Many of the aspiring marine biologists, or even early-career marine biologists, or even late-career marine biologists, or mid-career marine biologists like myself, the ocean. fact a lot of us when we were growing up got inspired by the Jacques Cousteau's and the David Attenborough's and the Shark Week's and the National Geographic's and all the different documentary type shows where we actually saw and got inspired like
you know what that's what I want to do when I grow up. But we're gonna hear from OceanX and talking about how inspiration
can lead towards solution to the ocean. And OceanX, if you don't know, is an organization, a nonprofit organization that explores the ocean and brings that exploration to you right in your living room or right in your bed or wherever you're watching on your phone or on your iPad, wherever you can see National Geographic or a program on BBC like Blue Planet, This is OceanX bringing you the stuff that they see each and every
day. And I have Vincent Parabon who is the Co-CEO and Chief Science Officer on OceanX to be able to talk to you about what the message that OceanX wants to do in the future. They've been really Looking forward to bringing you, you know, the best the very best of Media
that they can provide on Ocean X some of my good friends. Dr Nathan Robinson and Melissa Marquez have been on the shows on Ocean X and been able to show what that boat can do Also what they can do from the boat and be able to get all that information to you not only for science But and for governments but to you so we're gonna talk about a little behind the scenes of Ocean X how it got started and and where it's going in terms of bringing you not only the wonderful things about the ocean, but
the solutions so that we can protect the ocean. And it's not all doom and gloom. There's a lot of optimism to look forward to in the future. 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 a 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, it's a special one. It's a special one for me because I am honored to have Vincent Parabon on this program to talk about OceanX. Now, he is the co-CEO and the chief science officer. He's got the origin story of OceanX. He's got the passion about not only what OceanX brings, but what
OceanX wants to bring in the future. So not only the media that they've built for this beautiful vessel that goes around the world and takes samples and does observations and does beautiful science so that they can help governments from all over the world Tackle what they need to tackle right for their governmental things essentially they have they need science or they need to collect data You know ocean X is there. That's what
the vessels there do. That's what the organization is there to do That's what the people in the boat are there to do and they do amazing work plus they have a whole media side of it where they bring people where they bring the information to you or right to your tablet, your phone, your TV, in your living room, in your home, on the bus, on the train, wherever you're watching it from, you can get all this information on National Geographic, BBC, their
YouTube channel, it's just everywhere, and it's great to be able to be inspired by that, because we've all been inspired by something that, like what OceanX is doing in the past, right? Before there was OceanX, there was Jacques Cousteau, there was David Attenborough, There was for Canada, David Suzuki. There are a lot of different people bringing, and of course, Dr. Silver, bringing the information that we see in the ocean, the beauty of the ocean to us
in our homes. And I think that's what the benefit of media is. And when you have an independent organization, it's not part of any government, just like you do with OceanX, they can do a lot more and they can speak up a lot more. And they do, and it's really great. But they're not only just speaking up and waving the finger
at governments or anything like that. What they're looking for is they're working to partner with people, with organizations, with governments to find solutions so that they can talk about solutions to you. They can bring the solutions to you and say, hey, you know what? There's hope for the ocean. It's not all doom and gloom. We're going to be able to get through a lot of this stuff, but we've got to start looking at building businesses, for-profit,
non-profit. We've got to look at there's opportunity to make money in this so that people can actually profit off of saving the ocean, off of saving the planet. And these are big, big ideas and small ideas that will benefit the ocean, that will benefit this planet, that will benefit you and I. And I think that's what I love about the message that OceanX is going to bring in the future, and I'm looking forward to
it. It's going to be a lot of fun, bringing you a little bit of behind the scenes and sort of the strategy that OceanX is doing through Vincent Parabon. I appreciate him giving his time to be able to talk to me. He came to us from Cape Verde. That's awesome. I think it's amazing. I'm looking forward to this interview. I hope you are too. So here's the interview with Vincent Perrone, co-CEO and Chief Science Officer of OceanX. Enjoy, and I will talk to you after.
Hey, Vincent. Welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about OceanX? I am, Andrew. I am super excited for this because OceanX has been on like my top like five lists of people I wanted to interview and and organizations I want to get to know more of so I really appreciate you reaching out to be on
the podcast, this is a true honor for me. We're gonna get into OceanX, just sort of like the origin story, the purpose of OceanX, what you guys do, some of the cool projects that you've done in the past, and maybe some that you can tease for the future. We're gonna get into all of that, but first, Vincent, I will. First of all, I just would like to say it's great to be here. I think what you do is terrific. Protecting the ocean is OceanX. So
that's a good segue into the concept of OceanX. So OceanX, the quick origin story is that Ray Dalio and Mark Dalio, Ray being the father, Mark being the son, you know, began diving together when they were, when Ray was a bit older in life. And Ray was sort of inspired when he was young by Cousteau, but didn't think, I think, much about the ocean until later in life when he started diving
with his sons. And, you know, he became aware that the ocean, first of all, it's magnificent, but that the world was not appreciating it as much and that there was a lot of troubles in the ocean, that there's a lot of problems with the ocean. And I think Ray just had one of those moments that Ray has where he decided let's
try something here. Let's see if something happens and this ship a Lucia the original vessel that we had came on the market and Ray being a very spontaneous guy just said let's buy it and he's not a yacht guy. Right. So he's got small boats, but he's not like, I'll buy a yacht. So this thing came online and it was a research vessel, you know, he's like, okay, it's available. So without much thought, he bought it. I think, I don't want to say that, but he didn't, he bought it. He said, let's see
if this works. And then he, he got together with a lot of interesting people at Woods Hole and learned about it. And his model was basically, I'm going to take this out and we're going to use it. And we're going to invite scientists to come on board. And so I met him very early on at the beginning of this because he did a few expeditions. And then I was at the time a scientist, a neuroscientist, and we were very interested in these glowing proteins that we use in
the ocean. And so I had done some expeditions looking for these things. And we had this really good exhibition at the Museum of Natural History, and in it we had all this beautiful glowing things and bioluminescence and everything like that. So I was kind of working with the Museum of Natural History. And then Ray Dalio made a donation to the museum and said, here, here's some money and put out a request amongst your scientists if they want to come and do this kind of ocean work on
the ship. So I get a call from my friends. I was kind of an adjunct there at the museum. And they said, you know, we've done these expeditions. You want to go work with this guy? I didn't know who he was or anything. I said, sure. So we put a, put a, put a application in, got the grant and, you know, worked for about six, eight months building equipment, all this kind of cool stuff.
Went to the Solomon Islands with Ray on the boat, spent, spent about two and a half weeks there doing magnificent work in this beautiful place, science samples, everything. And then the last, last day or two, Ray showed up on the boat, went to see what was going on. Cause he kept hearing all these good things about it. So he came, and I met him, and we spent an evening together, like a dinner. He
brought me up back on the boat. We were all staying on shore in Honieri. And I came back on the boat anyways, ate dinner with him, met him, just was like amazed by him as a person. You know, in all fairness, I really didn't know much about him. And I thought, ah, it's just another finance guy, you know? Yeah. But he has this very, very interesting way of thinking. He's written a lot about it. He's got a very principled, very organized
thought process. And I came away thinking, this is a guy who's basically a scientist. He evaluates things and it's his logic. If you read the books, it's a lot about rational thought, which seemed to me, I said, it sounds like you're talking like a scientist here. And I think he has an affinity for the sciences, I really think, in another life. you
know, he would have been a great scientist as well. Anyway, so he and I began like a friendship that lasted several years where he would invite me out on the boat, done some expeditions and some other things to see how things were going and we sort of became friends over the next couple of years. And then at one point he just said, you know, hey, do you want to join, you know, this organization at the time is called Aleutia Productions. And I said, you
know, I got a job. I'm a professor, full-time neuroscience professor. What do I know about the ocean? And he said, well, we've got a head on you for science, so why don't you come and join? So I joined the program around 2017, full-time as an employee, but I met him back in 13. And he said, oh, you're in charge of the whole thing. And I was like, OK, that's shocking. So I was still at the classroom. We may not be testing today. Um,
but he said, you know, come on and let's do this thing. And then immediately he said, let's, let's buy a new boat. We need a bigger boat, you know? So, so that became the sort of vision. And what he said to me was, and what I learned on the boat was that he, he really felt that. the science of the ocean needed a visual component to it. It needed a way to translate it. I remember him saying, there's a lot of science papers published about the world, and yet the world doesn't listen.
I remember thinking to myself that year there was something like 11,000 papers published on climate. And why are we still, you know, the science, you know, I'll say this and probably nobody want to hear it, but the science around climate is pretty settled, right? We know what's going on. And a lot of ocean themes, unfortunately, the science of human inflicted problems is settled. Now, oceanography is
not settled, but what we're doing to the ocean is settled. We shouldn't, we're overfishing, we're polluting plastic, but you know it, the list, right? So doing more science on the impact of that is important, but Solutions are the most important thing at this point and getting the word out and letting people know that this is not going well and we have to change. So OceanX was really built to first and foremost to celebrate the ocean, to make sure that the old quote,
you don't protect what you don't love. You got to make them love it and Cousteau made us love it. Ray, my generation, we just loved the way he visualized. So this was like let's do a Cousteau moment in a modern updated version of Cousteau. Yeah, let's let's show the world, let's get to make the world fall in love with the ocean and protection will follow.
And so that was it and then that the idea was doing great science and Ray the first time I met with him he gave me this Venn diagram, you know, and the Venn diagram was great science and great media and in the middle, you know, and what was happening. was we were doing great science, but it wasn't visually compelling. And then the visually compelling work
didn't always have the best science involved. So my job was to find that middle ground, find the stuff that was exciting, scientifically valid, and was helping the world, was helping show stories. So for the first few years of OceanX, we just really built up a following. First, we created the company. We built this amazing vessel, COVID, blah, blah, blah. But then we started doing expeditions, and the vessel has been focused really on just exciting
the world. But in the background, all the science that we were doing always had, and the messaging we always had was about conservation of the ocean and stewardship. But of late, we've begun to pivot our messaging, and this is actually quite new. The pivot is to spend more of our effort now trying to talk about what needs to be done in the ocean. The science we're doing, because we've become such a popular organization.
I mean, we're sort of almost a victim of our own success that we're being asked by governments like, what can we do? And how can we help? And how can OceanX help us meet our goals in the ocean? So we have begun to rethink a bit our mission because we have built this unique position for ourselves, this platform. By really showing the beauty of science, the beauty of the ocean, we're in a position to help make change. So our pivot is around making change, around talking
more about the things that we need to do. So we don't want to be the Debbie Downer. Right? Because the ocean, I And honestly- And that you see like when you're out on the expeditions too, You see it and it's evident, you know, but there is a reversal. We can reverse all this, you know? So our thing is like, let's just get everybody excited about it because the first step is that. And
then we have to have the solutions, right? So OceanX has become an organization which wants to utilize its tools to help governments understand what it has. Because we go to a place that they don't know anything about their ocean and we want to say like, your ocean is super valuable. And super valuable not just in an It's not like just a place to start digging stuff out of. You got oil, you got this, you got fish, right? We need to like chill
on that in a way. Valuable. But it needs to be, you know, the word sustainability is just overused and sounds like a bad word these days. You know, first we would just stop everything and then we said, oh, let's do it sustainably. But sustainably has become this thing. But the point really is that we're now at the stage where we really need to find alternatives. We need to find alternative
value in the ocean, right? So they need to start thinking, everybody needs to start thinking about the value of the genetic diversity in the ocean and the value it provides in terms of food stability and all these things that it does. And how does the modern, how's the modern view of the ocean? What is the modern view? There's tourism in the ocean, right? There's coastal resilience against these changing hurricanes that we have. We got another one heading up
the Gulf right now, right? Very scary. Crashed through Florida. There's another one heading there. The Gulf water is like an incubator for these terrible things. So coastal resilience is all about not not Exactly. The seagrass beds and the bearing of the carbon and the whole thing is there in a nutshell. So we really take on as our mission the enlivening of these stories and
the enlivening of the ocean. We have all of the creature creature feature stuff we have all the cool yeah, she just can't get in a submarine or go down about the ocean, something amazing dropping in your lap so like the job it just does itself right so we're out there doing one thing and something else happens in the series that we just finished the National Geographic and BBC Jim Cameron is that story of half the things that are in that
show or not we went out to film. Right we said we're going to see these humpback whales are going to study their language and we did that but on top of it these things happen and if you watch the show you get a sense of what that was you know that nature just pulls something out of a hat so so it's an easy job to to get some people. about the ocean. I say it's easy. It's easy in the sense that you have amazing people. But the ocean never ceases to amaze any of us, even old people
like us. So OceanX is really this unique – we realize that still even to this day there isn't an organization that's really dedicated to almost be the PR for the ocean. And at the same time, a convener of people, of partnerships, of bringing people together to understand that these solutions are out there. We can solve these problems we have in the ocean. We can solve, we can have
our cake and eat it. You know, it's not that we have to stop. We just have to understand it better and we have to understand how to treasure it for what it really is. And, you know, I just think that All these astronauts that go into space and look down on the Earth, they're just like, oh. And that Captain Kirk, when he went into space, William Shatner, and just said, I've been looking the wrong direction. Yeah. Space is beautiful, but the ocean and the planet, it's just
an incubator. In some sense, it's like this little thing that keeps us alive as we're moving through the deadness of the space around us. And the excitement is right here under our feet. And I think this generation, I'm so excited of this younger generation. There's just a whole lot of criticism. But they're our best clients. They're the ones that feel it in their heart. And
they're the ones that will go out in life and do things. Everything they do, they'll try to bring this love of nature and this discipline and what they need is a kind of a respect and a thought. That has to enter their mind. My generation, it didn't enter your mind to take care of world planet. They have that. That's going to save the earth, honestly. I think our generation gave them the tools to understand it. It's
an exciting endeavor. traveling the world and doing that never ceases to be anything but a thrill I pinch myself I just today I was out with a contingent of people and they said you must have the greatest job in the world is like I'm I'm sorry to say, but I do. I don't know what yeah, right that this land. But it is truly you know, it's truly a pleasure and honor and it's Well, I'm sure, you know, through through the things that happened in the world, you set yourself up to be there
for that opportunity. And that's how that's how it all came to be. So I'm sure that you did something, not realizing it, but it ended up being in a good way, even just being a good conversationalist, you
know, with Ray. I have to say that. Yeah, Ray appreciated the ability to interpret science as a scientist and not speak always like a scientist, but rather At my stage in life, I've had to explain it so much in giving lectures and speaking to people that I get a sense of where, you reach a certain understanding in science, I think, where you no longer have to impress anybody with what you know, but you have an understanding of the top to bottom, from the molecules all the way to
the organization. Not to say that you understand it, but there's a kind of a thread line. That you can explain in a way there's a lot of the whole process, you know, and that that's a beauty when you see it and if people I feel that I feel a little like Salieri, you know, the guy from the Mozart movie where. you're witness, as a scientist, you're witness to the greatness of the world, the greatness of things, but sometimes the audience doesn't get it, you
know? True. Like, I cannot understand why you wouldn't protect the ocean. To me, it's an absolutely fantastic, amazing, it is just like the most rich thing on the earth. And so, that, I don't understand why the world doesn't see that the same way. Now, the world's got a lot of other problems to deal with, right? So I
get it. But on the other hand, it's so foundational to Well, I find I find also, though, like we, you know, we've been brought up to understand and learn and and especially as scientists to communicate the problems that we're facing in the ocean and on this planet. And so we have been a doom and gloom. Like I'm Generation X, almost like at that cusp of Generation X and millennia. I was 78, baby. You hear about the climate change. I've been hearing about climate change my entire
life, from the 90s all the way to now. And now we're really starting to see the effects. But now it's really coming in. It's undeniable at this point, over the last 10 years or so. But I find, though, we've been in such a state of doom and gloom for the last 30, 40 years. of my life anyway, that a lot of times we
kind of hide the solutions to the end. You know, I always say, a lot of documentaries that you see in the past, they would go through, here's the beauty of the ocean, okay, and then here's the problem as a regular storytelling thing, here's the problem, here's sort of like where we're seeing at the custom, we gotta do something, but we're not doing something, and then at the tail end, after that climax of the story, we
start to hear a little bit about the solution, but there's not a lot of time spent on the solution. That's why when you're telling me that OceanX is pivoting the messaging to be like, look, we're not only going to make people fall in love with the ocean, but we're going to start talking about the solutions. This excites me because we needed
this on a global level. You know, on the platforms where, you know, OceanX working with National Geographic, working with BBC, working with these types of media platforms where you get global coverage to show the beauty of not only the OceanX ship and the mission, but also what you see in that ocean to be able to talk about
solutions on that basis and get people excited. You know, that's the one thing that I've been trying to do on this podcast for a long time is get the stories that you don't normally hear and talk about the successes of, you know, villages in the Philippines being able to adapt to climate by having like a savings bank for their fisheries so in case their marine protected area gets taken out by a typhoon, They don't have to
worry about fishing for a little bit because they've had something stored away and they can still feed their families. They can still send their kids to school and still take care of themselves while this builds back up as we hope that it does. They've been able to feed off of that and they continue to contribute to this. Hearing solutions like that gets people excited. Oh, so we're not in dire need. We're not doomed in this gloomy kind of situation. No, there are ways that we can
build up. And even talking about what's about to hit Tampa Bay with Hurricane Milton, You know, it's looking at the infrastructure of Tampa and looking at the infrastructure of Florida and focusing on being more resilient, making those cities more resilient, even all the way up the Southeast and even to where I live in Ontario, Canada, we got the effects of Hurricane Beryl earlier this summer. And we started to see vulnerabilities in flooding because of so much water and
so forth. So, you know, we've been talking about these stories and solutions. It'll be great to see those types of solutions get on a global map, on major media so that people are watching these. So not only are they seeing the beauty of the ocean and maybe some of those consequences that we're seeing, but also the solution to those consequences. So I'm really excited that OceanX is getting involved in that because you guys have such great production value, such
great people that work on that. How do you, you know, get solutions and how do you portray that? Is it like individual stories or is it like you working with governments? Can you talk a little So, um, I noticed at COP when I went to COP 27, which was in Egypt and COP 28, which was in Dubai. I'd never been to the COP meetings before. Honestly, I went to the COP on a lark just to go see it, you know, and being invited there. And
I walked around and it was so inspiring. to be there. Because sometimes in our country there just seems like there's like half the world doesn't believe in this whole thing and half the world is fighting against it. But then you go to COP and you're at this group of people from all over the world, anywhere they are, that understand the problems. And all it is about is solutions to the problems. It's just piles of solutions. Every
booth I went to, I was like, oh, you've got hydrogen. Oh, you've got farming. Oh, you've got seaweed. Oh, like, like, like, oh, it's everywhere. You know, like, it isn't some bespoke thing. It's become a mainstream, you know, due to the real, due to
the movement, the climate movement and the thought around it. The fact that, that, you know, what we're asking though, at the end of the day, to me, and this was an epiphany for me, is that I think that the development of oil and development of petroleum, I tell everyone this, it's probably the greatest thing that the human species has ever done. And I don't think that people want to hear that from an environmental group, but the reality is that that has brought such,
it has changed humans in a way. If you study it, how amazing it was, what's changed in terms of lighting and just starting with lighting, but you know, transportation and food, it's all thanks To be honest, it saved the whales because that's what we got, our energy It saved the whales as a thing. In the end of the day, it was a great uplifter for the entire human race. It's a very hard thing to
say, okay guys, we got to not do this anymore. And I think that I'm proud to be a scientist because scientists looked at the problem and said, okay, it's a problem now, but there's still entrenched, not just business, but there's an entrenched thing in that world because they built such an amazing structure to distribute this oil throughout the world. It's a bad word today, but in reality, it's an amazing thing. But as a scientist, we just look at it and
say, now it's absolutely wrong. And maybe it wasn't wrong when we started it, and it wasn't wrong for the longest time, but now we realize that it's causing damage, serious damage to the Earth. And you're taking all this carbon that nature has spent billions of years burying, And the atmosphere is a result of that, and all of the earth is a result of this carbon being physically buried due to carbon storage over the billions of years. And we're just like burning it, like shooting
it out. And the atmosphere and everything in the ocean is trying to take it, and it can't. It just can't take it. And you say, oh, it's a couple of degrees. You hear the IOC, and they're like, oh, it's two degrees. I always remind people, two degrees is two degrees over the earth. It's not like you're frying pan. What's the difference of two degrees? But the fact is that we're seeing the effects of that. A couple of degrees in the Gulf of
Mexico, and you've got category fives every day. If something gets in that gulf, it's going to become a category five. It's warm. So I turned the corner when I was actually COP 27 on some level, because part of me is like, I live in this world of problem, problem, problem, especially traveling around the earth and seeing first hand. And I started to see the concept of this hydrogen generation, right? I know that hydrogen sort of had a false start maybe a couple of years ago.
People started it. Well, California did stuff with it. It was the first time and I started to like dig into it, like as alternative fuel. And it's just the whole thing suddenly just came crystal clear to me, like there is this material on the earth, hydrogen, which is 80% of the earth is made of hydrogen, right? That is this exchange material between electricity and storage. And
electricity, it's like the battery, it's everything all in one packet. The idea now that hydrogen is just this exchange feature, but the beauty of the idea suddenly became to me that, again, as scientists, you can put aside all the difficulties in society. In other words, it's not the difficulties, it's society accepting things and changing. You can just look at it purely academically and say, this is clearly the way to go. There's no doubt about it.
There's other fuels that can be in the mix, but all the different ways to create this, it's like, I always say it's like the ATP, you know, from biology, ATP is all this energy that you eat and the food ends up in your body and ends up as ATP, right? And the ATP is currency exchange. So hydrogen is like going to be the exchange, right? We're going to make it all different ways, whether it's solar or wind or geothermal, or we drill it out of the earth, which was another moment that was an
epiphany for me. And suddenly we have this fuel that we can use and do it and it's not going to cause any problems for us. It's a different thing. Right. And, um, And it's suddenly like this big, beautiful thing that was oil sees its way to this new thing that has many of the features that we'll have. Oil, but it won't have all of the downsides of putting so much carbon into the atmosphere. And carbon in the atmosphere kind of leads to a lot of the problems that we see. The acidification, the
heating, the movement of animals because of the temperature. Carbon's at the heart of a lot of that now. Having said that, as OceanX is concerned about the pressures on the ocean, carbon and acidification is really only one, unfortunately, of many problems that we have. Pollution, neutrification, overfishing, terrible coastal development, plastic pollution, everything. These are all human anthropogenic issues with the ocean. And only climate
change is only one of those. But to me, I kept saying, if you can't solve that one, But then I thought, you know, the beauty of science is that it finds its way through all of this, you know? Yeah. It finds ways to solve these epic problems, you know? And that makes me proud to be a scientist, to be one of the people who are on that side of solutions, you know? And all you got to do is take a bunch of young people, put them in a room, and tell them to
solve a problem. And if they have the freedom in the society, the resources and the audacity. And America to me, as I travel the world, still retains this. It's not the only country for sure, but it's one of the few countries in the world that has the audacity to just do stuff. To say like, we're going to try this and follow the
leads and fail and fail and fail until we don't fail. And so now I come back to the solutions, as you're mentioning, and I see in each of these areas, You know, we've got solutions to these things, right? It's no longer, you know, like I came from biomedical science, right? Alzheimer's disease is a real problem. It doesn't have a solution. Science has not given us a solution to that disease. We've got some drugs that don't work that
well. We've got a lot of really smart people studying it. But I can't say to you today that we've got like a scientific solution to that horrible problem, right? But then I look back in this field and I go like, wait a minute. solution for that. We've got bamboo. We've got hydrogen. We've got plastic bags that dissolve. We've got everything. We've got batteries. We've got stuff. We've got wind power. We've got solar.
It isn't one thing, but what it is is a lot of smart people. I'm seeing desalinization plants that go underwater. Fantastic solutions to problems. Ocean energy for energy from the ocean, the science of it, all aided by the modern AI and ways to utilize all this stuff. So to me it's like the problems are kind of all solved. And the money is now to be made. And that's the part that also makes me very excited, is that the power of the economy. And Ray has always driven that home to me. Philanthropy
is great. It shines a light. It's like a risk capital. But when you want things to happen, you've got to get it into the private sector. You've got to get it to the larger global markets. That's where all the money is. That's where the things happen. And so I start to see how the global market's responding to this. in a way. They have to. But also there's investment potential. And government regulation, which is a good thing in many cases, nobody wants to hear that either. But seat belts were
a good idea. That was a government regulation. Car companies didn't say, hey, let's save people's lives, unfortunately. And Ralph Nader, we'll talk your ear off on that, about how having airbags was going to kill the American car industry. It didn't. And Oh, I got 12. Oh, I got 13 airbags. And now it's a selling feature. Yeah. It's a selling feature, right? Yeah. Like, oh, Volvo was doing well because it was a safe car. Oh, maybe we should make a safe car. So
it's all temporal. Yeah, for sure. If you go back and look at those hearings in the 70s, they're like, he's killing the car companies. He's going to ruin it. It can't happen. How can we inflate a bag and 35 millisecond it? You don't hear anything about it anymore. It's gone. Our grandchildren will all be going like, what were you guys talking about? It's all done. So it's this transition period. But transitions are times
to make money. So when you go back to that, I think that Ray is a unique position as this really global scion of finance and world economics. And he's a behind-the-scenes guy,
understanding how things are working. And people go to him. And I learned that, like, that you can see it beginning, these solutions are leaving the realm of the kind of startups and the venture capitals and they're getting into the, so like, can you see that like Korea has made these massive hydrogen generating devices, you know, these high electrolysis units, and then these fuel cells, you can run a ship,
they've got, they've got grains running on fuel cells, right? they they're making enough energy to store but it's just you just see it's incredible and I think now that now's the moment. They're going to be people years from now, how did those how did those hydrant companies get so rich. now's the chance to get on that bandwagon. The Rockefellers of today are the people who are not waiting around and saying, let's move. And so
I think there's money to be made. And I'm not saying that in a disingenuous way, but this transition has gone from not doable to, you better get in now, because soon you're going to miss the train when the seaweed train goes, and the fish farms, and all the things that are going to help this economy. Our worlds shift. And unfortunately, you know, the other issue is, of course, the developed world, sort of the northern hemisphere will
all get there sooner, right? And so part of my job as I travel around to these places, Cape Verde for one, is to say like, you know, the way the cell phones have kind of leaped ahead, Starlink is going to leap everybody ahead. Like you've got these leaping technologies and maybe you don't have to go through all the headaches we went through. But you better get in on this business because you know, the next ExxonMobil is going to be in a business and you should have it here, right? Exactly.
You should build. And so like the opportunity to me, like I can, you can name a problem and I can give you a solution, you know, in the climate world and the ocean world. And we work a lot with like World Economic Forum. Again, this is like the people that bring you Davos, which is a big like, Oh my God. But
they're also got a thousand startups, a thousand ocean startups. And there's just, A bunch of smart people, we had them on our boat, we did like a kind of like a tour around and each one of them is just like, oh, so wait a minute, I can use your technology and I can take CO2 out of the atmosphere, I can make hydrogen, I can take seawater, I can bury this CO2 safely in the seawater and get hydrogen out as a byproduct. win, win, win, win, right?
And I'm getting out hydrogen that I can then use. So CO2 down, hydrogen out, no pH change. Yeah, it actually makes sense because hydrogen up means you're losing protons and you're putting, boom, that whole problem solved. You're on the way like, oh, wow. And what's the chemistry behind that? And it's a little company in California doing this. You're like, OK. So you see these transitions. And so to me, I started seeing this and thought, well, that's the story, right? Yeah. The
story is the ocean as a place to be. And also, we talk a lot about space and how well they did, how well NASA did, how well SpaceX and everybody does. It's sort of popularizing this place that nobody really wants to go to. I mean, let's be clear, right? I always say there's no, like, talking raccoons in space, even though there is in Mars. We're not finding them when we get there, right? Not yet, anyway. I made this joke, which I always repeat, but I still think it's funny. I said it at
a conference where there were some NASA people. I said, you know, that series, that miniseries that you're going to do on going to Mars, you know that 6 part series and the first part is getting there is that getting there. It's going to be great. Being there is not going to be you know, it's going to take us on Mars right. Yes, the real boring because yes, it's going to be this part 2 dust part 3. Part 4 rock and dust, you know, it's like it is to play off allies.
dried, dead, worst nightmare of a place to go, right? It's not going to be easy. Elon Musk may want to go there. Good for him. Him and his sperm, you know, he sent his sperm out. So him and his sperm can go there. But I'm telling you that I get in a submarine, you know, I go right off the coast here, I'll go down the submarine and I'll see creatures that that scare the hell out of me, right? And they're amazing. And they're magical. They're amazing.
They're floating through time, right? So I don't need to go into space to see that. In fact, I know that I'm not going to see it, right? Exactly. So to me, the looking upward is not, to me, I love space. I love the whole thing of it. But it's more the getting there that's kind of interesting. But being down there underwater is so, you know, it's just organically exciting and Well, it's different every time you go, I would imagine, too. And if you're in a
submarine, everything is different. Every time you go down, there's something I mean, if you just do the math, right? We've mapped like maybe 3% of the ocean bottom. Maybe more, maybe we're up to 40% as you map it with sonographic mapping, right? But most of it is on map, just to be clear, with sonographic. But if you go to like visualization, you're about 0.001%. Because the problem with the ocean, of course, is that It doesn't conduct
light well. It doesn't conduct any radio waves, right? So you can't have GPS down there. You can't have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cell phones, nothing, right? So you're down there in this void, and the light that you send out of your submarine just goes maybe four or five meters max. That's how much you can get light out, especially in the dark, which starts, you know, around. So you're in this dark area where you can't, right? So as you're driving, you
see stuff. And you think, oh, I was on a two-hour dive and I saw three strange creatures. That's not a lot. Well, do the math on that. You only saw. It's not like you went to the Grand Canyon and you looked out. Because the Grand Canyon, you look out, you're seeing miles and miles of everything. But underwater, you're seeing five meters for eight hours. So do the math on the volume you actually witnessed. It's tiny. And yet in that, you saw three creatures. And
the other ones are scared of your lights or your sound. So the place is just livid with life, you know. So we're all playing, OceanX plays a lot with how to sneak up on them. I told everybody when we were building the boat, you know, we're building it with a lot of oil company people who build boats, you know. So I was saying, look, the goal of this boat is to sneak up on stuff. It's like to sneak up and witness it, you know,
and not make noise. And they were all like, what? We're drilling. you know, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not drilling, no hydraulics, no, let's get these quiet, low light, mid lights, like, it's sort of like nightclub mood, because you gotta move in on them, so they pay attention, you
know? So, you know, that was okay, I get it, so we made very quiet ROVs, and we made quiet, we put new motors on the subs recently, very quiet, so they don't scare stuff, and then you start to, they start to come out, you know, they're shy, and they come out, and they see you, well, you walk around the woods, you don't see a lot of animals, they all run for cover, and they do it even more. In the sea, normally if they think if something's bright and making noise, I don't want to be anywhere
near it, right? That's a sign that we're going to get eaten. So the life that you see when you play these tricks, you turn the lights out and you buy luminescence. I mean, it's just, yeah. I mean, like I said, it's, it's, I've never taken, I've maybe done 40, 50 sub dives in the past couple of years. It's never nothing. You may go all the way down and not see anything and all the way up and you're 15 feet from the surface and something shows up and you're just like, there it
That's incredible. If I'm getting this in terms of the solutions and the stories being told on the ship, I and on like what OceanX does, are you trying to bring the solution makers, inspire them on the boat and in the ocean and start to bring them together to have those conversations? So not only do we get collaboration like you would see in the science world, but you're starting to get exchange of ideas and start to get that
inspiration. Like look, you could go down in the submarine or you can do a dive or you could look out on the ocean and be out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and be like, this is amazing. You can never get, and I'll tell you this, I've been on ships before, there's no better place to see a sunset than on a ship. When there's
just the horizon ahead of you and you see that sunset. I mean, I still think that my favorite sunset, which it didn't really set, was in the Beaufort Sea up in the Arctic in Canada, where it was still light and you just see the sun go over the horizon for like, it felt
like a minute and then pop up, back up. Yeah, and then like you never get sunsets like that like unless you're on a ship, so I totally buy into the inspiration that people feel Now, with the media aspect of OceanX, will this be filmed, these exchange of ideas and sort of seeing these solution makers, if we want to call them that, being inspired and having those discussions? And like, will those be on like the programs like, you know, the Blue Planet or something similar?
So it's still at the heart of the organization is discovery and exploration. And I spent a lot of time thinking about exploration as a concept. And exploration as a concept I think is super valuable in and of itself. But as we try to solve problems, our ship also is uniquely positioned to help collect the data necessary to solve problems. And I can't overlook that. It's built as a discovery machine.
I call it like exploration science is what we tried to maximize. We tried to say, when we put this thing in the water, what's the maximum possibility over the limited time we have at a particular location to film, to collect DNA, to do as much possible viewing? So we built a ship that can pull up at a location. We can put two submarines in the water, put an RV down. do a CTD cast, put a helicopter in the air to do megafauna surveys, and put a team out of scuba divers out on the boat. Everything
at once. And we've done this. You just, the boat gets on site, and It's like a morning meeting. You know, the night meeting is like, you're 8 o'clock, you're 8.05, you're 8.10, and the energy drops, and everybody's got, you know. And it's like, it becomes like a machine. A scientist first comes out, what's going on here? Like, we can't do this. No, no. And when we're planning expeditions, I have to say to everybody, like, they're like, Oh, all we're going to do is this today. I was like, okay,
you just plan for that. And then I'm over here. Oh, we'll plan for that too. You know? And they get there and they're like, what's going on? We're doing this. I'm like, just, you do that. We're doing this. We've got a helicopter going out and we're looking for whales, you know, at the same time. And so, so I did built it as this discovery machine. Now that was the overriding. Cause on the Lucia, the previous vessel, we had to use a lot of the same points to access, you know, we
had to launch and recover RVs and subs all from the same place. So we have, separate launch and recovery systems for the helicopters, everything obviously, right? So we can do everything simultaneously. So it is a discovery machine and still in my heart, and I think Ray and Mark and both of us agree that discovery still is is the heart of the organization, because we can't even tell people what's out there if we don't know. We just don't even know. I make
discoveries on that boat, scientifically valid discoveries. Sometimes they come back to you. We discovered an algae in the Red Sea, right? I think an algae in the deep. And this algae, you know, it just kind of becomes an anomaly. Like, why is algae so deep? Algae, by definition, is the most embedded creature. Yeah, it needs light. So it turns out that zooxanthellae, which are the type of algae that live in coral and make them brown and do photosynthesis, they
also can eat. They're one of the few creatures on the earth that can eat and do photosynthesis, so like plants that also eat. So these creatures live in the deep, and instead of doing photosynthesis because they don't have any chlorophyll left in them, they just eat food. But they still live symbiotically with the corals in the deep, it seems like. So how are they doing that? Why are they doing that? Why do you need a symbiotic algae in
your tissues if you're not doing photosynthesis? Well, we think, we don't know, we think they're digesting food and then secreting a kind of glycerol or like like easier products for the coral to absorb and live off of. So the coral still provides a home, but maybe they become more of a parasite than a symbiotic, but still the relationship exists. I thought that's a
little interesting esoteric. And then fast forward where I'm applying for a DARPA funding to use these algae in a deep sea device that will create power. with an algae that can live at that depth and can digest food and secrete glycerol onto an electrode surface that turns glycerol directly into electricity. So
there are bioelectrode arrays that you can build. So now suddenly you have a discovery that at the time seemed cool and interesting but not relevant, into building into a product that will be able to produce 10 watts of power sitting in any environment with no sun and no water movement, almost nothing, to power sensor arrays, for example. When they're non-destructive, they don't They don't have batteries in them, right? So that's the concept of this. I mean, we're working on
it in the lab right now. But discovery still opens the door to businesses and industries and ideas that you didn't have. So discovery still is at the heart of what we do. But like I said, we realized that with our prominent visual position as a vessel and what we built, the prominent image of OceanX, and countries are inviting us to come. and say, we want you to discover our waters. And then at the same time, they start asking like, well, what,
what kind of studies should we do to help protect our waters? Like, what is the, what could be done? Yeah. protect the fisheries, to evaluate our fisheries, and how do we find carbon credits in the ocean? We don't know how to do that, so can we help them with that? Can we help them find seagrass beds? Because seagrass beds, as you know, are great carbon stores, and they want to destroy them or don't care about them, but they're really valuable to storing
And biodiversity. They're like the coral reefs. They're one of the few Plants that lives in the ocean and they do a magnificent job and everybody loves it. You know, there's companies that are looking for these things. We're looking for them. So so what we tried to do now is try to bring together both of the technology we have on board the vessel to help countries who Honestly, the vessel is the best oceanographic
vessel in the world, without exception. So even the U.S. and France, we're very proud to say that, that we built the thing, and thanks to Ray Dalio, and thanks, it is an amazing, like I said, it can do so much at once. But, so any country we go into, we're the best they've ever seen. And we need to help them with that. We have to turn that into a valuable, that's
the goal of the nonprofit, is to go in and help society and help. And in this case, discovery is important, but helping them make the transition to a more to an economy that will think more about the ocean and protect the ocean and view the long-term investment and value the ocean the way it should be. So how can we help them do that at the same time where they're trying to develop as a country, where the country is trying to grow to be a more developed country? So
how can we help them do that at the same time? Because they seem to inherently understand the idea that this exploitive extraction from their waters is not good. Also, in some cases, it's become difficult when they're extracting so much fish. And if it's a place that lives on fish, there are many of these Southeast Asian countries that eat fish. And they're losing it. And so it's more of an issue, not just a financial issue, but a country that can't
feed It's populous. Some countries in the Southeast Asia get 40% of their protein from fish, and the fish are going away. First of all, they're leaving the waters, but also they've been overfished dramatically. So they can't do that. And they think, well, they need more fish for the economy. And on the other hand, the more fish they take, the less they have. I mean, it's a terrible thing. But we say, maybe we can find a way. to reduce the take, or take in certain areas, protect other areas.
And there are examples of places in the US have done it, other countries have done it, where they protected fisheries. And the fisheries can rebound and get to a kind of a stable level
of production, where they're not showing a decline. And if you look at values, for example, of effort put in, amount of fishing boats versus fish, You know you normally used to see this more fishing boats, the more fish now you just see that starting to plateau and you're piling more fishing boats and you're not getting any fish out because you know the cod fisheries in the North Atlantic where or our wake-up call as a yeah, we're all but especially the. the
Atlantic hemisphere that we can't just do that. We've been hunting those animals for a thousand years, Scott. And now we just can't do it. They're gone, right? So we can use a lot of our bad experience. And I think I go, for example, we spent a lot of time in the Florida Keys. you know, and I grew up in Florida and the Florida has done a terrible job and I'm saying it here at protecting its natural resources. And I, I imagine, you know, when I was young and
we go to the keys, there was, you couldn't throw a rock. You didn't hit a dive spot. It could have grown into the largest dive site in the world, right? Because it had driving access. It's the only coral reef that America owns, except for what's in Hawaii, right? But it's the only, and it's one of the largest barrier reefs. Well, it is destroyed. No matter what the Florida Tourism Bureau might want to tell you, it's not on the top list for
anybody to dive in the Caribbean. So if you go to a dive magazine, you say top dive spots, they're going to say Bonaire, they're going to say Turks and Caicos, they're going to say, you know, and that's basically every time I see that it's like Big Pine Key, it's Lou Key, it's all the keys could have been in that list. And they're not anymore because of everything they did, you know, and so you go to a foreign country and you're like, look, I
can tell you how to ruin your coral reef. You over-fish it, which we did in Florida. Put anchors down all you want in Florida. We stopped doing that recently. You can neutrify the water by polluting, and you can pump raw sewage out of Miami, processed sewage outside of Miami Bay. Still, to this day, we pump sewage into Miami Bay. You can do those things. And let me show you what it looks like. In my time, in the 70s, I dove there. It was crazy. And then we
had a trip to Cuba. And I say that's a real kick in the gut for a real red meat state like Florida. They don't love Fidel Castro and his Cuba, but I'll tell you, Fidel Castro did a better job of protecting the waters around Cuba. He did. And I'm going to get killed for saying this, but I dove in that area. We were talking about it earlier. saltwater crocs, you've got whales, you've got bait balls, you know, you've got the thing that you had in Florida. It's gone, right? And that's 90 miles
off the coast. So it's not a climate change issue in Florida. Those reefs were actively destroyed by, you know, and there's a lot of great people down there working. Now we've got this disease running down the coast. I mean, I have to say, I went down there and dove. I hadn't dove 20 years there. And when we brought Aleutia there, we did this very extensive set of experiments all the way from dry Tortuga up. to Miami Bay. And we went that direction because we didn't want
to drag the disease with us as we went down. We were recommended, if you're going to dive in the diseased parts of the water, don't. So I did that. And I said, of all the places I've been in the world, I've never seen in a country like the United States, why would we do that? And I'm on the boat, and we're having these press conferences. And the beauty of being OceanX is nobody owns us. Right? Right. Some of the laboratories that
we worked with there, they're all state-funded, and they don't keep their mouths shut. I don't keep my mouth shut. And now they're debating whether they should ban certain types of sunblock. And I was saying to the guy like, are you kidding me? Can you look in the water out there and am I sure that sunblock Are you changing sunblocks going to protect your reef? No. I don't know. But I'm going to tell you, if you put sunblock in a tank
with fish, with reef, it kills them, right? Yeah, but you don't know. OK, you go ahead. But you've got a patient underwater there that's like on life support. So can you not do everything you can possibly do to revive this thing? Or are you just going to argue with me about whether sunscreen, which blocks the sun rays, is from getting to your skin, and corals need sun? So I don't know. Logically, it makes sense to me. I'm saying like, well, penguins are
out there. And by the way, penguins live in Mexico. So all your complaints, the Mexicans figured this stuff out. And Florida's arguing the point, like, really, I mean, really nailing the coffin. So I realized that those points that the messaging that we do at OceanX is even more important than the science, because what I was surrounded by was amazing scientists studying these diseased coral. And I'm like, guys, like, it's like the economy, stupid, you know, like it is That's
the problem is facing you there. You know that you screwed up the Everglades. So I go to other countries, and I'm like, I'm not here to tell you, in your developing country, how America does things better. Of course. And they don't want to hear that. And you know what? We don't tell them that, because we didn't do that. No. I can't stand there and go, let me bring you to the Florida grief and show you how beautiful it is. And I'm sure I won't be
allowed to go to Florida again. But on the other hand, please stop. Yeah, it's true. And they've got this huge multi-billion dollar plan to try to fix the Everglades. Where is it? They've got to fix the problem that they made. So, you know, I think that we have case studies in that direction. And so, and then you've got Cuba right across the water, you know. So I think that in the
thing about OceanX was beautiful for me as a person to witness all of this. Whether it's the Red Sea or the Indian Pacific or the Arctic or the Antarctic or I've been in all the oceans. I've seen it all firsthand, you know, from the from a submarine. I've talked to everybody about it, right? So so it's not a I'm not it's not a fake news thing. It's a like I've known it seen it. Yeah, people a lot of people have I'm not the only one scientists do it but Ocean
X has given me the unique opportunity to be. to be there and to look at all that. But then to see that in enlightened societies, think about it, right? Think about waste treatment. You know, the Florida Keys had septic systems on the keys. I mean, what were you thinking? These are And you're going to put, you know, E. coli down there and you think
it's not going to get out into the, of course it neutrified the whole area, right? And you're going to block the water that's filtered through the Everglades and now you're getting fertilizer. I mean, so, you know, you see these things and you see countries that are really trying hard to avoid those problems. And that to me is, is just that solution happening right there. So to kind of bring that message, is what I
think is great. And then to bring the technology, but it's more than technology, it's a way of thinking, which is a way of thinking. So to say to them, like, for sure, Western culture doesn't have the answer to these problems. We have answers by the fact that we did things wrong. And so what I'm going to ask of you is to just feel in your heart, what does your heart telling you? And then let us help you with the technology. Let us help you see the solutions to
your problems and maybe we can solve it together. And that, that kind Well, I think also there's that side, which I think is a very admirable side, because we need more solutions. We need more people. Not only do we have the solution, but we need more people putting those solutions into place, whether it be through business, whether it be non-profit, for-profit businesses, but basically putting those solutions so that people see it. We need to see these kelp-made
clothing, and we need to see the ways to... Yeah, bamboo and no more single-use plastic, but the alternatives to that, not just so that we regulate, which we still need to do, regulate and ban some of those materials, but also offer those alternatives so it's not difficult to find and be able to go out and find it, which is great. But I think the other side, which is a huge side too, is to educate and inspire the people who are watching this message. There are people out there who want to
know more about the ocean. There are people who are out there who don't want to just know about the doom and gloom, but they crave those solutions so that they can be like, okay, we're actually on the right track here. There's actually ways to do it. Because I think what happens is The messaging around a lot of these major problems for people who don't want to change is there's nothing you can do about it. So
you might as well just rely on it. And if people see that there are solutions, then they can start to put pressure on the people who are avoiding those solutions or avoiding putting those solutions into play or putting up barricades to those solutions to say, hey, you know what? Maybe you shouldn't be in those positions of
power anymore. And if it's something that's elected, Maybe you shouldn't be elected into those positions of power, and maybe we should put people who want more solutions to be put in place, who want to address the problems into place. I feel like there's a definite benefit to that type of messaging that OceanX will be putting out for people to see and just be like, hey, you know
what? No, I'm on side of putting these solutions into I blame a little bit Hollywood recently because there's a sort of dystopic Hollywood messaging around the future, you know, they just kind of right and yeah, I know that it's easier to write those kind of shows that is to yeah, but I want to think like they're thinking either we have to go back to little house in the prairie going to give up all of our tech and
everything's going to go back to work. We're telling you is that you got to give up all this amazing stuff. And that's the dystopic part where you're going to end up chasing zombies or whatever on horseback. The choice isn't that we're going to pollute the world and it's going to be hard. I mean, the Blade Runner, right? The raining and then, oh my God, it's never sunny out. It can
happen. It doesn't have to happen. In fact, we can have both. It's the cake and eating it part that I love to tell the story of like, just because I'm saying oil's a bad thing doesn't mean I want us to go back to before oil. In fact, that's the truth. It's moved past it. It's almost like saying, well, should we just go back to killing whales again? It's ludicrous. The beauty of all this is the human spirit and the generational, I'm older, but I get to just live in this world of optimism. It's
not optimism as much as I see it differently. Like I was saying before, I see it as like this is the time of opportunity. Because the species ain't going anywhere, and we're not going back. Nobody's going to accept that, OK, we're going to go horse and carriage now. No, no, we're not going to accept that. Because if you're going to offer horse and carriage or a hydrogen vehicle,
I'm taking the hydrogen vehicle, right? I mean, I'm doing that. For sure. So I think that the thing is, it's the chance, it's the real chance to make money. It's a chance to build a new world. is a good incentive in a way. The non-profit space is absolutely essential, like I said, but that letting people know that there's a future, and it's going to be a happy future, and we're going to like it just as much. We're going to get over the fact that the car doesn't make the same noise it does when
you put it in there, right? But it doesn't make the same noise. You're going to get over that. I mean, I love I love Bruce Springsteen, but the generation of cars of that, you know, that muscle car concept, you know, it'll change somehow. Well, there'll be a new concept that comes out of it, but we will, you know, we will find that place and it's okay. We'll be okay. We'll get there. It'll still be, it'll be great. The world will be even greater, you know, and life will
come back. I mean, I think the planet renewed will surprise people. you know, yeah, surprise people said years around the streets like it actually really let the coral reefs come back in the rain for us come back. That's the future I I would love to see I was fortunate to go to some
of these places before some of them are damaged and there's still some of them that are there. Earth will rebuild itself, but it needs time needs us to leave it alone, you know, but that will happen so the future isn't doom and gloom it's instead. opportunity for the new world, to build a new world. You don't get that opportunity often. If you can now build energy systems to compete with ExxonMobil, you're
doing good. Let's say that you can make energy, you've got a windmill and you can make energy and you can make hydrogen and you can sell it to your neighbor. You've just beat ExxonMobil. Everybody doing this in its own little way. Because you can't drill in your backyard and find oil and refine it and sell it. That's in the domain of large companies that take it to places where it is and move it to places where it isn't and refine it. It's a very elaborate process.
But now imagine that you have a windmill and you make enough power to make enough hydrogen or electricity to give to your neighbor or to make enough for yourself or to power a few cars or if you've got a dam In a city, you can make enough to drive all the cars in the city, right? Oh, suddenly it's a different playing field for energy. Now, suddenly energy becomes open to everybody. And if you're in North Africa right now, You should be sitting around going, we have the sun. And
they need energy north up in Europe. So let's make the hydrogen. Let's put it in pipes. And let's send it up there. And they're going to be making green energy up there. And they don't have to get it from places that are not as pleasant. And they've had that fuel for so long, they don't remember how to govern properly. Because the fuel is just so rich with it. So in some places, not all places. Yeah, of course. But now this changes the balance, right?
And allows you to think more, wow, creative ways to do things, you know? So I think it's a time of opportunity and a time of excitement. I think it could be amongst young people. But the messaging, like you said, we really can't continue pounding away on the dystopic future. It makes for great movies. And I don't tell Howard to do their business. But the fact is, that
Not the future we want. Young people are going to be optimistic. My young children, I have 13 and 15 year old, and I try to tell them like, don't, don't. Don't worry about that. It's your chance to grab this thing now. And we're out there with all the computer technology and AI and hydrogen, all these different things are building this new world that you're going to take home. And it's just going to work better. In the end, it's going to take years, years
before everybody can make the change to these things. But so what? It took years to get where we are. It takes time. What we're talking about takes time, but it takes people to be inspired, to be optimistic, and I think the line that OceanX is on and the direction that OceanX is taking, I think is a great way to start this off, to get more people inspired, to get people looking for solutions, look around, and then continuing on
and being part of that solution, I think is the future. Like you said, there's opportunity. There's money to be made and it doesn't have to come at the cost of the environment and of the planet and of the ocean. I think that is probably the perfect way to even sum up what we need to do in our planet and what OceanX is helping to do for our planet with So I love that aspect. I'll tell you and your listeners, send us your solution. Your ocean view. And what we'll do is if we find time or find
place or find a location, we'll highlight that concept. We'll be your free advertising. Because we're looking at having people come on board that do these things. We're already doing that. Bringing them on board and saying, showcase what you're doing. Let's put it down there. Let's visit it. Let's visit the fish farm, seaweed farm. and talk about solutions rather than and we have a brilliant way of his brilliant filmmakers and storytellers in our court and by the way they're all gung-ho on
the idea because they see it for us. So we're all gung-ho we're all this optimistic group there, you know they just want us to help so when I talk to the group about OK we're going to make this pivot everybody yes because we see we're not we're not yeah, I mean it's a notion it's never been doom and gloom we've always been like that optimism around the ocean and how beautiful it is and that's worked and that's gotten an audience that's like totally thrilled by that we also want to say like okay,
you love the animals. what can you do to protect them is think about, you go out and make some money and start a company that's going to be, but, but go with that new sensibility that you're going to, that this generation is going to have more than any that can solve that problem. 100%. I love this. And I think that's fantastic. I look forward to seeing this messaging coming out. I think it's going to be something that it's
necessary. We need it. We need more of this solution. I think it's filling that People don't want to be pointed fingers at. As a scientist, I don't see a reason to do that. We're all in this together. Just taking sides, it doesn't work. I used to do AIDS activism when I was younger around AIDS when it was such an issue. We learned early on that what we call disease pitting wasn't going to work, like saying no, cancer needs to get more money. We're all in this boat
together of health and we're all in this boat of motion together. Science and technology and social responsible behavior will all lift everybody up and there's no finger pointing. Anybody who's making an effort to make this work better is going to be part of the party. Anybody who signs up for a better world, So to me it's just the time to get in on it right now. Get in on the fun, get in
on the excitement. And OceanX is just sort of about if you love the ocean and you don't want to think about climbing, you just want to see how beautiful it is, it's a home for that. If you want to see that you don't need to do anything, you just want to see that the world is going to be better, that's what we'll bring to people. Because that's what the world is. It's a beautiful place and keeping it that way, through hope and
thought and work is what we're all about. So to I love that and I can't wait to see the messages that are coming out in the future. Love to be a part of that and looking forward to Vincent having you back on or anybody from OceanX back on to help tell those stories and share those with this audience because I know we're looking
I have a whole team of people who you'd love, who would love to talk to you. I have to say that your show is part of the solution to this problem and having you out talking to the people, to your audience, that we talk to our audience, again, it's part of the team of communicators, to communicate the beauty and the solutions and everything about the ocean. And to me, you embody a piece of what we embody, is that we all feel excited
Absolutely. Yeah, no, I can't wait. Yeah, we'll definitely team up on some more storytelling. And I'm looking forward to doing that. You know, we definitely on the same page of that. So thank you so much, Vincent, for spending time. You're very busy. So I appreciate you taking the time and being able to share all this new and exciting information with our audience. And we look forward to hearing from you again. Thank you, Vincent, for joining me on today's episode of the How
to Protect the Ocean podcast. It was great to be able to hear what OceanX is going to be doing in the future. Thank you for bringing that to me. We really appreciate it. This audience appreciates you and the staff, the work that you guys do. It's amazing. to see all this information
coming to us. It's something like a dream of a scientist to be able to say, hey, I'm going to take this boat, and I'm going to get on it, and I'm going to collect all this different information, not only just for me, but it's going to be for the government. That's what I love about this. If you heard Vincent talk, it's not just like going to a coastline of the Solomon Islands, taking data, and bringing it back to the US. or North America and saying, hey, we're
going to just do whatever we want with this data and not share with it. No, they're going over there and be like, what data do you need to collect? We can be here to collect it with you. And they partner with these countries, this organization partners with this country, and they say, hey, look, we're here to help you. What can we do? Now they're going to start to say, hey, what
solutions are you looking for? And how can we foster that by inspiring people, business leaders, or up-and-coming entrepreneurs to be like, hey, you know what? Do you want to solve a problem? Because that's what business is. Do you want to solve a problem? Let's solve a problem. And what I love about this conversation, it wasn't just promoting OceanX. This was about what OceanX's mission is. And that is to help the ocean, help us understand the
ocean better, help us find solutions for the ocean. And that's what it's giving us. in the future and I can't wait for that. So again, Vincent, thank you so much for spending time with me today, with our audience today and telling us about OceanX and its new sort of path and its new mission to bring ocean solutions to
us. We really appreciate it and we look forward to having you back on. We look forward to hearing from you and the staff of OceanX in the future on this podcast to be able to tell us all the wonderful solutions that you find, and I'm looking forward to that. So folks, if you loved this episode and you want to hear more, you can subscribe or follow, however you need to do. You can see us on YouTube, on Spotify. We have videos as well
on Spotify. We're on Apple, and we're on all your favorite podcasts. And of course, we're on the website speakupforblue.com. You can get access to Beyond Jaws, How to Protect the Ocean, and other podcasts. So you can just go there and enjoy all the different types of content on wildlife and ocean. 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.