The System That Makes Ocean Problems Feel Like Your Fault

0:00 Why does caring about the Ocean sometimes make you feel worse instead of better? You learn about plastic pollution, coral bleaching, overfishing, rising Ocean temperatures, disappearing species, and suddenly it feels like everything is broken. You care deeply, but the more you care, the heavier it feels. So what are people supposed to do? They can shut down. They can scroll past it. They can tell themselves there's really nothing they can do. But if you're feeling that powerless, what if it isn't just because you care too much? What if it's because you've been told to solve a collective problem all by yourself?

0:41 This is the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast, your weekly Ocean news update. If you care about staying informed about the Ocean every weekday, hit that follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's episode. We don't talk enough about how many people are carrying the environmental stress right now. How many is it just sitting on your shoulders? I know for time to time it feels exhausting. Some call it climate anxiety. Some call it equal anxiety. Some call it Ocean anxiety, and some people just call it exhaustion. And honestly, it makes sense. Every day we hear about another crisis. Marine heat waves, whale entanglements, plastic pollution, coastal flooding, policy rollbacks, habitat loss. Even now as you are hearing this, you're probably like, Andrew, what are you doing?

1:25 This sounds like your regular podcast. Why are you telling me all this same? And I have to admit, like even last week, if you heard any of last week's episode about Antarctica, about leopard seals, about orcas, about emperor penguins, even about the glaciers that we talked about in Antarctica last week, you probably felt the same thing. 'Cause it was depressing. It was really depressing. Andrew, my brain is starting to ask what difference can I actually make? Like should I recycle more, drive less, buy less plastic, eat different seafood, never travel again? Like, is that what I'm supposed to do if I'm not supposed to look at my phone? 'cause like we know the politicians, those types of politicians are like, well, if you use your phone, you're kind of giving into the whole fossil fuel thing. Yeah. We know that, right?

2:06 We know that's what they love to say. But we're in a system that's built to just encourage that type of talk. The questions you're asking matter, but they can also become a trap because when the problem is massive, personal responsibility alone can feel crushing. It's really difficult to do everything yourself. Like even in my own household. Like individuals, we always try and be like, okay, is this recycling? Is this not recycling? It's tough to kind of like decipher everything 'cause every piece of plastic is different. And so like when we're trying to recycle and decide whether our region looks at this type of recycling or not, or they come up with a complicated word for all this stuff and you're just like, well, is this the type of plastic it is, but it's got a waxy feeling like maybe our region looks after it, like region of Halton.

2:49 Maybe it does recycle it, maybe it doesn't. It could be really complicated to just do your part. For years, environmental messaging has focused on one thing, do your part, and yes, individual choices actually matter. I don't want you to think that it doesn't. You still should bring a reusable bottle. You should reduce waste. You should choose better products. You should support sustainable businesses. All are good things. But here is the problem. When individual action is presented as the main solution, people start believing that if the Ocean is still in trouble, they must not be doing enough. Like imagine you do everything right. You reduce your garbage. You have a reusable bottle, like the kids do that.

3:30 Adults do that as well. You buy an EV car, maybe you buy solar panels or things like that, and you still look around and you're like, uh, yeah, it's still terrible. When an individual action is presented as the main solution and doesn't work, people start to be like, well, hold on a second. It creates guilt, not momentum. It doesn't create a movement. I interviewed Sarah Fetterman just this week, and you're gonna hear it on Friday. And one of the powerful points that was made is that a lot of the pain people feel comes from collective problems, but we often try to solve the pain with individual action, and that mismatch actually matters because no reusable straw can replace strong fisheries policy. Imagine that. We say, oh, well, you should be drinking out of a paper straw.

4:12 Nobody likes that. We all know that. No single person can stop illegal fishing. No one family can restore an estuary. No one consumer can regulate offshore drilling. The issue is not that personal actions are useless. It's that they are incomplete. So what works, andrew? Like what are we talking about here? We're talking about collective action. Research discussed in the interview that I highlighted earlier, that anxiety around environmental issues can shift when people work with others to take action. That's what makes sense. Not individual action, not just working on your own, but collective action. When you act with others, you share the burden. You feel the momentum, you see progress.

4:52 You build those relationships, you stop feeling alone. Imagine just cleaning up your neighborhood with a community, with your neighborhood, like your neighbors. Imagine just going out and being like, Hey, this is kind of cool. Like we're actually getting to know each other. We're building relationships. Not only that, we're seeing our neighbors collectively come together and say, yeah, no, to pollution in our neighborhood. 'Cause like, I don't know if you guys have it, I know I keep going to garbage, but when is garbage day here at my house? It's every Monday. It seems like it's the windiest fricking day ever. So all the recycling gets blown over. I come home from after work or I go out, I work from home now. I go outside after work to get my garbage pails and recycling bins and everything, and I bring 'em inside and I look on my front lawn and I see garbage that's not from my bins.

5:35 I know it's not from my bins. I don't use those products and I see it from others. So like all of a sudden you're like, why are the neighbors putting stuff on my lawn? But it's really just the wind from the garbage, and that's how it gets around the neighborhood. If you don't pick it up and it's somebody else's garbage, but it's on your property. Or like, you know, my neighbor, my neighbor's elderly. She's a great woman, but she's not gonna go out every day and pick up trash off her lawn. So like, as a neighborhood, we kind of look out for each other. We kind of pick up that stuff. And to be honest, like a lot of the times I should be, as I walk the dogs in the neighborhood, I should pick up the stuff. But sometimes when you're doing it alone, you're like, why am I always doing this? Why isn't anybody else doing this? So if you do it as a community, go to a beach cleanup, do a river cleanup in your neighborhood, whatever that might be. It's huge because you're not doing it alone. And that last point that I made, you stop feeling alone.

6:18 That's a huge one because isolation magnifies the fear. Community creates the actual resilience. Speaking up with others feels different than worrying about yourself. Now for a long, long time, for 11 years, I've been podcasting. And I've been sitting in my office normally doing solo episodes by myself. And when I know that there are other people that are starting podcasts, when I know that there are other people who are doing the great work, it's awesome, but they're doing it on their own. And sometimes that can feel isolating. It's not their fault. It's not my fault. It just feels isolating 'cause you're doing it on their own. You're speaking up on your own. I've talked about this a number of times on my podcast. I joined a group of, like a coalition of other science communicators.

6:58 Most of them are in the US but some of us are in Canada. And we get together every once in a while and we collectively as a coalition, collaborate on science communication posts, whether it be on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on a podcast, or anything like that. And we come together and do it. And when I see other people doing the same work that I'm doing, it makes me feel so good. Showing up to a meeting feels different than doom scrolling. Joining a cleanup feels different than reading another headline. It's always something that makes it worse when you do it alone. Even learning together feels different than panicking alone. Some of these news articles, man, they are dangerous. They are dangerous. They either like over blow what's happening just so you can click on it, but it makes you scared.

7:41 And people do not wanna see doom and gloom. They wanna see optimism, they wanna see that there's hope. They wanna see people working. And when you start to read more optimistic things, not that everything in the Ocean is optimistic, but when you start to read those things, it really helps. So what does collective action actually look like? I've talked a little bit about it. It does not have to mean chaining yourself to a bulldozer or becoming a full-time activist. No, you don't have to do that. Sometimes it looks like maybe joining a local conservation group. Or starting a local conservation group yourself. Back in the day we used to have just community watch. And that would just be like everybody else is like, you know, they had two parents would walk along the neighborhood at night just to make sure everything's fine. Nobody's getting broken into. Everybody's looking out for each other.

8:22 They know the neighborhood, they know the kids, they know the families. And they kind of just look out for each other. Imagine doing like a community watch, but for oceans. Doing beach cleanups, wetland restoration, shoreline stewardship, maybe some citizen science. Sounds like a lot of fun. You can support advocacy campaigns, sending comments on Marine protected areas, writing elected officials, backing science-based policy. All these things are really great. Community science, track species sightings, which is kind of cool. I know I have a neighbor here who's a birder. He takes pictures of the birds too. It's just incredible pictures. Water quality monitoring. You can always get part of that. Reef observations if you live near one. Unfortunately, I don't. You can share skills. There's no stopping it.

9:02 Maybe you're a teacher, a designer, an accountant, a communicator, a photographer, a coder. All those skills can help Ocean organizations make more than you think. Can help more than you think. Being part of a learning community, and yes. Even this podcast can be a part of that. Every time you listen or you share an episode, you send a story to a friend, or you start a conversation, you're helping build a network of people who actually care. Imagine taking this and having a conversation with your family about it. Just taking this episode and just talking about Ocean anxiety, climate anxiety. That matters because it gets people thinking. You're having an intellectual conversation on something that's happening to all of us.

9:43 Because movements are made of connected people, not the perfect people. It doesn't have to be the best thing that comes out of everything. So here's the shift I want you to remember today. I don't want you to just ask, what habit should I change? I want you to ask, who can I join? The question changes everything. Instead of carrying the Ocean on your shoulders, you become part of something bigger. Instead of guilt, you get direction. Instead of helplessness, you get a movement. Instead of anxiety, you get an agency. And no, it's not gonna fix everything overnight. And joining a newsletter of an organization who's always asking you for money so they can do more work is also not gonna help.

10:24 You have to get involved. You have to join something. Look for something that can get involved. And if there's nothing around, start something. There's nothing stopping you from starting something. It could be volunteer, it could be a business, it could be whatever you decide it to be. But it will change how you feel. It can change what becomes possible next. So if caring about the Ocean has you making you feel worse lately, there's nothing wrong with you. You're reacting to a real problem, but you were never meant to carry it alone. Find your people. Join the effort. Take one step at a time with others. That is the change that starts. That is the hope that becomes real. I wanna leave you with that message because this is gonna be an inspiration of episodes this week.

11:09 We're gonna be talking about the realism of what it's like to do Ocean conservation, what it's like to be an Ocean conservationist, whether you're a scientist, whether you do it as a full-time career, whether you just care about the Ocean and you want to see something done to protect it. You care about the planet, you care about the climate, and you wanna see something help because let's be honest. Climate is Ocean. Ocean is climate change. It's all the same. Even more so. So when you go to a climate week next time, you make sure you say, Hey, where's this Ocean stuff? Because ocean's a huge thing. But do it in a community. Join that community. Surf rider, great community to join. All right. I'd love to hear if you join a community or you started something that has to do with the Ocean.

11:49 I'd love to hear your thoughts. Go to speak up for blue.com/feedback. If you're listening to this on Spotify, leave a comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts. ' Cause this is an inspirational week. This is a week that I want you to get up and I want you to get out there and I want you to do something about it, about the Ocean, about the planet. It's Earth Week. It's Earth Week this week and I want you to feel like it. I don't usually do stuff like around Earth Week, but this week is something special 'cause we're seeing a lot of stuff go on around the world that is really concerning especially around the environment, a lot of rollbacks happening in the environment, not only in the states, but also in Canada and elsewhere. We need to protect the Ocean. We need to make sure those regulations are in place 'cause they are in place to protect the Ocean. We just celebrated.

12:30 I believe it was like 50 years of the Magnuson-Stevensons Act, which is the big Fisheries Act in the US. It has brought back a lot of fisheries in the US to be sustainable. So happy to celebrate that. But also we need to celebrate this Ocean. We need to celebrate this planet. We need to do something about it by joining a community. So I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode and I want to hear your thoughts. Speak up for blue.com/feedback. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.