Speak Up for Blue Podcast Network

This week on World Ocean Radio we are reflecting on the early days of World Ocean Observatory and the enthusiastic reaction by Sylvia Earle as well as her confidence, counsel and support. Through Sylvia's organization, Mission Blue, she provides information, vision, and endless advocacy for the creation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), officially designated to protect from incursion and damage from fishing, dredging, mining, and other consumption-driven practices. The success of MPAs may be the

Have you ever had an idea for your community, like a beach cleanup, a water fountain, or a patch of shoreline that needs some love, and thought, "If I just had a little money, I could make this happen"? That kind of funding is hard to find. In the UK, there's a charity built for exactly that. Sea-Changers was founded about 15 years ago by Helen Webb and Rachel Lopata, two divers with no background in marine science who watched the places they loved underwater start to decline. Instead of starti

"We'll never see that in our lifetime." You've probably heard it about the ocean. Andrew has heard it plenty, and admits he's said it too. For years it was the standard answer about protecting the high seas, the two-thirds of the ocean that lies beyond any country's borders. Then the High Seas Treaty was agreed, entered into force in January 2026, and passed 100 countries in September, Canada included. In this week's wrap-up, Andrew uses that win to show why a global plastics treaty can happen

"You can't care about plastic. Your phone is made of plastic." If you've ever heard that, you know what it's for. It's designed to make you feel like a hypocrite, so you give up. In this episode, Andrew goes back to one of the most famous moments in plastic pollution: the 2015 video of researchers in Costa Rica pulling a plastic straw from an olive ridley sea turtle's nose. A few months later, the same researcher pulled a plastic fork from another turtle. The straw video helped spark a global p

Picture a beach cleanup. Two hours of hauling bottles, wrappers and foam off the sand. Now picture the same beach ten years later, where you walk the whole length and come home empty-handed. Not because nobody cleaned it, but because there's nothing left to clean. That's a real story, and it happened in Tofino, a surf town on the west coast of Vancouver Island. In 2016 its beaches were covered in plastic, and the local Surfrider chapter realized they could clean every weekend for the rest of th

Dr. Pilar Blanco-Parra grew up in Bogotá, high in the Andes and far from any ocean. She saw the sea for the second time in her life when she moved to Santa Marta to finish her marine biology degree. Within a couple of years she had been stranded overnight on a fishing boat during her first shark project and sent diving as the Galápagos National Park's "shark expert" after a tourist was bitten. She was still an undergrad. In this episode of Beyond Jaws, Andrew Lewin and Dr. David Ebert hear the

Do you ever feel disconnected from ocean action? You sign the petition, you donate, you share the post, and you still don't feel like you're doing the work. Andrew knows the feeling. Fresh out of his undergrad, he emailed organization after organization offering to help for free, and mostly heard nothing back. In this episode he explains why that happens (it usually comes down to trust and how organizations take on volunteers), and how to get past it. He also retells the story of Lilly Woodbur

We are seeing examples every day of the cause-and-effect of climate change on ecosystems: temperature and species, rainfall and agriculture, drought and community, air quality and health, warming ocean water and migration of people and animals. What's it going to take to motivate change? Let's move beyond inadequate responses to inventive solutions, positive change, and embrace of new systems to provide unexpected outcomes to common problems. About World Ocean Radio World Ocean Radio is a weekl

Do you ever feel like ocean action is happening somewhere else? You sign the petition, maybe donate, but you're not really part of the work. Lilly Woodbury knows that feeling, and she found her way in by walking into a Surfrider meeting in Tofino in 2016. Lilly is the campaigns and storytelling director at Surfrider Foundation Canada. In this episode she tells Andrew how a small volunteer chapter helped Tofino and Ucluelet ban plastic straws, bags, cutlery and foam containers, and how Tofino be

Picture a kid at an aquarium in Durban, standing in front of the penguins with a pen and a postcard. She writes one sentence, a promise to change one habit for the ocean, and drops it into a little post box. More than a year later, researchers emailed visitors like her to ask if they'd kept their promise. About half could point to a real change they'd made. This week's episodes covered a lot: marine protected areas nobody can name, a reef that rebuilt itself, and why "fishing is bad" pushes peo