For decades, the deep sea was treated as an afterthought in conversations about ocean conservation, a dark, distant place assumed to be mostly empty. That assumption is now being tested in real time, as mining companies push to extract polymetallic …
In September 2021, Time magazine profiled Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company (TMC), and his company's plan to mine the Clarion Clipperton Zone, a stretch of international seabed between Hawaii and Mexico that holds one of the world's largest k…
Why would someone who watched a deep-sea mining company collapse go back and try it again? For Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company (TMC), that's not a hypothetical question. It's already happened once, with the same industry, some of the same l…
Seamounts are underwater mountains, most of them volcanic, that rise at least 1,000 meters above the surrounding seafloor without breaking the surface. They disrupt ocean currents through a process called topographic upwelling, in which cold, nutrie…
Most people picture ocean advocates coming up through science or policy school. Matthew Gianni's path started on the deck of a fishing boat. For 10 years, Matthew worked as a commercial fisherman across a remarkable range of US fisheries. He gillne…
Every field has its designated spokespeople. In marine science, it's usually whoever has the most letters after their name. Amy Weldon thinks that's a mistake, and she built an entire podcast to prove it. Amy is the host and executive producer of B…
After 11 years of podcasting and 2,000 episodes of How to Protect the Ocean, Andrew Lewin is doubling down on a platform he first tried and stepped away from twice: YouTube. In this episode, recorded the day after HTPTO's milestone 2,000th episode a…
Two thousand episodes. When Andrew Lewin recorded episode one of How to Protect the Ocean, he had no way of knowing it would eventually lead to TV offers, podcast hosting offers, job offers, and his current dream job. In this milestone episode, he p…
Yesterday's episode covered short-form content: TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts. Today, Andrew Lewin makes the case for the opposite end of the spectrum: long-form podcasting, and why he thinks it's one of the most underrated tools available to an…
Most people scrolling through TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts have had the experience: you see an underwater clip, tap the little info tag, and an hour later you're deep in a rabbit hole of ocean facts you never expected to learn. That pu…
Electric vehicles took over the road years ago. Now the same shift is happening on the water, and Alexandre Mongeon has a front row seat. As CEO and co-founder of Vision Marine Technologies, Alexandre has spent more than a decade building the electr…
Ocean conservation doesn't have to run on grants and donations alone. A growing number of companies are proving that cleaning up the ocean, funding wildlife research, and paying people fairly can also be a profitable business. In this episode of How…
Imagine you're surfing in Bali, one of the best surf spots in the world. You paddle out expecting clear water and instead you're pushing through floating plastic. That was the moment that led two friends, Alex Schulze and Andrew Cooper, to found 4oc…
Andrew Lewin has thought about buying a boat for months. It goes back to his dad, who spent a brief stretch on a fishing boat as a teenager in Quebec City and talked about it for the rest of his life. Andrew used to joke he'd buy his dad a boat one …
Global shipping is the invisible backbone of nearly everything we buy. Somewhere between 80 and 90% of world trade moves by sea, and that scale comes with a real environmental price tag: shipping is responsible for a little over 2% of global CO2 emi…
When you picture ocean conservation, a Hollywood film set probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind. But on this episode of How to Protect the Ocean, Andrew talks with Zena Harris, founder and president of Green Spark Group, about how the en…
Businesses talk about sustainability constantly. The harder question is whether they are actually doing what they claim. In 2026, regulators around the world decided to find out, and the answer for a lot of companies was no. More than 400 greenwash…
For a long time, the health of people hasn't been at the center of how businesses think about sustainability. Some of the industries that run our economy, particularly fossil fuel companies in both Canada and the US, have put people at the lowest en…
Why Sustainable Companies Actually Save Money Companies don't usually go sustainable purely out of goodwill. Most of the time, it comes down to money. Businesses that build circularity into their supply chains often find they can cut costs, reduce …
Sustainability anxiety is easy to come by right now. Wildfires, sea level rise, melting ice, and governments that keep investing in fossil fuels regardless of who holds power can make the climate crisis feel unsolvable. That anxiety is where today's…
Conferences are one of the biggest opportunities in a marine science or conservation career, but they can also be one of the most intimidating parts of the job. In this episode of How to Protect the Ocean, Andrew breaks down how he approaches confer…
Marineland Canada is officially closing. This week the marine theme park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, began moving its remaining beluga whales out after decades of protest, legal battles, and mounting concern over animal welfare. Six belugas were flow…
The United States is on track to hold the world's first commercial deep-sea mining lease sale. It is happening in federal waters off American Samoa, and it is moving forward despite overwhelming public opposition. The Situation The agency running …
A viral TikTok about fish aggregation devices drifting into marine protected areas was the spark for this episode. It got our host, Andrew, thinking about a topic he hadn't covered in a while but that never really goes away: ghost nets. What is a g…