Call of the Ocean
Discover the profound connection between humanity and the ocean with our unique collection of stories. This curated series features captivating interviews from individuals who lives have been shaped by the sea.
Each story offers a glimpse into the transformative power of the ocean, showcasing its ability to inspire, heal and connect us all.
Call of the Ocean
Ocean Conservation Trust
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On this episode we are talking to the Ocean Conservation Trust, who operate the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth. Some of the topics we discuss are Blue Therapy, Seagrass Restoration and what it takes to curate the National Marine Aquarium.
https://oceanconservationtrust.org/
https://oceanconservationtrust.org/ocean-advocacy/are-you-an-ocean-friendly-home/
https://oceanconservationtrust.org/ocean-experiences/blue-mind-hub/
https://oceanconservationtrust.org/ocean-advocacy/call-a-motion-for-the-ocean/
https://oceanconservationtrust.org/ocean-advocacy/think-ocean-conservation/thinkocean-challenge/
Welcome to Call of the Ocean Podcast. My name's Cerys.
Speaker 1And my name's Neil.
Speaker 5So today we're going to be speaking to Freya, Megan, and Will from the Ocean Conservation Trust who operate the National Marine Aquarium .
Speaker 1Yeah, the Ocean Conservation Trust is one of the major conservation charities here in the UK. They exist to protect and restore the ocean.
Speaker 5So today we're going to be looking at many different topics, including mental health, habitat restoration.
Speaker 1Yeah, and what it takes to look after the national aquarium. So I'm sure you're going to enjoy this one.
Speaker 5See you on the other side.
Speaker 1So we've got Freya, Megan, and Will from the Ocean Conservation Trust. So should we start off with our usual question? Yeah. So what we do, we ask everybody on the podcast the same question at the start and at the end. So our opening question is what was your earliest memory of the ocean and how did it make you feel?
Speaker 6So I used to, so I lived in lots of different places growing up because my dad was in the armed forces. So we lived in inland places, but we also lived quite close to the coast. But somewhere we used to regularly come was we used to come to the southwest to visit my dad's family. So visiting the beach, making sand castles, and I just remember it feeling just really joyful. That was the main thing I remember. Sound good.
Speaker 7I think my earliest memory is similar to Faya. I I grew up near the ocean. So I grew up near Southampton, which is a lovely area. I was on the edge of the new forest, but the access to the ocean isn't always that great. But I was lucky that I had a mum who loved the ocean as well. So we used to go down at the weekends and even just sit on the beach or take a dog walk or go snorting or whatever. We would always find a way to be round the ocean. And I always just remembering everything, everything going quiet and feeling very calm and enjoying just being there. Awesome.
SpeakerWell, for me, I lived in Surrey, so I lived in Surrey, so pretty far from the ocean. But we had a friend that had a house on the Isle of Wight that we would go to every year. And I don't know if you know the Isle of Wight, but there's a place called Freshwater Bay. It was right next to Freshwater Bay. And so you go down there, there's like amazing rock pools there. There's actually some caves that you can walk around to and the tide's out snorkeling as well. So for me, it was kind of being on holiday and feeling a kind of sense of adventure, I think, just because exploring those rock pools and going to the caves as well was really adventurous for quite a young, quite a young child. Yeah. Awesome.
Speaker 1Thank you very much.
Speaker 5So I'm guessing none of you probably imagined that you're gonna that you were gonna end up in the jobs that you're in and you know, when you were children. So how did life lead you to where you are now? Who wants to go first?
SpeakerI'll go first. So I think my mother would say that I did kind of want to do this as a child. I'm not I'm not sure, but she always said that I did. Like when I went to uh we went on holiday to California one year, we went to Monterey Bene aquarium, and there were divers in the tank there, and apparently like three or four years old, I was pointing at them saying, I want to do that. So she said that I already knew that from that age. How so how did I end up here? I kind of always wanted to do marine biology. I wasn't sure if I wanted to work in an aquarium, but I always wanted to do marine biology, and I did that at university, and then eventually got an internship here in 2016, I think, and then kind of went from there. I've I've kind of worked all over the country as well, in Manchester, in Birmingham, London as well, and then eventually ended up back here. Yeah, so I think I think that's the path I took.
Speaker 6Yeah, sounds good, sounds interesting. Kind of similar with me. So, like for a really long time, I knew I was going to work with animals, I was going to be a vet for quite a while. And then I came to the aquarium when I was 10, I think just during a school holiday, and I was chatting to someone that worked here, and I was like, I really like the sea, but I don't know how I can work with the sea as an adult. And she was like, Oh, you can be a marine biologist, and that was once that was in my head at 10, that was my path. So, yeah, like Will said, I went to uni, did lots of volunteering. I interned here as well in 2017, and then when I got my job here in the public engagement team, that was meant to just be like a bit of a filler before before I went and did like another master's and things like that, and that was eight years ago, and I stayed. Um, but I really enjoy that aspect of the communication side of my role, which I didn't know existed in marine biology until until I got this position. So yeah, awesome.
Speaker 7Uh and then I did not do an internship here, just uh easily lost my job. So as a child, I was very academic and really wanted to know more about the world and like really enjoyed biology, and then growing up in a sea, kind of put two and two together, realised marine biology was a thing you could study. So came down to Plymouth to study marine biology. But like Freya said, the course was very kind of natural science hard points, and there wasn't much room into engagement, and it wasn't something I realised A was a job or B was something that I was interested in. So after uni went off to do lots of different things, worked as a zookeeper, worked in a pet set, did terrestrial ecology for a bit, but really missed working with the ocean, and engagement has just been a part of every job that I've had to do. So working as a community engagement officer for the ocean was just kind of a natural path for me, I think.
Speaker 1Brilliant, brilliant. Awesome. Right. Well, you you've all got different responsibilities, haven't you? That within the Ocean Conservation Trust. And I believe Freya, is Blue Mind your is that is that your baby?
Speaker 6It is my baby, yes. Uh it's definitely a a really big passionate passion that I have here at the OCT. So yeah, whilst I have responsibility over our entire public and community programme, Blue Mind is is an aspect of that that I'm really passionate about.
Speaker 1So so what is it? What you know, what is Blue Mind for people who have never heard of it? How would you describe that in a nutshell?
Speaker 6So Blue Mind describes the feelings that we have when we're near blue spaces, particularly, uh, and how that impacts our well-being. So if you think about rivers, lakes, the ocean, aquariums, digital water also counts as a blue space, so things like virtual reality or a documentary, for example, and it describes that restorative relationship that we have with those blue spaces and how they make us feel. So the term itself, blue mind, was coined by Dr. Wallace J. Nichols in his 2014 book, Blue Mind, and he used it as a way of describing how our brains should be naturally set and how the ocean can help with that. So our brains should sit for a majority of their time in that rest and digest relaxation mode, versus what he describes as a red mind, which is where you're in fight or flight, so you're you know thinking quickly, acting quickly because of how fast-paced our world is. You know, you've got distractions coming in all the time. Restorative can mean lots of different things. It can be something like inspires curiosity, like Meg said, she was naturally curious, curious about the natural world, feelings of being calm and relaxed, which is what lots of people and lots of the work is being used for, is those kind of more calming aspects of the ocean, but it can also be invigorative. So we think of like surfers, for example, they come out of the ocean feeling full of energy and really excited and passionate. So restorative is a big word in itself and can mean lots of different things.
Speaker 5Fantastic. And why do you think that being near the ocean has such a powerful effect on the mental well-being? You know, is it is it just with the surfing, or could it be just going for a walk along the beach? Could that have a restorative effect as well?
Speaker 6Yeah, absolutely. So the ocean is is an amazing tool because it has those multi-sensory aspects of it. So it's not just about being in the sea, and I think that's a really important thing that we we try and encapsulate, particularly at the OCT, because a lot of the work is about getting people into the ocean more broadly in terms of bloom health. But the ocean is an incredibly inaccessible place to access for lots and lots of people, so you can get those positive well-being effects just from being near the ocean, just from viewing it digitally as well. It's all those different ways that the ocean taps into your senses. So, for example, the colour blue is really, really good for relaxation. It's why people paint their bedrooms blue, for example, all those spaces that they want to relax in their homes. The sound of the waves, it's quite different, it's fractionated, it doesn't sound the same every single time, which is enough that it captures your attention, but it's also it's very relaxing. The steady horizon, if you've got a non-stormy sea and you're just looking out to the horizon, that actually goes back into your kind of like evolved brain and how that invokes safety because you can see there's nothing coming over the horizon. The smell of the ocean is incredibly calming as well. It's a very relaxing scent, it makes you feel sleepy. So the flow of the ocean itself, the term flow is used in mental health quite a lot, but it's actually what helps your brain go into that rest and digest part of the nervous system because it takes your brain out of fight and flight, it lets your brain go into that sort of daydreamy mode. You know, I always find that if I'm near the sea, stood on the coastline, for example, watching the ships, my brain's going, Oh, I wonder what they're doing. And it's going into that daydreaming state, which is really good for your brain to be in, rather than like, oh, I've got to send that email, I've got to walk the dog, I've got to paint the house, da da da da. I'm always more thinking, more openly about different things.
Speaker 1Sure. So I mean, if you I'm assuming you've been working with people directly with this, have you have you seen changes in people? Is that you know, has the have you can, you know, or not necessarily measured an impact, but have you seen an impact that it's had in the work that you've done?
Speaker 6Yeah, definitely. So we've had so we've been doing this for about three years now in terms of using the Blue Health kind of work scheme in our work with people. So we have a specific program called Blue Mind Hub where people are prescribed onto activities using link workers and social prescribers, and they're they come to our program, it's about eight weeks long. And over the course of those eight weeks, we've seen some some amazing changes in people. So we do use numerical measures, and we've seen some huge leaps in their pre-surveys, which suggests their well-being is really poor to being excellent again. But just terms in individuals, we've had a couple of some really key people, and we had one person who was living with disordered eating, and as part of the program we were doing was the snorkel program, so they have to go snorkeling in the sea every week, and we were finding that that individual was really struggling with the recovery from that snorkeling, so they were quite cold afterwards and just weren't feeling the best. And then the next week they came to us and they said, Oh, I've I've made sure I've had a really, really good breakfast and I've been eating well this week, so that I've got enough energy to snorkel. And that was like, wow, okay, that's that's a huge thing to know that we've done in a couple of weeks. We've had individuals before that have come with support workers and have only ever been able to leave the house with those support workers for quite a while, and then by week five or six, they've started coming without those support workers, and you're kind of like, Oh, where's where's your support worker? And they're like, Oh, don't need them, I'm having fun without them. Oh my god, okay. We've had other individuals where they've then felt confident to do volunteering with us afterwards. So our volunteer scheme on the ranger team that I manage is communication, it's talking to people about the animals that we have here at the aquarium and highlighting the different things that people can do to sort of support the ocean. And people have gone from potentially having quite high social anxiety, struggling to leave the house, to very confidently telling someone about a jellyfish and why it's important for the sea. So to see those changes in individuals, whilst we have those kind of like impact data we can collect on on questionnaires, you can't capture that in any other way other than knowing those individuals and seeing the journey they've gone on. So it's an absolute privilege to know that we've we've had that impact on someone just in such a small set amount of time.
Speaker 5That sounds amazing. Okay. So is there any like scientific research behind the blue mind that surprised you at all?
Speaker 6So some of it was kind of like quite not obvious, obvious is the wrong word, but made a lot of sense based on the the kind of time that I've spent with the ocean, how I feel personally connected to it. But there's something called the fishbowl effect. So it's how you look into the ocean and how that makes you feel. And that's really common for some when we talk about those benefits without having to get in the sea, for example, and for people that can't get in the sea. So we had a study done here at the National Marine Aquarium, and they looked at the restorative effects of different stocks within the tank. So whether the tank had nothing in it, whether it had a little bit of animals and seaweed and things like that in it, or whether it had a lot. And it turns out the most diverse tank had the better impact on well-being. So it decreased your heart rate, your breathing rate slowed down, which is all signs of you know being calm and things like that. Nature in general is also better at supporting recovery and pain relief in hospital settings. So if you think about any time you visited a hospital, and I notice this all the time now when I go in there, you'll see you know pictures of trees, there's ocean scenes on the walls and things like that. But they found that those who were recovering from open heart surgery had reduced anxiety when viewing blue images, which was higher than compared to green images, things like trees. So that really surprised me when I read that bit of data because I didn't realise how deeply that kind of research, how much that impact actually had, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1Awesome. If there was somebody who like anywhere else in the country who couldn't access one of these courses, but they're struggling themselves a bit, is the one like simple thing they could do the next time they they go to the coast, something they could try out themselves?
Speaker 6Yeah, so if they're at a coastline, if they're they're lucky enough to be able to get sort of near the coast, they don't have to get in the sea, they can just sort of stand on the coastline or sit on the coastline. You can do it in a car if you need to, and just look up on the horizon and try and think about how each of your senses are connecting. So, what can you smell in that space? What can you hear in that space? What are you noticing about the waves, for example? Are they rippling in a certain way? Are they crushing? It might be stormy. Your mind will naturally start to drift and wonder, like the tides flow, and just giving those feelings names, like how is that making me feel and how that lands within your body? Does it make my chest feel weird? Does it make my head feel different? Um, is actually like a really important mindfulness technique, but you can use the ocean to sort of help with that. Sometimes when you're doing mindfulness just on your own, it can be quite difficult if there's lots of distractions, but you can use the ocean to sort of support with that. If you're not near the coastline, you can still do that though. Just if you get some videos on YouTube, for example, we've got some really great aquarium relaxed videos on our YouTube channel, and you can watch the fish drift in and out. Um, so we often send that to our hospitals, hospices, and care homes and say, look, just put this on your TVs and it'll give you guys some great kind of blue mind effects without having to get out and get near the sea yourself.
Speaker 5Well, that's really good.
Speaker 1Awesome. Well, thanks, Freya. We'll give you a breather for a minute. That was really that was really good, really interesting. Thank you. Megan, are you happy for us to pick on you next?
Speaker 7Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1Your so your project is Blue Meadows and More Nature, is that right? M O R More Nature, is if I pronounced that correctly.
Speaker 7Yeah, yeah. So Blue Meadows is the Ocean Conservation Trust project. And then there's a part of Blue Meadows, we're partnering with a lot of amazing partners down in Cornwall to do a more nature project. So it's slightly different, but we all work together.
Speaker 1Right. Okay, okay. So what's what's it about then?
Speaker 7What's the it's all about seagrass? Yeah. Okay. Um so seagrass is this ancient plant. It's the only plant that flowers underwater and completes its whole life cycle underwater. So as we're speaking right now, the rest of our team are actually down in Cornwall collecting up to a million seagrass seeds to sustain our planting for the next year. So we're all about restoring seagrass, but also protecting the seagrass because it's been really threatened in the last hundred years or so. So yeah, we do a lot of restoration, monitoring, protection, and engagement as well.
Speaker 5Fantastic. And what if seagrass disappear tomorrow? You know, what what would we notice? What would the impacts be?
Speaker 7Uh so seagrass meadows produce a lot of benefits, both to the environment, to marine organisms, to us as people. So things like uh acting as a nursery habitat. So all of our fish and chip species who have place, god, havoc, they all grow up in nursery habitats, which can support our economy. So if seagrass was to disappear, we would obviously see a loss in sustainable seafood that we're able to catch. And obviously, we're based in Plymouth, we would see a massive impact of that. But it also has these wider benefits, such as it's really good at carbon storage. So some species are in the Mediterranean, they can store seagrass 35 times faster than a tropical rainforest. So obviously, if you get rid of all the seagrass, we're going to see uh stronger effects of global climate change, which we obviously don't want to see.
Speaker 1So you mentioned about some of our fish and chip uh species that use it as a nursery. What are there other sort of marine wildlife that use or you know, rely on seagrass as well that we might have heard of?
Speaker 7So many species. So you get a lot of your like cool animals are found in seagrass. So things like seahorses and cuttlefish and octopus, they love to bounce around seagrass meadows, and then often you'll get the larger predators as well. So things like dolphins and seals will then hang around because they want to eat the smaller animals. Uh so there's whole food chains that go on in seagrass meadows. We actually have a nice partnership with the university where we're looking into, we're supporting a lot of PhD students, and one of them is looking into the biodiversity in seagrass meadows. So we've been able to kind of quantify that about 10 meters squared patch of really dense seagrass meadows can be home to up to a thousand different marine animals. So they're really nice homes for lots of different things.
Speaker 1Can I just jump in with another question? What's kind of caused the decline in seagrass? I know we're storing it, but is there are there an is there one factor, or there are a number of factors, you know, what's kind of caused the damage?
Speaker 7Lots and lots of different things. Um there was this disease called seagrass wasting disease, which uh took out a lot of the UK seagrass habitats. There's lots of theories as to why this disease kind of evolved and was so prevalent. Don't think anyone's really come up with the answer yet. But we think it's sharp changes in environmental conditions, so like big changes in water temperature or that kind of thing, or water pollution, that kind of issue. But we also see a lot of things that we can have an impact on on an individual level. So things like physical damage. Like if you're out on a boat and you check an anchor in, you might not know where seagrass is, you might not know why it's important, but that damage can do up to 10 years worth of damage to the seagrass meadow. So uh lots of things are working against it at the moment. We're trying to protect it as best as we can.
Speaker 5So More Nature is restoring Cornwall's marine habitats. What does success look like in say like 10 years from now?
Speaker 7So More Nature is this really, really incredible partnership project that we have just started. Uh, so it's a seascape project based down in Falmouth, where Ocean Conservation Trusts, we're doing subtidal seagrass restoration, and then Cornwall Wildlife Trust are doing intertidal seagrass restoration and native oysters as well. And then we have lots of different pilots doing research and engagement and all sorts of other things surrounding these species. But we're trying to reintroduce them, reintroduce them and protect them and give communities kind of actions that they can get involved in and they can help out with. So in 10 years' time, uh, we're hoping it's all going to go really well. We're hoping that the subtitle seagrass meadows will be more connected with the natural seagrass meadows that are already existing. So the ones that we are planting will have created nice connective habits. So that we have all those amazing benefits that we talked about earlier. The intertidal meadows have historically mostly been lost from the farm of area. So we're hoping that new meadows will have uh established themselves there. And then we're hoping that there'll be a nice thriving oyster population as well. And then you'll get lots of different benefits from that, from better water quality, higher numbers of biodiversity. And we're hoping that it will all link back into everything that Freya said as well about people being more connected to the ocean and feeling more a part of conservation and that they can make a difference as well.
Speaker 1That sounds amazing. So what what's the biggest challenge then in restoring marine habitat? This is a really difficult question.
Speaker 7I think everything is challenging. So with our work, we work subtidally, so we're underwater all the time. And obviously that comes with a lot of difficulties with hiring boats, having the weather available already with our More Nature project, which we started at the beginning of July. We've already had to postpone a couple of weeks of planting because the winds were too strong. And uh, if we get stormy weather, obviously that's going to impact what we have planted. So we're there are things out of our control that it can be really challenging. We are obviously a charity, uh, so all of our work is grant funded. So that's a lot of work goes into grant applications, as we can probably appreciate. But it also means that we need to report back. And if that, for example, if the weather means that we can't plant as much as we want to, or by a certain time, that can have all these knock-on impacts. So we're just keeping our fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly.
Speaker 1Oh, brilliant. Well, it's fancy, you know, it sounds an amazing project to be involved with, and yeah, the results are gonna be spectacular.
Speaker 5Definitely.
Speaker 1Awesome.
Speaker 5Awesome.
Speaker 1Thanks. Thank you very much.
Speaker 5So, Will, you're the assistant curator.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 5So, do you want to tell everyone a bit about what that involves?
SpeakerYeah, so here at the aquarium we have a husbandry team, an animal husbandry team. And what their job, that what their job in the aquarium is to do is to develop displays, to keep our animals happy and healthy, and basically, yeah, to look after all the animals in the aquarium. And as the assistant curator, I'm basically the manager of that team. So I have kind of oversight of all of those operations on a day-to-day basis. And also I'm there to kind of develop displays and develop practices, develop what we're doing and just make things better. So the aquarium is here to connect people to the ocean by basically pretty much exposing them to amazing sort of wildlife, amazing facts. And that's why the husbandry team is here to kind of build make those amazing habitats and showcase some amazing wildlife and hopefully get people really thinking about the ocean and how they can protect it.
Speaker 1I think I read somewhere that a bit a big or uh you know part of the work of Aquarium certainly with with the creatures that you've got in there is enrichment of the what what does that involve?
SpeakerSo the the sort of definition of enrichment is kind of improving the physical and psychological well-being of the animals by providing stimulation and allowing them to kind of express express natural behaviors in the habitats that we have. So there are kind of five main categories. There's feeding enrichment, so that means basically trying to encourage foraging behavior, that sort of thing, by hiding food or scattering food, changing the food off as well so they don't always have the same thing and on the same days and just making a bit of variety for them. You can have sensory enrichment, so that's introducing kind of sounds or textures and things like that. In the Querum environment, that's a little bit difficult, but we do try to introduce that. For example, we've had some amazing ideas of having like a turtle float, for example, literally a float in the shape of a turtle, and basically just kind of moving that around the top of the tank to kind of stimulate the idea that there's a turtle in the water. So you have cognitive enrichment, which is getting an animal to use their brains. So getting them to think about things. So a classic example is octopus with an octopus giving their food inside a jar or something, so they have to kind of figure out how to get the food, they have to kind of unscrew the jar. Physical enrichment as well is another one. So literally changing the layout of the habitat, just moving things around, creating new structures, removing old ones, and kind of just changing it around so that they've got a variety of structures to interact with and yeah, and changing it. And then finally, social enrichment, which is basically ensuring that they have the opportunity to interact socially with animals or indeed humans as well, that they might in the wild. So allowing schooling fish to school properly, seahorses, for example, are very social, allowing them to live in a group together, and just encouraging that natural behaviour that they would have out in the wild. Yeah. Brilliant.
Speaker 5And have any of the animals like completely surprised you on just how intelligent they are?
SpeakerCan I say all of them? Yeah. I think there's kind of like a societal idea that fish, in particular, fish, are kind of stupid. And I think that's something that as a society, I mean, with I I read a book once that sort of explained how you know the plural for fish is fish. We don't say fishes, and that's kind of an example of how we kind of treat fish in particular as being kind of stupid. I think that that isn't the case. What I've seen definitely is a lot of intelligence, they can recognize people, even if that's just recognizing our uniform, for example, they'll recognise the colour of our uniform and come up to feed when they see us and they'll come kind of try and interact with us. Shark the sharks, as well, an ocean tank and our Atlantic Ocean exhibit, they definitely interact differently with certain individuals, again, by the probably by their scent. So they'll literally they will like certain people and not like others and interact differently. So yeah, I'd say all of the animals that we have have surprised me. Yeah.
Speaker 1Wow. Would it be rude to ask if you have a favorite?
SpeakerI like I I really like Cooper, who is our humphead ras in our Great Barrier Reef exhibit. He is like basically I don't know if you've ever seen a humphead rass, but he's a very large, big blue fish with a big bump on his head. He's very interactive. He is a great ocean ambassador because he's very photogenic. People love to see him. And I hope that it kind of gets people thinking about the Great Barrier Reef as a habitat and how they can protect it. So yeah, probably Cooper.
Speaker 1Yeah. Brilliant. I'll have to go and visit him sometime.
Speaker 5Definitely. What's one thing that you wish everyone understood about the ocean?
SpeakerI'd say connectivity connectivity, just the uh the fact that we have one ocean really, anything that's happening kind of here in Plymouth is going to affect what's going on down in Australia, for example, or really anywhere. So yeah, I would say connectivity, if you're if you're kind of littering and or leaving plastic in the in the sea here, it can get washed right out and over to the other side of the planet. So that's something I wish everyone would understand. Yeah, a good one.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 6Yeah. I think for me it's that you don't have to get in the sea to feel connected to it, or that you don't have to be a diver to be a marine biologist, for example. And that's one thing I wish I knew uh before I started uni, because I always used to think you had to be a diver and would make myself go swimming and stuff like that. And I actually don't like being in the sea at all. And so you don't have to do those things to be an ocean conservationist, to be a marine citizen. You can absolutely do those things and still enjoy it from afar. You can be in the middle of a landlocked county and still be an ocean conservationist.
Speaker 1Awesome. Good ones, yeah.
Speaker 7Good answers.
Speaker 6Yeah.
Speaker 1No pressure.
Speaker 7I think for me, it's appreciating that we're still learning about the ocean. And we know that the ocean is so important for the environment, for marine life, for us, for everything. But we're there's still so much that we don't know. You know, we're still learning every single day. So I think that kind of appreciation that the ocean is amazing because we don't know anything about it. It's really important.
SpeakerYeah. Brilliant.
Speaker 1Brilliant. What gives you hope for the future?
SpeakerWell, I think that attitudes are starting to change. Uh, people are kind of starting to wake up to the climate crisis and things like that. I mean, particularly now with this really hot weather that we're having, I think it's really opened people's eyes to the fact that it's actually happening, there is a climate crisis, it's directly impacting people in this country now. So I think it gives hope that there might be change on the way because more people are going to kind of be aware of that, especially because they're being directly impacted now.
Speaker 6And because they're being directly impacted, they're looking for more ways they can help themselves at an individual level, whilst we obviously have as a society a bigger, bigger conversation to have about the policies and the way that we're governed as a as an as a society. You know, people are looking for more direct actions they can take. And I think for us as a conservation charity, seeing more people want to do things like our Think Ocean Challenge and learn about things they can do day to day, wanting to be an ocean-friendly home, for example, the uptick in that gives me hope because it's like, cool, people are wanting to make those changes at that kind of smaller scale, which has such a huge ripple effect if we can get so many people doing imperfect changes. You know, it's not about being this absolute clean eco-warrior, green, oh my goodness, my house is the most sustainable thing on the planet. But if you can take small steps and small nudges in the right direction, of I'm gonna make sure my bathroom is plastic free, for example, or I'm gonna try and swap out my vegetables to not have plastic on them, or I'm gonna reduce how much energy I use, for example, those small things really do add up when lots of us do them. So that gives me a lot of focus.
Speaker 7I think what's really cool about our jobs in particular, Freya, is that we meet so many different people when we're out and about, and everyone has a different opinion on everything, but we are meeting so many passionate people nowadays, and like there's definitely been an uplift from what I see about people learning about seagrass. Not everyone is able to take part in everything, but one thing that most people can do is just spread the message about the ocean. Um, and I think that's really hopeful that people are wanting to spread that message and do more when they can.
Speaker 5Yeah. So if every listener could do one thing this week to help the ocean, what would what would that one thing be, do you think?
Speaker 6I was gonna say if they want, if they're feeling a bit stuck and maybe a bit hopeless, taking the Ocean Conservation Trust Think Ocean Challenge is actually a really, really good place to start. It's uh a really short quiz and it sorts you into one of four different shows. So you can either be a heart, head, hands, or a new starter. But what it does is based on the answers you gave during the quiz, it will give you tailored actions that you can take to help the ocean based on your personality. So rather than it being a prescriptive list of all of these things that can feel very overwhelming, it's a really small list of things that feel achievable. Um so that's what I would say. If any listeners are maybe feeling hopeless and they want some actions to take, take the pink ocean challenge.
Speaker 1Good idea.
Speaker 6Good idea. I actually had a go as well.
Speaker 5What shall we? I think it was oh, I can't remember now. It was the heart. Uh, you strike me as a heart.
Speaker 1Are you doing the right thing?
Speaker 5Yeah, I think so.
SpeakerI've I kind of what Freya was saying earlier about just little things like consciously using less plastic, consciously using less energy. So, for example, just switching a light off when you leave the room, just little thing, little things like that is gonna help. If everyone's doing that, if you can imagine everyone in the country doing that, that's that's what 70 million people. So that that's uh uh gonna have a big impact.
Speaker 7I think um something that most people, maybe not everyone, most people can do for seagrass this week. Um, it's meant to be really sunny all week again, right? So we have a really nice citizen science initiative called the Blue Meadows Coastal Camp, which basically involves people just sitting on a coastline for an hour in the sunshine. Has to be nice weather, and recording like what recreational activity happens in seagrass meadows, and then the data from this is going to help us better understand how people value seagrass, so how they appreciate the benefits to themselves and how they impact seagrass as well. But it's also giving us data on how well our voluntary no-anchor zones are working in the local area, so how well our protection measures are working as well. And it's super simple. You do just need to sit on a bench next to a seagrass meadow and count for an hour and have fun in the sun, uh, which is always something I'm a big act for.
Speaker 1Can that be anywhere in the country? Have you got specific locations for that? I'm just thinking if somebody goes, Oh, I'd love to do that, sit on a bench for an hour.
Speaker 7So we have uh specific locations at the moment that are in our Blue Meadows sites, but all the information is on the blue meadows.org website. But if there is a local seagrass meadow near someone that isn't on our list, we can very easily just add the site.
Speaker 1Right. Oh, fantastic. Is there an ocean experience that you can think of that everybody should have at least once in their lifetime?
Speaker 7So we were talking about this earlier, in that it's really interesting because not every ocean experience is accessible to everyone. Uh so I just want to tell you about my favourite time in the ocean, if that's okay. Um so years ago, I was out in Fiji doing some marine volunteering, and we were diving three or four different times a day, and we did a night dive. It's the only time I've been underwater, fully submerged at night time. We turned all of our torches off, and you could see all the bioluminescence, and it was like it was like a starry night sky, but all around you, and it was really cool. But just experiencing how different the ocean is at night time, that is something if someone is able to and is able to in a very safe way, uh, I would recommend going to the ocean at night time because it's completely different to the daytime. Different animals are out, and it will give you a completely different feeling of the ocean. Wow, that sounds amazing.
Speaker 6I think for me, something that maybe is a bit a bit more accessible for more people is just trying and find like that curious hook you have for the ocean. So, like with an ocean experience, when you, for example, documentaries are a really, really good way to kind of naturally be a bit more curious about the ocean, and there's some really great different types, you know. David Attenborough's done some absolutely brilliant stuff. Steve Batchill's got some great documentaries out as well. And find that curiosity, like have a curious ocean experience, you know, and maybe research a little bit more about that animal, what makes them weird, what makes them tick. I remember I was obsessed with dolphins when I was younger, less so now, but um more of more of an octopus gal. Um, but I remember just deep dive researching as like an eight-year-old into dolphins and just having like posters on my wall. So, you know, find find a weird animal and do a bit of research on it. What makes it a bit weird, what makes it a bit different, what makes it a bit more unusual?
Speaker 1Have you got anything, Will? You don't have to be put on the spot.
SpeakerDon't don't I yeah, I I mean I would say it's again, it's it's accessibility, it's accessibility, but I would say diving is the kind of ocean experience that everyone should have. But of course, it's it's money and it's time, and it's if you've got a disability, you might not necessarily be able to do it. But snorkeling as well, of course, is is also really, really great for kind of getting up close and personal with the marine world. You can just do it straight off a beach if it's safe, of course. And definitely around Plymouth here, there's loads of great beaches for snorkeling, and there's definitely information to find that out online and your kind of local area if you want to go snorkeling. But yeah, like Meg was saying, yeah, diving at night and sort of being around the ocean at night is very different. One example of that I'd say is I went on holiday once to Oman, and there was really good bioluminescence there uh that you could actually see from the surface. There was actually a turtle in one of the harbours, there was actually a turtle swimming around, and as it was kind of swimming, it was just glowing around the turtle, like making the turtle glow, and the waves were glowing as they kind of broke on the beach, which was really amazing. So, yeah, seeing stuff like that is really, really incredible. Yeah.
Speaker 5The next question is what's something in the marine world that still completely amazes you?
Speaker 7I really enjoy finding the weird animals that people don't know much about, or they don't actually look like a traditional fish at all. They just look weird and wonderful. And I think it always amazes me how many different species there are out there that we're still learning about. And if you think about all the animals we do know about, I'm sure there's still thousands that we don't know about. And that is what really blows my mind that the ocean is just endless, endless of surprises, you know.
SpeakerI would just say the kind of vastness of the ocean. So, you know, the depth of the ocean, for example, and just how much we don't really know about it, because after basically I I think it's a thousand meters, you get basically no light at all. There's no light penetration at all down there. And I believe the deepest part of the ocean is 16 kilometers deep. So that's basically 15 kilometers with absolutely no light. And you can just imagine what's kind of down there that we don't know about still, because we can only see what we can see with submersible drones, etc., and what's straight in front of us with a beam of a torch, or what we get on a kind of plankton sample and stuff like that. So there must be a lot that we haven't seen yet. And yeah, I think that that's quite amazing.
Speaker 6I think one thing that surprises me is the power the ocean actually has and just the ability it has to, you know, like I love what I love winter storms. I I love the the power that you really, really appreciate from the ocean at that time of year, and like seeing what it can do and its velocity, like I think it's just such an incredible, incredible place. And like I particularly feel really restored when I see a really big stormy sea crashing over lighthouses. I'm like, wow, look at that. So yeah, I think that power is still really, really surprising.
Speaker 1Yeah, another difficult question, potentially, but we wonder what your proudest moment has been whilst you've been working for the Ocean Conservation Trust.
SpeakerI mean, I yeah, I guess it was when we had the documentary being filmed here, uh, and just sort of being on TV, I guess. I I know that sounds really vain, but I think that was probably my proudest moment because I kind of got to sort of showcase what we do here a little bit. I was recognized afterwards by a few people. I was actually recognised in the hospital while I was giving blood, but somebody in the in the chair next to me while I was giving blood was like, Oh, aren't you on that documentary? So I think that was the proudest moment for me personally. Yeah, we had a documentary here uh called Secrets of the Aquarium, which is a BBC documentary a couple of, I think three years ago. Yeah, and That was really fun.
Speaker 7I think uh for me, my proudest moment probably comes from just the most fun and chaotic partnership that I've made whilst I've been here. Freya's nodding because she knows exactly how I'm gonna stop talking about. So my job is all about trying to connect people with a habitat that is largely invisible to most people and it's not well understood at all. So a lot of my work involves finding out of the box ways to connect people with seagrass. Uh so I met this really lovely pair of women called Katie and Amanda, who are engaging audiences with seagrass through the art of clown and of dance as well. And we went to a really good conference up in Cardiff, the UK Seagrass Symposium, where we had a room of 200 people who wanted to learn more about seagrass. And Katie and Amanda had the confidence to go up on stage in front of everyone and just do an interpretive dance of seagrass. And you could see everyone just connected instantly, which was really cool to see. So following this, obviously, I wanted to get to know them, and they are the best people I've ever met. Um, but we invited them down into the National Marine Aquarium where they did a little flash dance knob style seagrass interpretive dancing around the aquarium, and it was for World Sea Birthday, so it made a really nice uh celebration whilst lots of our visitors came and connected with them. And then a social media officer came and recorded some of it as well and put it on Instagram, and it's become one of Ocean Conservation Trust's most viewed reels on Instagram, and we've had over 1.4 million views on it. So the amount of people that have seen this happening and have been connected with seagrass just because crazy ladies were dancing becoming seagrass, and it's just my favourite thing about this whole job.
Speaker 3Brilliant, brilliant.
Speaker 6Oh, I've been sat here going, I'll think of what I'm gonna say. I really don't I think for me, seeing the impact that our work really does have on those communities. I'm really proud that we else who are based in Plymouth, we're able to have quite a broad reach, but we do still really try and advocate in our communities here in Plymouth as well. And giving giving people experiences that they didn't know they needed to have, I think is is a really proud moment for me. So there's a couple of examples, and I'll just focus on one. But I went with a group of people who were asylum seekers, you know, that's quite a divisive topic in this climate we have nowadays, and we took them rock pooling for the first time, and they had never been rock pooling, and some of them do have quite a natural fear of the ocean, and English is not their first language either. So trying to explain to them how to safely rock pool with very excited kids that do speak English quite well was very, very interesting. But we took them, and it was so nice seeing the parents just be able to switch off and just have fun and just enjoy their time with their kids, you know, not having to worry about all of the kind of paperwork and admin that comes with having to live the lives that they do. So seeing that, you know, really frequently in the communities we work in, those opportunities where we can give people ocean experiences in a way that meets their needs as well. I can't pick one, I have to pick another. There's another one that's coming, uh that's coming to mind. But we do a virtual reality program called Ocean for All, where we take Bayar headsets, so virtual reality headsets, into care homes, hospitals, and hospices. We went to a hospice up in Western Super Mare, and it makes me want to cry now thinking about it. And there was a guy we met in one of the rooms, and he he really, really was struggling with how scared he was of the ocean, and he had been since he watched jaws for the first time. And he was like, I don't don't really think I want to do it, like I'm really scared of the sea. And I was like, I'm I'm not gonna pressure you to do it if you don't want to do it. It's absolutely fine. But his doctor was like, No, no, no, just give it a go. Like, you can take the headsets off, you're not gonna break them. And he watched the whole, the whole clip is about 10 minutes long, and he took it off at the end, and he he was very emotional. And he was like, you know, I I never thought I'd get to have that experience where I wasn't fearful of the ocean before I died. And I I managed to keep it together, like in the in the hospital setting. But driving home, I was just like, wow, like what a I said this earlier, what a privilege my job actually is, is that you know, I jokingly say I'm a facilitator of fun sometimes, but I really do get to make a difference to people's lives in that moment and take them out of whatever is going on around them and just give them that real moment of connection in that time, um, and hopefully give them memories that will last the rest of their lives and they'll feel really sort of happy when they think about that. So, yeah, I'm really proud that that's my job.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, too right.
Speaker 5What do you think the ocean's trying to tell us? And are we listening?
Speaker 6I think the ocean is trying to say to us that it can help, you know, it's it's the biggest ecosystem on the planet, it can help fight the climate crisis, but I don't think we're listening particularly well. And the the kind of focus hasn't been on how the ocean can support us and how we can live in harmony with the ocean. So I think you know, more work needs to be done at a higher level with buy-in from the government and things like that on how we can support the use of the ocean and not just using it as a resource, you know, really learning from some of the mistakes we've made historically about how we can understand the ocean better and how we can support a healthy ocean because that then will it turn into a healthy humanity. You know, they they go hand in hand with one another. So, yeah, that's what I think.
Speaker 5Brilliant.
Speaker 7Fantastic. I completely agree with what Faya's just said, and I think the ocean is struggling, and I think it's trying to tell us that, and that's why we're getting all these harsher storms or rising sea levels and rising temperatures. I agree that I don't think we're listening. I think there are pockets of people that are really tuned in with the ocean, and we're trying to do our best. And there's lots of people that we meet out in the communities that really care for the ocean. Uh, but like Freya said, we need higher level support, we need councils to take notice, we need MPs to take notice. Uh, we just need everyone to care about the ocean, basically.
SpeakerYeah, I agree as well. I'd say similarly, I'd say that we're we're an ocean planet ultimately, and we may live on the land, but obviously the ocean massively affects everything that we do, and the climate, of course. And as I was saying earlier, with this kind of hot weather that we're having, I think that more people are starting to take notice of as as it impacts their daily lives, even if it's just that they're they're feeling too hot in their in their bedrooms. But it it gives me a little bit of hope, I suppose, that that change may be possible. But yeah, change has to come obviously from the top, really, it has to come from leaders and governments. They are the ones that make the big impact. But, you know, as we said earlier, again, doing small things like switching the lights off when you leave the room, using using less plastic, that sort of thing, it really does make a big impact. And if everybody does stuff like that, it's really it is going to make a huge impact. Even if that impact is just signaling to companies and corporations and and governments that people are not using as much energy or people are using less plastic, so those companies then start producing plastic-free products. I mean, a really good example of that is straws. You know, only a few years ago, a few years ago, paper straws came back after there was a really big call for that. And you don't really see any plastic straws around nowadays. So that that's you know, that is an example really of people making a change and it having a really big impact on so many companies and corporations and governments, and they then reacting to that. So yeah, it gives me hope. Right, right.
Speaker 1Lovely.
SpeakerYeah.
Speaker 1Thank you so much for your time for joining us on the podcast. We really appreciate it. And more importantly, really, thank you for all the work that you guys do, you know. Incredibly important. And uh yeah, keep at it.
Speaker 5I'm in awe.
SpeakerThank you for having us.
Speaker 1Always been a pleasure.
Speaker 5Yeah, thank you for letting us join you. We hope you really enjoyed that. They were really great and very knowledgeable.
Speaker 1Yeah, they definitely knew this stuff, didn't they? I think we're gonna have to make a special trip down to see the National Aquarium, you know?
Speaker 5Definitely. And the work they do is just so important.
Speaker 1Absolutely. You know, that work with mental well-being, looking at restoring seagrass meadows, you know, yeah, incredibly important stuff, isn't it?
Speaker 5Definitely. And we'll add links to their website and different projects that are going on as well that we've discussed.
Speaker 1Yeah, so definitely check them out, go and have a look at what they're up to. And so you don't miss out any other episodes, don't forget to subscribe. And if you get a chance, it'd be really useful for us. If you enjoyed it, just write a nice little review on whatever platform you're listening on. Anyway, we'll see you next time. Bye.