incredible. So that was the basis of the nomination. I documented all these things. You know, we were designated a couple of years ago as a hope spot by Mission Blue.

That's Dr. Sylvia Earle's organization. Right. Yeah. And we met her actually in person at one of the local marine celebration events in Bolinas and Marin County. After she had been in a documentary at the International Ocean Film Festival in San Francisco, and then she got up to give the Goldman Awards at the Goldman Environmental Awards at San Francisco.

Opera House, but she is just an amazing individual. What she has done over her lifetime, like you have, both of you have contributed so much to this world as far as scientific knowledge and awareness about what the issues are so that somebody can do something about them. mean, just like what you were saying, this has created a lot of eco tourism too. mean, in coastal living is improved and the problem.

that we all worry about. If they start drilling off our coasts, we're, you know, it's like every 20 years, it seems like in the past, they were having oil spills from 69 to 89. And then in 2010, what is it? They forget what happens, but we're living with better coastlines now. And if they start to drill off of there, then that's another pollution that we might end up facing again. What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 1 (23:10.062)
I think the drilling is a very worrisome thing, but most of the oil spills we've had in the past were from ships, from tanker ships. That seems to be, I mean, since the Exxon Valdez in the 80s, we haven't had a major tanker oil spill. And I think part of that is because after that Exxon Valdez spill,

the Congress legislated that all new ship tankers would have to have double hull. So if it runs into a rock and pokes a hole in the hull, there's another one. I don't know how far in. And it's not likely to puncture both of them. And that was US legislation, but I think a lot of other countries that manufactured the ships adopted the same thing.

And so that there's much less chance of a tanker spill from puncturing, from running aground and getting punctured. I mean, there's always chances boat may tip over or on the drilling that what happened in the Gulf of Mexico with the deep water horizon.

was just about to say that in 2010, the Deepwater Horizon.

Right, that explosion, no, that was another horrible one.

Speaker 2 (24:33.742)
134 million gallons of crude oil. That's a lot.

out of

A lot of oil, a lot of it is still down on the bottom. It's sunk, it's there in the sediments. With the Alaska, with Exxon Valdez, with Alaska, they cleaned up what was on rocks. What came into the marshes sinks down and can be there and remain there for decades. It's not visible.

You're not seeing it. You're not seeing oiled birds and all those things like that. Right. But it's still under there and can be one of the critters that I like to study are fiddler crabs that dig burrows in the sand or mud. And there was a very minor oil spill near Woods Hall, Massachusetts in

say around 1970. It didn't make the newspapers. It was very minor, but it did spill oil on some marshes near Woods Hole. And of course Woods Hole is full of marine scientists who code-studied it. And then 30 years later, you'd think it was all gone and there was nothing visible anymore. But some other, you know, another generation of marine scientists

Speaker 1 (25:58.912)
went to the site where it had been and saw that the fiddler crab burrows were still not normal. The fiddler crabs would dig a burrow down and go sideways because, you know, they're avoiding the oil that was certainly deeper in the mud. And the fiddler crabs were not quite normal. This is like 30 years later. It just sits there underneath the surface in the marshes.

It was a very minor oil spill, know, a little article in the Boston Globe or something. Didn't hit the press anywhere else.

Well, fortunately, Biden was able to do that protection of the outer continental shelf before he left office. we're just still concerned it might be ways to... President Nixon was the first president to use that same mechanism that Biden used with the OCSA. It was Section 12A. But he did that because of the spill off of Santa Barbara.

think I prefer stuff, sure.

Speaker 2 (27:01.932)
That was 1969. The important thing is, is that not only do these spills last so long and they embed in the marshes and they're still sunk down onto the bottom of the oceans and it is really hard to clean up. It just defies sense, but there is no sense right now in some of this. So let's get back to your book and I wanted to ask you what it was like.

to do the first one and then what compelled you to do the second edition update.

Well, nothing compelled me. got an email from the editor who had been the editor of the first book at Oxford University Press. He wrote and asked me, would I be interested in doing a second edition? And I thought about it. And I thought about all the stuff that had.

occurred in the previous decade, including all the interest in microplastics, which is something that I personally myself had gotten very involved with. So I said, yes, OK, I will. That's how it happened.

And how long did it take you to do the second edition?

Speaker 1 (28:17.806)
Well, it took me less than it took for the first edition. I guess it was about a year or so working on it. I mean, I was doing other things too. I wasn't doing that full time, but it was certainly easier than starting from scratch, taking most of the chapters and sort of bringing them more up to date on things that had taken place in the past decade. And then I wrote an entirely new chapter

about microplastics, which had been part of, in the first edition, there was a chapter called Marine Debris. And marine debris is, you know, mostly plastic. So it was basically a chapter about plastic. And there was a piece of it, a page or two, about microplastics. But a couple of years ago, when I was writing the second edition, I thought there was enough going on.

and enough attention that microplastics deserve their own chapter. So that's the chapter I wrote from scratch. All the other chapters were just adding into different areas some new issues, new findings.

You've written this for the general population to understand. It's not a scientific research paper.

It's called What Everyone Needs to Know. This is the series that Oxford University Press has on any kind of topic, history, art, popular music, whatever. It's something rather what everyone needs to know. And there's dozens and dozens of books in the series. Some of ones are science books. What holds them all together is a thing. They're all Q &A format for the general public.

Speaker 2 (30:11.308)
I'm glad you brought that up. Let's focus on this other part where you talked about climate change, because I know that's been a question of yours, Tree, with other guests in the past. Talk about that a bit, about the effect that it's had on our oceans.

Okay, well, some of the effects are due to the rising temperature. mean, the climate change is hot, making the waters warmer. The most drastic effect we see in the oceans is on corals. Coral reefs are extremely important ecosystems in more tropical regions. We don't have them here, but further in the Caribbean.

In the Pacific, we have all these countries throughout the Pacific equatorial area that are surrounded by coral reefs, which provide most of their food. mean, the coral reef supports a whole lot of fish and provides food for millions of people. Corals have tentacles. They're like miniature sea anemones.

and they have tentacles and an individual coral can catch a certain amount of plankton as food. But more important for them is that they have living inside them single celled organisms that we call zooxanthellae. These are photosynthetic single celled organisms. The coral reefs are not.

deep in the water, they're in relatively shallow water, and they get sunshine coming in the light that stimulates photosynthesis. And just like trees, they're turning carbon dioxide and water into sugars. It's the same process of photosynthesis. And depending on the species of coral, this could be a supplement to the food they catch.

Speaker 1 (32:19.598)
Or it could be the main part of their nutrition. Some corals don't catch a whole lot of prey with their tentacles, but they depend on the zooxanthellae that photosynthesize and provide them with nutrition. Now, when it gets too warm, they go, they get out, they leave. Leaving the individual coral animal, relying on its own

of plankton. And some species can do that fine, but many species can't do that well enough to live for very long. This process is called bleaching when the photosynthetic cells leave and the coral gets white. Corals are sort of brownish or bluish, have different colors. That's not color of the coral itself.

It's the color of these algae that are living within them. And so when they leave, the coral turns white. It's called bleaching. And the different species can survive different lengths of time after bleaching. Some species can live a long time. Some species can just live a very short time. And if they don't return, the coral animals die and you have a dead reef.

Yes.

It's been happening very often at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. It's a disaster there. Other reefs seem to have more species that can manage longer without their symbiotic algae living in them.

Speaker 2 (34:06.52)
We had a conversation with Dr. Carly Kinkle of the Marine Lab down at the University of Southern California. Thanks to Scott and Tree that you brought her to our show too. She was talking about that. Scott, you were just sharing with me an article about photosynthesis and the disruption that microplastics is causing.

That's recently in the papers about reducing photosynthesis. Yeah.

I worked at the University of New Hampshire for about 17 years, 14 of those years teaching a marine mammal class. In the other three years, we're working at Sea Grant on various projects. One of those projects brought me down to Groton, Connecticut, where I was observing an educational project down there that we tried to mimic up in Durham and New Hampshire. But what I wanted to ask you is we were doing some trawling in Groton, in that river that runs through there, and brought up some flounder that had tumors on them.

You know, more than just a few. Not more than just a few flounders, and more than just a few. In the 70s, yeah, that was.

A long time ago.

Speaker 1 (35:13.582)
70s, fish tumors were very common in the 70s, but they're not common anymore.

No, I'm wondering at the time what you thought might have caused, know, flounder liver flat on the bottom. So yes. Any idea what might have caused that?

There was a lot of research, I have a friend named, drawing a blank on his name, anyway, who studied tumors in fish in the Hudson River, Ike Wergen, his name is, studied fish in the Hudson River and found that the Tomcod was very susceptible to cancers. And of course the bottom dwelling fish like flounders would be exposed to all the various contaminants that are not very

concentrated in the water, but much more concentrated in the bottom sediments. Most toxic chemicals will concentrate in bottom sediments rather than in the water itself. That seems to have gone away along with the improvements in water quality. That's not something I read about anymore. Read about it a lot back in the 70s.

There was a problem in San Francisco Bay where the Harbor purpose left and it sounds similar to what you were talking about. Gotham whale watch there, but the Harbor purpose would come back with that cleaned up. But there's just been a loosening of the regulations to allow more sewage to be dumped into San Francisco Bay again, allow more raw sewage to be dumped back into San Francisco Bay again. Yeah. Cause they fact they were in favor of it. was, they thought it was too strict. weren't.

Speaker 1 (36:50.19)
The city agreed to that.

Speaker 3 (36:56.478)
actually getting to where they wanted to get because of the regulations to get to clean the area out a little more. When I went back to New Hampshire from here, I was in Southern California and Northern California through the sixties into the early seventies. I went back East. And by the time I started working at the University of New Hampshire, I arrived back in New Hampshire just about the time Aristotle Onassis arrived. You might remember he wanted to put a oil refinery out on the Al's of Shoals where there's a Shoals Marine lab.

It's Sal's Marine Lab.

Yeah, I thought you might have even taught there. Yeah, the good old Scholl's Marine Lab. John Heiser, he just passed away recently. He's one of my best friends. Every time I'm writing your book, he wrote Vertebrate Life, they're at Cornell. And he was always talking about about the time they finished the book, it was a time for another edition. He was constantly writing.

When you were at UNH, did you know Ray Grisel? He was a grad student of mine. And Art Greenberg in the chemistry department? He was a share of chemistry.

Yeah, I remember the name, yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:02.402)
afraid of those guys. were too smart. Yeah, I thought you might have known some of the folks from Cornell I worked with and and from the show's lab.

Anyway.

Speaker 1 (38:13.186)
been to the Schultz lab, had a granddaughter who spent the summer there, a month there, when she was in high school and college. yeah, we had a field trip to the island from one year there was a surf coastal and estuary and research federation had its annual meeting near there and it was a field trip.

That's very good.

Speaker 3 (38:29.198)
towards my.

Speaker 1 (38:40.94)
to Schaal's. So, you know, I was there then. That was probably in the 90s, I guess, had had a field trip there. So I've been there.

The university had a lab up in the Great Bay and you might have visited that too.

That's the one where I think where Ray Grizzle works in Great Bay.

Yeah. John Kingsbury really put that together with the Shoals lab. You ever met John? Yeah. His expertise was marine botany. When we were out to the Virgin Islands in the winter, he'd be scraping along the bottom for algae. The rest of us would be looking for sea turtles.

Right.

Speaker 1 (39:20.142)
I've been picking around looking for Fiddler crafts or something. Yeah.

When you're talking about the crabs taking an exit, it reminds me of what I read about the residue still left up in Alaska from the oil spill. Yes. Still bringing that up.

It's, mean, you sort of expect it more in Alaska because it's so cold and all, every chemical reaction, everything is slow when it's very cold. I thought it was particularly less expected that they found it at the Woods Hall site where this very minor spill had taken place. They still found the oil was having effects.

In Tampa, well, more than a couple years ago, probably about seven or eight now. And Roger Payne got to give his talk and he started out with better living through chemistry. He was joking around. Went on to report about heavy metals that were found in the eyebrows of polar bears.

Eyebrows

Speaker 1 (40:19.714)
Thank you.

If anybody you think is safe to go anywhere, you're wrong.

Well, mean, better in the eyebrows and in the liver and in the and important organs. I'm sure it's in them also, but.

And in photosynthesis, I just want to get back to that one thing because that's a big, big issue. If the microplastics are interfering with the process of photosynthesis.

That's the new paper that came out recently. Yeah. That's the basis of the whole food chain, food web, everywhere.

Speaker 2 (40:54.06)
Right.

Speaker 2 (40:59.935)
life on earth.

Fearing was about 12%. Wow. It seemed like a lot. Significant. Yeah. Yeah. Fearing was about 12 % of the photosynthesis the plant's trying to do.

And corals too, with the bleaching, we were talking with Maria Brown, the superintendent of the Cordell Bank and the Greater Farallones Marine Protected Areas here in the San Francisco Bay Area up to our North California coast. And she was talking about how there are corals out there that are actually coming back since they have been protecting these areas.

Well, you know, it depends what other stressors might be around, you know, the bleaching, it really depends on what species of carls we're talking about. Some are less vulnerable and less dependent on those photosynthetic.

organisms that live in them. But that was just you had the question was originally about effects of climate change. Yeah. I focus first on that, because that seems to be the most widespread and most worrisome aspect of effects in the marine environment. Sea turtles. We mostly think about sex determination as X and Y chromosomes.

Speaker 2 (42:05.582)
Yes.

Speaker 1 (42:24.192)
And sea turtles have a whole different way of sex determination in an embryo. It's temperature dependent. And in the sea turtles, the warmer embryos become female and the colder ones become male. turtle digs a hole and lays its eggs in the sand. You know, they lumber up from the water, come up onto the beaches and they dig a hole.

Really?

Speaker 1 (42:52.374)
and drop the eggs into the hole. And you've probably seen, you know, nature programs showing that on TV. And the eggs that are deeper down, cooler temperatures become male. And the eggs that are the embryos developing higher up where it's warmer become females. Now, as the temperature is rising because of climate change,

instead of getting a roughly 50-50 ratio, most of them are becoming females. some areas where they studied, they were finding over 90 % of the eggs in a nest were females. And in some cases, 98 % of the eggs, like maybe one male and whatever. So if this goes on very long, there's not going to be enough male

sea turtles to be able to fertilize the eggs. So this is extremely worrisome also. And so this is another really worrisome concern. So those are temperature related concerns. The other really worrisome thing about climate change is not the temperature, but the carbon dioxide dissolving in the water changes the acidity.

of the water. It turns into carbonic acid and the ocean water is always slightly acidic. It has a pH eight point something. With the more carbon dioxide dissolving in the ocean, and it's good for people, it's good for to land, the fact that most of the carbon dioxide gets absorbed in the ocean, because if it didn't do that, we'd be a whole lot hotter already. So that's,

reducing the amount of temperature rise on land. Anyway.

Speaker 2 (44:53.816)
That's actually been a topic that's come up before, it, Scott and Tree, with the acidity in the oceans?

Right, and that's not climate change, but it's the carbon dioxide itself, changing the chemistry of the ocean. And the more acidic makes it more difficult for animals that make shells with calcium carbonate. It makes it more difficult and the shells become thinner and more fragile. It's related to climate change, but it's not due to the temperature, it's due to the carbon dioxide.

Yeah, the oyster farms out along our coast here are very popular and they're having a hard time with this change in the pH of the water all the way up into Washington.

I read about that. was Oregon and Washington. think that was, they were finding that like 10 years ago already, right? That some of that problem was coming to light, right?

Absolutely. the paper this morning about the warming waters are three there are three of a 350 right wells left and of that 353 of them this morning were entangled in gear. They're leaving areas where they were feeding on copepods and the copepods have left and the right wells are trying to find them. Three entangled right wells and a couple of them are really heavily entangled in a lot of gear.

Speaker 1 (46:20.11)
This is the Pacific right whale, right?

Atlantic. North Atlantic. Sorry.

ones on our coast. There were this 300 and some left, but it was looking encouraging this year. They seem to have more successful new babies arrived. But you know, the tanglement in the fishing gear is a major worry. And also getting hit by ships is another major worry.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:54.368)
Yeah. I'm glad you brought up about the sea turtles too, because one of our upcoming conversations is with the president of S E E sea turtles organization up in Oregon. And I want to bring that topic up with him of what you just mentioned. And I want to make sure that. That we cover any other topics that you think might be of interest, Judith to the audience about.

to bring it back to your book, but I also appreciate the long career you've had at Rutgers, the time as a professor, whatever you'd like to do, we'd love to hear it.

Well, I guess my time as a professor was not anything terribly different from other people. I I taught environmental courses for non-majors, which I think was a good thing to have done to prepare me to write books for the general public. And then I also taught marine biology for biology majors. And I taught graduate

I had many graduate students who worked in my lab with me over the course of the years. Some of them are teaching at universities. Some of them work for the government, government environmental agencies. One of them, one of my first graduate students had a career at EPA and has recently retired.

And so she hasn't been fired like so many of her former colleagues. So I mean, there are various government agencies, some work at NGOs, environmental organizations. You know, they're out there doing good things.

Speaker 2 (48:45.568)
you on the advisory board of the EPA for a little bit.

for some committees, I was on some committees of the advisory board for EPA. And I wasn't on the science advisory board, but on committees of it. I should just say I got interested in that sort of thing in the 80s and the whole policy world. I was up until the 80s sort of.

minding my own business, doing my own research. And then when I read about some of the policies of the EPA, what was going on, I got upset and decided I needed to learn and get involved in policy. the AAAS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, runs a program where scientists can come to Washington and spend a year working in Congress or in the agencies.

So I applied and received what they called then a Congressional Science Fellowship. It's now called the Science and Technology Policy Fellows, but just different names, same thing. Congressional meant you were working in Congress. So I worked for a year at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. So I learned a huge amount.

A number of the people who take these fellowships very early in their career decide to stay in Washington in the policy world. About half of the people who get these fellowships at that time would stay in somehow within the policy world in Washington. And then the other half either go back to where they were or go somewhere else. So I being tenured and established their Rutgers, I went back.

Speaker 1 (50:40.174)
husband and family and so forth in New Jersey. So I was back at Rutgers, but I kept involved in policy by getting onto advisory committees and that sort of thing for the EPA and then for NOAA with the Sea Grant program. I was for a long time a member of the Sea Grant Advisory Board and a variety of other things. The state of New Jersey

the Department of Environmental Protection formed a science advisory board, and I chaired that for over a decade. So I've been involved in the science and policy interface for quite a while, and I'm very glad I have been doing that because this sort of enriches my life, and I feel like I'm making a contribution beyond just writing papers for other scientists.

All of that sort of led into the idea of writing books for the general public and giving talks for the general public. I think there's a problem that many scientists have of needing to use scientific jargon and speaking over the heads of the general public. And I really think teaching that environment course for undergraduates that were not bio majors,

These are English majors, math majors, business majors, whatever. The experience of the several years, decade or so, that I taught that course, I think, prepared me to be able to write book for the general public and give talks to the general public. You know, I feel very good about that. Having done that, I guess I've answered your question.

Well, was a great, great information. that gives us this understanding of the foundation for the book too, as far as what you've done in your life and what are your thoughts about what is happening now with these layoffs and budget cuts?

Speaker 1 (52:49.062)
I'm devastated. It does not affect me personally because I'm no longer getting grants that are getting taken away. I no longer have students to support. So I'm past the point of it directly affecting me, but I have many, many friends and just reading about it. And I think so highly of the EPA and so highly of NOAA. And I see that they are seeming to be

Well, AID also, mean, but aside from AID, EPA and NOAA seem to be particularly being torn apart by the administration. mean, NSF and NIH to a degree, but I think they're rehiring all those people. At least a lot of them are gonna be coming back to NSF and NIH.

But I think EPA and NOAA, Trump has it in for them in particular. And it pains me to see this. And I spend a lot of time writing angry letters to my Congress and senators, they're not my two senators, they're Democrats. And I last weekend spent Friday at a

a rally called Stand Up for Science. And last Saturday I was at a rally because it was International Women's Day. And there's another rally coming up for just generally angry people. So it's like the 60s all over again. Even in the 60s, I didn't have back to back, two days in a row protests to go to. But anyway.

Bara!

Speaker 2 (54:44.002)
Here's where we are.

Yeah, we are.

also just wanted to say thank you for helping us get connected with the woman, Suzanne Brander up in Oregon. she's with the Sciences Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty. since the talks fell through in Busan, South Korea, it looks like they are going to go forward.

Yes.

Speaker 1 (55:11.086)
It's honest. That coalition too, that's where I met Suzanne. We haven't met face to face yet, she's in the inner core of the organization. I'm a regular member of the coalition and that's been a really wonderful experience. I'm, you know, it remains to be seen what the treaty will end up.

being and certainly the US is not going to be among the good guys anymore. Biden was sort of wishy washy and never joined the group called the Ambitious Coalition, which is over 100 countries that want plastics reduced. I mean, this is the main sticking point. Should the manufacture of plastics be reduced?

or not. And the ambitious coalition is saying, yes, we need to reduce the manufacture of plastics. The other group, which is oil producing countries and, you know, other, I guess the US was sort of waffling and now probably the US will be aligned with them, that don't want plastics reduced. Or recycling, you know.

China, Russia, better.

that recycling isn't going to work with plastic. so anyway, yes, Suzanne is great.

Speaker 2 (56:46.754)
We're looking forward to talking to her and thank you so much for coming on to Resilient Earth Radio and podcast with us today, Judith.

Thank you, I've enjoyed talking with you all.

Thank you. Thank you, Scott and Tree for all that you do. Thank you for all of your research and background and history too. Is there any one last thing that you wanted to say to Judith (Weis) or the audience before we go? 

Be active. Do Good. Be active, do good.

I like it. All right, Judith, take care. Bye bye. Bye bye now.

Speaker 1 (57:21.934)
Bye bye.

Speaker 2 (57:33.624)
Thanks for listening to the Resilient Earth podcast where we talk about critical issues and positive actions for our planet. Resilient Earth is produced by Planet Centric Media, a 501c3 nonprofit, and Sea Storm Studios Inc., located on the rugged north Sonoma coast of northern California. I'm Leanne Lindsay, producer and host along with

co-hosts and co-producers Scott and Tree Mercer of Mendonoma Whale and Seal Study located on the South Mendocino and North Sonoma coasts.

Speaker 2 (58:15.234)
The music for this podcast is by Eric Allaman, an international composer, pianist, and writer living in the Sea Ranch. Discover more of his music, animations, ballet, stage, and film work at ericolloman.com. You can find Resilient Earth on Spotify, Apple, and Amazon podcasts, iHeartRadio, YouTube, SoundCloud,

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