Why Ocean Solutions Fail, And How Business Can Actually Save the Ocean

0:00What if the biggest barrier to saving the ocean isn't science? What if we already know how to solve many of the solutions to the ocean's biggest problems? Overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction, and yet those problems are still getting worse. So why? They never reach the people who need them and they never scale. This is the how to protect the ocean podcast where we break down what's really happening in the ocean and why it matters to you and how you can be part of the solution. So if you're interested in this more of this type of content, hit that follow button so you don't miss tomorrow's episode. For decades, we believe that science will save the ocean and to be honest, it allows us to view what's really happening in the ocean, identify trends, whether they're positive or whether they're negative. And so don't get me wrong, science is still critical. It helps us understand ecosystems, it identifies threats, it helps us develop solutions. But here's the problem. The science doesn't scale the solutions. It doesn't drive adoption and it doesn't change behavior on its own.

1:03We've known about nutrient pollution and dead zones for over 50 years. We've understood the overfishing dynamics since the 1970s and we've been documenting coral reef decline for decades. And yet, dead zones are still expanding, fish stocks are still under pressure, and coral reefs are still disappearing. We are not lacking the knowledge. We are lacking the implementation. I just went to the World Ocean Summit put on by the economist. That was done a couple of weeks ago in Montreal. And it was a great conference. Don't get me wrong. Everybody there was super friendly. Everybody there wanted to meet other people. Everybody were out there looking at solution. And we knew the solutions, the high seas treaty was put in, the World Trade Organization subsidy program, or policy was put in. And there was a lot of talk about those. It was really just talk and about the prediction of the future and whether things will be implemented or not. And when I spoke to somebody there, then I don't want to mention their name, but they said wouldn't it be great if we had, instead of just a discussion conference, we had an implementation discussion conference. Speaking about how companies,

2:06organizations are implementing the solutions that will actually help protect the ocean and scale those solutions to a point where we can actually make a difference. In comes the EarthX conference. At EarthX, one idea came up again and again. Solutions only scale when they become financially viable. Because scale requires adoption and adoption requires incentives. If a solution depends on people doing the right thing, it will struggle. If a solution depends on economic incentives, it spreads fast. And that's where business comes in. Not just profit, distribution, replication, scale. Business is what turns a good idea into something that actually changes the world. Let's look at a real life example. Fertilizer runoff is one of the biggest drivers of ocean dead zones. I actually had the opportunity to do some data collection and one of my first jobs at LUMCON, the Louisiana University's Marine Consortium in the Gulf of Mexico.

3:07I did my work there as a marine technician aboard the RV Pelican, which is still running today, I believe. And we had a great time. My first job was awesome. I was out in the Gulf of Mexico doing all this wonderful thing. I got to work with one of the scientists that came on board, which was, at the time, was a resident scientist at LUMCON at the Institute. And she studied the dead zone, the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, which essentially nutrient runoff comes off of the Mississippi River, which runs all the way up the Midwest of the US, comes out, collects all these fertilizers, nitrates, nitrogen, ammonia, all these nutrients and phosphates that come down at the Mississippi, they empty into the Gulf of Mexico. And when they empty into the Gulf of Mexico in the spring, there's this spring bloom of phytoplankton. Because once you get the great weather, once you get the right amount of currents, and once you get the right heat and nutrients, you get this bloom of phytoplankton in the spring. And that phytoplankton mixes in the water column as the wind kind of comes in, and it mixes and mixes. And then eventually it'll hit summer, and the wind will die down, the layers will stratify,

4:08and the phytoplankton will die and move to the bottom of the ocean. At the bottom of the ocean, that's where the microbes just kind of break them down. And they eat them up, and they use oxygen when they eat them up. And so when that oxygen is taken out of the bottom of the ocean, that one and a half meter layer is devoid of oxygen in some cases. And that hypoxic zone, what we call the hypoxic zone, that hypoxic zone is extending year after year, after year, and it's measured every year. And I was part of that program to help measure that. And it was unreal how different it was every year, and the fertilizers that would be regulated the next year were based on the results from the previous year. And it went all the way up to Congress, and it was quite the program, and something that people had to look out for in the future. And I'm sure Nancy Rabelay, Dr. Nancy Rabelay, wasn't really a lot of, didn't make a lot of friends in the agricultural industry, because she was basically based on the results. She was having a say in the regulation of how much fertilizer can be used, right?

5:09So when you get excess nitrogen phosphorus washing up from agricultural fields, flows through rivers and up in the ocean. And once there, you get that, you fuel the algal bloom, it comes down, it all dies down. Now here's the shift. So instead of trying to convince farmers to simply use less fertilizers, some innovators built systems that capture excess nutrients before they leave the field. And then they do something even smarter. They return that captured waste back into fertilizer, a product, something that can be sold. And now reducing pollution isn't a burden. It's a business opportunity. And farmers don't need to care about the ocean conservation to adopt it. It just makes economic sense. Now compare that to a typical conservation project, grant funded, short term, limited by specific place. It works, but it doesn't spread. Now compare that to a business model. It generates revenue, it attracts investment, and it's replicated across regions and industries.

6:11That's the difference between impact and global impact. We don't just need solutions that work. We need solutions that scale. And if you ever talk to a scientist who's doing one of these pilot studies, a lot of the times they're just wanting to protect the ocean. The incentive to do something more, although some scientists are doing it, is not really in their purview. They just want to get everything started and let somebody else, an innovator, take over, or at least be part of that process. But a lot of the times, the business people that solve the problems and provide the solutions and are willing to invest money to put it together. When I met the world ocean summit, one of the biggest things that people are looking for is funding, is seed funding, is pilots funding. There is no mechanism to generate revenue just yet to get that off the ground. Once they get off the ground, they have that revenue. And the ones that are going to be successful are ones that drive revenue quickly and are able to bring it to a market and able to scale that. So if you're a scientist or a conservationist

7:11and or a student listening to this, you need to start thinking differently. Not just about, does this solution work, but can this solution scale? Can it sustain itself? And can it spread without constant funding? Because solving a problem is step one. But scaling the solution is what actually protects the ocean. One last thing about the world ocean summit that you'll probably get at the Earth X summit is you'll get people that, like I saw at the world ocean summit, there was a couple of people that I met that were scientists and that were frustrated with the academic process because they found something within their graduate studies that said, hey, this is a big thing that we need to do and we can use this as a tool for industry to use, to clean up or to identify risks in what they do that could protect the environment. But when they realized that tool wasn't really going to be used, it was just more of an exercise, maybe more of someone's master's degree. They got extremely frustrated. And they ended up starting a business that will actually help the solution better. And it'll scale the solution better.

8:12And this is a different solution, but they know that they can actually have a bigger impact on the world because they control where the solution goes and they can bring in money on their own and generate revenue to continue to solve that problem. So that's what we're going to be talking about this week. We're going to be talking about businesses. We're going to be talking about how they're affecting, how they are finding solutions and scaling those solutions. And at the end, on Friday, I have a great interview with Peter Semic who is the CEO of EarthX, talking about the EarthX conference is coming up at the end of April, April 20th to 22nd. You're going to love the interview. I highly recommend that you listen to it because you're going to find out, it's actually not just one conference, it's 20 conferences and one. So if you, it doesn't matter if you're listening to this and you're an engineer, your business person, your scientist, your conservationist, it doesn't matter what you are, you will find something that you love there. So stay tuned if you want to learn more about how businesses can help and how businesses are helping finding solutions to the ocean. You know, hit that follow button. Don't miss tomorrow's episode. And of course, stay in all week

9:13because that's we're going to be covering all week and you get the interview from Peter Semic from the CEO of EarthX on Friday. So stay tuned, hit that follow button so you don't miss any episodes. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation. Thank you.