Building a Network for Ocean Protection: Why Community Matters

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When you publish as many episodes as I do per week, like I do Monday, Wednesday,

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and Friday, I publish a new episode. When you publish as many episodes, you

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find that you see every once in a while a theme, whether

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it's in your life or through the episodes, where a theme or

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a topic just kind of keeps arising. And then you start to say, you

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know what? I'm going to talk about that topic on

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today's episode because, you know, sometimes you just like,

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I see things that align and then you're just like, okay, now

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I've got a clear, a clear way to go about this. And sometimes it

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helps me with my life and other times it helps you with yours. So

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hopefully today we're going to be talking about finding your

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community. for ocean conservation. And

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that way, it could be in a career, it could be in a volunteer position, it

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could be anywhere, just so that you feel that you are

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a part of a community that's helping the ocean. And

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there was an interview that I did recently with Surf Rider, as well

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as a dinner that I went to with a couple of colleagues and friends of mine that

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really got me thinking about finding my community here

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in Ontario, Canada. So we're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the

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How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey

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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm

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your host Andrew Lu, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean,

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how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean

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by taking action. And if you want more information, I

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try and provide this as a resource, not only this podcast, but we have a

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YouTube channel, we have Other podcasts that are part

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of this little bit of a network that we have here, you can go to speakupforblue.com to

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find those other podcasts, or you can find out more information. So

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you go speakupforblue.com and you can find more

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information. If you want stuff to come to you in your inbox, you

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can sign up for our newsletter, that's speakupforblue.com forward

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slash newsletter. Pretty simple, speakupforblue.com forward

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slash newsletter. And that newsletter comes out every Monday to Friday, 8 a.m.

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in the morning Eastern Time. You will get it to your inbox and you'll get

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the latest podcast, the latest videos that we put out, the

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latest ocean news that's happening, and the latest job ads that are

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coming through. that you might be interested in at some point in

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time. So today we're going to be talking about community and finding your ocean

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conservation community, your ocean enthusiast community, your ocean practitioner

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community, whatever ocean science community, whatever that

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community might be that you are looking for. We're going to talk

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about how important it is to find that community and how it can help you and center

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you and help you drive sort of your goals forward in

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terms of just being a good human being for the planet, right? Having

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an impact for the planet. A lot of the times, I've

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been thinking about this recently, a lot of the times we get caught

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up in our own world, right? I have two

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girls. Two teenage girls, great, fantastic kids.

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I am very, very, very appreciative and grateful for the kids

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that I have and how they are turning out and how

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they're growing up to be great young women that they are. They have, you

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know, they're in high school and they have pressures. They have their own sort of thing going

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on. We have hockey, we're starting indoor soccer today as I record this

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with one of the kids. You know, when one daughter's trying to get

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into university, so she's, you know, working on marks and studying hard.

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They've got jobs, they've got friends, there's a lot of stuff that goes on.

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Myself, I've got the podcast, I've got a full-time job, I

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coach sometimes, I coach my girls hockey, I go out

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to their sporting events, we have socialized with my wife and I. We

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tend to get caught up in our own lives, and a lot of the times,

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you get caught up in that phone. you know, that you're just scrolling through or

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maybe even listening to the podcast or you want to do outdoor activities and fitness and

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you want to stay healthy and all those kinds of, there's so many things that you can get caught

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up in and everybody has their own hobbies. They have what

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they want to do. Some of them are more active than others. Some of them are

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sitting in front of a microphone and doing podcasting. Others are fitness. Others

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are, you know, doing puzzles or knitting or, uh, you

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know, whatever that might be, reading a number of different books. Everybody

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has their own kind of hobbies, but everybody wants

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to be able to have an impact on life, right?

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They wanna be able to go through life and have a purpose. And

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if you don't have a purpose, sometimes it's difficult. You

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can get into a, I'm not gonna say

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it because I'm not a medical doctor, but a bit of a depression in life. I

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mean, where's my life going? Where do I want to go with it?

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I see this a lot of times with people who are trying to get careers, especially

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younger people who just graduate, trying to build and

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establish their career, trying to get a job, and they can't find it.

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So they feel like the purpose that I want, my

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dream, I can't get to. Right. And so it's harder

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to find that purpose. And

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sometimes, you know, we are facing some

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pretty serious things in our lives, you know, from,

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from this perspective of what we've been going through over

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the last year, last couple of years, we've seen, you know, wildfires, droughts,

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flooding, hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones,

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earthquakes, you know, storm surges, massive

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storms that come out of nowhere here in Ontario that have caused flooding.

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And there's been a lot of damage to homes and things like that. And

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then what happens is we feel helpless when it comes to this,

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right? We feel like we can't have an impact on

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the situation at hand that affects our lives and

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the people within our community's lives. It's very difficult

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to help in that situation when you're by yourself. It's

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when you're by yourself and you feel like, hey, I want to do something, but I have no idea

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where I begin. I have no idea where

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I need to go. And I have to do better.

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But I don't know where to start. And that's where you have to find your

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community. And for me, I am a marine biologist in

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Ontario. And a couple of, actually a number of years ago, we

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had an aquarium that opened up, a public aquarium that opened up in Toronto. Now

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I've been waiting for an aquarium to open up in Toronto my entire life. And

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back in like the mid-2010s, the aquarium opened up.

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And there was a marine biologist that actually lived in

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Burlington, just outside of Toronto, the city that I live in, that

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was a marine biologist. And his wife was a marine

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biologist. And he worked at the aquarium. He was helping establish and

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launching the aquarium. And it was cool to

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have somebody that, you know, we know the same things. We

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know, Andy DeHart, who's actually been on the podcast a number of times. We

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know, you know, what issues face the ocean. We have a lot in common. We

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actually like the 49ers as well, the San Francisco 49ers. So we had a lot in

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common. So, you know, he became a pretty good friend over time. And

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no matter where he is in the world, he's in Florida right now. But we, you know, we

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kept in touch. We had that, like, we felt that bond. There was a bit of that community

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there, right? Establishing, it was like just the two of us or just three of

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us with his wife. There was like that community there. And

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that helped me feel like I'm doing something. I can talk

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about something that could be done. And I've been looking for

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that community of people who are around. Like, I always see people

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on the coastlines. I see, I meet people and

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I meet with them over Zoom or I meet with them over Riverside that

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I'm using to record this right now or Google Meet and

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we have these talks and we have these discussions, but I

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can't really do anything outside of having these meetings because

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they live across the country on each side of the country. I live in the central

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part of the country. And so sometimes it's difficult. I

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don't know a lot of people within the Great Lakes area that are

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marine biologists and stuff, and so it's difficult. But over

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time, I was able to establish some friendships and meet

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some colleagues that want to do more for the ocean, that live

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in Ontario. You know, some of them are science communicators. One

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of them is a business focus. Actually, two of them are business focus people,

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but they want to have an impact on the ocean. They

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want, from a Canadian perspective and from a world perspective, more

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people to have an impact on sort

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of the ocean, right? Be able to understand the ocean, be able to put

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forward solutions for the ocean. Now, we're all working on

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different projects and things, but we talk about it, we get together. And last night,

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as I'm recording this, I got together with two of them to say, hey, let's

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get an Ontario Ocean Group together and let's start meeting every

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once in a while. Let's discuss the different projects, how we can help each other out

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potentially and collaborate. But it was just so refreshing

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to have people where we could talk about the big problems and talk

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about how we can slowly sort of chip away at

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addressing some of those problems and providing solutions for some of those problems. And

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it just made me feel amazing. And

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it brought me back to, and even I was talking to them last night

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about it, where it was like, there are you

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know, organizations out there that are based where they have chapters, where

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they have volunteers. You know, they have a small staff or

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as a growing like, and this is like I was talking to Surfrider of Chad Nelson that

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we published last Friday. And, you

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know, there's just a couple of episodes ago. So if you want to go back, I highly recommend that you listen to

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that. But they, you know, Surfrider established this large network

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of chapters along, you know, across the US, a

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bit into Canada and a bit into other places around the world, where

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they could help coastal communities, coastal water quality, surfing

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sites, beaches, and so forth, and protect those and make sure that regulations

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are being followed and that, you know, they had some pretty big wins.

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And if you listen to that episode, you'll hear some of those wins. But

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the basis of it all is this community of people that they've established through

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their network of volunteers, 100,000 volunteers, 200 chapters, 80 full-time

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employees. When they first started, it was really just three founders,

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surfers, that saw that there was something happening to one of their major

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surf sites, they didn't want it happening, and they decided to stand up for

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it, and they created this organization called Surf Rider. And

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now you have all these volunteers and you

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can mobilize these volunteers to take action on

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specific things, but you're also helping them find a community. So

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by, you know, this, the headquarters is in California, but it's, they're

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not always talking to the people in Florida, the people in North Carolina, the people in

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New Jersey, the people in along like the Oregon coast or

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the Washington coast. They have their own regional

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communities, regional chapters, and each and every one of those in

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the little counties and stuff all get together and they decide what they want to

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do under the Surfrider name. They are provided with the training,

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they are provided with everything, but they found their community within their

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own local area through the Surfrider umbrella. Right?

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It's a surfrider organization. You are a surfrider organizer or

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you're a surfrider volunteer and you are working with like

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to help surfrider, like help its mission by empowering people

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to drive that. So people who are along the coastline, say here

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in Burlington, there's no chapter here yet, but you

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know, you look at what's happening in Ontario, Lake Ontario,

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and you can say, well, there's a lot of plastic pollution that comes out when we get big rainfalls. Well,

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that's not good. We need to do something about that. How do I do something by myself

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about that? How do I approach the local council to

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do that? I don't know how to do that. I feel lost when I

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do it by myself because I don't feel like I have enough power. But

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under the Surfrider name and you have a local chapter, you know, say in

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like Vancouver or in other places in the US, you

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have that number. You can go to somebody and be like, hey, have

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you ever dealt with this before? Or have you ever, I've noticed this, I've noticed this. You

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go through your training that's online, that's provided online, and you have all

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this stuff. You have your community, you have your backing. You

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know, one of the big stories that they talked about, that Chad talked about when

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he was on the podcast, was the fact that, you know, there was a park

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that was going to be changed and it was going to affect one of the best spots

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for surfing, as well as a park, a park that's visited, one

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of the largest visited parks in the world, or in

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the U.S., and it was going to get changed. Something was going

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to happen to it. I don't remember exactly what. You'll have to go back to the podcast and

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find out what. But they mobilized people in the area and they

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had like 2,500 people come out and to the public comment

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period, and they basically said what they wanted to say. They had to change

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the venue three times because so many people came out. Normally, you don't get that many people. That's

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why they do these small venues. But Surfrider was able to get 2,500 people, probably

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most of them in their chapter, right?

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This is in California. So they had a pretty

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big chapter there. So people came out to say, hey, you

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know, we are not for this. We are against this. And it was a

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David and Goliath kind of situation where a surf rider was the David,

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right? And the government and the, I think it was like a highway or something. And the

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people who were in charge of like the industry or developers were

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Goliath. And they did not get that pass through. because the

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people wanted something. So they found their community, they mobilized the

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community on a specific action that everybody's aligned on, and

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everybody had a chance to say something. And that many people, you

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know, when you're talking about democratic government, they're like, well, the people spoke, and then we have to

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listen to the people. Right? For the most part. That doesn't

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happen all the time, but it happened in this situation. They found, but they found

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their community. And although not every sort

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of issue gets resolved by mobilizing people like that, and

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I'm sure they've had their losses, you know, Surfrider and people along

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the coastline. We definitely had our losses. But by

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having people join in a community of

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other volunteers, under one sort of umbrella to say,

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hey, here are our values. If you believe in our values and our mission, come

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together, volunteer, and you can help drive

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some of the programs, right, that fall under their programs. Like

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they actually, you know, Chad couldn't do something along their coastline that they observed and

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they want to do something, can find a community

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of people who want to do something and want to have an impact and you're part of

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a larger thing, you bring it to their attention, you mobilize on that act.

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And then under the Surfrider umbrella, you can be part

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and you can do some great things. Imagine, just

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imagine the beauty of that. Right?

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I think that's something that we lose focus

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on. We get caught up in our own lives. And

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we observe stuff, but then we just get apathetic. We're just like, you know what? I can't do

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anything about it. Not by myself. And I don't know where to go. You

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just have to search. So if you want to have an impact, whether it

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be on the environment, whether it be on fighting homelessness

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or, you know, hunger and, or child

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hunger or, you know, adult hunger, people's hunger, whatever

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that might be, find your community. Find

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the help so that you feel that you can have an impact. You don't have to volunteer every

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day. You can volunteer once a week, once a month, whatever that might be, attend

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some meetings, you know, get on their newsletters, right?

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But you feel like you can have more of an impact as part of a group

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than to say, I'm not gonna have an impact at all, right? You can

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learn from each other. You can learn from the different exercises that have been

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done in the past from this group, and then you can build on

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that, and then you can do more in the future. And I think

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that's what's important when we talk about life. We get, we feel like we have

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more, have had more of an impact on our local community or,

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you know, province or state or even country. Right. But

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you have to find your community and it may, may or may not be

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with Surfrider. You know, if you want to go to Surfrider, you can go and volunteer. You

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can go to volunteer.surfrider.org. I'll put the link in the

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show notes and in the description, but you

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don't have to volunteer with Surfrider. And by the way, you don't have to be a surfer to be

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a volunteer with Surfrider. But you can volunteer with whoever

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you'd like, you know, whatever matches what you want to do and the impact that

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you want to have and the purpose that you want to be able to fulfill. And

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instead of scrolling on TikTok or on Instagram or

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whatever, you feel like you get out, you meet people, you get more social, you

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feel part of the community, and then you can build on that. It's not an easy

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thing. It's gonna take a lot. It takes a change of habit. Some

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of us are more extroverted than others, and that's okay.

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But you can be a part of something, and you can help, even

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by putting just your signature on certain petitions that the organization that

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you're volunteering with wants to push through and wants to change. So

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there's a lot of things that you can do, and the level

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of effort changes, but find your community. I've been able to find

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mine, and hopefully that will grow as we continue this. But

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I've been able to find mine, and it makes me feel better, and it gives me

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more purpose on what I can do in the future. So I hope you're able to

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find yours. And let me know what you think. Put your comment down if

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you're watching this on YouTube, put it in the comments. Or if you're watching this

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on Spotify, you can put it in the comments as well. Or if you want to

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just tell me, just Just me itself, I would be

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happy to share, you know, or listen to what you

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have to say. Just DM me on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean, that's

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at HowToProtectTheOcean. I want to thank you so much for joining

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me on today's episode of the How To Protect The Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew

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Lewin, and I want you to have a great day and