Beyond Plastics: The Hidden Dangers of Marine Pollution

What do you know about marine pollution? Probably not a lot because it's not something that we discuss as a whole. We discuss plastic pollution, that's probably the major

marine pollution that we discuss. We don't talk a lot about toxins and algae and all this other kind of stuff and chemicals in the water and so forth, but not to worry because you can find out everything you need to know by buying the book marine pollution what everyone needs to know it's the second edition and i have dr judith weiss who is the author of this uh... addition and she was the author of the first edition and fun fact Judith was my first ever interview, my first ever

episode here on the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. It was called Speak Up for Blue at that point, but now it's called How to Protect the Ocean. It's been 10 years later and she is here to talk about her new edition because we talked about the first edition. Now we're going to talk about the second edition and I can't wait for you to hear this. So let's start the show. Hey

everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by

taking action. And on today's episode, we are talking to Dr. Judith Weiss who has written a book called marine pollution what everyone needs to know the second edition and like I said in the pre-intro This is a very special episode for me kind of brings me back to my first ever episode that I published with Judith talking about marine pollution what everybody needs to know the first edition and I love the book because of this it's not just your regular textbook now I You know, Judith has one

hell of a fulfilling career in academia. She has published multiple, multiple journal articles on marine ecology, on water quality, seagrass, salt marshes, all these different types of systems, plastic pollution, and so forth. And she turned to writing books. And a lot of the times, I get skeptical when somebody from the academic field starts to publish books for a general audience. But she has done it perfectly. she is to

help with marine pollution. And I think that's something that's extremely, extremely helpful. And it's something that we need to do more. And to be honest, like it's something that we talk about a lot here in terms of helping and how you can help and how you can feel optimistic about the ocean. But this book is something that I highly recommend for anybody who wants to know more about how important water quality is, whether it be freshwater, whether it be brackish water, which

is a mix of ocean and freshwater or ocean water. It doesn't matter. Marine pollution affects everything. It affects everybody. Especially when we talk about plastics, it actually affects our own health. In terms of now we're seeing it in the air, we're seeing it in the water, we're seeing it in our drinking water. It's everywhere. And so we need to do something more to reduce it. And to do the first thing you need to do is inform yourselves. And to inform yourself, you need to buy

this book to inform yourself on marine pollution. But I want you to listen to this interview because a lot of it is focused around you know, marine plastics and marine debris, something that's really, really important. But we talked a little bit about algae, the recent episode that I covered about the toxins that were released from algae, from dinoflagellate. in Florida that affected 80 species, killing 80 different species of

fish. So we're going to talk a lot about that, and we just talk about how policy is important, what to look for in the upcoming elections, whether you're in the States or potentially in Canada, which might happen a little earlier than we expected, earlier than 2025, or probably earlier than October 2025, I should say. But yeah. I think this is gonna be one of those episodes where you can be like, man, this is really, really

good. Judith is awesome. I can't wait for you to listen to this interview. So here's the interview with Judith Weiss talking about her book, Marine Pollution, What Everyone Needs to Know, second edition. Enjoy, and I will talk to you after. Hey, Judith, welcome back to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about Right on. This is a very special episode for me. Not only is it great to have Dr. Judith Weiss on the podcast, but Judith, you were my first ever interview for

this podcast. That's 10 years ago. Actually, it was even further back than that because it took me a while to get it published. So we have known each other for over a decade. We've met in person, not in the US, not because we're actually closer than we think, but actually in Borneo, in Malaysia, at a conference. And

that's sometimes how it works in the marine world. But you have released a second edition of Marine Pollution, which is the reason why you were on the podcast in the first place talking about marine pollution, a book that I absolutely love and I recommend to a lot of people. I think I actually just lent it out to someone recent. in

the last couple of months. But it's the one I always tell people to read because it's a book that's really easy to understand for people who don't know much about the ocean or about marine pollution and the pollution that it faces. And so I love the fact that you came out with a second one. There's probably a lot to update, so I can't wait

to get into that. But before we do, why don't you just let people know and remind the audience, the real fans, the ones that have been here since day one, why don't you just remind Hi, I've been a professor of marine biology at Rutgers through an entire career. I'm now technically retired but still very busy. A lot of that time

I studied aspects of pollution. I worked in parts of northern New Jersey that were highly industrialized and had all kinds of metals and organic contaminants as a result of a century or so of heavy industry without any rules and regulations about what these industries should do with their wastes. They were just dumping them right into the water. So we did lots of studies of how the mixture of all these contaminants, what kinds of effects it had, on the animals that lived there

and stuff like that. But in addition to the original research, we published lots of academic papers, I was also interested in writing books for the general public. That was a pretty recent, I didn't do that through the career, I started that maybe 15 years ago, or getting closer to 20 years ago. having published a book about salt marshes, a book about fish, a book about crabs, I noticed that Oxford University Press was doing a series called X

colon, What Everyone Needs to Know. It could be any topic from history, social science, English literature, any field at all. including science. So I thought, well, and I wrote and asked, would they be interested in one on marine pollution? And that's how it all came about a decade ago. And then about two years ago, maybe a year and a half, two years ago, I got an email from the guy who had been my editor And he said, would you be interested in doing another, a second edition of

this book? I thought about it and thought, yeah, there's a lot of things that have happened since then. And so that's what I spent a fair amount of time doing, was revising the I love it. I love it. I can't wait to get into this book because you have a number of other books that you have written. Going from a career in academia and looking at applications and looking how water is affected by disturbances and like you said, unchecked, dumping unchecked, any kind of whatever we decide to do

as humans during that time. What made you decide to start writing these books? Like you said, you kind of did it towards the end of your career. Was it something of like, it's just more, look, I've learned so much, I need to hit a different audience, because you have publications and so forth. So I'm sure you've, you know, contributed to the scientific community. What I never had thought about it. A friend asked my husband if he would be interested in working with

him on a book about salt marshes. And my husband said, nah. I was there and I said, yes, I would. And we talked back and forth for several months and it turned out that he was very busy and really had no time to do it after all. And then I went and found another co-author because this was my first venture into writing books for the general public rather than a technical, scientific-type journal

articles. So I found a co-author who helped me with the writing to make it more user-friendly writing for a general audience, and that was the Saltmarsh book. And then it kind of went from there. So it was a total accident. It was nothing I thought to myself, yes, I should write some book. If he hadn't approached my husband about writing this book, probably

So it's just being at the right place at the right time. And it must have hit something, like triggered something that intrigued you about writing to sort of a general audience, a non-scientific audience. What about that was important to you to follow? Because I mean, taking on a book as you know, is a huge, it's a bigger project than a lot of people think. What triggered that in you to be like, I want to speak to the

I just thought it was very important to do that. You know, scientists can't be just in a little clump talking to each other. The general public needs to know, particularly with all these environmental topics that lead into policy choices and voting choices and everything about being a good citizen of the world and being concerned about the state of the environment of this planet. And I had taught courses for non-science majors. So I felt, you know, I was capable of doing this. And sort

of that's where it was. It's sort of part of my, or whatever on behalf of the environment to get more people to understand the problems and want to act Got you. Now, you've had an extensive career over decades. A lot of the times, talking about science or talking about marine ecology was not really looked favorable or people weren't incentivized to do so.

As you started writing these books, were you worried about what colleagues would have said or what the public would have said in terms of, you know, trying to attack any of the books that you said, or you were just like, no, I I had no concerns like that. I was still publishing papers. You know, I was very close to retirement. So no, no worries at all. I didn't have any worries earlier on in my career when I was an activist. The university did not harass me, did not bother me

Can you elaborate just a little bit on that activism part? What were you Back in the early days when I was very young, I was involved in the women's movement. It was about feminism, but later on, I got involved in public policy about the environment. I went down to Washington as a science policy fellow for the American Association of Advancement of Science. They always sponsor people to go to Washington. And I worked in the Senate. And that sort of started me off into policy issues. And

Rutgers did not have a problem with that. They actually gave me an award about 20 years ago, a policy. I don't remember what it was called, but it was something dealing with policy, not just your academic. I And that's fine. I think what's interesting is seeing someone in academia take that stance and being like, look, I have all this information and knowledge and experience in marine ecology and looking at how it's been affecting you

know, our, our water systems. But then you go above and beyond and just be like, Okay, now I'm interested in looking how policy shapes that. So I think as scientists throughout our careers, we get, we almost get to like certain epiphanies during our career, where the first you want to start off a lot of people academia, and then let's do

research, and let's do this. And then you start noticing things as you learn. more and more about the environment the things that are affecting you realize that there are certain times where the environment takes a backseat to you know what happens out there you know and and and to policies and so forth and a lot of times things get built over over natural land salt marshes mud flats and so forth and You realize that well I should have maybe I could have stood up for that a little bit Then

you start to get a little bit more of an actress as you get later on in your career or even mid-career depending on the person. So I think that's like a fair assessment, right? Have you seen that happen with It really started mid-career with me. It was in the 80s. I haven't seen a lot of my colleagues go there. But I certainly have met many other people there who were and still are

academics one place or another. So there's a good collection of academics in some sort of environmental field that are out there trying to improve the environment one That's a great insight. It's interesting to see a book come out on marine pollution. We hear about and I talk a lot about issues that are facing the ocean. You've got fisheries. You've got climate change. You have coastal development. You have marine plastics, which is a water quality and marine pollution issue. But

it never gets qualified. When you hear about plastics, you hear about plastics as the pollution. And it is a pollutant, and it's a big problem. But you don't hear the term marine pollution a lot being covered in the media or even like even on my podcast. I rarely say the word marine pollution unless I'm referring to your books. I was like, if you want to know about marine pollution, you

got a great guide here. You know, why do you think like people aren't talking about marine pollution other than like say things like plastics as much in sort of the Well, plastics is the one thing that is in the news a lot. I don't know if I'm going to regret saying this, but it's the biggest problem that has not yet been addressed. Well, I can't. That's not true. Climate. Climate is being addressed, but not enough. And

I include a chapter in climate. That's not typical in a marine pollution book to have a chapter on climate. I also have a chapter on invasive species, which I generally not thought of as pollution, but could be considered biological pollution. Animal or plant that's not been there, they're making problems. I lost That's funny, you talked a lot about what I asked. In terms of marine Plastics is the biggest deal these days. It's what I've

been spending a great deal of my time on. Not just in the research world, but in the policy world as well. There is a scientist coalition for an effective plastics treaty. which is a worldwide network of a couple hundred scientists from all over, some of whom can go to the negotiating sessions for the treaty. The

last one was in Ottawa. I haven't gone to any, but I have friends that I've made there some of whom I have not met face to face, but I still consider them friends because we have meetings and we write position papers and policy briefs and all this sort of thing. And so I've not physically been there, but I've got friends in this coalition who go there. And as an objective science, bringing science, the science about plastics, to

the negotiators. Because without the scientific community, they would be hearing only from the lobbyists of the plastics industry, who show up at those meetings in large numbers. There were 200 of them at the Ottawa meetings. So that's far more than the scientists who were able to come. But we still don't know. We have one more meeting left in Busan, Korea in a few months. That's supposed to be the final meeting where they hammer out the final part of

the treaty. And the scientist coalition is putting out policy briefs on specific issues that we hope the negotiators read. These are also written. for the lay, just like my book. For the non-scientists, the negotiators are probably mostly all lawyers. And so it's the same idea, writing short two-pagers on specific issues about plastic pollution. So I'm involved with this, as well as still writing papers. generating new data, I'm retired, I don't have a lab, I don't have graduate students,

all that. But I still can write reviews and critiques and work with teams of other people about various issues about plastic. That's what I've been focusing on most of the time over the past decade, I'd Yeah, and you've been very active. I've seen you on the, there's a listserv, the Marine Debris listserv, and you've been very active on there. I've seen you very active on social media talking and sharing information

about marine plastics. And it's really interesting, you know, looking at the book and how you write the book for a non-scientific audience. A lot of things come out about marine plastics within sort of like the general context of things. The big thing I hear, it's almost like people are just sick of hearing about plastic straws. As you know, a plastic straw

was pulled out of a sea turtle's nose. It was actually done, the video was taken by a friend of mine, Christine Figgener, as well as the person who took it out was Dr. Christine Figgener and Dr. Nathan Robinson that took it out. And then later on, you know, about four months later, he took out, he found an olive ridley turtle with a plastic fork in his nose, took that out just about four months after that. Fork in his nose? Fork, it's the

same kind of thing, he thought it was a straw. He was actually out, it was four months, it was just about 70 kilometers south of where he was, and somebody, it was like a tourist attraction when all the ridleys come in to lay their eggs, and people were walking around and Um, he was doing, he was doing, uh, epibiotic, or epi, epibiome, um, study, and somebody pulled him aside and said, hey, there's something wrong with this turtle, and he was bleeding

from his nose again, and he said, oh, probably a straw, and then ended up taking out a plastic fork. You know, and it was literally folded within its nasal cavity in one nasal cavity, and when he took it out, it folded up, and he's like, yeah, And so, you know, but- He must have inhaled it Yeah, it must have been. Yeah, I don't know how that happened. What Nathan kind of assumed was that all of Ridleys tend to experiment a little bit in terms of how they eat. And so they bite on

something first before they realize that it's not food. This one, the

way it was in, the water may have looked like a shrimp. And so when it went, it may have just gotten it in the folds, and then as it cost or something try to get it out and went through its naval cavity he thinks so obviously awful stories to see and it made a huge impact at that time it kind of brought the plastic straw to the forefront of the the the plastic you know the the clean up plastic movement And now I constantly hear people joking about plastic straws, like I'm sick of

plastic straws and this and that. And they're just like, we're not worried about a plastic straw. The way I always say is it's sort of like a symbol of our plastic problem that we have in this world. And this is just an example. This poor sea turtle, both sea turtles, had this

in their mouth, in their nose. So I guess the question is that I have for you as I go on this long, long rant, is, you know, you hear people talk about this, you hear politicians talk about this, where they're sick of like, oh, plastic straw is not an issue, and this and that, and they kind of like, it seems like it's taken a turn for, in the opposite direction of how people are looking at plastics. How as scientists and science communicators, do we combat them and kind

of bring them over and just be like, Hey, no, there is actually a problem. It's not just start and ends with with one plastic straw. How do we convince people of that? Or I don't know how to convince people who are skeptical about all of this. But there have been plenty of cases, for example, of dead whales washing up with a stomach full of plastic, which is perhaps more upsetting

than the turtle with the straw. They're feeding on so many animals that feed on plastic pieces, and they can't get regular food. Their stomach's all clogged with the plastic. And they basically starve to death. It happens, I think, much more frequently than the turtles with the straw or fork in their nose. And whales are something that people tend to relate to. But that's

with the big stuff. I have a new chapter in this book about microplastics, which were a very small part of the chapter about, I guess it was Marine Litter was called, the original book. Microplastics were just beginning to be studied. And now, there's an enormous literature. Every year, thousands of new papers are coming out about microplastics. which are tiny pieces coming from fragmentation of all sorts of things. I mean, people used to think it was, you know, just styrofoam boxes

breaking up. That's a small part of it. A lot of places have now banned styrofoam. So, I mean, we've had progress in certain areas in certain places. But the microplastics There's four major sources of them. One is textiles is perhaps the most important. Synthetic clothing in the washing machine sheds tiny fibers. If a whole lot of them collect, you might call it lint. Right. This happens every time it's washed, and it happens also when it dries in a dryer. So that's one of the major sources is

our clothing. And carpets, too, also shed microfibers. These are long, thin, fibrous pieces of plastic. Another source is tires. Tires. Tire wear. You know, after driving on a tire for some years, the tread is not as thick as it used to be, right? And eventually the tread is worn down. That didn't evaporate into thin air. It shed tiny particles onto the road as you're driving the car. And these tiny particles When it rains, it runs off into the water, down storm drains, and gets into the water.

And the tires have, I should say, back to the fibers from the clothes. It's not just an issue of a tiny piece of plastic. A tiny piece of plastic contain chemicals, toxic chemicals. that are built into them to make the plastic have certain characteristics to make them harder or make them more malleable or whatever, however the product is supposed to be. So a lot of these chemicals are highly toxic. So when an animal eats microplastics, it's not just getting little bits of plastic that

it might poop out later. It may or may not. That's an issue of how well it passes through the digestive system. But it's also that the plastic has chemicals that can come off it and be toxic in various ways. So anyway, I'm digressing. So we've got the fibers and the tire wear particles. Another source of microplastics are pre-manufactured pellets. We call them pellets or nurdles is what they're called. This is the way plastic is manufactured in the first place.

These tiny things about the size of a lentil. And there have been shipping where they spill millions of them. If there's a ship spill, a few years ago there was a spill of these things from a ship that ran aground or something near Sri Lanka. And the beaches on Sri Lanka were about six feet deep in these pellets, these nurdles. It's just hard to even imagine this. And then the fourth major contributor is paints. paint is now plastic. Latex paint. We don't use oil paint anymore. We use

latex paint. What's latex? It's plastic. And, you know, a boat gets scraped off or, you know, even flaking off from building structures or anything near the water, you get tiny paint particles as another major contributor. But I would say the textiles The nurdles and the tire wear particles are the So, you know, these are all these types of products, right? And consequences of such products. They're in our everyday lives, right? You've got clothes, you've got tires.

I mean, we're seeing them all over the place. When people want to do something about you know, marine pollution like this. They want to reduce or things like that. How do they get away from all this kind of stuff? How do they, like, it's not as if there are a lot of alternatives. There are more probably now than there were 10 years ago, but some of it's really, really expensive and it's not necessarily everything's

expensive now. So that makes it really more expensive. How do you suggest that people help in terms of reducing the amount of materials that are in there and these types of chemicals and these types of products How do we get rid of, how do we reduce our, not only our single footprint, but Well, in terms of the textiles, there are things that individual people can do. I mean, you can buy more clothing

that are not synthetic, that's wool or cotton. Not to say that those have no problems, but those have less problems. in terms of some people buy clothing, wear it a few times and then throw it out fast fashion. This is really terrible because that ends up in a landfill somewhere and just releasing microfibers. So buy clothes and wear and keep them for a while. I have some clothes I've had for decades. When you wash the clothes, There are things you can do to reduce the

amount of shedding. Using full loads rather than washing a few things at a time. That helps. Using a front-loading machine rather than a top-loading machine helps. Not using fabric softener helps. not doing a pre-wash cycle helps. So all these personal decisions and choices, and then after they're all washed, if you have a possibility of hanging them out on a line to dry, rather than putting them in a mechanical dryer where they're going to just spew the fibers out into the air, hang

them on a line instead, if you can. There are also things you can do to capture the fibers once they've been released. There are filters on the market that you can buy to attach to your washing machine that capture a pretty good lot of them. And those are available to purchase for about $150. So the filter will help. This will all contribute to having fewer microfibers from clothing coming into the water bodies. So people can do stuff with regard to that. Also, The textile industry is aware of

the problem. And researchers are trying to develop, I mean, this is bringing back to the source rather than intercepting them on the way to the water. If we can get fabrics that shed much less, or ideally don't shed at all, that will be a solution to the problem. depends on the textile people, not the marine biologists. We find the problems. They know that loose weaves, like fleeces, shed a lot more, and

that tighter weaves shed much less. They also know that if the fibers used are long rather than very short, that helps it all stay together instead of shedding. So, you know, it's up to the textile scientists and the textile industry and they are working on it. When it comes to the tires, I have not heard anything about the tire companies being concerned and trying to do something about it. They may be, but So you haven't heard of different materials being used in tires to...

That may be just that I'm not tuned into the right sources. But I know I'm getting stuff about the textile industry. I'm not learning about the tire industry. The tires are particularly worrisome because there is a chemical in the tires called 6PPD-Q. The Q is quinone. I forget what the PPD is. But it's a chemical that is exceptionally

Particularly to salmon. And this chemical, when you've got the tire wear particles around, huge numbers of salmon migrating up to spawn are killed by the chemical. By very low concentrations of this chemical is

And perhaps other salmon species. Yeah. You know, this is something you know that the Tire people should try to find a replacement for right are Yeah Yeah, the information is not necessarily readily available to you as is the textile industry Giving a seminar in late going up to Cornell to my alma mater. So I'm really delighted to go there. And I'm not giving this seminar in the biology department or the environmental department. I'm giving this seminar to the textile

I like that. And they will let the biology and environmental science and so forth, the other departments, the departments that I would relate to more, inviting people to come, but I'm talking to the textile people. And, you know, I have the next to last slide. It says, you know, what you can do in the general public. And I talk about the washing machine and how to do it and the front loading and not so much fabric softener and

blah, blah, blah. That's the next to last slide. And then the last slide is what you can do as a textile scientist. One thing, find ways to have fabrics You're seeing it. I do agree there's a lot more information on the textile industry and I've seen more people start to experiment and there is at least one company I know that's looking at making fabrics and textiles out of kelp. and other marine algal It's all good stuff. It's been a very long time.

Very long time. Now this company that I've been watching is a little faster and starting to release some items and being in the fashion shows and stuff. I don't know if they're going to be high fashion or if they're going to be like fashion for I guess what like the regular purchased items you know t-shirts and shirts and all that kind of clothes and stuff like that that everybody kind of does not just not just some of the extravagant sort Yeah yeah exactly. But like, obviously,

marine pollution or plastic pollution is a big deal. You know, we know that we can, we know one way of reducing it, which is great that you've gone over. We know policy is another thing

that we could do with support organizations that are following. you know, looking at marine plastics and trying to work on the policy side with governments to get these things going, as well as supporting individual scientists or other, you know, organizations and academics who are, you know, taking part in the treaty and, you know, trying to help and get people to understand the ramifications if we do let plastics continue to go in. And that's Yes. efforts in state legislatures about

filters. And there was a bill in California last year and in Oregon last year that didn't make it all the way through. But there were bills that had quite a fair amount of support to require that new washing machines to be sold in their state had to be equipped with I understand that France has passed a law requiring that in some future year, I don't know, in the late 2020s sometime. That's And there's other bills about plastic. There's a Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act.

that's been in the US Congress. It has some support, but it hasn't got enough to pass. But there's also, just last week, one senator put into a bill for a national requirement of filters on washing machines. I don't know that these bills are gonna go very far. I don't think there's that much support yet. And we've had stuff in New York State, various things that have, not on microplastics and filters, but on reducing

That came pretty close to passing last year. But then there's also an issue where sometimes when a bill passes, the governor may not want to sign it. And that's another issue. And sometimes when it's passed and the governor signs it, it doesn't get enforced very well. If the Department of Environmental Conservation, who's supposed to enforce the law, doesn't do their job very well. I mean, I'm thinking of the plastic bag

law in New York State. Four years ago, New York State passed a law prohibiting supermarkets and so forth to give out plastic bags. Well, there are huge neighborhoods where hundreds of stores are still giving out plastic bags in That's interesting. Yeah, they're not enforcing it by any means, right? I mean, there's a lot to go. It's a lot to get a bill passed, to get a bill drawn up and passed. And then

there's enforcement as well. And we all know, through our experience in the environment, enforcement is a huge, huge issue, or lack thereof is a huge, huge issue. And just getting politicians to start considering and start getting educated on the subject matter then passing or supporting a bill to pass it, then the enforcement has to happen, then the people have to kind of follow it as well. It's an uphill battle. We know that

for a fact. But I feel as though we're starting to get progress, especially in the plastics sort of case, where we're starting to see more and more people supporting bills like this, more and more people supporting laws like this. It's not as convenient for everybody, but I think we need to be a little inconvenienced. It's not all about convenience in our lives. It's about looking after, you

know, the ocean and looking after our planet. But I think that's really interesting. Just to move quickly, you know, because all this stuff is covered In the book, you know, you got, you know, plastic pollution, marine debris, marine litter, you know, but there's something that's been really, especially this past summer or spring, that really kind of hit Florida a little hard. We saw about 80 different fish species get hit with some sort of bad water

quality. Yeah, where they would turn around, especially sawfish, where they would turn around and swirl around in circles, and they would die. I just did an article, actually, on this where it was multiple toxins from a dinoflagellate genus that could expel multiple toxins. Unfortunately, the sawfish got it probably the worst, because they got it in their gills and their liver. We're seeing things like red tide, we're seeing things like these multiple toxins get released at some point, and they

still don't know the mechanism of why. They're usually on the bottom or on some sea plants of some sort or algae, but all of a sudden they got into 80 different species of fish, they don't know why, they don't know if it was concentrated somewhere. Is this also something that you cover in terms of like, is this a

Oh, yeah. I guess the first chapter of the book is about nutrient pollution, which is responsible for algal blooms, including harmful algal blooms, which are the ones that are putting out toxic stuff. So yeah. Yeah, that's in the eutrophication. And the eutrophication is one thing that seems to be getting worse. It happens more. I mean, we have got some control in areas where there are sewage treatment plants of

this. But there are so many people with big lawns and putting fertilizer, I mean agricultural pollution from fertilizer, but also the rich communities with the gigantic lawns going down to a lake, right? Or going down to an estuary. And then it rains and all of that is ending up in the estuary. And you'll get an algal bloom which may or may not have So this is a problem that seems to be getting worse, while some problems, and plastic is also getting worse,

and some problems seem to be getting better. You know, we don't see, we haven't seen a big oil spill in a long time. We have, you know, less problem with oil spills. Some of the other contaminants are improving like less PCBs or mercury because they're not being released anymore and they're in the sediments and the highly polluted sediments are getting covered over by cleaner sediments. So they're getting down further

and further and not going to be making trouble. So Well, even New York City Harbor has improved in water quality with all those factories that haven't been able to, you know, they kind of literally cleaned up their act in terms of allowing those chemicals to go. And we've seen the Medhaden come back, we've And the Medhaden are back, the whales come back. And there's nothing so exciting as going on a whale watching trip from Brooklyn, New York. Yeah, I'm seeing Wales with

the city skyline in the back. Yeah, so for the I had a couple years ago Nominated the New York, New Jersey Harbor estuary to become a hope spot. This is all right Sylvia Earle's yeah organization mission blue Has designate certain areas as hope spots so now I'm Our estuary, the New York, New Jersey Harbor estuary, is one of the hope spots because of how much better it's gotten. It's

certainly not pristine. It's still polluted. For sure, but there's been improvement. But in the past 50 years, since the Clean Water Act, it has gotten so much better. And I'm the one Well, congratulations, that's awesome. Because that does like, that brings a lot of attention towards New York City Harbor,

right? It brings a lot of attention towards the hope and the optimism that if we actually do things right, we actually obey the law, we put the laws in, we obey them, we enforce them, we can get our environment back, we can get our oceans back, we can get our lakes and our rivers back. And I think that's really important. And it really does start with things like the Clean Water Act and the Clean

Air Act. And we start to see these bills i got you know we've one of the biggest in the in the u s some of the biggest uh... acts like the mason stevenson's act the marine mammal protection act in the seventies have really allowed species that were once considered almost extinct or critical to really come back great white sharks this uh... pacific sea lions and so forth have kind and even like i think some of those the smaller fish uh... like the uh... uh...

it's escaping me right now uh... sardines and things like that have started to come back of the you know more and more because of those protections and you know and and i don't want to put you on the spot i don't want you to say if you don't if you're not comfortable who you're going to support but there's a really important election coming up not only in the u s and it looks like it Yeah, I think so. Yes, I think so. But I think this is really important because look,

in Canada, we thought we weren't going to have one until 2025. It looks like that might be happening a little earlier federal election. And so in both Canada and the US, where there's a lot at stake in terms of the environment, because it seems like One party is for protecting the environment, and you can almost criticize not enough, but they actually have policies to protect the environment and keep certain legislations

and laws in place. And then you have other parties, or another party that is not talking about protecting and even talking about regressing some of those laws, which happened in the US, happened between 2016 and 2020 when President Trump was in And this candidate thinks climate change is Right, right. He's almost like 40 years behind sort

of what people are kind of going. So I guess the question for me is, for this audience and for people who you talk to who you want the audience to read your book, what would you recommend they do in terms of finding out what each party They have to do their homework and pay attention. I mean, you can't just go out and vote and pick a candidate, get informed, who's supporting what. And I would expect most of Yeah. They're clearly informed if they're listening

Yeah, I guess it's frustrating to me. And I guess you've seen this a number of times, too, where in election cycles, the environment takes a backseat, and it's always the economy over the environment. But at what point, Judith, do we realize or do like sort of the general public realizes that a lot of the times the economy is still tied to the environment. So if the environment goes to crap, our

economy's gonna go to crap. And case in point, a lot of the consequences from climate change, increased storm surges, increased hurricane, typhoons, tornadoes, droughts, wildfires. At what point do we put a price on the cleanup and tie it to how it's affecting the All those bad things are happening mostly to Yeah, it's true. Many of those people are powerless. You know, you've got to look who's getting affected and who is making more money by not having

Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if anybody has ever calculated the total amount paid out from FEMA or from any, you know, government organization on the cleanups of all these things and sort of the bailing out of people on all these things and tied that to the debt or to who's paying for that or how that's going to affect the future. It should be done. It should Yeah, I think I'm going to have to do an episode on that next, because I think that's the

next question. And a question for you. For me, as someone who has the ability to get messages out through this podcast and other means, what do you think I should focus on from an environmental standpoint to help people inform themselves in terms of what they're voting for in this election? I know we're coming down to the last couple of months, but is there something that I could could publish on, I think you should have other people to talk If each episode you do, I

OK, so you've done a lot of this. Yeah. You can hammer it home with different people coming

Right, right. Yeah, I think this is something that I might, I'm going to definitely consider seeing if I can line up some people who can help out and talk about some of these important issues and how it affects people that, you know, we may not hear in the debate or we may not, because I think climate change was only talked about just a little bit in the debate this It was at the last couple of minutes and nobody had time to

Yeah, so hopefully, I don't know if there will be another debate, hopefully it gets covered there more, but we'll be covering it here. So if people want to listen, they could listen to that. So I think that's important. If people want to get access to your book, I'll put the links in I would encourage them to go to their local bookstore and tell them to stock it. Nice. Go to their local library,

just get them to stock it. They could also go to the Oxford University Press website and put in, you know, marine pollution, what everyone needs to know, second edition. Gotcha. And I'm not going to recommend, although some people will Okay, we'll put the Oxford link in and we'll have people buy it from there. And like you said, let's try and get people to ask for it in the library in their local bookstore. I think that's fantastic. Judith, this has been an absolute

pleasure to have you on the podcast. I'm looking for, hopefully it won't be I'm happy to come on. I'm not doing any more books, but I'm We'll have you on because you have such a wealth of knowledge to share with us and we definitely appreciate your time to spend with us for this last hour. It's been absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much and we'll continue promoting this book because I think it's going to So wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Judith, for joining me here on the

How to Protect the Ocean podcast. It was great to have you. I told you she comes in and talks facts and talks fun. It's just a fun way to listen to this type of thing. She's such a fun

person. I've got to meet her in person as we mentioned. in Borneo in Malaysia at the International Marine Conservation Congress a number of years ago we haven't seen each other since but it's been 10 years since she's been on the podcast and I'm so happy that she's back on however I want to have her on more often but it's it's really invigorating to talk to somebody who's done so much work in and around like the Northeast US and the US. She's

done work in the Pacific. She's done work all over the place. Even in her retirement, she is working. And I think that is something that is really fun to see and really fun to watch. Just seeing someone who's so passionate and cares so, so much and does such great work. So really happy to have her on. And I will put the link to the Oxford bookstore so

you can see it. And as she said, You know, as Judith mentioned, go to your library, go to your local bookstore, ask for marine pollution to be in those stores in that library so that other people can take it out, other people can read it. Not everybody can afford to buy books, totally understandable, but we highly recommend that you go to your library to see it. And if it's not there, ask them for them to carry it so they might actually do it by a couple of copies.

Okay, so thank you so much for joining me. That's it for today's episode. I'll put all the links to where Judith wants you to buy the books if you want to buy it. And I'll put all the links to get in touch with me as well. But I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.