Nine Inspiring Ocean Voices from last year (2024)
Some of our best guests from the Rising Tide Ocean Podcast
David Helvarg (DH): Looking forward 2025 promises to be a challenging time for our Ocean world. But looking back at 2024 we had some amazing Ocean guest voices on our Rising Tide Ocean Podcast that can inspire us to believe that we can still turn the tide.
Let's start with commercial fisherman turned journalist Nick Raheim and his recalling how some very smart sperm whales were stealing fish from a longline fishing boat he was working on in the seas off Alaska, until a few frustrated fishermen tried to get him to join them in shooting at the whales.
Nick Rahaim (NR): It was late February, March, the western Gulf of Alaska, we were fishing on sand point. Uh, which is basically where the Alaskan peninsula meets the Aleutian Islands. Terrible weather. And we had worked for about two weeks straight and couldn't shake this pod of sperm whales that were following us.
We'd set up dummy gear and do other things to try to avoid them and try to move to different areas. And sometimes you even see sperm whales sleeping on the ocean surface when you get to your buoys to start hauling gear. So, they know what to look for. And. Even though a sperm whale's jaw can be 8 to 10 feet long, and sablefish are 18 inches to 3, 4 feet at the biggest.
They discriminate between what they eat. So, if you have bycatch of grenadier or rockfish, they don't really want those. So they can daintily pluck Sablefish, also known as a black cod, off the hooks. Sometimes they clean the hook. Sometimes you'll see the hook has been completely straightened out. Other times you'll just have a black cod head and then they also do what's called raking the long lines.
When it’s being hauled up from the depths because you fish for sable fish in really deep water, like up to a mile deep. So, you have lots of line and have thousands of hooks and maybe a mile or two of line in one set. And they're anchored to the ocean floor.
As they're coming up, sperm whales sometimes will grab the line and pluck it with their mouths and pluck it like a guitar string. And there's video of this. They'd strum the line and the vibrations would send all the sablefish off the hooks, and then they'd just go around and nibble.
So, at that poin the guns came out, this one person said, ‘Hey, Nick, you need to take this gun and shoot a whale, otherwise we can't trust you.’ Oh, jeez. And, so I was like doing a job that he couldn't do as well as me. So, um, I don't know how technical I should get into the boat operations.
(DH): But you were in a position to say no.
(NR): Yeah. I was like, you can't do this, so leave me alone. Maybe later. And, uh, luckily later never came.
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(DH): On a lighter note, Alaska artist Ray Troll recalls how fishing for ratfish off southeast Alaska inspired his famous ‘Spawn Till You Die,’ artwork, paintings, murals, plus millions of t-shirts like The Empire Strikes Bass, Dark Side of the Loon, and Coho Ho and Humpy Holidays.
Ray Troll (RT): When I moved to Alaska I was in the middle of this fish culture, you know, I was selling fish, I was drawing and painting fish. I also started fishing seriously as a sports fisherman. And then a lot of my neighbors were commercial fishermen. And there's just so many aspects to the maritime cultures. But I began to catch the fish, and get my fish ID books out wanting to learn. I'm just naturally curious. What is this? You know, and I love bottom fishing, which is really like reaching out into the mysterious dark unknown. And you just drop your line to the bottom and see what comes up.
And there'd be these massive halibut and beautiful rockfish that blow your mind. And I just wanted to know more about these creatures. I wanted to know more about these animals. So, catching a fish was always, and is always an emotional experience and is mixed with pride. And it's also mixed with horror at killing a beautiful animal. And that was feeding my art, that angst, that sort of conflict of emotions the pride and the horror.
And then one of the weirdest, most alien looking was a rat fish. And I love the name rat fish because it sounds like ‘Rat Fink’ which I loved as a kid. Rat Fink was sort of the anti-Mickey Mouse. And I reached out, I just got on the phone and there's only a few people in the world that know about chimeras, which are the Ratfish. They're in the shark family. I reached out to Dominique Didier at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, just called her out of the blue, back on the old rotary dial phone, ‘Hey, you want to talk about Ratfish?’ And she turned me on all kinds of things about Ratfish, and I started drawing and painting them. I tumbled deeper into the world of Ratfish and how ancient they are.
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(DH): A few oceans away. Dr. Sarah Frias Torres recalls how her father inspired her interest in the sea along the coast of Spain and how growing up in a repressive fascist culture inspired her to move on to where she now studies corals in Florida, along with the Goliath grouper, the ‘Lord of the Rocks.’
Dr. Sarah Frees Torres (FT): From the moment I knew how to walk, every time we'll go to the beach, I'll just jump into the waves following my dad. He was an avid snorkeler and freediver. And he decided, okay, I cannot prevent you from following me, so let's go snorkel together. And right there the ocean was almost gin clear. Um, and so right away I discovered this amazing new world with all these beautiful creatures I didn't understand with these different shapes and colors.
And so, my dad, at the end of every snorkel trip, he will explain, so this is an anemone and this is a sea urchin. So after that first discovery, all the different summers afterwards I’d do the same thing, snorkeling with my dad and obviously we had a constant supply of Jacque Cousteau ocean documentaries on TV every Sunday afternoon over the years that generated this passion for the ocean that continues to this day.
(DH) And so you went to school knowing you were interested in oceanography?
(FT) Yeah. Yes, I knew I wanted to be a marine biologist, whatever words I was using. But remember, it was not an easy goal to achieve by accident of geography and history. I was born and raised in Barcelona and from birth to my preteens, there was a fascist dictatorship still in the country. So when you're a little girl born in those conditions, All that society expects of you is to grow up, get married, and have many, many children por el bien de la iglesia y la nación, for the good of the church and the nation. That was the only purpose in your life. If that is your choice, that's fine, but it becomes a problem when it's imposed by the Catholic church and a Fascist dictatorship.
I was lucky that my parents had great expectations for me. They quickly realized I was very, very smart and I will just absorb science in a way that they've never seen before. I was really a scientist from birth. So, they made every effort to ensure that I had access to a great school. And then whatever it took, make sure I could go into university.
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(DH): Author Shelby Van Pelt, who wrote the best-selling ‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’, tells us about going on a book tour that included penguins, and how her work has inspired so many of her readers to fall in love with octopuses. Or octopi, or whatever.
Shelby Van Pelt (VP): You know, just the, the financial windfall of this book, I definitely, it's important to me to divert a lot of that to getting plastics out of the ocean. I also donate to some of the organizations that rescue octopuses and rehabilitate them even if they are not as endangered as a lot of other species are.
But, one of the things that has been most joyful to me in this whole process is just seeing like little nudges, where you take someone who has never been to the ocean or wouldn't have any reason to have a connection to it and get them to care about it.
And, you know, this book can be just a little nudge in that direction. I was at an event in Texas. And it was really cool. The Dallas zoo brought a couple of their penguins to the event, just to, I think, to keep people entertained in the signing line, because the signing line was long.
But then the host polled the room, this was a room of probably about 300 people. He said, before reading ‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’, how many of you knew anything about giant octopuses or any octopuses? And a handful of hands go up and then, ‘After reading this book, how many of you went and googled octopuses and learned something and cared a little bit more?’ And like every hand in the room went up!
I mean, a lot of people who would otherwise have no pathway to come to learn about something like this now have. This pathway and, you know, maybe it doesn't turn them into doing activism every day of their life or spending their life savings on trying to save the oceans. But, you know, it helps, I hope, at least a little bit.
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(DH): Now, my friend, Dr. Nancy Rabalaie doesn't like to be called ‘the Mother of the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone’, but she certainly brought it to public awareness. Here she describes what it's like diving in the dead zone below the Gulf's oil rigs. Also, how her saying the dead zone’s the size of New Jersey pissed off a governor but got some federal action.
Dr. Nancy Rabalais (NR): We dive in our research operation to put oxygen meters on an offshore platform. We get real time data that way, continuous every 15 seconds from the bottom and the middle and at the surface. To do that, we have to dive in new instruments and then take out the used ones and swap them out. I have video that shows at the surface, the water is sometimes clear, sometimes turbid, with a lot of phytoplankton. And the color is very green. And there are many fish swimming around in that area. And many barnacles and anemones and other kinds of organisms growing on the side of the platform legs. Lots of fish.
It’s a Sports Fisherman's Paradise, Louisiana. Once you get below that level, and the oxygen starts to drop down, you don't see any more fish. When you get to the bottom, it's usually very dark and murky. And there are no living organisms. In the sediments, there are no living organisms or on the side of the platform, which can look like a mini coral reef sometimes at the surface.
And you definitely know you're in the area of the low oxygen, the dead zone. Our favorite comparison is it’s the size of the state of New Jersey. From the Mississippi River over onto the Texas coast and even into Texas at times. And that particular size comparison proved very worthwhile when the former governor of New Jersey addressed the National Academy (of Sciences) group on Nutrient Pollution and said in no uncertain terms, ‘I don't want to hear this thing compared to the size of the state of New Jersey anymore.’
And I thought she was looking directly at me, but then a couple of years later I went to a retirement party for somebody from the office of water quality at EPA who had done a lot of work on nutrient reduction, and she was there and I walked up to her. And shook her hand and said, Nancy Rabelais, dead zone, Gulf of Mexico, size of the state of New Jersey. And she was taken aback. And that's when she helped move the Hypoxia Action Plan for Nutrient Reduction from a (George) Bush (Sr.) desk onto a Clinton desk, and we started making some progress.
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(DH): Rear Admiral Andy Sugimoto is a 40-year veteran of what I call the ‘Rescue Warriors.’ That's the title of my book on the U. S. Coast Guard. He commands the Coast Guard's 11th District, that stretches from California to the waters off Peru. In the course of his career, he also spent 12 years at sea.
(DH) What amazes me still is sort of the range of mission activities the Coast Guard's involved in. Maybe you could tell us some of them.
Rear Admiral Andy Sugimoto (AS): Absolutely. There are 12 statutory missions and an additional mission of intelligence that the Coast Guard is tasked with carrying out. And I guess you can actually summarize all of them in two words, Maritime Governance.
So, when you think about ports, the environment in the coastal waters and the protection of our environmental resources in waters out to 200 nautical miles, the safety of all vessels coming in and out of the ports, ensuring the inspections from new (ship) builds wherever they are in the world is taken care of, that vessels coming into the United States are safe and secure and that there's nothing bad that can be put on those vessels.
All of those things fall under our jurisdiction and our ability to keep up with about $5.4 trillion dollars of the United States's GDP, which is the maritime environment. And this nation is blessed beyond all other nations in that it has three coasts that are open year round, the Atlantic, the Gulf and the Pacific Ocean, but more so than that, they have the Great Lakes to the north and the inland river system, which allows us to put on barges anything we grow, build or produce in the middle of the countrybetween the Appalachians and the Rockies.
We can send it out at a price point and speed that no other nation on earth can match in terms of the ability to get that out to the world. And so that is our responsibility on a daily basis to protect that economy, which we're extremely proud of in addition to Search and Rescue (Drug and Migrant interdiction at sea, etc.).
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(DH): Sherri Goodman is the former Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security and the recent author of a new book, ‘Threat Multiplier.’ So, Sherri, please talk to us about the strategic advantages of clean energy for both combat land operations and maritime security.
Sherry Goodman (SG): In Iraq and Afghanistan, we were losing soldiers and Marines who were trucking fuel to the front because eight out of 10 of the military convoys in those two wars were about moving fossil fuels, water, and ammunition, and they were subject to improvised explosive device attacks by the terrorists in that region. And that began a whole era of as Secretary (of Defense) Mattis said, he was General Mattis at the time, he said, ‘unleash us from the tether of fuel.’ In other words, we have to be able to fight at the front without having long supply lines of liquid fuels. And we now say that we have to be able to operate in what we call a contested logistics environment.
We can't assume That you're going to be able to get all these logistics - fuel, water, ammunition to the front without being attacked. And that is true not only in a future land-based war, but also in what we call the maritime domain, let's say, in a war fight in China. And so nuclear aircraft carriers and other nuclear-powered ships are not dependent (on fossil fuels), but you also have many that today are, also aircraft.
So, moving towards hybrid fuels actually reduces your supply lines of fossil fuels. Also, when you think about, and the Deputy Secretary has talked about this, hybrid tactical land vehicles have the advantage that they are quieter and they have better torque. So, there's actually some military operational advantage to moving to new types of energy sources.
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(DH): Okay, back to octopuses. Craig Foster, the Academy Award winning filmmaker of ‘My Octopus Teacher’, is out with a new book, ‘Amphibious Soul’, a memoir of growing up on the kelpy shore of South Africa, where he taught himself how to track animals underwater, and also how to enjoy the freezing cold water of the kelp beds that he calls the Great African Sea Forest.
Craig Foster (CF): I realized that it takes about 20 years to become a really good tracker and have this nature connection. So, I'd grown up in the intertidal, diving in the great African sea forest. So at least I knew quite a lot about that environment. If I could somehow learn tracking in a place I'd grown up in and I'd had at least 10 years of very powerful immersion, if I did another 10 years every day, maybe I could attain some level of connection.
So, I set a goal of diving every day for 10 years. And I set a goal of trying to track underwater because I knew that tracking was the key. This is a way of pattern recognition where you can see tiny signs and you can see what's been happening at night. You can even see future events by a whole lot of signs and clues. And it took me literally I think three years to see my first track underwater. That's how difficult it was. But as soon as I saw the first one, then it started to go much faster. And I realized there were thousands of these tracks underwater. They’re not the same on land at all, but I got so excited because I realized it would be possible to track animals underwater.
(DH): And what was that first track you identified?
(CF): That was the trail of a Burnupena whelk (sea snail) and these whelks move along the rocks underwater and they leave a very fine slime trail and then tiny particles of sand collect on that trail. And it's one of the most obvious tracks underwater. You'd think I would have seen it, but you know, if you're not looking for something, you don't look. And then it just built from there. Now I have thousands of these underwater tracks that I've known and developed. Being close with those animals, I've realized that the most precious thing that we will ever, ever encounter in our lives is what I call the mother of mothers, and that is the biodiversity, all the animals and plants, bacteria, and life forms that live on this planet, the millions of them and all their interrelationships.
That's the life support system of this planet. That's why all of us are breathing. That's why all of us are eating. And we somehow have to change the story from this madness of infinite capitalism towards looking after our mother of mothers. She's looked after us from the beginning. Now, how do we allow biodiversity to regenerate? Because that is critical if we want to survive as a species.
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(DH): And finally, it was a pleasure to talk with Wendy Benchley. She and I co- founded the Peter Benchley Ocean Awards, the Academy Awards of the Ocean, many years ago. But they've been in hibernation for several years now except, with support of the Aquarium Conservation Partnership (ACP), they're coming back, just in time for the 50th anniversary of ‘Jaws.’
Wendy Benchley (WB): When David started to talk about the history and the idea, I'm just thinking about Peter. When we first, after Jaws was published, when we first started going on National Geographic expeditions and it was so thrilling for both of us to be able to get out on the ocean and, and what other writer has ever been so fortunate as to write a book and then have it open up a whole new life for him as it did for Peter?
We were very lucky in that way. And one of the things we talked a lot about was that there are so many different vocations and avocations and jobs that are all associated with helping to get the ocean healthy again. And so, I think that this, the Benchley Awards, are very true to that thought that he had. And Davi helped put it into a real organized award system, but it was certainly something that we talked about when he was still alive. And so, it's a great, marvelous feeling.
And the other thing I just am thinking about right now is that I'm very moved, and I think he would be if he were alive, that the ocean community accepts Jaws and his writing as something that the end result was fascination and more interest in the ocean and that it had a positive effect. So, I think it's quite wonderful that the aquariums also feel comfortable with that concept.
(DH): I was talking the other day with this young woman scientist, Who told me when I mentioned it, she didn't know there was a Peter Benchley Awards and that it was coming back.
And when I said that she got very excited. She said, when she was a child she read ‘The Girl of the Sea of Cortez,’ and that she carried it with her for years and it inspired her to become a scientist. So, it wasn't just ‘Jaws’, it was his whole work of fiction that were all about the ocean.
(WB): That was Peter's favorite book. You do know that he had this wonderful ride on a manta ray that was injured in the Sea of Cortez and (after they helped remove rope that had entangled the manta) the manta stayed with the ship for about three days. I think it was a safe place for the manta. It was like a feeding station. And so, he (Peter) came back from that trip just exhilarated and fascinated with mantas. And then he wrote ‘The Girl of the Sea of Cortez’ about this young Mexican girl who has a very positive relationship with a manta and it's a great book. We hope it's going to be a movie one of these days. I think it would make a lovely movie.
(DH)” It’s also nice, after meeting so many marine scientists who were inspired by the marine biologist character in Jaws that Richard Dreyfuss played in the movie, it’s nice to meet a scientist who was actually inspired by this other book.
(WB): I think Peter got thousands of letters from people saying they wanted to be Hooper. And actually, I think Peter wanted to be Hooper. That was what was sort of his role model.
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(DH): Well, that's it. It's a fish wrap, as they say. But as stormy and challenging as 2025 will almost certainly be, we promise to keep offering you fun, diverse, solution-oriented Ocean Voices in the new year. Check us out at: https://bluefront.org/category/podcast/