Marine Conservation, Coral Restoration, and Ocean Advocacy: Alexandra Faura, Sustainability Assoc.

In our community, we've got an amazing organization called Mars Bars, and now they've been doing— so they're a massive corporation, and they've been doing coral restoration projects for 15 years now. They've been doing amazing projects all over the world, regenerating coral reefs. It's just the most amazing thing. So we've recently started working with them to tell their story, and our co-founder of Ocean Culture Life, Tamsin Wren, went out to the Shiba Reef that they, the reef that they're doing in Indonesia. And this was once a barren reef. There was nothing there, it was all bleached. And they, over the last few years, they've just managed to grow this amazing coral reef that's full of life. And it's just like, it's like it was never dead. It was, it's just the most amazing thing. And Tamsin got back last month and she was quite like emotional. She was like, it's just incredible. And it really does give you hope to see organizations doing this kind of thing.

Hello and welcome to Rethink What Matters, the podcast dedicated to aligning the economy with the ecology and everyone for improved business performance, stronger families, and a greener, cooler planet. And today I'm joined by Alexander Andra Fora, Sustainability Associate at TRU and board member of Ocean Culture Life charity in Jersey. And we're going to be discussing marine conservation. You know, it doesn't take long when we think about marine conservation to come up with ocean acidification, ocean warming, coral reefs receding. Plastics in the ocean. There seem to be so many challenges to marine conservation, and it's such an important part of, you know, such an important part of the world. Perhaps first we could— if you could start off by telling us a little bit more about True and Ocean Culture Life charity and your roles there. Cool.

Um, yeah, of course. So yeah, just to, to go back to what you said earlier, we— yeah, exactly, we do need to remind ourselves that the ocean takes up 70% of the Earth's surface. And most of that is international waters and there's no rules and regulations out there. So we really don't even know, like we know the slightest, slightest amount of detail of what's actually happening out in the oceans right now. So it's really important that we, that we tell the stories of what people are doing out in the ocean and what's happening, the good and the bad. So yeah, well, basically what we do at Ocean Culture Life, we are a Jersey-based charity and we have a community of over 500 guardians and storytellers all around the world. So we based in Jersey, but we have global impact. And we're helping these individuals and organizations tell the stories about the positive impact that they're having on the ocean. So we're kind of bridging the gap between science and storytelling and giving a voice to the ocean, which is actually our most undervalued asset and most underfunded SDG. Even though it is literally fundamental to life on Earth, I think people forget it because either they don't have an emotional connection to it or they don't actually see the impacts of what's happening out in the oceans. Yeah, so I've been volunteering for Ocean Culture Life for the past sort of 5 months, but supporting them and following their journey for the past 2 years. We're just, yeah, I think 2 years old now. And our founders are Tamsin Reid and Matt Porteous. Matt Porteous is a storyteller himself. He's an amazing ocean photographer. And yeah, so that's my passion project, I like to say. I love, I love the work I do with Ocean Culture Life and just connecting connecting with individuals all over the world that are doing amazing work. So my day-to-day job, but I don't like to call it a job, is I work for True, which is a sustainability consultancy. And I say I don't like to call it a job because I love what I do, and it's all about aligning organizations to the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals, and helping them improve their impact across all the SDGs.

Just recently, the Office of the Ocean was in the news because it's been the warmest it's ever been. And yeah, what impact are you seeing that's having? What's the impact of that that you're seeing?

Yeah, so it's quite frightening. I think the record was broken, and it's 20.96 degrees Celsius on average, which is far greater than any temperature we've seen in the past. And the knock-on effect of marine heatwaves and marine temperatures reaching these kind of extortionate heats is It's dramatic. There's a few points I can touch on with this. The first one is that the ocean is our largest carbon sink. It absorbs so much carbon from the atmosphere. I think it's more than 25% of carbon emissions go into the ocean. And the oceans are so saturated with carbon and reaching such high sea temperatures that they're unable to absorb carbon. So this carbon's now having to stay in the atmosphere, which then accelerates global warming even further. And then we're in this horrible cycle, you know? So that's the one thing. So the second thing is the sea glaciers are melting, and this is going to have a really negative effect on the sea levels increasing. And I actually, before this podcast, I was on LinkedIn and I saw an article that someone posted on what's happening out in Slovenia. And they had floods this week. Two-thirds of Slovenia was destroyed in the flood. And now the knock-on effects that this has on the social development SDGs and how much this is going to cost to, like, redevelop this country, it is terrible. And that's just one of the other things that we're going to get with these increasing sea temperatures.

Right.

Yeah. The third— Yeah. So just to touch on the last thing, which for me is is the most significant point, is the coral bleaching that's going to come from the sea level as the sea temperature is increasing. Yeah, so another thing that I saw in the news, which is a knock-on effect of the sea temperatures increasing, is that there was 100% coral mortality in a coral reef restoration site off Florida. Now, this is something that we're definitely going to see more of in the years to come, and it's devastating. And then there was another thing, again due to sea temperatures increasing, which was that in the Texas Gulf— on the Texas Gulf Coast, there was just tens of thousands of fish, dead fish, that were on the shore there. And it's just, it's really sad to see this because I can, I can, this isn't, it's only going to get worse in the years to come if we don't start to do something about it now. And the, the social development goals that we're trying to achieve as well are really going to be, the progress towards those, it's really not going to be great because of the knock-on effects of what's happening in the oceans. Right.

Yeah, I mean, I've also heard that the ocean warming causes the ocean to expand, which is another driver of sea levels rising.

Yeah, exactly. So there's going to be some coastal communities— I think Venice is one of them, actually I know Venice is one of them— that's already going underwater.

And another topic that's often in the news is plastics, plastics in the ocean. There's this Atlantic Garbage Patch and then there's the Pacific Garbage Patch and Do you have stories about that?

Actually, it's, yeah, it's really, um, it's really frightening to see. I'm quite lucky, um, in Jersey we do a lot of beach cleans here, but we don't see it visually here. So we have, at Ocean Culture Life, we have workshops that we run with the schools throughout the year, and we do beach cleans with them, and we educate them on the Sustainable Development Goals, but obviously focus on SDG 14 and the importance of SDG 14. And, you know, they've grown up in Jersey and they don't see the amount of plastic on the beaches and stuff. And we show them pictures of what's happening around the world and what some shorelines do look like. I mean, in South Africa, it's crazy. You cannot walk a meter along the beach without just filling up a bucket of rubbish. It's— yeah, so we're trying to not freak out the children in Jersey, but show them what's happening around the world and educate them on the impact that they as individuals are having if they don't cycle and use products sustainably and think about what they're purchasing and think about the end life cycle of that product that they're purchasing.

Right, right. And we do talk a lot about coral reefs and them receding, and they're such— they're so beautiful, aren't they, the coral reefs? But are they more important to marine life than just being very beautiful in terms of the marine ecosystem, if you like?

Yeah, so a significant amount of marine life live and rely on coral reefs as their homes. So when sea temperatures are increasing, it causes the algae that grows on— that provides energy for the coral reefs— it causes the algae to expel. It's a way of the coral kind of cooling down in a way. But this expels the algae, and off the back of that, it doesn't have energy for photosynthesis, and so it dies. And we call this coral bleaching. And once coral has bleached, it goes this white color, and it's not so pretty anymore. I've seen lots of bleached coral reefs and it's really quite emotional and scary to see. Because at that point, the ocean marine life there, the ecosystem has to move on and go find another coral reef. And yes, I mean, just to tell you a story, I was in Bali a few years ago and I love scuba diving. It's something that I've grown up with and I've scuba dived in many different reefs in the world. And I went diving in Gili Tegana in Bali, and in Indonesia. And we went down, got down to the bottom, and I expected to see this abundance of life. You know, it's Bali, scuba diving in Bali. And it just, as far as I could see, was, it was literally a coral graveyard. And it was the most emotional thing to see. There was absolutely no sea life there, no fish. It was just devastating. There is, there is hope. Just to tell you another story at Ocean Culture Life. We have in our community, we've got an amazing organization called Mars. I don't know if you know Mars Bars.

Mars Bars, the chocolate bars.

Yeah. So Mars, so that's the conglomerate. And within that, they've got a few other brands. And Shiba, Shiba Cat Food, I'm not sure if you're aware of that. But Shiba Cat Food is one of their brands. And now they've been doing— so they're a massive corporation. And they've been doing coral restoration projects for 15 years now. They've been doing amazing projects all over the world, regenerating coral reefs. It's just the most amazing thing, but they've never been able to tell the story. They've never had the time and resources or whatever it may be. They've never known how to tell the story of the impact that they're having. So we've recently started working with them to tell their story. And our co-founder of Ocean Culture Life, Tamsin Rain, went out to the SIBA reef that they, the reef that they're doing in Indonesia. And this was once a barren reef. There was nothing there. It was all bleached. And they, over the last few years, they've just managed to grow this amazing coral reef that's full of life. And it's just like, it's like it was never dead. It was, it's just the most amazing thing. And Tamsin got back last month and she was quite like emotional. She was like, it's just incredible. And it really does give you hope to see organizations doing this kind of thing. So yeah, it's possible then.

So it's possible to restore bleached coral?

So you can't restore it, as in you can't bring it back to life. Once, once it's bleached, it's bleached. But basically what you do is you take a— you cut off a small piece of coral that is still alive and you tie it onto these structures. They're like star-shaped structures, and then it starts to grow kind of like a garden. And yeah, they planted like thousands of these coral restoration structures all over this reef. And it's just grown into this amazing, beautiful ecosystem. And fish have slowly, slowly started to come back. It just began with like a few fish and now there's like manta rays and turtles. And it's, yeah, it's incredible.

So mangroves comes up quite a bit as well. For carbon offsetting, mangroves apparently are a great, great resource.

Yeah.

But they too, with salt marshes and seagrass beds, they form an important part of sort of coastal ecosystems, I believe.

Yeah, exactly. So we actually, another one of our Ocean Guardians is an organization in Jersey that are helping. We've got a massive seagrass ecosystem here in one of our ports. And they're protecting this port or harbor to let the seagrass grow because it sequesters a lot of carbon, it absorbs a lot of carbon, which is what we need. We need, you know, as I said earlier, the ocean is our largest carbon sink. So we need organizations like this that are protecting these areas so that it can continue to absorb the carbon that we don't want in the atmosphere. So that's another one of our Ocean Guardians that is doing incredible things locally in Jersey, which is great.

Great. And marine protected areas, can you tell us a little bit about those, please?

Yeah. So marine protected areas, they're basically areas around a coastline that you're not allowed to dredge in or do any unsustainable fishing practices in them. And so you are allowed to like hand-dive scallops or fish off a rod or whatever, any sustainable fishing you of course are allowed to do. But any of the horrible other types of unsustainable fishing you're not allowed to do in those areas. And I've got a story about this too, actually. I was out in Fiji in 2019 and I was doing a marine conservation project there where we were basically assessing this marine protected area. It was just off a little island called Tangalai, and it was a very remote island. There was no, like, kind of big communities there, no tourism, nothing like that. So I had expected to see, again, an abundance of life. It's a marine protected area. In a remote, a remote island, like, you know, surely there'd be a lot of sea life. And there was just nothing. There was hardly any fish. There were— all the coral was bleached. And the reason why the coral was bleached, it wasn't actually this time because directly because of the ocean being too warm there. It was because they had too many crown of thorns. Crown of thorns is basically like a— it's It kind of looks like a giant starfish and they go over the coral and they eat the algae off it and they reproduce really quickly. And so within a matter of days, they can destroy a whole coral reef. So we were basically, as horrible as it sounds, we actually had to, we had to count the number of coral, of crown of thorns in that area and extract if there were too many because they were another, they were just destroying the reef there. So that was a marine protected area and it wasn't looking great, but it wasn't because of human activity. It was more because of just this ecosystem was off balance and there were too many crown-of-thorns.

But like an invasive species?

Yes, exactly, they're an invasive species.

Habitat destruction is obviously a really, you know, big problem on land as it is below, below the sea, below in the oceans. How much habitat destruction do you see in the work that you're doing or the stories that you're coming across?

So one that comes to mind, a story that I actually heard recently, which is quite a devastating story. So again, out in Indonesia, there's a lot of coral reefs there, and the local fishermen, there's kind of, because of the coral bleaching that's happening out there, there's kind of a lack of fish in the sea as it is. And some of the local fishermen are going out and they have these like explosive bombs, they're called coral bombs, I believe, and they throw them into coral reef and instead of just, you know, fishing a few fish, it destroys the whole entire reef and all the fish float to the surface and that's how they collect their fish. And so that's a good example of habitat destruction that's happening and it's probably not only in Indonesia, it's— I mean, Tamsin was saying she was literally snorkeling the one day looking over the the Sheba Coral Restoration Project, and she just heard this in the water and you just know, okay, that's another coral reef gone.

And it's something off a movie. It's literally fish float to the surface. Crazy.

You just— yeah, that's why we have to tell the stories of what's happening in the world, the good and the bad, because both can change your actions and help you do something about it.

And that brings us on to perhaps, you know, there are cultural practices here. There are ways that people live and make their living. In terms of fishing. And how much of that is an issue for you? You know, their whole way of life is dependent on the way that they fish or they interact with the oceans.

The main kind of worry that I have with the future that we are literally going to live in one day because we're not doing enough at the moment is that, is the impact that by not achieving SDG 14, the impact that that's going to have on local communities there is a massive amount of communities around the world that rely on seafood as their main source of protein. There are local communities all over the world that rely on fishing as a form of income. And I'm not talking about the big dredging, horrible boats. I'm talking about local fishermen that are walking along the beach just trying to make a living and try— trying to have a job and making an income. So the impact that the— that destroying the ocean is going to have on communities around the world is is quite frightening. And we talk a lot about in the workshops that Ocean Culture Life do with the local school kids here, we talk a lot about the impact that SDG— the interconnectedness between SDG 14 and the other Sustainable Development Goals. And by achieving SDG 14, you know, you can help achieve no poverty, which is SDG 1, and zero hunger, and good health and well-being, and affordable and clean energy and decent work and economic growth. There's just so many connections between the SDGs. So by helping achieve SDG 14, you really are off the back of that impacting so many other SDGs.

That's such a good point and something which we try to focus on at Awardaroo as well. It's very much about joining up the dots. Yeah, the dots are the SDGs, so the more joined up they are, the better. And SDG 8 is decent work and economic growth. Yeah, so for us at Awadharoo, that's the central SDG. You know, if we can get that right whilst, you know, whilst supporting the other SDGs and making sure they are a part of decent work and economic growth, then we really create the future that we all want to see. And if we don't connect them up, then we can't do it, actually, I don't believe. And you know, the SDGs, they're embedded in 193 governments around the world, and but not many people know about them, which is a bit crazy.

It is quite scary the amount of people that don't know about the Sustainable Development Goals. And you really need to also, I guess, through Ocean Culture Life, we also in a way just trying to give a voice to the SDGs and just, you know, let that be a common language. Everyone should know about them. And it's interesting you said that at Awadu you guys focus on decent work and economic growth because I have always— and I actually wrote a dissertation on this when I was at university. I've always said that individuals always have— individuals and organizations always have one focus SDG. They always have one that they like to, that they like to focus on, which is great. I, for me, that's SDG 14. But it is important that we, while achieving that goal, we look at all the other SDGs as well. And so, yeah, it's— yeah. So I guess at Ocean Culture Life, we've, we've obviously focusing on SDG 14, but also keeping in mind and still educating people on the other SDGs. Just as you guys are with SDG 8.

I think you've just given me an idea for a great survey, actually. It's just to go out into the streets and ask people their favorite SDG.

That's literally what I did in my dissertation. Yeah.

All right.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's really interesting. And we did at an organization level as well. I sent out a survey once to our, to the employees at our office and I said, what is your favorite SDG and why? And it was so interesting to see that literally every single person had a different kind of focus STG that they like to dedicate a little bit of extra time towards.

Yeah, so mammals— what's the impact that the— what impact are we having on the mammals in the oceans, the dolphins and the whales?

Yeah, well, I think there is a— there's going to be a major, and there has already been a major disruption in different ecosystems because of the sea temperatures increasing. And basically big mammals are having to relocate to colder oceans, and that disrupts the whole ecosystem. And actually, I think it was 1 or 2 years ago when I went back to South Africa and I heard stories about how shark livers were washing up on the shores. And this is something that no one had ever seen before, and we couldn't work out what was going on. Like, what predator does a great white shark have in the South African oceans? And turns out that it was the killer whales. They were coming up towards South Africa and going for the great white shark livers. And I think this is another thing that we're going to see more— not specifically this example, but we're going to see more frequently random events of, you know, mammals, marine mammals being found in locations where they haven't been before, and maybe finding new predators, or yeah, it's really going to disrupt their ecosystems.

So aside from the storytelling, what else are you doing to get your message out there and to help with marine conservation? You mentioned some workshops that you were running.

Yeah, so there's a few different things, and there's a few things in the woodworks that are coming out next year which I can give you a little preview on if you'd like. So the one thing is every year we run grants where organizations donate to our charity, to like a grant pot, and all of our guardians and storytellers will submit a story to us or a project that they want to do but they need funding for. And we will go through, we have external examiners that go through these grant applications and they're also amazing and we hope to get to a point one day where we can support all of them. But at the moment we support about 15 grants. I think last year we did 5, this year we're doing 15 grants. And we give them a bit of money to help them tell their story or expand expand their impact. And then another way, locally in Jersey, we run workshops with the different schools here where we teach them about the Sustainable Development Goals and focus on SDG 14. So what's to come, which is super exciting for Ocean Culture Life, we've had quite a few organizations recently come to us and ask how they can help. And I'm talking like big law firms and like massive corporations in Jersey, and they've said, how can we help? Can we 'Can you guys run a CSR day for us?' Which is a corporate social responsibility day. And CSR days are great because they create impact and it does do something, whether it's beach cleans or helping out at a workshop, whatever it might be. But we really want to expand on that impact and take, and take organizations through a partnership journey. So what we're implementing from next year is we're basically going to take organizations that want to get involved in ocean Ocean Culture Life and support us through CSR days or donating to us, we take them through a year-long partnership by which every quarter we run a workshop with them where we educate them on what's happening around the world in terms of marine conservation and what Ocean Culture Life's doing. And yeah, so we're running these workshops throughout the year, and in those workshops we're going to educate them on sustainable development goals, SDG 14, what's happening around the world in terms of marine conservation, and what they can do both at an individual and an organization level. And then throughout the year, along with those workshops, we are going to have CSR days type things that they can get involved in, in terms of on-the-ground impact in Jersey. So that's really exciting.

Great. And how can they reach you if they want to find out more about that? Where should they go?

So we are in the process of launching a platform on our website by which you can go if you're an individual or an organization. You can get involved with us through volunteering, and then we'll also have all school workshops, and then for organizations, we'll have an area on our website where they can select a day and a time and the amount they want to donate and what their budget is for the partnership for the year. So that is all in the works, and we are going to launch that in January next year.

Great. And what's the website address?

The website is oceanculture.life.

So just tell us, how many, actually, how many people are there in Ocean Culture Life? How many employees?

So we are really tiny actually. We have two co-founders, Matt Porteous and Tamsin Raine, and then in terms of volunteers, it's just me and Lindsay Raine, who's Tamsin's sister, and then we have got a secretary on the board, which is Sheena. So there's just five of us, but we don't like to see it as we're the only people on the team because we really have a community, and it's the community that's part of the team, you know. They are the brand, and they're telling the stories.

So what's your biggest frustration?

So my biggest frustration, or I guess I want to frame it as the message I want to give to organizations and individuals separately. My biggest frustration in terms of organizations is that they just aren't doing enough. We, in the last few months, we've seen the impact of climate change and global warming. On the oceans and on the land, but specifically for us on the oceans. And that should be enough to make you want to change the way you do things. We really, really, really need to reduce our carbon emissions. We are reaching, we are fastly approaching the 1.5-degree global warming Paris Agreement number that we've all been seeing everywhere for the past few years. And once we get to that 1.5-degree global warming, increase, we're going to have lost 70 to 90% of our coral reefs, to a point that they cannot be— they cannot come back to life. They will be bleached and destroyed. And that is really frightening when you're working in the ocean space and you're constantly seeing on a daily basis these marine ecosystems being destroyed. And on the flip side, you're not seeing organizations doing enough. It is really frustrating. So I would love organizations to take Mars as an example, and with what Mars is doing around the world with their coral restoration projects, take that as an example and improve your impact and do things like that. Because if every organization around the world did what Mars was doing and did something impactful in the ocean space, we would be in a completely different space. And then, and to tell that story, most importantly, you know, that they need to, they need to really tell the story of the impactful things they're doing. And when they are doing good, tell people that you're doing good. And yeah, we need to get rid of the greenwashing.

I think, and then you want to talk about your frustration on the individual side of things.

I wouldn't say it's a frustration on the individual side of things. I think as an individual, you can be doing a lot, like you can be recycling and cycling, and cycling to work and composting and all of those amazing things that definitely do have an impact. Don't— if you're doing those things, don't for one second think that you— that it's not doing any good, because it really is. But I think at an individual level, we really need to think about the organizations that we are supporting. We need to have a look at organizations and critically analyze what their impact is and, you know, distinguish greenwashing from not greenwashing. And we need to only support organizations that really are having a good impact and doing good, because that's and in return it's going to force other organizations to do better. And then again, at an individual level, tell your story, and it doesn't necessarily need to be through photographing. You can do what I do and write and speak to people, or you can do Ocean Culture, like all of our brands and images on all of our merchandise. It's all drawn by one of our ocean storytellers. He's an artist and he draws pictures about the ocean and marine conservation. Conservation. So you can tell your stories in many shapes and forms, and it's really important that we tell stories because it does really have a massive impact on people's actions.

I think it really does, it really does, and especially with the oceans because I think people are very— tend to be very remote from the oceans and the seas, and then they're not really that close to them. Most people aren't living next to the sea, so they really need these stories and pictures, don't they, to bring it home to everyone?

Yeah, well, I think Back to how the ocean impacts life on land and the interconnectedness between the different goals. You may not be living near the ocean and you may not see on a daily basis what's happening under the ocean, but if you're in a country right now that's experiencing flooding and fires and all of those other horrible extreme events, that is off the back of global warming and also off the back of what's happening in the oceans. The ocean is— it's reaching a point where it's not able to absorb any more carbon, which is accelerating global warming and causing these extreme weather events that are happening around the world. So whether you live inland or by the sea, you do and you will feel the impacts of global warming on the ocean.

And to what extent do different governments get involved in helping the cause of marine conservation?

In terms of like rules and regulations in Jersey with fishing, we do obviously have marine protected areas and areas that you can't fish in and can fish in. And we do have also restrictions on what species you can fish at different times of the year. And the problem I think comes in with the big dredges out in the international seas where there are no rules and regulations and they can take what they want and it's every man for himself. And I think that's where the problem comes in. And who implements the rules and regulations for that, I'm not sure, but I know that something does need to be done about it. And maybe it's, maybe it's just the pressure from consumers and from organizations. Yeah, and I think one thing that you can do is just when you buy seafood, check it sustainably sourced. All seafood now in the shops should have some kind of label on there telling that it's been sustainably sourced or where it's come from. And that's a good way to— that's a good place to start.

Alexandra, thank you very much for your time on this podcast and sharing with us, you know, what you're doing there at Ocean Culture Life Charity and helping to educate all of us on the challenges of marine conservation and just how important it is, and sharing your stories with us as well. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your time, Paul. It's been great.