Instant Genius - How the health of the oceans is vital for the health of the planet

Episode Date: August 31, 2025

Despite being a land-based species, the fact is that we humans live on a planet that is largely covered by oceans. The oceans play a key role in regulating the Earth’s climate and provide us with many of the resources essential for our continued survival – even down to the oxygen we breathe. The sad truth is our oceans aren’t in good shape. But there is still hope. With directed effort we can all help to preserve this vital resource and improve the health of the planet and all who live on it. In this episode, we catch up with oceanographer, environmentalist and grandson of the legendary ocean explorer and innovator Jacques Cousteau, Philippe Cousteau Jr. He breaks down the huge importance the oceans have on the health of the planet, explains how taking positive environmental action can benefit us both culturally and economically and how educating the next generation is key to safeguarding the future of the planet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps. from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. Streaming has made music more accessible than ever, but true listening is about more than ease. It's about quality. British audio experts name audio, alongside French acoustic specialists, this focal, combine handcrafted tradition with cutting-edge innovation and high-end materials,

delivering digital precision with analogue warmth. So you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. Hello and welcome to Incen Genius, a bite-sized master class in podcast form. Every Monday and Friday, you'll hail world-leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor of BBC Science Focus. Despite being a land-based species, the fact is that we humans live on a planet that's largely covered by oceans. The oceans play a key role in regulating the Earth's climate and provide us with many of the resources essential for our continued survival, even down to the oxygen we breathe.

The sad truth is our oceans aren't in good shape, but there is still hope. With directed efforts, we can all help to preserve this vital resource and improve the health of the planet and all who live on it. In this episode, we catch up with oceanographer, environmentalist, and grandson of the legendary ocean explorer and innovator Jacques Cousteau, Philippe Custod Jr. He breaks down the huge importance the oceans have on the health of the planet, explains how taking positive environmental action

can benefit us both culturally and economically. and how educating the next generation is key to safeguarding the future of the planet. So Philippe, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm so delighted to be here. Thank you for having me. So let's get the sort of the big question out of the way first. So anyone who's interested in ecology or the environment, or perhaps even science in general, really, will be familiar with your family name, thanks to the work of your father and your grandfather before him. And so you're now the third generation in this field.

So I want to ask, was there ever a question that you're going to keep this legacy going? You know, Jason's a good question. I was inspired very, very much by my grandfather. As you can imagine, you know, I grew up with him. My father, who also, you know, worked, you know, and pioneered so much of the family's work. He unfortunately died six months before I was born. So I never knew my father. But my grandfather had a huge influence.

on me and hearing all of his stories about the adventures and the places that he went and the things that he did, it was like real life Indiana Jones. So for a young boy in the, you know, in the 90s, that was pretty cool. And I certainly didn't know exactly how I would follow in, you know, in that in that spirit, but I always knew that's something I wanted to do. So obviously, they're pretty big shoes to fill. So I'd imagine a lot of pressure comes with that. So how do you, How do you cope with it? You know, Jason, listen, I've always thought to myself that, you know, my grandfather achieved extraordinary things.

70 years ago, he stepped foot into the Marne River outside of Paris with this contraption on his back that he had invented to see if it was possible, if it would even work and you could breathe underwater and swim freely like a fish. Because prior to this point, right, in the pre-late 1930s and 1940s, the only way you could really explore the ocean was either free diving or clobing. pumping around on the bottom with big lead boots and a copper helmet and a hose connecting you to the surface, which was very, very dangerous. I mean, literally, if they got the pressure differential wrong between your diving suit and the pump on the boat,

the pressure would build up and it, and I'm not exaggerating here. This happened. It would suck your face off of your skull and pop it out of the tube onto the boat. So the hard helmet diving was very dangerous and very limiting, of course. and my grandfather wanted to explore the ocean and wanted to swim freely. And so he co-invented scuba diving in this crazy contraption, stepped in foot into the river, and it worked. And it opened up an entire new era of ocean exploration. So I've never felt the pressure to think that, oh, I can open up a new frontier of human exploration again because that's been done.

Right. So I will never be the one to film the ocean for the first time. put it on people's televisions. So I never had, in many ways, I've always looked at it as feeling too much pressure to try and top that. It's impossible. All I set a bar for myself was to think about how I can honor that legacy and in my own way do good work to make the world better. Great. So let's move on to the sort of main topic of our conversation today then. So we all know the planet is in great shape at the moment, unfortunately, thanks largely to the actions of human beings. But I think a lot of people overlook the importance of the ocean in the whole picture.

You know, it covers the majority of the planet. I mean, does this ever frustrate you? You know, it frustrates me every day. You're absolutely right, Jason. You know, humanity continues, being a terrestrial species, we continue to see land-based solutions as the main solution to the crises we face. We live on an ocean planet, right? And the climate, that we're also worried about is regulated by the ocean. And it is the ocean changing, the ocean absorbing heat that is causing the majority of sea level rise, which is threatening coastlines. It's the ocean absorbing heat that is shifting weather patterns around the world that is causing all the havoc with heat and cold and rain or drought, whatever it may be. So it's the ocean that is

at the core of the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis. And it's very frustrating. that we continue to underestimate the importance of the ocean and undervalue the ocean's role not only as a victim, but as a powerful ally to solve these problems. So let's have a look at some of the key challenges our oceans are facing at the moment. Can you run us through a few of those? Sure thing. So, you know, the big ones, the headlines won't be surprised to people, right? Climate change.

It's an ocean problem. It's threatening human beings and life on land, certainly also threatening life in the ocean, but it's also fundamentally changing how our climate works, which is, you know, long-term weather. Biodiversity collapse. We're seeing overfishing and pollution that is threatening ocean, you know, creatures around the world that have a real impact on humanity, right? The ocean is a multi-trillion dollar economic engine for the global economy and for free. And thus we take it for granted. But the collapse of fisheries and the collapse of these systems is having very real impacts on people's lives.

One example, you're seeing the collapse of coastal fisheries in West Africa, places like Senegal, and consequently, coastal communities that are dependent and have been dependent on those fisheries for millennia, they're leaving. It's driving massive illegal migration into Europe, which is destabilizing politics and economics. So when we see collapse of these ocean systems, it has very real, real world consequences. Plastics, of course, is a huge issue. plastics in our brain, plastics, and it's driven through the ocean, through the water cycle, it's coming down in snow, coming down in rain, the health impacts of the amount of plastics,

micro and large-scale plastics, is horrifying. So just a few of the headlines. Yeah, so let's sort of go through those in turn then. So I think let's start with rising ocean temperatures. I think this is sort of a key point. And I think, you know, either through naivety or ignorance, a lot of people will think, well, the ocean rises by a couple of degrees. What harm is that going to do? You know, people tend to forget that we are a relatively fragile species. Most animals are relatively fragile, you know, with a few exceptions. And when you shift the baseline average by just a few degrees, particularly Celsius, right,

being in the US, we think in Fahrenheit, so it's even more. But just one or two degrees Celsius is then changes the variations of temperature in the world by many more degrees. Right. So you have your baseline average, but you'll see then that start to shift how weather patterns move, how precipitation will concentrate or drought will exacerbate. And it's fundamentally a question of one or two degrees Celsius can have and cause much wider. swings and temperature at the extremes, right? So that's really the baseline in the average, but we're seeing it's not equally distributed around the world, largely because of the ocean, and how it moves energy around. And it's causing much wider variations. So we're seeing

temperatures in places like the Middle East, you know, getting 125 degrees, 130 degrees, 50, 52 degrees Celsius. We're seeing, you know, these massive Arctic domes coming up over the U.S. and sometimes as parts of Europe that is creating plunging below freezing temperatures at wacky times of the year. So, you know, massive rainstorms and monsoons are getting worse or droughts are getting worse. So just a few degrees has very serious consequences. Yeah, so sort of sticking with that theme of these larger knock-on effects, you mentioned there over fishing. So over here in the UK, you know, sort of one of our traditional dishes is fish and chips, usually cod and chips.

These days, you don't see cod on the menu that often it's. It's replaced by Pollock, by Haddock, even things like Koli or Bassa. So some people say, well, we can't have Kod anymore. This is the next best thing. But it's not just about cod, is it? The whole ecosystem is so finely balanced. If one species depletes, it has a huge knock on effect. Everything is a, you know, we talk about the food chain, but really we should be talking

about the food web, because everything is connected. It is not a linear chain of species that rely on another species and, you know, on the way up, like most of us learned in school, it is much more intricate and everything is connected. So be it cod, be it tuna, sardines, so many of these different species that are fundamental to the functioning of the ocean, we are having a very egregious impact on those species. And there are knockoff effects. There's no question. you know, butterfly effect, if you will. You know, we have an impact on one species in the North Sea, and then that can have an impact all the way into the Sargassum

to the Atlantic and all the way into the Caribbean. So it's short-sighted to think, oh, it's one species. It is not. It is all connected. So let's have a look at coral reefs. I know this is something that you're very, very vocal and passionate about. I'm in my mid-40s now, and I've remembered this problem being raised since I was a kid. But the progress seems to have been very strong.

slow. So how dire is the situation? And why is it proving so difficult to fix? So coral reefs are the most biodiverse ecosystem on the planet, bar none. More than rainforests. We all think about the Amazon and rainforests and oh my goodness, they are extraordinary ecosystems. But coral reefs are the most biodiverse marine ecosystem on the planet, 25% of the various marine species that are important to human beings from a fisheries and food perspective, spend a portion of their life on coral reefs. That's pretty significant and has a real huge impact on the global food web and global economies and people's ability to feed themselves. We have coral reefs and the importance of them from the perspective of they act as a shield for coastlines and tropical areas.

Literally, I mean, it's not just about snorkeling and pretty fish. Coral reefs are an absolutely critical defense for coastlines. And we're already seeing extreme storms, worse and worse hurricanes and typhoons and cyclones every year that are damaging tens of billions and threatening hundreds of billions of dollars of real estate and coastal infrastructure, hundreds of millions of lives because coral reefs are degrading in places where they traditionally provided protection along shorelines. You know, you see things like typhoon Hayan just about 10 years ago, probably the most famous damage perspective in the last decade. You know, it led to the death of thousands upon thousands of people, the displacement, and this is crucial of millions of people

causing economic chaos and mass migration and cost hundreds of billions of dollars with the damage. And that's because, you know, that's just from storm surge, right? Storm surge alone caused that kind of damage. And storm surge that would have been mitigated by coral reefs. So, you know, coral reefs are absolutely critical to the functioning of coastal tropical regions in the world. and their decline, we've seen about half the world's coral reefs disappear in our lifetime. We're about the same age, Jason, and they continue to decline rapidly.

We're seeing the headlines about the Great Barrier Reef and all these other places and girls dying. It's not good news. So what can we do to stop this? So this is one of the biggest crises that we don't talk about, frankly, facing the ocean and humanity. Again, threatening hundreds of billions of dollars to the coastal infrastructure and hundreds of millions of lives around the world.

So this is a very real challenge, one of the biggest crises I said facing us today. The good news is, and I always look for good news, 25 years ago I started working with a scientist named Dr. David Vaughn, and he had pioneered technology to grow corals in a farm, like in a greenhouse, like you would grow any land-based plants. And in that situation, they can grow up to 20 times faster than they do in the ocean, because, of course, corals, they look like rocks, they're not.

their living animal and plant and bacteria, they're fascinating animal, are, you know, limestone creating creatures. They build their homes out of limestone. That's the rock. But inside is an animal that's alive, right? Small little animals. Think of a coral reef like an apartment building, creating critical infrastructure for all the other animals and life lives around it.

And so he pioneered a technology to grow crows 20 times faster in the farm. And over the last 20 years, there's refurb. buying that technology. And there have been multiple groups that are leveraging that to do small-scale restoration. But nobody has stepped up with a vision and a plan for how do you actually scale coral restoration to the tune of rebuilding thousands of kilometers of reefs around the world to driving it to a commercial scale. And so we have been working on this for about three and a half years and just launched a new company. And I say company because it is not a nonprofit. I've run a nonprofit that does youth environmental education and work with leading ocean NGOs around the world.

But nonprofit has its limitations as a business model. And in order to drive scale and restore coral reefs at scale, outplant billions of corals that are heat-tolerant because we can engineer that in the lab as well. We'll take a new approach. And that's what we've launched with our company just a few months ago, which is the first large-scale solution for literally staving off the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the collapse of the most, one of the most important ecosystems on Earth. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal.

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So this is clearly a serious problem. a huge problem and again we can't do what we so often do which is divorce the environmental impacts from the human impacts so much research now emerging around microplastics and nanoplastics which are really tiny molecules of plastic that are pervasive in the environment demonstrates as I said earlier that plastic is is in raindrops and snow flakes you have plastics in our brains plastics in placentas, plastics in babies, bodies, when they're born, plastic is pervasive and everywhere. And it doesn't break down. It tends to carry endocrine disruptors, dioxins and

PCBs that it can pick up in the environment. Plastics is in our food, particularly in seafood, and the fish that we eat, but also can be found in animal products, even in plant products now. So it is everywhere. And the scary part is we don't really know. the impact of those plastics. But I can imagine that an inert substance that doesn't break down and that can carry endocrine disrupting toxins is probably not the kind of thing that we'd love to have in our brains. And yet they're there. And it's a huge problem.

And what's scary is international efforts to reduce plastics. There was an international conference just a month ago in Switzerland that are working to to try and find curbs to the plastic crisis are currently failing and not coming up with good solutions. It's a petroleum-based product, and there's a couple key countries that are pushing hard for an increase in plastic use, which is horrifying. So, you know, there are some solutions that exist, but right now it's not trending in the right direction.

So you mentioned earlier there, like the kind of habit that we have to concentrate on the land rather than the ocean. something that's perhaps a result of that is chemical runoff. So we think, well, it's just fine. You know, we don't want these chemicals on the land here. We'll just dump them in the rivers and the oceans. And this is causing a huge problem sort of globally now, isn't it? Yeah, and I read the headlines about particularly what's going on in the UK with water quality

and the overflow of the sewage systems into the Thames and into local rivers around the UK in particular. But it's a problem here in the United States. It's a problem in Europe. Run off of chemicals and frankly, an underinvestment in water infrastructure in general, which is one of the big problems in the UK is over the last 50 years. 50 years ago or so, you're in the U.S. as well. We invested a ton in infrastructure as populations were growing quickly post-World War II. And oh my goodness, that's amazing.

Really cutting edge technologies. And then we kind of forgot about it. And consequently, so much of our infrastructure that can deal with these kinds of system, you know, problems from a water perspective are decrepit and falling apart and totally not up to task. And so certainly not keeping up with population growth and the complexity of technology and, you know, the increase in chemicals. So that's really an infrastructure problem. We have underinvested.

It's not sexy. You don't get a politician going, right, I'm going to invest in another wastewater treatment plant for our town. People like, they want to go, no, I'm going to create a new shopping mall. And I'm going to improve your roads and the stuff that we interact with every day that people really care about. I'm going to get you broadband high speed internet. And all of that matters. But it also really matters where our waste goes and how we clean up water. And, you know, I mean, the rates that I've been reading about in the UK of people swimming in really.

dangerous, dirty, polluted water just in their local watering holes in the rivers, which should be a fundamental right that you can go down to the river with your kids and jump in the water and not be worried that there's feces floating by, which is happening. It's shocking and really just reflects, I think, a degree, a lack of appreciation of the public and a lack of any kind of vision on the part of politicians. So moving from sort of governments to private entities, so do you think there's a way that we can get them interested in this by sort of economically incentivizing green action. Well, I do think that we're seeing a revolution. We're seeing a shift in understanding that

there are ways that we can marry environmental action and economic action. I'll go back to the coral reefs as a great example. We see a real big commercial opportunity, frankly, in recognizing that collapse of coastal coral reef systems is a great example. We see a real big commercial opportunity, frankly, in recognizing that collapse of coastal coral reef systems is threatening huge amounts of terrestrial investment. And so if you go to somebody and you say, hey, give me a few million bucks to restore a coral reef because it's really good for the fish, people will look at you and be like, okay, well, maybe on a charitable perspective, here's a few million. You can do a couple little coral reefs and we all feel better about ourselves, but that's not going to cut it. It's not going to get the scale and it's not going to outpace ecological collapse. But when you go to someone and say, hey, I can engineer a structure that I'll print with using 3D construction printing technology.

I can place that in the water, anchor it to the bottom, plant corals on top of that to give it the function that a coral reef plays. Right. So our traditional approach to protecting coastlines is seawalls. And so the idea is stop the ocean's energy. It doesn't work. It ruins the hydrology of coastal regions. You see massive erosion, up or downstream of that. and eventually those seawalls will break down.

And so instead, what coral reefs do is they diffuse and absorb that energy over all the little nooks and crannies and variations in their structure and evolved to do that over, you know, hundreds of millions of years, really. And so by mimicking the function that coral reefs play, we can go to somebody and say, hey, give me $10 million to build a kilometer of corals. I'll build it in areas that are critical coastal infrastructure for you and protect a billion dollars with the coastal infrastructure. And 500,000 people now we're ready to have a conversation about how we drive scale and financing to that. So what we need to do better as an environmental community is think about where are the economic opportunities and benefits. And there's a growing movement of impact investing and people starting to look for these opportunities to realize, oh, wow, if I'm the winner, if I invest in algae and seaweed alternatives to petroleum-based plastic, and when that works and takes off, I'm going to make a lot of money. And so thinking about it, not from the perspective of a nonprofit do-goodery,

but from cold hard economics and cash. Now, that's not always applicable, but it is more applicable than I think people realize is where we need to be more sophisticated as a movement to invest and to incubate these kinds of economic solutions, viable solutions to a lot of these big problems. And the good news is a lot of these solutions exist. There's extraordinary innovation that's happening in the world with respect to plastic alternatives. Like what we're doing with coral reefs, work on nutraceuticals and supplements, which believe

it or not, things like fish oil have a huge impact on the health of the ocean and communities. And there are algae-based alternatives now that are better than fish and coral oil, right? So there's lots of really interesting things that are happening out there. Unfortunately, a lot of doom and gloom, doom scrolling, the press and media tends to focus on the bad because it's a short-term motivator to get us to click a link or be outraged. But there's also a lot of really good things happening. And that's exciting to me. So one of the other of your many hats that you wear is working with young people. And you have this organization called Earth Echo.

So can you tell us a bit about the work you do there, please? Sure. Thank you, Jason. My first endeavor in this world was founding Earth Echo International about 20 years ago. The organization is building a global youth movement to restore and protect the ocean. And I was very inspired, as I said at the beginning of this conversation by my grandfather. And he always spoke about the fact that you cannot achieve environmental sustainability without human sustainability. And that the key to that is education.

he was frustrated and I founded earth echo out of really out of frustration too I looked at the environmental movement and it's very tactically focused okay it's very focused on passing laws or protecting land or you know chunks of the ocean the problem is that without investing in education without in growing a constituency of people in a society that cares you don't get durability and that's the big challenge that the environmental movement is finally waking up to. We've been so tactically focused. We've neglected a strategy and a social strategy about how we help young people understand the importance of water and the importance of the ocean and the importance of all these issues. And so, and connect the dots as we, you know, bringing it back to the beginning, Jason,

around, you know, it's not just about as fish species, oh, we'll just go on to Haddock or Pollock or in many cases now shark, dogfish and things like that or end up in fish and chips. it's about systems thinking and the consequences of that these systems collapsing and how that affects all of us in our economies and fishermen and jobs and people putting food on the table for their kids and so connecting those dots having a youth strategy wise man was told me if you don't have a youth strategy you don't have a strategy at all and the environmental movement has neglected a youth strategy and thus we have not built again that sense of durability for these efforts because you don't have enough of a constituent society that cares and that's what earth that goes doing We've worked with well over 2 million young people in 146 countries around the world, including many in the UK. And it's really gratifying because when I was in high school, when we were in high school, there was maybe the recycling club. But you almost can't go to a school now that isn't doing composting.

And kids aren't starting businesses and getting involved in policy work. And it's really extraordinary. There's an ancient Greek saying that says young people are not vessels to be filled, but flames to be lit. And the idea that with the right tools and knowledge and agency, you can help young people recognize the power they have that change the world and they don't have to wait until they grow up. So I love Earth Echo.

The work that we do there is empowering. Whenever I get down, I just have to join one of our youth groups or one of the webinars or one of the different things that we're doing. And I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, there's hope. So sort of as a final question then, I'd venture that pretty much everyone listening to this interview is interested in doing what they can to protect the environment and the ocean. You know, recycling, trying to make the best use, they can have their resources,

trying to live as responsibility as possible, really. But I think sometimes you can get a bit pessimistic and think, well, you know, I'm making all of this effort. Is it actually doing any good? It's easy to get down. There's no question. I've got two little girls, three, and she just turned four, two days ago, and a six-year-old. and I look at them and then I look at the world that we are passing on to them.

And there is no question that if the fundamental duty of a parent is to make the life of their children better, we are failing as a species. There's absolutely no question that the world we are giving to our children is worse off from an environmental perspective than it was when we were born. That said, I think it is absolutely critical that we do a couple things. that we come together. These environmental issues are so often polarized and needlessly so. It's presented as an us versus them as a zero-sum game, whatever you want to call it. And so particularly in the U.S., but you see this in Europe as well, this idea that protecting the environment somehow means that we have to give up or lose something, we need to change that

thinking. And we can have lots of different perspectives about national security and economics, etc., but we should have one thing that can bring us together and it's recognizing and demanding of our politicians that some fundamentals about clean air and clean water are non-negotiable. So who we vote for and how we engage in politics is really, really important, be it in whatever political affiliation we have. And then certainly all the things we've heard have an impact, right, the growth of locovore movements.

I mean, you're seeing it in the UK. You're seeing it in, you know, in the United States and in Europe of people looking to eat more locally and also being aware of maybe cutting back on some of the protein. and not eliminating them, but having a more balanced diet is also really impactful. And then being, I think the one thing that we can all be is powerful advocates and storytellers for these issues. We can be storytellers in whatever platform we have. You have this platform, but maybe someone that's just around the dinner table, but it's

really taking care and recognizing that we all have an important role to play if we want to build a world that we are proud to pass on to our children and that we need to be vocal advocates for that in our communities. and set aside our differences and recognize that clean air, as I said, clean air and water, are fundamental rights that every single human being deserves on this planet and that we all have a role in ensuring it. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius brought to you from the team behind BBC Science FACUS. That was Philippe Custod Jr. If you liked what you just heard, then please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform.

If you'd like to see our guests and hosts in person, then please also check out our YouTube channel. at ScienceFocus. The current issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or downloaders on your app store of choice. You can also find us on Apple News or online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music

can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist vocal, Name creates high-end audio systems, combining innovation with craftsmanship, so you can listen to music, just as the artist intended.

Discover more at namea audio.com. Some people never stop being part of what's happening around them. They stay curious, engaged, connected to ideas and to others. That's what defines life at Villa Gardens in Pasadena. It's a community shaped by conversation, culture, and a shared sense of curiosity. So when the conversation turns to what's next, it doesn't feel like stepping away. It feels like staying exactly where you belong. Explore your options at villa gardens.org, a non-profit life plan senior community within the Front Porch family.