Nuanced. - 58. Dr. Peter Ross: Ocean Pollution, Plastics & Contaminated Killer Whales

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Aaron Pete sits down with Dr. Peter Ross to learn about ocean pollution, plastics, and chemicals. He discovered the region’s killer whales to be the most ‘contaminated marine mammals in the world��� in a groundbreaking study, and reported on the widespread distribution of microplastics in the NE Pacific and Arctic oceans. In this interview, Dr. Ross explains the causes of ocean pollution, what is being done to address this growing global problem and what individuals can do to help. Dr. Peter S. Ross is an internationally recognized ocean pollution expert working as a senior scientist with Raincoast Conservation Foundation, and an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia as well as the University of Victoria. Dr. Ross is a Science Manager and ocean pollution scientist with a demonstrated history of working in the academic, government and private sectors. Skilled in conservation research, Public Engagement, Media interactions, Scientific Publishing, Report Writing, Policy Analysis. Strong education professional with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and MSc from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. He recently served as the Vice-President of Research at Ocean Wise, where he founded the Ocean Pollution Research Program, launched PollutionTracker and the Plastics Lab. He served for 16 years as a federal Research Scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. His work with priority pollutants and microplastics has led to numerous invitations to advise industry, government, the G7, the European Union, and the OECD. His work has been featured prominently in national and international media. Dr Ross is now Senior Scientist at Raincoast Conservation Foundation, where he is developing a new community-oriented Healthy Waters Program.Peter Ross LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-ross-53241855/?originalSubdomain=caPeter Ross Twitter: https://twitter.com/calypsocoastDonate to Raincoast Conservation: https://www.raincoast.org/donate/Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

This episode is sponsored by the Real Estate Foundation of BC. REFBC is a philanthropic organization that supports sustainable, equitable, and socially just relationships with land and water. Learn more about the foundation's grants and initiatives at REFBC.com. My name is Peter Ross. I'm a research scientist by profession. I'm currently working as a senior scientist at Raincoast Conservation. Foundation based in Sydney, British Columbia. I'm adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria, where I benefit from being able to mentor graduate students and collaborate with partners there. Amazing. I'm so interested to know how you

sort of became interested in water, in the oceans, in maintaining the quality of life that we've lived for so long, and now we're starting to see it start to slip away. And you've been one of the people at the forefront trying to understand what we're doing to the oceans, the impact that we're having. And in so many ways that I guess maybe people don't expect that it's not on their radar of issues at the front of their mind. And so I'm just interested to know, how did you get started in this? When did you become interested? Well, the interesting thing is I'd love to go out of business. I'd love to be unemployed, but the environment beckons. We see environmental degradation around us. And so my lifelong journey really began.

a long, long time ago, and I remember as a five-year-old watching black and white television and seeing air pollution in Tokyo, which was very topical when I was a kid, smogs, the traffic police were wearing gas masks, and as a five-year-old, I became alarmed that maybe if this continued, our entire planet would become enshrouded in air pollution and smog, and we'd need to basically import our oxygen to be able to breathe, or wear... these crazy masks. So as a youngster, I was really alarmed by pollution. And so I think that combined with a few other poignant examples, I guess one of them being absolute fascination and love for nature and for animals and wildlife, sort of painted a path for me in my

sort of education and early career, where I wanted to protect nature. and protect the animals and the wildlife and the rest that I valued deeply from the smog and the pollution and everything that we saw that was going awry with the industrial machine. Wow. So some people say that they discovered their passion for nature through like National Geographic magazines, through documentaries. Some say that they were out on the water and that's where they really developed that connection. Where did that come from for you? When did you realize that you had a passion for the outdoors? which seems like a rather odd question when you think of like for most of society, like the history of us, we've lived outdoors.

But where did that kind of come in for you? Well, I think it might have been deeply rooted in who I was when I was born in my early years. But I do remember a time that was personally challenging for me. And that was when my parents split up. And we were living in Ottawa at the time. And I basically, my journey. my world opened up ahead of me and I became much more aware of the world around me

and we got on an ocean liner for France in Montreal. We got an ocean liner and we headed off to France to spend two years in Switzerland where my mother had friends and my father went to Cambridge University to do his PhD. So this is quite a while ago but I remember being on that ocean liner and looking back into the water, into the wake,

the trail left by this ship leaving Montreal, and then we went off into the North Atlantic. And for me, that was really the first connection to the ocean. And it was sort of symbolized by what was happening to me personally as a youngster with the family breakup and that sense of adventure and the unknown on the path ahead. what was in front of the ocean liner. So I think my world kind of opened up at that point.

And the adventure became an ocean adventure, it became a geographical journey. And I started really rapidly picking up on the world around me and whether that meant, you know, the cows in the fields in Switzerland or the snails that we harvested in grade one when I was there and cooked to consume. So I started connecting with the natural world

around me in different ways. But I think, you know, it's always instructive to try to figure out why we might have landed where we are today. And sometimes it's not that easy to sort of figure out it was point A when everything began or point B or something. But I'd say that's really when through my consciousness awoke when I was five and my world was changing and the adventure, so to speak began. That's incredible. You also served in, I want to get this right, you served as a private, correct? What was that experience? Like, how did you choose to involve yourself in that? And what was that sort of journey like? Right. So I did serve in the reserves. So I got my basic military training in Canada when I was 17 and 18. And I served in the Governor General's

foot guards. And for me, this was an opportunity not to prepare for war. At the time, I think Canada's military was deeply vested in the Blue Helmet programs around the world, which was peacekeeping. My own family, on my father's side, was very much a Navy family, so a history of service aboard Corvettes in the North Atlantic and World War II and so forth. but I never saw myself as a military man. I saw this opportunity as one where I could grow, I could learn survival, I can garner first aid experience,

I could look at, you know, orienturing and map work. So for me, it was a very good experience. There was, of course, the discipline, which when you're 18 has its benefits

to have someone else, to sort of provide some structure to do your conduct or your behavior. And I certainly, I enjoyed the experience. It was something that I thought was useful for me personally. It bought me some time between high school and university. And it gave me a flavor as to, you know, what kind of a challenging life that can be in the military. That's really interesting because that's where I feel like maybe my generation

or certain groups within my generation, it feels like we're struggling because we're well aware that there's problems, but it doesn't always feel like we were the group that wants to go and kind of get involved in all of the different issues. And I've had the opportunity to talk to Scott Sheffield, who's a military historian,

and he kind of highlights the value of having that disciplined instilled in you, that you have a responsibility, whether it's your right to vote, whether it's getting involved in issues in your community, or there's just a sense of onus on the person that's developed. And I just, I'm curious to you, like, do you think that that was helpful or do you think that that can be done in different ways? Was this a unique experience?

I also interviewed Chris Koo, and he talked about how Catholic school really instilled responsibility. He wasn't allowed to drink water without asking permission. And, again, to regular Canadians, we think that's so crazy, like not being able to just have a glass of water, but he was like, this really formed my respect for other people and this responsibility. We don't wear suits as much anymore, but I think suits aren't meant to make the person feel good about themselves. They're like a sign of respect to the people you're interacting with oftentimes. And so I'm just interested to hear your thoughts on kind of that discipline element. Yeah, very interesting one. And certainly over my lifetime, I've seen

fashion change. I've seen respect for authority change. I've seen. I've seen, ways in which we, we, as independent voters in a democracy or consumers in a Western country, I've seen the way in which, you know, that, that flexibility and freedom to choose whatever the heck we want can be overwhelming. And of course, when I was growing up, the technology was much more limited. There was no such thing as cell phones. You know, we didn't even have, you know, we didn't have internet or the like cable TV was still a thing of the future. So I think we've seen the advent of a lot of growth in terms of choices and opportunity. And that's a wonderful thing in many ways, but I think it's also a little bit

overwhelming. And for me, and certainly my parents and grandparents' generations, life was in some ways simpler, in some ways more difficult, perhaps less resourced, less wealthy. But to me, when I was growing up, and I think this was certainly key with my decision to make a short-term foray into the armed forces, it was simply a question of loyalty and pride in the country that I called home. So there was a respect for authority. There was camaraderie. There was camaraderie, which was both of which were very structured, but there was also that higher calling to serve my country or to serve, as I saw it at the time, the international community should there be a blue helmet occurrence rather than war, which we're hearing a lot about

these days. And that would be a very, very different reaction, I think. Yeah, that is incredible. And I think it's just important for people to start to think about how they can be involved in their community because that seems to be one of the challenges so many face now is there's so many different avenues. There's so many different issues that can be personal to you. It's tough to choose one and get involved and put yourself out there. And I think that I've learned so much from individuals like yourself who commit to an issue and then follow it through to an end and work hard every day to try and make that difference. Did you know what you wanted to do when you were going into university for biology? Like, did you have a vision of where you

wanted to take this, or were you just like, I enjoy nature and the environment and I just want to learn more about this? What was that kind of early stages of choosing to go to university like for you? A very interesting question, very poignant, because I remember being in high school and being interested in animals and wildlife and veterinary sciences and the environment, but not really understanding how one was supposed to approach a university or choose a career. And certainly when you go to university, often what you're choosing for is an area of interest or expertise, but you don't really know what the job is at the end of the tunnel. So it's a step into the unknown. It's a step that requires some confidence.

It's a step that hopefully builds on what you're passionate about and what you're keen on. But I think the struggle in high school is trying to create your own boundaries, your own framework for future education, training, and, you know, professional life, when sort of the halls of authority and parenting have kind of gotten softer and perhaps more flexible. So you're almost expected today to be a more mature, more sophisticated person who's going to go in and look at the options and figure out where they're going to go. But unfortunately, that the freedom and the opportunity that the Internet and the world around us provide us with, I think that makes that a tall order for many individuals and they become overwhelmed. And it just highlights to me the absolute value in a young person

for them to basically have trust in themselves, to look inward and look at what they're passionate about, what they're interested in, to have faith and confidence in themselves. which is hard when you're an adolescent suffering from peer pressures and the like. But I think it's all the more important today to really take the time to invest in yourself and reflect on where you've gone, where you'd like to go, how you can go there, and to listen to the journeys of others that you have some respect for or some interest in. That seems like the most important part to me is being able to see different paths. The challenge I see for like indigenous communities is oftentimes we don't have biologists as

our next door neighbors or lawyers or judges. And so perhaps the idea of going down those routes is underdeveloped because they don't realize that those opportunities exist or what they would call those positions in society. And so were there certain people that stood out to you in terms of like role models that you kind of admired? Like were there books that you were reading that you were like, this really seems like a good area of work and meaningful involvement in addressing issues in society? I don't think there's anything specific, but I remember, strangely enough, I hated school,

or I was afraid of it in some way, and yet I went to school for something like 33 years in the end. So something went awry in my planning on that one, but I do remember very vividly a number of teachers I really like to respect it. I really, you know, I like to develop friendships with my teachers in the classroom. And, you know, that was important to me. I wanted to be valued by them as older figures of authority. Both of my parents were smart. They were both geographers. So I looked to what they had done with their skill set.

And both of my parents had interesting friends. had some really, really nice friends, good, warm, open people who would share their experiences and sort of lead by that example of telling you how they got to where they were. So I think it's a mix of different sort of figures in my life that have played that role. But clearly I was someone who benefited from that connections with people, whether they were teachers, formal teachers or professors. or whether there were mentors in some other way. Yeah, I really like that you said that you didn't see yourself in school because I think the thing that I think scares me the most about education is there seems to be two different groups.

And even my partner has struggled with seeing herself as a university student. And the people who don't go to university, I've seen them have a chip on their shoulder that like one teacher in grade 10 made them feel dumb in a certain area or sort of gave them a bad grade and didn't give them any resources to kind of develop. And so they carry this idea of who they are all the way until their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and they just define themselves as, I'm not a math person. I'm not a science person.

I'm not. And it's like you go out into nature for a walk and you absorb the outdoors like nobody else. And then you say you're not a science person. And it's like this is maybe an inaccurate description based on like bad data from when you had other things going on in your life. Maybe you were going through a divorce. Maybe your family was having issues. And so it's unfortunate. And then I see certain people within the academic world kind of go, well, we're smarter than the general public.

And that creates this division between the university graduates and the non-university graduates. And the thing I admire about people like yourself is you go out and you do videos and you talk about issues and you don't talk down or you don't make the topic intimidating. You make it accessible to so many different people. I'm just interested in what that kind of decision to attend university was like and then commit so much time because to your own kind of statement, you didn't see yourself in this institution, yet here you are being one of the leaders within it. What was that kind of journey through school like to start to see yourself within the university? Yeah. Well, I guess I'd always assumed I was going to go to university because my parents did. So it was in that sense, I just, I didn't question.

I just said, well, I've got to go to university and I like animals and nature. So there's probably something in biology or veterinary sciences that there are environmental sciences that I can pursue to do what I was, I felt ingrained to do, which is protect the environment. That said, when I look back at my undergraduate years, you know, age 18 to 22 or so, it's very clear to me in hindsight that undergraduate years for me was as much. about socializing as it was, you know, education or teaching or training. And it was a very, very important time to network, to make friends, to maintain friendships, to explore my social world outside of my home, for example, and to put it simply, perhaps, to grow up. You know, I think, you know, in that sense,

you know, undergraduate years is an experience. University is an experience. It's an opportunity to sort of spread your wings. And so I think sometimes people that go to university feel sort of hell-bent on proving themselves. And they feel as though there's going to be, you know, maybe their dad at home is going to be mad at them if they don't do well or if they drop out. But at the end of the day, it's a super wonderful time to, to be on your own, it's stressful because you're on your own, it's a difficult time, but you get a chance to try to explore who you are.

Sometimes, you know, with three or four others, maybe it's at the pub or a coffee shop or, you know, a picnic table, and to really reflect on life and the world around us. So for me, in hindsight, the most important thing about the early university years is not the formal training. It's the growing up and garnering some social skills and networking skills and advancing one's confidence in terms of your view of the world, et cetera. So I think that, you know, maybe the university experience or that path on one's road in the future might be very daunting for a 16 or 17 year old

and maybe it just helps to just sit back and go look, you know, it's an opportunity to be on your own and explore the world around you and explore who you are. Forget about becoming an accountant or a super scientist or an astronaut. Think about, you know, developing your personal and social skills

in a rather exciting, potentially fun if somewhat intimidating environment. Absolutely. That's brilliant because I think the part that perhaps we don't hear as much about is the community that you can form, the clubs that you can join on certain issues and peers that are interested in what you're interested in. Because perhaps if you go to your local high school, the people don't share your interests. But you can go to a place and maybe you're interested in chess. You can join a chess club if you're interested in biology.

Maybe there's a conservation group that you can join where you can learn more. with people who are inspired by the same topics you are that you might not be able to find in your local high school because there's only maybe 200 to 300 people in your same age range that have any interests and then trying to figure out that you match their interest is going to be even more challenging. What was the decision to go into your master and go into your veterinary training? What was that decision like? Was that daunting or was it kind of the the next step. I think everything tends to be daunting when you're facing two roads on the path ahead,

and you have to make a choice between A and B. I don't know if it was daunting to choose to go into a postgraduate program. I might say that it would have been more daunting to not do it because then I wouldn't have known where I was going to head or what kind of a job I was going to have. And, you know, at the time, there weren't a lot of job opportunities in the area that I was interested in. So in some ways, some ways I chose the easier path. And that was pursuing, you know, just hunkering down and just advancing my education and training. In the end, I got my Ph.D. and I had good experiences, both in Ph.D. and masters, learned a lot, applied myself, you know, and used the opportunity to travel.

which is another wonderful feature of education is, you know, in Canada, you tend to be encouraged to travel for a university, to go outside of your home or outside of your hometown, and then certainly as you progress with subsequent degrees to continue to travel. So education is an easy way to travel and to occupy yourself in a new landing spot for a period of time. So it's a part of life's journey. And for me, I think, despite the stresses of moving and all the rest, I think it was in some ways the easier path for me to pursue. Interesting. What did you do your PhD in? And what was that experience like?

Because I've never done a PhD, but from everybody I've talked to, it's an incredibly hard task that's so intellectual that it's hard to compare to anything else. So I'm just interested, what were you interested in when you were choosing your PhD? What was the kind of decision that you had to go through during that time? Yeah, interesting. For both, when I took three years and worked between my bachelors and my master's, and that was informative and adventurous in its own way. And then when I decided to go do my university training, it was in response to my personal realization that knowledge,

knowledge is power, and that is that if I was going to affect change, it would be through expertise and science-based advice or decision-making. And so I felt as though I could articulate a stronger, more compelling argument to protect the environment or recover or restore the environment by garnering expertise. So that was one thing. The second thing was that When I went back to do my master's in Ph.D., there was a big die-off of marine mammals happening in northern Europe, and tens of thousands of seals were dying and washing ashore, and it was a very, very big news topic in Europe at the time and in North America, but nobody knew why. And so I eventually they determined it was a virus, but I knew from my own undergraduate work, And some of the research that I had done, that contaminants or pollutants can make us or mammals more vulnerable to disease. So that in polluted areas, you had more severe consequences for the same virus that was circulating in more remote environments.

So that drove me to go back to work on marine mammals in Nova Scotia and then in Holland. And I guess the rest is history. Wow. What was it like to go to both of those places? What were those experiences like to travel so far and feel perhaps that you're on the cutting edge of understanding issues, knowing that there are perhaps very few who are on this issue, reading the literature, trying to understand the issues at the same caliber you are? Well, I mean, the first thing to realize that it takes years to publish a paper or conduct the studies. And so this frustrates some politicians and some policymakers because they need advice or they need to make a decision this afternoon by 4 o'clock or by Friday at end of business or, you know, or maybe within a month or two. So if there's a priority question that's emerging on, you know, on the desks of these folks, then if they can't get answers, then they have to invest in the science to deliver that answer at the end of the day. So that was something that, you know, I was mindful of. You know, if I did my PhD, it took me five and a half years.

So it took five and a half to six or seven years to get all my publications out from my PhD. It's a long time. So really what you're doing is you're contributing to the scientific community and the sign of literature in the manner that all scientists recognize. as required, therefore, you know, publishing a peer-reviewed article, that is the currency of science. And in doing so, you're contributing one little snippet of an answer to a wider question where there are multiple teams or groups or labs working on something related. And together, science is constructed in that way. The other thing you're doing, though, at the same

time, as you're learning about the scientific method, you're becoming a specialist and an expert in your own right in the areas that you're conducting that research. And as you grow and as you learn, as you get more experienced, you start to acquire a certain level of expertise where you can start to pontificate or muse or advise in areas where perhaps nothing is known or little is known. And so that's very important when one thinks about science and the world in which we live. For example, in Canada, we have half a million chemicals on the market. Half a million chemicals. You talk to me or any environmental scientist or chemists or toxicologist.

It's unlikely that we know much about more than 20 or 30 of those chemicals. And so what it means is we are emissaries that can speak to a small portion of the problem or the issue. But we will occasionally be called upon to extend our understanding to other unknowns so that our decision makers can protect human health or the environment in ways that either they're expected to or they want to. That makes my toes curl. when I think of like that we do things like the normal person feels really confident in their day we have our job we have our car we fill up our gas tank we go to work everything's on maybe a schedule we're used to knowing things we feel like there's certain level of consistency in the world and if something like gas prices go up we kind of go oh my gosh things are not what they're usually are

and things are different now and what do we do and and there's kind of a reaction to these things but we feel like our days are all kind of everything makes sense. Our phones work, our iPhones, like everything around us works so often that we get comfortable with this idea that people know things, that we have, we've got things figured out. And if we just keep trucking along, the world's going to keep working and everything's going to keep working. Our sewage always works.

Our plumbing systems are always reliable. And so we get confident that this whole living life thing is mapped out. But when you say that there's so many chemicals, that we don't know about, but we want to feel like we know. And one of the ones that you've studied is like laundry detergents and the polyester fibers. And you think, I bought my shirt and it's a nice shirt and how great is that? And I'm just going to give it a quick wash before I use it. Can you just quickly perhaps walk us through that?

Because I think it's just a door into like, oh, we don't know everything. We don't have everything figured out. Something is simple that our laundry can have effects that are very, and far-reaching. Yeah, I think a couple of observations. The first is that we tend to, as a species, use the environment as a bit of a dumping ground. You know, it's out of sight, out of mind.

We flush our toilet, it's gone. Yes, we know somebody's treating our wasome, you know, downstream. Our storm sewers collect runoff from, you know, cars and various activities on streets and that, where's that go? Well, out of sight, out of mind. And, you know, we go up into the Arctic, or we go to the north, the middle of the North Pacific, what do we find? Well, we find plastic, we find fishing nets, we find buoys, we find water bottles, we find

packing straps, we find ropes, we find little bits and pieces of plastic that are breaking down. We find exactly what you were just mentioning, polyester fibers everywhere, even in the North Pole we're finding polyester fibers in every little sample of water we collect from there. And the evidence is pointing to the fact that, you know, as a society, as a global society, a global village, we've become addicted to plastic. You know, plastic has a short history in this planet. You know, it really was a 20th century invention, if we can put it that way. There were a couple of plastic polymers that were invented in the 1800s, but most in the early 1900s and onwards.

And today, we have tens of thousands of formulas. tens of thousands of different kinds of plastic, they might be colored, they might be not colored, they might have softening agents or hardening agents. We've heard of BPA, maybe, bisphenol A, that's a softening agent. So, you know, these chemicals are added. Sometimes we add flame returns to plastic to, you know, protect against fire. So plastic is not a single chemical or a single product. It's a very, complex product, that at the end of the day is very difficult to recycle. In fact, we think that we're good recyclers in Canada, but we're only recycling about 10% of the plastic we produce every year. And that underscores or epitomizes what's happening globally, and that is a doubling of plastic production every 15 years or so. So exponential growth, that's not changing any time soon, even though everybody's worried about plastic. And, you know, on the whole plastic conversation, you know,

the risk is what we're seeing in remote environments, what we're seeing in our aquatic resources and our seafoods, for example. And it reminds me of the late 1980s in Ottawa and in Canada where Canadian scientists led the charge to understand that the Arctic was becoming contaminated with industrial chemicals like PCBs and DDT. In fact, a number of dedicated research programs in the Canadian Arctic discovered not only did industrial chemicals end up in the middle of nowhere far removed from industry, but they're getting into the Inuit food chain.

So they're getting into the indigenous foods of the Inuit. And lo and behold, a couple of studies demonstrated that the Inuit people, despite living thousands of kilometers from the industrial heartland of Eurasia, North America, were the most contaminated people on the planet. And so it was a late 1980s, and it was an eye-opener in Ottawa. And to their credit, politicians and policymakers in Ottawa took note. And that science was pursued to better understand what was happening and why. And it led Canada to push globally for the Stockholm Convention.

The Stockholm Convention, it's not an everyday term, I don't think, for anybody listening today. But the Stockholm Convention is one of those super important global treaties that acknowledges that we are living on a small planet and that all countries together have to bear some responsibility in terms of these chemicals that are persistent by accumulating food webs and are toxic. And for Canada, the nation that co-chaired the Stockholm Treaty negotiations, we looked at these types of chemicals with those three features that are persistent by accumulative and they're toxic and said, those should not be getting into a remote environment where they get into indigenous foods.

Now, that was, you know, 30, 40 years ago that Canada was working on that. Stockholm Convention became international law in 2004, and it was a science with indigenous knowledge mixed in, of course, because the value of the indigenous foods was what drove the imperative to do the analysis and the studies get it published. And then the policymakers working nationally and then internationally to say, look, we've got to get rid of these chemicals. They should not be on the market because they're going to be around for hundreds of years, and they're impeding the health and viability of aquatic foods for indigenous communities. So that's, you know, for me today, that's what plastics is all about. It's ending up in indigenous foods. It's ending up in remote environments.

It's, you know, these particles and pieces of plastic are traveling with impunity around our little planet. And, you know, you just have to look at Google images for plastic pollution and look at Southeast Asia where there's virtually no recycling to realize what will happen or is happening when we're not careful with our plastic waste. That is fair. And there's so much to unpack there. One thing you said was food webs. Can you describe what is a food web? Well, food web, food chain, I think we've all, you know, heard of it, but

functionally speaking, it's just a way of describing who eats who in the water or on land or in the ocean. And so think about what is at the bottom of the food web or the food chain. It's what's producing the food for the higher

ups. And so in the ocean, we'll think about plants or algae or phytoplankton. That's the bottom of the food chain. They're using the sun plus nutrients to create food just as grass in a prairie is producing the bottom of the food chain for the cow. You know, it's the food, it's the sun, and then it's the animals that it supports. So in the ocean, a food web would be, for example, all the phytoplankton that bloom, you know, periodically seasonally, for example, with the delivery of sunshine and nutrients.

And that feeds zooplankton or shrimp or other invertebrates, including clams and crabs and, and other shellfish. And then we've got small fish like smelts, or then we've got forage fish like herring or hake. Then we've got the slightly more predatory fish like salmon or tuna or swordfish, et cetera. And then on top of the food chain, the higher you go,

you get things like seals and killer whales and the like. So every food web can be structured in different ways. And you'll see who depends on who. But you can't knock out one element of the food web and not have significant consequences for the environment. So ultimately, when we look at the environment, we want to take care of the environment. We want to make sure that nobody's at particular risk or that, you know, nobody is particularly sensitive to, you know, whether it's climate change or a pollutant or eutrification or something like that. Yeah, the part that I want to understand more that I might get wrong, so please feel free to correct. me is that it starts small and then with each kind of fish that gets bigger and bigger and

you work up that food chain from your research my understanding is that killer whales are actually the most toxic or they have the most toxins in them is that because it works up this chain and so like the smallest starts and then a fish eats that and then a bigger fish eats that and then a seal eats that and then a killer whale eats the seal and it kind of accumulates in the largest animals. Is that, am I sort of correct? You are absolutely sort of correct or sort of absolutely correct. Yeah, I mean, as you go up the food chain, certain types of chemicals or certain types of pollutants, not all of them, but certain types will accumulate and magnify at each position in the food chain. And so that was really what underpinned the whole Stockholm Convention was

we don't want chemicals that accumulate in food webs. And so today on the market, we're not supposed to have chemicals that accumulate in food whips. We still have chemicals. We still have harmful chemicals, but they're not supposed to accumulate to any great degree in food webs. So basically what happens, if you've heard of the term biomagnification, one can understand what that means is the concentration of chemical X gets higher and higher and higher as you go up the food chain. So when small fish eats zooplankton, medium fish eats small fish, seal eats medium fish, and whale eat seal, or a biggs killer whale, transit killer, eats seal. You're going to have certain chemicals biomagnifying or amplifying,

getting to higher and higher concentrations. Why? Because nobody has the ability to get rid of these chemicals from their bodies. I think everyone understands that our liver processes a lot of things. For example, if I go to the pub and I have a beer, my liver can break down the alcohol in about four hours. That's why I'm not drunk for weeks when I have one beer. So that's your liver detoxifying something that it perceives to be harmful. That happens to all of our foods. We're constantly breaking down our foods and our liver plays a very, very important role therein. The problem is our liver wasn't really designed for industrial chemicals. And so industrial chemicals, rather than getting broken down, they're staying in our body. And they're staying in our

body in a way that means they're not going anywhere anytime soon. And that means everything that I accumulate my lifetime or everything that is accumulated by small fish in its lifetime is then transferred to a bigger fish who's going to eat a lot of little fish and so forth. So at each step in the food chain, you're getting higher and higher concentrations of those persistent biocumative and toxic chemicals like PCBs. as each position in the food chain is using fats as the currency of life. So they're metabolizing the things that they can break down, but they're not metabolizing the things like these industrial chemicals.

And that is really the simple message behind what happened to our killer whales. Our big killer whales and our southern resident killer whales are the most industrially chemical, chemically contaminated marine mammals on the planet. And it's because they're high in the food chain. They live a long time. And they eat a lot of stuff that sits down below them. So this is like the ultimate you are what you eat.

And if you have these foods coming in, the one maybe example, maybe it's not like a perfect overlay. But I've heard from hunters that one of the challenges is like when you hunt for a bear, if that bear is more urbanized and it's been eating garbage and stuff around the community that and berries and stuff, you're going to have like a more toxic, like you cut it open and it has like a rancid smell because it's been eating trash in the community and stuff. But if you go up into the middle of nowhere where this bear has been living off of like berries and fruits and stuff like that, it can actually have like a blueberry taste to the meat. It can have this rich kind of flavorful, enjoyable taste. But if you were to just go in your backyard and kill the bear,

it likely has a bunch of garbage. Maybe it's been eating like dead deer in the area that's been rotting away. And so its meat isn't going to be as clean because all of those nutrients are meant to fuel the bear. It's meant to help grow the muscles and make sure everything's. Is that like an apt comparison? Well, I think so. Because essentially when one looks at industrial pollution, one thinks about there are two things that dictate how contaminated an item might be, whether it's a killer whale or a seal or a salmon or a food source for, whether it's

indigenous communities or sports recreational or commercial fisheries, and that is proximity to source. If you're fishing near a big city or a big port or a factory, logic dictates that it's potentially more contaminated than something in a remote environment. So that's important and that by and large is true. But then the second point is where in the food chain are? you. So, for example, if you live a far distance from a chemical factory or source, you may still accumulate a lot of those chemicals because they're getting amplified up in that food chain. And that's what explained what was happening to the Arctic and the Inuit, and their heavy reliance on aquatic foods. The Inuit, from the last study I read, are eating about 110 kilograms

of seafood a year. The average Canadian is somewhere between four and a half and six kilograms per year. Coastal First Nations here, somewhere around 13 to 15 kilograms per year, maybe even up to 25. So you are what you eat.

You just described why the Inuit are so vulnerable to industrial chemicals. It's because they're eating a lot more of these aquatic foods that are subject or vulnerable to that magnification. process or that amplification process.

The food is not more contaminated in the Arctic, but they're eating a lot more of it. And that's the problem. So I think the conversation we're having is to a large degree. It's about taking care of the receiving environment, the aquatic environment, so that pollutants that are persistent or harmful aren't impacting those food sources or natural resources or aren't accumulating them in them in ways that might be harmful

if I or my family or my neighbor downstream might be where they might be harmed or threatened by that pollutant. Yeah, one of the topics that I'm hearing more about is this idea that there's like an inequality in who's affected by maybe climate change or the lack of biodiversity, the destruction that we're doing to the planet, however that looks. that it's not fairly distributed amongst maybe the CEO of the plant that's doing maybe more of the destruction, that person's not as impacted as the Inuit. And you think of their, perhaps their culture and their community and they're like, well,

we're more part of the land. We're more natural out here. We're away from all the electrical lines and we're more natural with our environment and more connected to it. Yeah, they're the ones predominantly being impacted. by these things that maybe they don't use as much as other people. They're maybe saying, like, we're not going to use plastics, but yet they're impacted. What was that like to discover, or what were those conversations like?

Because that does seem rather perhaps unfair. Well, we're living in very interesting times in terms of the global environment, in terms of the population size that we have on this planet, and in terms of our awareness of many of the injustices that have been, you know, many of the wrongs that have been carried out either through ignorance or deliberate action and decisions within, you know, notably indigenous communities, but also many other communities around the world. And, you know, you talk about vulnerability, and that's a very interesting one. I think it's a, it's an exciting time, it's a dangerous time, it's a scary

time. You think about sea level rise and some of the poor farmers in Bangladesh that are in a low-lying estuary. You think about the Maldives, some of these low-lying islands in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean that are basically disappearing because of sea level rise. It's not because of their industries or their decisions that their countries are disappearing, basically. It's our global community of nations that's burning fossil fuel, simply put. So it is deeply, I think, deeply troubling and humbling, but also potentially valuable and instructive to acknowledge that many of the most vulnerable communities are either dispossessed or have a lack of control over their environments or are otherwise being wronged by a whole series of decisions or events

in the past and today. So what can we take home from that? Well, for me, it gives me hope insofar as, I think, you know, if we look back at the last several centuries in what we largely call British Columbia today, we can think of what's happened to the forests, we can think of what's happened to the lands and waters around the big metropolis of Vancouver and its municipalities. And we could look at that change is something that's startling. And we could probably benefit from understanding how we can better protect watersheds and forests and salmon and whales because the model today is not very robust in terms of our ability to protect things that straddle many government agencies and jurisdictions and laws.

You know, think about water, think about watersheds. Think about the land to sea transition and vice versa for an agamous fish. How do we protect them? Well, we're not doing a great job. So I think where I garner some hope and some hope for strength and clarity is in working with indigenous communities, where there's, I think, a stronger connection to the lands and waters around one's community. There's a heavier reliance often on a, aquatic foods or indigenous foods.

And there's oral teachings that tell us about, you know, how things used to be and how things were managed. It may not be easy. It may not be enshrined in every piece of legislation available to us or published in ways that Western scientists can understand. But to me, that has the potential to unleash ammunition in support of better stewardship and a more progressive path ahead

whereby we work as a community, as a team. We listen to knowledgekeepers, whether it's within indigenous communities, whether it's in the Western world and Western science. And we look at opportunities to change the way in which we view and understand and protect and or use natural resources in that sort of watershed context. Interesting. Was that at all a journey for? you to learn about because like throughout history perhaps indigenous teachings and their values

have been underestimated like most people know that indigenous people were described as savages and I think that that has like a long term effect on people's preconceived notions of what the value of their culture might have because then you just kind of default to I know three things I know that they were called savages I know they weren't treated well and then they kind of just move forward, maybe underestimating the culture. And I think perhaps in my early years, I was guilty of this. I heard that my mother was a part of the 60 scoop. So we grew up somewhat disconnected from the culture. And it's only in recent years that I've been able to learn about the teachings and the information and how the stories have value and what that

looks like. And so when I first learned about oral cultures, I was like, oh, so it's subpar. Because it's not written in a paper. It's not documented the way we think of. But when I get to sit down with people like Sonny McKelsey, who's a cultural historian. He talks about how these stories were both maps, geographic maps, that you would have memorized because you'd have the story of the medicine man being turned into a cedar tree, or you'd have these stories that would help you figure out where you are. This mountain has a story around it, so you'd know, oh, there's that mountain. We're walking all the way to California, so we know we're on the right track. But then there'd also be, like, moral stories that I think are comparable to, like, the

Bible and these stories of like how to live a good life, how to live a meaningful life. And within it is like one story of like a medicine man who was very generous and kind and he gave back and he was turned into a cedar tree. And so you want to be that generous man. You want to be like that. And I think that that's comparable perhaps to people who believe in Jesus Christ and and have a story around how he lived his life in a good way. And so was that, what was that journey like for you to start to, because I think biology is probably the primary scientific discipline that ties in with, like, indigenous culture. I don't think that there's, like, a lot of chemical understandings within indigenous

culture around, like, how chemicals work or how physics works, but we have, like, an understanding that there's an overlap between indigenous teachings and biology. When did that kind of open the door for you, where you were like, oh, here's some information from this, was that hard to start to take in? or were you excited about there was an overlap? What was that sort of journey like for you? Well, I think in my early years as a practicing scientist, there was within the scientific community of the day,

so late 1990s, early 2000s, basically saying, you know, science is the way the construct, the tool that we're going to use to explore questions and answer questions and address priorities and then inform wider society. And, you know, when we acknowledge the, you know, the dramatic way in which Canada, if I could put it that way, Canada discovered the Inuit to be the most contaminated people on the planet, that opened the door to the realization within the scientific community that, you know, science might not have discovered that had they not been looking at the foods that were consumed by an individual. communities. And the indigenous, the Inuit communities were consuming beluga fat, mucktuck, ring seal fat and skin, also mucktuck, you know, migratory bird eggs and smoked char. A lot of things that were not to be found in Canadian supermarkets, certainly, were, you know,

we're not going to be studied for the sake of, you know, curiosity from a Western science perspective. But they were studied because they were important food items. And they are important food items because social scientists started working with indigenous consumers and elders and, and then doing surveys to ask questions about what do you, you know, what do you eat, how often, how do you prepare it, where do you harvest, where do you hunt. And so it, you know, even though it was through the eyes of Western science, social and natural sciences, it became, a conversation about what's important to you culturally, spiritually, nutritionally, and socioeconomically.

And so I think that's, to me, it really underscores the fact that I think there is confusion throughout the population, but what, you know, how to reconcile Western science and indigenous knowledge, for example. To me, you don't have to reconcile them. They're two ways of looking at the world around us, and they're different toolboxes and different tools. And if we can get the best of both toolboxes and put them together, then we're in a position potentially of harnessing great power

and insight into the world around us and hopefully using information that protects things that are important to a watershed or to an indigenous community or to citizens of Vancouver, for that matter, where we're using strong analytical science where needed, and it's being applied to questions that are important to indigenous communities. Then we're striking a very interesting opportunity, I think, on the road ahead. To reconciliation, maybe, but I think to the point,

environmental management and stewardship of natural resources. I heard this brilliant quote by Eric Weinstein. It was, we are gods but for the wisdom. And it seems to be something that we've fallen in love with technological innovation. We've fallen in love with what science can bring. And there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that we are in a far better position than people who lived 100 years ago, 200 years ago, in terms of our quality of life, our ability to accomplish great tasks, have impacts. I think of the internet as like now indigenous communities, you can go on YouTube and you can learn about how to manage your finances, you can learn about how to start a garden, you can learn about any topic and there's no longer a disconnect between, well, you don't live near a person who has that expertise or you don't, that person's not your neighbor, so you don't get to learn about that. It's open so many doors. And so it's undoubtedly made positive impacts. But we seem to scoff at the idea of like teaching,

and knowledge that's more about wisdom. And I'm very grateful because some of my most successful interviews have been with people who are wise more than they're perhaps intelligent. And that gives me great hope because it seems like there's this deeper hunger. And when I hear people saying, I want to hear about indigenous teachings, I always want people to understand that there's a beauty in a lot of these underlying belief systems. Like indigenous people, we have salmon ceremonies where we give thanks for the food. And we have different ways of giving thanks.

But other cultures have grace. They have different ways of giving thanks for their food. And that's an important step in making sure that you act ethically. Because if you're being thankful, you're hopefully being aware of where your food comes from and you're trying to understand your relationship with this food. And I think it's important that if you're going to eat salmon or any type of animal, that you recognize that you now have a responsibility to wherever it came from, to respect that and to be a better person.

afterwards, that that's now your own. You have something on your shoulders now. And I understand the vegetarian and vegan movements, but I think that there's a value in, if you are going to eat these foods, that you recognize where it comes from and that you do your best to be a good steward for the land and that you recognize that that is, you have taken something. Like the vegetarians often say things like, well, I don't want to kill a life. And it's like, well, you might need to do that for your own health because there's some

people who need certain dietary, they have dietary needs. And so having a relationship with where your food comes from is like an important first step. When did that come about for you? Or is that something that's on your radar when you're shopping at the grocery store? What's that sort of process for you? Well, I think your earlier comment about the Internet, it's unleashed all sorts of opportunities in terms of information. We can glean whatever we want from the Internet.

And that is both a wonderful thing and a dangerous thing because we might not be trained to critically review what we're reading or to trust the source. And so I think the great weakness in our new found technological wealth and technological world in the Internet is the fact we haven't figured out how we can use it to bring together communities effectively. And so there's a real risk, I think, in some people just going down rabbit holes and not coming back out because social. they're, they're isolated or economically they're isolated, or they end up down some kind of value system that is anathema to working globally or culturally with others in community, locally or around the world. So there's, I think there's, we're at a point in time where we acknowledge that, you know, the Twitter sphere is vulnerable or Instagram is vulnerable or Facebook and democracies or different countries might be cultural. vulnerable to whatever happens. And so I think we're in a process of understanding how to sort of, you know, mature that system so that we don't go drive ourselves crazy or end our planet as we know it because

of some misunderstanding or ill-gotten belief. But, I mean, food and water is, you know, what is of immediate importance to every human being. And so understanding that there are, you know, 8 billion people on the planet, that, you know, the climate is changing, that water is a precious resource and it's one that is, we may not appreciate it here very much in British Columbia, although the fires and the droughts in recent summers have alerted us to the water cycle being something to watch. but in the U.S., Midwest, they're looking at a drought that is now, you know, at the thousand-year historical mark, the very serious droughts. So I think water is something we've got to be thankful for, and we have to understand whether it's too much in November, December, or not enough in the summer. And that water is going to underpin everything.

It's going to underpin the health of salmon. It's going to underpin, you know, our berries and bushes and our agricultural production. It's going to underpin what happens in terms of productivity in the Salish Sea, et cetera. So water is vulnerable, changing, undervalued. It's the common denominator for foods and the foods that we like to choose. And, you know, certainly the supermarket, you know, I've always loved supermarkets. Learning places go, they're exciting, exotic things, bananas coming in from Costa Rica or, you know, olives from Greece or, you know, grapes from California are hopefully more local.

Exciting places, stimulating. I mean, I've got lots of memories of going there with my mother and shopping, and I just, and they're a place of plenty. But they're disconnected from the natural world. They're disconnected from the natural world because they don't really reflect the natural world. They reflect the artificial food supply that we've created, designed regionally, nationally, internationally. And so we may or may not see the consequences of environmental degradation or climate change

in a supermarket. Probably the first signs are going to be Sokye Salmon this year is twice as much as it was last year or something because of climate change or diminishing returns. So I think it, and I think there is increasing acknowledgement that we have to be thankful. for our foods. Certainly during COVID, there was an explosion in home gardening and people buying chickens to lay eggs and people buying giant bags of flour and sugar so they could bake bread. Very interesting kind of reaction to being locked down at home and potentially being cut off from certain supply chains. So I think there is a growing realization that we've got to pay attention

to our food supply and be thankful for what we have. But also, so to maybe be a little bit more responsible with our home, pantry and garden and maybe community as we look ahead. And I look at British Columbia here or the region, and I say, you know, we could do a lot better in terms of understanding and protecting our local watersheds and our local aquatic environments, both freshwater and marine, and the lands that support us as humans. And, you know, part of that protection means understanding its value to different communities, understanding the threats to different elements within our environment, whether it's climate change or pollution or overfishing or habitat destruction.

And then, as you put it, being thankful. So one of the challenges, I think, is that, like, the way we like to work is that we have, like, if you think of agriculture, we have this plot. of land and that's my plov of land and I decide whatever I want to do with it but the world doesn't work like this and it seems like one of the challenges is that these salmon and these various aquatic animals birds they all migrate they don't stay in the boxes that we like to operate within so damage to one area affects another area in a way that's uh to humans inconvenient it's an inconvenient in truth that these salmon don't stay exactly where they are.

So if we just keep this area clean, then everything's all good. And it sounds, I've interviewed Eddie Gardner, recently Dean Work, who've talked about the challenge with fish farming and the challenges of like the sea lice that end up there that end up impacting fish that had nothing to do with the farms that we're over here. Is that one of the biggest challenges that we seem to face is that we like these boxes and we don't like that things travel sometimes around the world? Oh, absolutely. I think anadromous fish epitomize, anadromous being migratory from freshwater marine and back, so largely the salmon species.

And, you know, how do you manage that? How do you take care of that? How do you understand it? How do you document threats to salmon? I mean, what's the threat to salmon? Is it out in the high seas where there are fishing boats and oil tankers or plastic? Or is it in coastal waters where we've got lots of noise and small boats and big boats and, you know, waste. water and chemical discharges, or is it in freshwater habitats where we've got these little streams that are being subjected to logging where they lose the tree canopy that protects a nice cool stream for the salmon aches. Where are the impacts? How do we capture that? How do we protect it? Absolutely, we love boxes. If you're a government manager responsible for a portfolio, you want that portfolio to be clear and crisp and understandable so you can do your job and hand Your advice or your decision to either the Prime Minister or the people of Canada or the courts as you see fit. So as soon as you have migratory fish or migratory whales that are transboundary or migratory birds,

you're dealing with outside the box, which means, oh, all of a sudden I have to talk to another ministry or another municipality or 14 First Nations or another country or the United Nations. to try to manage these things. So it takes a lot to think outside the box, but that's exactly what we have to be doing today to survive. We have to be thinking outside the box. And I think, I hope that outside the box opportunities will be the stuff of entrepreneurs and innovators that, well, if it takes capitalism, it takes capitalism.

However, we can harness the most productive, forward-looking ways of thinking in a new way that allows us to better understand and manage and protect the natural environment from us as the super predator on this planet. I really like that because I'm fascinated by entrepreneurship. I just wrapped up my law degree and one of the papers was on First Nations Economic Development of like what ideas, what cultural viewpoints can be. developed into a business and what strategies can you implement one person that I thought of when you were describing that was Boyon Slot, if you know who he

is, and the work he's doing to try and clean up the ocean. And I know that there's challenges with running a machine over the water that it's not a perfect solution. But can you first describe the garbage patches and like the impact they're having and maybe what you know about Boyon Slot? Yeah, Boyan Slot

is a young Dutch engineer. I believe he's 24 now. maybe 26, I'm not sure, but he was the fellow that dreamed up this idea of creating a tethered sort of collection device out at sea that would basically clean up the floating debris so in the garbage patches. So the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is simply the middle of the Pacific where currents conspire to collect and confine, you know, all these floating traps and nets and buoys and garbage from, you know, the lands and seas around us.

And so he designed the system and he fundraised very successfully and he's deployed that system. And they are collecting garbage, which is great. It's one opportunity for innovation and applied outside the box thinking. And we've got to be thinking on all cylinders in that regard. or firing on all cylinders in that regard, because we need innovation. The problem with the buoyant slat exercise is the fact that every minute

we're dumping a garbage truck of plastic into the ocean somewhere, you know, globally, every minute. And so his contraptions that use fossil fuels to the ships, etc., are collecting, you know, it's a small band-aid on the problem. So where we need innovation to really be applied is upstream, is divine.

devising new packaging that is plastic-free, devising more compostable cutlery and plates and so forth, as we're starting to see in Canada, both, you know, in terms of business decisions, but also laws, either municipal bylaws or federal laws. So we've got to see much more innovation in that regard in ways that are going to reduce the release of plastics or pollutants into the environment.

And not all of it is about recycling or cleaning up beaches or cleaning up the oceans. A lot of it is, and not all of it is about our blue box that we're proud of, I think, which was a Canadian invention from Waterloo, Ontario decades ago. So it was a proud Canadian invention that unfortunately is being overwhelmed and under-resourced and is really failing to protect our environment as we're increasingly. understanding. So we need the innovation way upstream in the policies, in the laws, in the tax credits, in the design of plastic products or alternatives. And plastic products includes clothes, probably the majority of our clothes have polyester in them. That's plastic, petrochemical. And it

doesn't degrade. So it degrades sort of physically with fibers and so forth. But in the long run, it's still around as a chemical somewhere, usually in these microfibers. So I think the outside the box innovation agenda is one where I think there is, I hope, the biggest opportunity for an army of youth to go forth, whether they want to go to university or not, to look for opportunities locally or economically or nationally, whether it's practice, design, industry, policy, legislation, or, uh, or, uh, or, uh, or, some kind of other solution-oriented activity. Yes, I hope so.

And I think that that inspires other people. Like whether or not Boyon's able to fix the problem, he certainly gave new life to the idea that this is an area ripe for development. And I forget who it was, but there was somebody who was like, you don't think somebody who can fix the problem that, like, our oceans are facing or the environment's facing, is like a trillion-dollar brilliant mind. Like, that's worth like millions and billions of dollars in terms of

like the impact a solution in this area could have on our society. And I think hopefully capitalism like our markets are able to catch up to that because our markets like to think in two year, three year spans and we need solutions that are that might be cost heavy. Like Tesla is maybe a good example of something that was cost heavy to get started and they're probably still pouring money into trying to grow that operation. But over the next 50 years, 100 years, that's going to have hopefully a meaningful impact and it impacted other car manufacturers who were kind of like no we'll just stick with hybrid like this this isn't going to be a good system electric cars aren't the future that was kind of the mentality prior to Elon kind of helping people think

differently and that that thinking differently can play even a bigger role in my view than just the one solution that they kind of come up with can we go through some of the problems though Like, I'm interested to understand where are the PCBs on this? Where is, like, where do you see the main 10, 20 issues that we need to start to pay attention to? One was polyester that you just mentioned. Could we maybe start there? What's going on with our clothing? And how do we go about addressing this?

Well, clothing is an interesting one. My understanding is that by the year 2050, the world textile industry will be producing about 25% of the world's greenhouse gases. So that's a quarter. So you think about climate change, clothing plays into that. And I think today it's about 10%. So it's a significant player in terms of climate. The world's textile makers can be forgiven for being, by me, split into two camps. Those that are kind of responsible and aware,

and those are the ones that are looking at the damage or the impact that their product has on water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, toxic chemicals, and so forth. So they've got a list of five or six major issues that they want to track and they want to score and that'll be their performance indicator for the harm that their product might and they will seek to reduce that.

And then the second camp, which is, we don't care. We just want to sell, you know, $10 fleas at, you know, at Walmart. And those companies are always going to be around. So we've only almost got two types of responses to the environmental, you know, way in which companies are behaving. So how do you deal with that? Well, I think education is part of it for the consumer. Labeling.

There should probably be a new look at how you label products so that the consumer can understand what he or she is buying. regulations, tax credits, you know, policy instruments as a vehicle to create a minimum standard for the way in which these things can be judged or improved. So it's a big one. And end of the day, you know, if I say that there are 49 microfibers per cubic meter of seawater under the North Pole or at the North Pole, I'd say these are probably all coming from wastewater, from clothing, from laundry. So how do you deal with that? Single polyester fleece is losing

10 million fibers in a single laundry. So 10 million fibers. Okay. Well, you know, the polyester fleece was originally designed to be a green product. It was recycling pop bottles. And that's the way it was designed. It was a green, environmentally friendly product.

And then now we're discovering that they're actually, you know, all these fibers have contaminated the planet. So there's an element of education, science, and understanding. There's an element of product design. We need companies to be encouraged or to encourage themselves to design friendlier products. We need the consumer to be empowered to understand what he or she is buying so that we can try to be friendlier in that way. We need the consumer to look at practices in terms of waste management or wastewater management to weigh in. And then we need governments, municipal, regional authorities, federal agencies to look at ways to step in. So lots of opportunity for change in the right direction.

And, you know, end of the day, we can always point a big bad industry or big bad government, but it's about us. It's a team envelope that we all have to work together on. And it's not that the clothing sector decided it wanted to pollute the world's oceans. It's not that the clothing sector said it didn't care. It's that nobody knew. And now we've got opportunity, and there are lots of things happening in terms of sustainable or compostable, even clothing. So that's one issue.

That's a big one, I think. It's an emerging issue. It's very much on the desks of decision makers in Ottawa. What do we do about this one? Wow. Textiles. That is really interesting. Do you ever get discouraged? How do you stay, like when you learn that polyester was done for the good of the world,

then you learned, oh, no, this is actually becoming one of the big problems. Is that ever discouraging to you personally or maybe to your colleagues where it's like, come on, like, we thought we had this. We thought we had the answer. We thought we were on the right track and now we're back to square one. Is that ever a challenge or is it just like stick and move onto the next kind of approach that can maybe have a more positive impact? Well, in a philosophical sense, I don't blame industry or capitalism or ignorance for where we are today.

Would I attribute a lot of where we are today is at the fact that we've got a super populated planet. We've got a lot of human beings on this planet. And if we're going to survive as a community of nations or as a global village or as whatever we want to call ourselves, We have to be aware of the issues that we're facing and we have to figure out a way to walk more softly. There is little doubt in my mind. That means reduce greenhouse gas emissions by finding alternative energies, consuming less multiple scales, you know, having a simpler existence, being thankful for the food and the water that we have, hopefully clean, you know, all the simple things. and so I think overpopulation, we haven't heard a lot about that, but it was the big buzzword, you know, 50 years ago

when we had a quarter of the population. And so that's a big issue. Do I get despondent? Well, sure. It's a bit of a downer to talk about the environment all the time or to work in the environment or to understand what we're doing to ourselves. But at the same time, I've always, right from the get-go, I always realized that, you know, the way in which we solve problems is by understanding

the nature of that problem, understanding the threat, characterizing it, and figuring out how we can climb ourselves out of a potentially harmful hole. So, so that's, that's why I just keep firing on as many cylinders as I can possibly muster on the path ahead because I want to generate the science that supports an understanding and awareness of the emerging issues or the priority issues. We can't do everything all at the same time, but maybe there's some low-hanging fruit we can tackle. Maybe there's some emerging priorities we've got to watch out for. Maybe there's a shift in the way we should be working in Ottawa or at the United Nations in terms of the way we look at chemicals or water or pollution in general. So that keeps me going. The humbling part of

one small example, textiles we're just talking about, I don't like polyester very much. But try to find a pair of genes today that isn't putting polyester as a percentage of the fabric in there. It's like, you know, they're spandex. And that's, that's petrochemicals. That's plastic. And as your genes, if you imagine those genes in 200 years where they are, you're not going to find the cotton, which was 90% of the fabric. You're going to find just a netting of that spandex or that polyester remaining because it does degrade. So I get a little desponded at some of the tricks done in the

name of fashion. It's very hard to get just cotton jeans. These days, 100% cotton. The flip side, the other element, though, because I like cotton, the problem with cotton is twofold. Number one, it uses

a lot of water, 20 times as much as hemp per hectare. And it's the world's most pesticide intensive crop. So, cotton is not a great thing. And that's why, you know, looking at alternatives, well, organic cotton is one option,

but hemp and some other, you know, flax, which is linen, there are some other things that are much more water-friendly and don't require as many pesticides. But it just reminds us that sometimes that simple answer is a bit of a dangerous one, or it just opens another door to another problem. So it's a bit humbling sometimes when you look at the spectrum of opportunities and threats

and realize that what we have to do rather than play whackamol is look at a consolidated and rational way to sort of evaluate threats and to look at opportunities to mitigate at whatever level that might be.

Brilliant. I think hemp is a really interesting one because from my understanding it was kind of demonized like 50 or so years ago for regular paper because they were looking at switching to hemp paper because it was going to be more cost effective and that was sort of

discouraged by one person, I forget his name, but I think it's interesting that there are these potential solutions because hemp is a super strong material as well, isn't it? It's like it's very hard to break or something like that. Yeah, hemp was used

by the Royal Navy in Britain for its sales and lines aboard its sailing fleet. But my understanding is in the early days of the cotton trade and the cotton sector in the states, the U.S. banned hemp because it was a competitor for cotton and it wanted to sell cotton internationally. So they banned hemp and they pushed down on trade with countries that used hemp. And then there's a whole history of concerns

about marijuana, which is the high THC hemp. And so it's had a bit of a bad rap for probably close to a century, if not a century and a half. But I think today you'll find hemp products are out there and available. And I think anything that provides us with the opportunity of reducing greenhouse gas production, reducing the use of harmful pesticides, reducing the use of agricultural application of water, that's probably going to benefit us. And if it does so without releasing polyester fibers into our wastewater stream, then all the better, right? So what does the polyester do in the water? So it's, so it's in there for an average

person, maybe they go, oh, well, like, there's just a little strings. Everything's fine, isn't it? Like, they're not, I'm not eating the string. I don't know what an average person might think, but, like, what would you say to that person? What are the problems with this entering the water systems? Well, it's interesting, because on the one hand, people's eyes tend to glass over when we talk about PCBs or DDT or Chloridane or Doxins or fernance, because it's invisible. We don't see it. We don't really understand it intrinsically. But it's everywhere, right?

And so it does take sort of a chemistry lab and, you know, environmental monitoring to figure out how these chemicals are getting into, for example, the food web or into wildlife and why and whether it's harmful or not. But the average person instinctively goes, plastic, I get it. Polyester fibers, I might not see them. They're so tiny. But I understand it's like litter. It's like debris. I get out on my beach, I see cigarette butts and straws and bottles and this, that, and the other. And I understand that that's harmful because, you know, I've seen pictures of how sea turtles are mistaking plastic bags for jellyfish and they're suffocating it as a result.

We're seeing albatross, you know, picking up little bits and pieces of floating plastic and feeding it to their chicks, where they become artificially satiated and basically starve to death. we're seeing all sorts of problems associated with plastic and people get that right sorry the albatross i just interviewed chris coon he was talking about how they're so far out in the water that we don't really pay attention to them as much and so the idea that they're like choking on plastic or not being sustained by eating plastic that just blew my mind well and plastic is probably today the number one threat conservation threat to albatross because of the way in which they skim the surface for little bits of food but they're actually picking up a lot of plastic. So you see, you know, chicks dying and their belly is full of, you know,

bottle caps and tampon applicators and syringes and little bits and pieces of broken down bottles and things like that. So it's a really big threat to charismatic, what I call charismatic megafauna or wildlife. So the question about polyester fibers, people sort of understand it's plastic to the smaller degree. It's a smaller piece of plastic. In fact, we did work in the northeastern Pacific with zooplankton. So little shrimp krill like creatures. And we found that basically one in every 20 individuals had plastic in its belly. And they're consuming polyester fibers because it looked like the food that they would normally eat, the phytoplankton or the diatom, the algae that they would normally eat. So we're seeing plastic get ingested, basically

if you look at the scientific community around the world, by any and every species that we look in. Every species on the planet is eating plastic in some way, shape, or form, and to differing degrees. In some cases, it's serious and it's very harmful. In other cases, we're not so sure. And humans were not so sure. Interesting.

So what do you think the consequences are for like salmon or for fish that people might be familiar with? Does this end up, like, making them toxic so they die younger? Does this make them not able to have children as easily? What are some of the effects that the fish have or the animals have in the water from these plastics being in them? Yeah, so there's really two concerns we've got with plastic. Number one, if it gets into your gills as a fish or your mouth, your mouth parts, your throat, your stomach, and it either suffocates you or it blocks your intestine,

you could see how that would be acutely distressful and or might kill or maim the individual that's consuming it. So that's one thing we're concerned about. I call that structural toxicity, if that makes sense. The other thing that we hear a lot about is chemical toxicity. So that's where we're worried about, think about chemicals for a minute. DDT caused eggshell thinning in seabird. in the 1960s and 70s.

Wipeed out bald eagles and falcons and all sorts of things throughout North America. So like the shell that they lived in was super sensitive. It was thinner. And so the female, when she was keeping the eggs safe and warm, she crushed them. And that was because DDT

looked like estrogen. It altered the female's calcium metabolism and led her to create thinner eggs that were vulnerable. That was a single chemical. DDT is a pesticide. It's been banned Canada since 1977. It's now interdicted around the world except for a very occasional use for malaria control. So that's a chemical toxicity. In the case of plastics, there's structural toxicity.

There is also concerns about chemical toxicity. Why? For two reasons. Number one, some plastic has, you know, BPA and other hormone-like substances. So hormone mimics or estrogen mimics. So if we eat that plastic or if an animal eats that plastic, are we taking a pill that then releases that hormone-like substance or additive to our body? Yes. The point is that the evidence so far suggests that we can demonstrate that in the laboratory and in extremely localized conditions.

But really, the wider environment, it's hard to imagine that you're eating so much plastic that you're getting a lot of these chemicals, because these same chemicals we're going to find in their natural food. So there is the potential for a pathway of chemical toxicity in eating plastic. It's just likely to be fairly limited to certain exceptional species or locations. It's not the biggest concern. My biggest concern is that structural toxicity. If you ingest plastic, and it's a big piece,

and it blocks your system somehow. That's a problem for wildlife, for fish, for salmon. If you're eating smaller particles, like humans are more likely to be doing, it's rare that a human's going to try to swallow up, you know, a water bottle or a toy or something, although some children will do it. But we tend to learn,

and we understand plastic is not something to eat. And that's something a lot of wildlife just haven't quite figured out. so for humans we're more like to eat these surreptitiously occurring microplastics ones we don't see so ones that might be in a fish filet might be in an oyster or clam or crab because we're eating the whole body or they might simply be floating around the room and landing on our plate because dust is consists of plastic as well there's little bits of dust that are polyester or reflect what's going on or in our house. So we're likely to get exposed mostly to tiny little bits and pieces of

plastic. Most of those are going to pass right through us. But there's some evidence to suggest now that some of those little bits and pieces of plastic can actually get lodged in our intestine and cause inflammation. Or they can actually, if they're small enough, they can get into our bloodstream. They can go across the intestine and circulate in our bodies. So there's more concern about these microplastics in human health based on our exposure, either through breathing them into our lungs

or consuming them through water or food. So that's one that I can think of that maybe other people have heard of, which is like water bottles. If you leave your water bottle in your car all day, it's a hot day, there's something that goes on with that water bottle where some of that plastic melts

and then it goes into your water and then you drink that water bottle to hydrate yourself and now you've got even more plastics in you. Some might think of like when you're getting like a higher quality water bottle, you're looking for the one that says BPA-free. But I've heard that the challenge with some of these plastics is that like you switch out BPA for some other plastic that's got overlapping problems that has not been on the radar of the government yet that hasn't been banned. And you can do so much with plastic that it's tough to get a handle on. Can we like, is this an issue

with the water bottle and the heat? Is this correct? Absolutely. If you, as a government agency, decide to ban BPA and consumer applications or food packaging, what's to stop industry from doing a slight shift in the formula for that chemical? So we've got BPS or BPD or BPS, Z, and that's exactly what's been happening. And this is not very ethical, but it's legal. And I think it argues for, a major, a fundamental shift in the way in which we look at chemical regulations and management. And the Europeans have done

a better job on this. The Americans are starting to do it. And it's basically, instead of saying, this formula is no longer allowed, this chemical structural formula is no longer allowed, this specific BPA is no longer allowed, we should look

at the activity or the toxicity of that chemical to make sure it doesn't bind to certain hormone receptors that we have in our body. So, for example, BPA, we know is estrogenic. That means that chemical binds to our estrogen receptors. Estrogen receptors, of course, very, very important to female reproduction and growth and development.

And we don't want a chemical interfering with the, you know, differentiation or development of the female body, because that's going to not be a good thing for her future reproductive of health. So if we have BPA that's estrogenic and we have other bisphenols, bisphenols, Bisfenol S, for example, that is also estrogetic, why should it be allowed

to replace the BPA that's been banned? So that would be expanding our definition beyond a certain chemical formula saying that's banned to one saying, hey, activity, this activity-based review is something that we want to decide on whether our chemical is

safe or not. So it would argue in favor of a shift in the way we look at chemical management. And that's probably worth discussing because with half a million chemicals in the market, you can't test all of them in ways that are going to protect every person and every species in Canada. It's just, it's impossible. Who would you, if you, maybe with your expertise and knowledge, who would you want to be responsible for making sure? Is that better to have government have to run tests on BPQ or whatever it is, and then tell industry, don't use this, or would it be easier to tell industry? These are the things that we do not want to have happen. You need to come to us to prove that your new water bottle doesn't have these factors in it. The fear with

having industry do it is that they're going to they're going to fudge the numbers or something like that. The fear with government doing it, I think, is like, they're highly, like, they're always a couple steps behind industry. They're always trying to catch up to whatever the standards are or whatever the new approach is. Do you have any thoughts on best ways forward? Well, at the end of the day, my whole career has been about looking at what escapes control, you know, what ends up getting into the environment, what ends up being a problem for us. So these are all mistakes. The fact that we've got PCBs and killer whale, the fact that we have pesticides and salmon, the fact that we have hydrocarbons in shellfish or crabs around harbors, these are all

things that were not supposed to happen. The fact that we have dioxins from pulp mills getting into crabs and closing crab and prawn fisheries, these are not supposed to happen. They're all mistakes or accidents or, and why did they happen? Well, ignorance in the first place. Secondly, kind of a free market system where industry is basically allowed to do everything until it's proven to be harmful. But once it's proven to be harmful, it's kind of too late. You can't clean up killer whales. You have to imagine that, you know, that chemical in the environment is going to behave in different ways. And so we need that creative approach to research and monitoring of the environment so that we're looking at different vulnerabilities,

different chemicals, different species, different habitats to make sure we didn't miss something. We didn't make a mistake, either as an industrial designer or as a jurisdictional practitioner in Ottawa. Ottawa currently does regulate chemicals. New chemicals coming onto the market are being imported into Canada. The industry has to submit, basically a fact sheet on what that chemical is, how it behaves, whether it dissolves in water or not, how quickly it breaks. down and whether it's toxic to the water flea or to rainbow trout under certain conditions. So very elementary data that come in as a requirement prerequisite to decision-making in Ottawa.

And then there are practitioners, risk assessors in the federal government that then look at the chemical properties and try to map out where that might cause a problem in Canada. If they can't demonstrate through their computer models, that it's going to be expected to cause harm to Canadian health or the environment, then they allow it on to the Canadian market. So there is already a dance between industry and government, but it's a very simple. It's not a very sophisticated

dance, and I think we're seeing a lot of things escape detection or escape our precautionary approach to things. A very small example is 6pD quinone. This is this tire chemical that was discovered

by University of Washington colleagues to be harmful to Coho Salmon. So for over two decades, officials in Washington State were trying to figure out why Coho went belly up as they returned to urban streams and waterways around King County and Seattle.

And it took 20 years of looking at copper and asbestos and lead and hydrocarbons and diseases to figure out it was a single chemical that is added to car tires and truck tires to protect the tire from degradation in sunlight. So that's one chemical, but no regulator had anticipated that. Industry hadn't anticipated that.

And nobody is carrying out tests that would have alerted us to that as being a potential downside with the environment. So it's important to have creative, independent research that is resourced by the government, and that's largely gone the way of the do-do over the last 30 years, and government agencies that are not only doing the rubber stamping, but also pushing and pulling and thinking a little bit outside the box and modernizing their decision-making, not sticking with a model that we developed in 1989, 1,000 new chemicals in the market every single year,

that's a lot of new chemicals since 1989, and then industry that is transparent. And you mentioned that problem, and certainly there has been a lack of transparency. There's a vested interest in delivering safe chemicals to the market. And if you discover that one of your chemicals might not be safe, what do you do? We've got a history of examples from North America of where industry has not been fair and transparent. You are a brilliant thinker in that I really value when people don't pick T.

teams or look for sides, because I think it detracts from the issue. I think it kind of creates a side issue of like a sense of bias. And I'm interested in what that journey has been like for you because I'm certain that there are some people who hate industry. There are certain people within the conservation community that hate government, that think that the government is in the pockets of big corporation. And it's so easy to follow. of these rabbit holes to start to try and look for the connections and kind of lose sight that we like from my understanding it was like a hundred years ago that somebody did research and was like we would never be able to overfish the oceans ever like this is just never going to happen

they didn't predict the increase in humans that we see today they didn't expect that we'd be able to develop the systems that we have today to fish but that was their prediction at that time and you can say how they should have known but they could have never known where we were going to end up 100 years later. Even predicting what the next election is going to look like is difficult for people to do. So to hold people to these accounts is so challenging. And I'm just interested to know how do you navigate this? Because it seems like within people who care about the climate, it seems like it's commonplace to pick teams, to pick sides, to say that it's this organization's fault or it's this industry's falter and to go down that path. And then

it almost feels like to perhaps the other side that you're less credible. But you've managed throughout this conversation to show that you recognize everybody makes mistakes. There are problems within each government level. Like, it's not saying that the government's not at fault and they don't make mistakes. It's not saying the industry doesn't. It's not saying that humans don't try and pick aside and think that they're doing the right thing and then make mistakes. It's that we're all so flawed. And I think that that's just, it reduces some of the burden.

So I'm just interested. What has that journey been like for you? Well, I mean, I've worked for the government. for the federal government, largely, as a research scientist, and I was a proud and loyal civil servant, I thought. And then, you know, I saw the way in which science was used, applied, applied well. I saw the way in which science was ignored, sidelined, buried. I saw the way in which science informed or didn't inform or wasn't protected and nurtured. And I saw the shortcomings of science as well. Um, so, you know, when we talk about government, we obviously were thinking about one

entity, but it's a, it's a living family. And within any family, we've got discord, we've got accord, we've got, uh, you know, pitfalls, downfalls, opportunities, got warmth, we've got heated arguments. So that's happening in government too. Um, you know, the government is an instrument of the people. And so it's subject to being pushed, uh, and it's subject to leadership. it's subject to bold leaders, it's subject to weak leaders, you know, anything can happen in government. To a certain degree, that's the same thing with industry. I don't think that any government agency or any industry really deliberately tries to harm the environment or pollute the environment, but rather they may not understand the consequences of a decision or an action,

or they may feel as though the decision, the consequences are outside of their purview. For example, It's their job to make white paper for our computers. And they're going to focus on that. And they're going to say, we know that downstream of our pulp mill, we might produce dioxins or we might produce plant resins or we might create low oxygen levels in the water that kills fish. But the government's supposed to monitor that and regulate that. So it's the government.

And we don't always like it, but that's their job. and this is our job. And so sometimes just ignorance or a lack of appreciation for the full life cycle of the impact of one's activity. So I think the key for me is trying to figure out

how you can galvanize a team orientation to a problem. I mean, government, industry, public, we all cherish water. We all need clean water to survive. And so, you kind of, if you can diminish the rhetoric and the angst around the conversation, just say, look, our end goal is to protect water or to have clean water or to have safe drinking

water. Who's going to argue with you? Whereas if you say, hey, you guys are polluting our water or you're not monitoring it or something, then it becomes a little bit more antagonistic. So constructing the team formula is, maybe doesn't always work. There are times we need a stick or a carrot in different ways. But I think it's ultimately what will bring governments and industry to the table. And, you know, through rolling up one's sleeves and everybody doing the same, I think there are opportunities to think outside the box in a new way. And it's a multi-jurisdictional manner.

And I don't know, maybe. Yeah, the importance of kind of zooming out and going back to why are we all sitting at this table today. because maybe you're like the CEO of this pulp mill, you live a few blocks away. Well, if you're ordering local fish, you're going to be impacted or your children will be in 20 years or whatever it looks like. And I'm just interested to know because I think it's perhaps one of the biggest challenges addressing these issues faces, which is that the environmentalists sometimes give themselves, in my view, a bad name.

They almost come down so much on one side of the issue that it's almost hard. hard to hear their concerns. And you've obviously not approached this conversation or any of your interviews that way where you're throwing stones. Is it ever, like, I'm sure you're admired by people who enjoy throwing stones. Is that ever difficult to manage where some of the people who support your work would like to see you throw stones or are in, you're surrounded by people who want to throw stones? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if I'm, you know, and I go back to my training and my role in this spectrum of opinions or actions, I see myself as a scientist who is using the scientific method, occasionally in lockstep with Western, sorry, with indigenous knowledge,

to provide insight into pollution or environmental degradation or natural resources. And so that means, you know, using the tools of science, the tools that I was trained for. And those tools don't necessarily line up comfortably with saying industry should stop doing that or governments have to do this. I mean, you can't extend your way out there, but then you become less neutral, you become more partisan and you become less trusted. And so there have been many times where a conservation organization would have turned to me and say, will you sign our petition? or will you join this lawsuit or will you, you know, write a letter to the cabinet minister or something or, and occasionally I have, but by and large I've said, no, that's not my role. And then they go, well, who do you think you are?

If you really believe in what you're saying, and I'm going, well, I'm not saying that it's wrong to do that. I'm just saying that's not my role. And my role is to provide science that is of value to everyone in the room. And industry can ignore it or they can read it, but they can't deny it. It's there. And so as soon as I take a position, I run the risk of taking sides in a way that might be counterproductive. You know, there are times when you do have to stand up, say, look, this is not good.

But then it's even more credible when you say that, right? It has the potential to be if you choose your words carefully and you demonstrate that you're not being unfairly, that you're not unfairly targeting a certain entity or enterprise or individual. You know, at the end of the day, you know, science is one tool in the toolbox. There are policymakers, there are legislators, they're activists, There's a whole bunch of folks. And, you know, I don't know.

I mean, if I rolled back my life and re-ran it, would I still end up being a scientist? I don't know. I think it has provided me with, you know, the ability to really understand where we are and what we're doing from the perspective of a scientist. It's allowed me to contribute to regulations, legislate. enforcement, best practices, design. I've contributed to governments of different levels and in different countries. I've been, you know,

it's gone so far as me having been invited to advising the G7 several times, the OECD, the UN, in different forms. You know, I've been invited to be an expert witness by the United States government on certain cases. So these are all things that stem from my expertise, and they allow me to support the actions of others

when the actions of others and the roles of others are potentially more activist. It's an enforcement case. It's a prosecution case. It's a natural resource decision. It's someone making a new law, you know, et cetera. So it's a lot of people don't, fully appreciate how expertise or how science-based decision-making can affect positive change.

And I get that. It's hard to understand all the corridors that lead to power and the way in which we shape power. And it's not perfect because there are lots of things that we as societies are not doing very well at all, or we're not doing it fast enough, or we're not heeding the science. And so I think there's always room for what I do, but I also feels, though, there's room for others to join in in their own perspective, whether they go to university or not. You know, understanding, you know, if there's a high school dropout who's hanging out in his hometown and he feels, oh, you know, those guys at university and those politicians, those CEOs, they're all doing their own thing. and I'm, I'm powerless to affect change. I go, bowl cookies.

You're as powerful as you want to be. And there's such beautiful examples coming from different people around the world about how people have really started a revolution in a positive way. Whether it's a local one, whether it's a global one, whether it's a local one. Lots of examples. And, you know, the key is acknowledging that, you know, We have a finite amount of time on this little planet, and heck, we need all the help we can get.

Amazing. I've heard the quote, which is most people live lives of quiet desperation, which is the idea that, like, most people, they don't get to feel like they're making the difference in the way that they might want to, or they didn't see themselves ending up in this job for 35 years, and now they're looking at retirement, and they're like, oh, I thought I was going to go be X. I thought I was going to go do Y. And so they don't get to find out what their potential was going to be. And I feel a lot of sorrow for those people because I think that it can start the day that you

realize that your life isn't going the way you want it to or the way that you imagined it was going to be. And so you're a very humble person, so I don't want to come across like I'm just pumping your tires, but you're considered an expert in ocean pollution. And that's, to me, a high honor to be considered an expert and to have the governments around the world look to you for information and knowledge and expertise. What has that meant to you to know that you definitely do not follow in the quiet desperation life, that you've lived and you're living a life that is so meaningful and that does have impacts? Like you were, from my understanding, one of the people who discovered the impact on killer whales and what was going on there. That's incredible, and we, like, hopefully the whole world is doing better as a consequence of understanding your research. What has that sort of meant to you to play such an intricate role and to leave a legacy in this world that's so important?

That's a big question. You know, on the one hand, it's kind of expected of one as an expert to not only publish pages, person, to be a good practicing scientist, but to have that work used and cited and applied to policies, practices, whatever, by others, that's kind of the role of any expert. So I'm not any different in that respect. You know, if I can chalk up, you know, key developments that, whether they were legislative or regulatory or enforcement or other best practices, to what I've done. I do feel good about those small successes. But the same time, I feel kind of humbled and somewhat distressed that I didn't save the world. I haven't saved the world yet because

that's sort of where I started as a kid. I want to save the world. And there's a lot of people with those dreams. And, you know, it just strikes me that we're all pointed in different directions. And if all the people that wanted to save the world, you could hold hands and actually save the world, it would be possible, right? It's like, you just need that way to create that cultural mosaic that actually allows us to move the dial on protecting the environment or restoring watersheds and the like. And, you know, that's, that would be my, my singular regret is, is, you know, I feel like a little bit like I'm on a hamster wheel trying to deal with all these new chemicals and legacy chemicals that are very persistent and issues. And it just seems like,

hamster wheels going some ways faster and faster and faster. I haven't fallen off it quite yet, but I think probably where we really need to be thinking is how can we really fundamentally facilitate a positive trajectory in terms of our relationship with Mother Nature, so to speak, what would it take? What would the 10 guiding principles be? What would the key legislative instruments or modification thereof look like? You know, what would the cultural shift or the paradigm shift look like, right? We've had a few attempts of that with the Green Revolution in the 70s and so forth,

the Great Lakes Agreements on phosphates and detergents to reduce the pollution in the Great Lakes, etc. There have been a lot of important achievements. But we've got more people on the planet. The temperature is rising. The carbon dioxide concentration, our atmosphere is rising. Our watersheds are vulnerable to climate change as our communities. So I think it's time to hunker down and do that outside the box approach that champions local stewardship, local management,

resilience, you know, if we're going to build back, we've got to build back better with our eyes focused on what's coming at us, which is rising seas, more crazy weather, a mix of fires and landslides and floods, and communities that are vulnerable to that change.

So I think we really, it's a time for us to refresh that, local stewardship and to temper that with the global village where we use the global village model to get along with our neighbors and ensure that we have a more sustainable planet. But we can't go it alone. Sorry, the global stewardship model. What is that? Well, just thinking about the global village, using the instruments of the United Nations, using the United Nations Environment Program, looking at the sustainable development goals, the 17 sustainable development goals that they,

the world's nations have come up with the SDGs. And it's worth looking at that on the Internet. There's good information about that. And what are the principles for how we go forward as a community of nations globally? How we reconcile local reconciliation with indigenous communities around the world with safeguarding water and ensuring adequate food and sanitation for the communities around us. So there is a global model out there we sometimes forget. the internet's too busy and too noisy.

And Amazon is waiting for us to order our next, you know, whatever, toy. But there are some good global tools, toolboxes, efforts, initiatives. And we've got to be mindful of those. We've got to look at those. But really, it's our home that we need to store it and where we have the most power. Our home, our backyard, our street, our community, and our sort of, you know, regional environment or watershed. That's where I think, like, it's really important that people are encouraged.

There's this, I don't know, I feel like there's this pessimism that just is pervasive in our minds where it's like if you tell somebody, hey, you make sure you go vote. And then they go, well, my vote's not going to sway the election, so why bother? And then you go, well, like, yeah, your vote might not change the election. But if you vote every year and you communicate with your MP or your MLA and just let them know what your thoughts are on the world, that's going to have a cumulative. effect. If you figure out an issue that you care about, you can get involved in. And there just seems to be sometimes a feeling like we don't matter or our actions don't matter. And it can be very

discouraging because I'm just one person. If I recycle, what's that going to do? And there's this feeling that like we're so small. But when you take on that responsibility, when you start to think about if I were to have an impact, how big of an impact could I have? That's a mental exercise that really has no end because it depends on what your efforts willing to be. And I don't want to say that it's all of it, but it's definitely a portion of anxiety and depression that exist in the world because people don't have something they feel they've made an impact in. They don't feel like they matter in this world.

If they were to disappear tomorrow, who would miss them? And that feeling could be alleviated perhaps by playing a role in something, whether it's getting involved in, like I know we have like the Fraser Valley like cleanup crews that go out and try and clean the rivers, whether it's getting involved in a society and trying to get involved in donate money, whether it's communicating and talking about an issue that you're passionate about. There are different ways to make a difference. And then perhaps some of your stress, anxiety or depression can be reduced because it's not just about you. And right now it feels like we're so focused on how many likes did I get on this post. How many responses did I get to this?

how many people know who I am, that it's like, maybe it's not about you. Maybe it's about our community. Maybe it's about something bigger than yourself. And I think that that's something that the environment, like, calls us to is to remember. Like, and I'm just interested to know what it's been like to work in the environment, to see whales and to know that they don't really care who you are, what your name is, what your degrees are, but that they're a majestic animal. And to, to, that's sort of where you started from, which is, this is a beautiful world that I just get to participate in. I'm just this one piece, but I'm an important piece, and I can play a role, but that there is

life beyond me that is just amazing to behold. And that's sort of where you started. And so I'm just interested to know how that kind of fuels you or what it's like to see creatures that most people maybe never see in their nine to five jobs. Well, I mean, that's certainly part of the personal adventure that has been enjoyable. I mean, being able to go out and work with seals or sea otters or beluga whales or killer whales and to work in the Northeastern Pacific, the Northwestern Atlantic, the Arctic, the Western Arctic, the Eastern Arctic,

the Northeastern Atlantic in Europe. I mean, I've worked in all of these areas. And as a scientist working in the field or working with wildlife, you get to see some pretty cool places, pretty cool animals, and some pretty spectacular things that you thought only David Atmero and the BBC really armed with a TV crew was able to see. So that's wonderful. And it's very humbling because you realize that, you know, I'm really inconsequential.

I'm a, you know, a biped homo sapiens, you know, living here. And, you know, that blue whale in the St. Lawrence isn't going to notice if I'm gone, et cetera. But, you know, when I look at, you know, trying to protect these things, trying to understand these things, I think there's two things for the average person. When they start to feel dispossessed or disconnected to things, then I go, hold on a second. It's our obligation as an individual to do our level best within our level of control. Let's not start arguing with ourselves saying, oh, I won't make a difference or, you know, somebody else is going to vote the other way, therefore I won't vote because it'll be neutralized. No, don't start arguing like that.

I mean, the Greeks and the Australians have compulsory voting for everybody. Just don't discuss it. Everybody's going to vote, just done. And so here, we don't have that, but I just say, vote. Don't argue with yourself about whether it's going to make sense or not make sense or it's a waste of time. Just do it. It's like, I mean, you take out your blue box. Why can't you vote?

I mean, just do it. So I think we have certain things as individuals where we have some ability to contribute. It might be very modest, but we do what's expected of us as citizens on this planet for whatever reason. The way in which we then go about life, it's not just about voting. It's not just about recycling. It's not just about not littering. It might be about not using pesticides in our backyard. It might be about, you know, not buying, you know, that antifreeze for our car or, you know, windshield wiper fluid because it's got forever chemicals in it or something.

But maybe it's about looking at, you know, your driveway and the street and the storm drain. Where's that going? And maybe you start to look around you and you realize, hey, I'm actually, you know, there's a forest over there, there's a city park here, there is there a hiking trail there, and you start making the connections between your home, your backyard, you know, the watershed, the watershed around you. And again, you don't have to do anything, but I would say you really have to take care of yourself. You have to do the basic individual things that you're responsible to as a citizen on this little planet. And that's maybe more than some people think, but they really should be. That's our duty to humankind or to the planet. Number one.

Number two, if you want to get involved at a club or a watershed watch or salmon streamkeepers or a conservation group that pulls out invasive weeds, absolutely you can or you could say I'd rather just sit in my backyard and grow some you know some you know some uh salmon berry bushes or or you know go down and catch salmon and smoke to them in a little smokehouse I mean there's different things that we many of us do we can we can choose that but I'd say there's a core element of responsibility there's a core thing that we simply have to check off the boxes not argue with ourselves over and then next level becomes easier, which is how can I contribute? And then you'll see that you actually

can affect positive change by contributing. We don't hunt in British Columbia for big whales anymore. It's been, well, since 1962 or so when we stopped industrial whaling, and the whales are coming back. You know, internationally too, most countries don't whale anymore. The big whales are coming back. It took about 100 years for some of the really big whales. That was a decision that was made communally on the part of individual countries and individuals

and scientists and governments and then everybody's doing it. And all of a sudden we got teamwork. And the great whales are coming back. I mean, that's a magnificent conservation success. And in my world, the world of nasty chemicals, there are a lot of nasty chemicals that are dropping dramatically in the environment.

Why are they dropping? because the science showed they're harmful and they're increasing. Governments opted to get rid of them and to ban them and industry stopped making them and trading them. And also, the levels of dropping. And for some of these things like DDT and PCBs, they've been dropping for 50 years, that's good news,

not just because those chemicals in the environment are going down. It means the chemicals in our salmon are going down. And they're going way down, like 5, 10, 15-fold lower today than they were in 1975. So, difficult decisions can be made through a few pointy sticks and carrots and so forth by scientists and certain brave decision makers and some sectors in industry. And we do see positive change. We do see positive change on a number of fronts.

We often forget that. We often forget to tell the stories about the positive outcomes of these things. Pulp mills, they don't use liquid chlorine anymore, which means they don't produce dioxins and furoxins the most toxic chemicals humans make. And so we've seen a 95% reduction in the levels of dioxins and fureants around pulp mills in British Columbia. That's good news because that stuff was nasty. It was getting into crabs and shellfish and all sorts of things. It's good news.

So we can develop a good news orientation, but it takes a good individual working at home, taking care of himself herself, taking care of their homestead, making the right consumer choices, watching what they put down the sink or the toilet, maybe taking care of the backyard, doing a nice little bit of gardening, connecting in with whatever you're producing,

carrots, lakes, beets, salmon berries, going down to the dock or, you know, steveston, and looking at what the fishermen are bringing in, understanding their connection to the ocean, going up into the headwaters of your local watershed, and understanding where you're drinking water is coming from and being thankful for those things. And then access to those things and the health of those things,

the availability of those things. And then I think an individual is better placed to understand his or her role in the world and the positive opportunities for change that that person can bring to the table. That is inspirational, particularly the idea that people, have duties. It's the one disappointment I have in regards to my law degree, which was that

that area, the idea that you have rights, which people love to talk about, that comes with responsibilities, that that comes with an onus on the individual. That seems like the part that we didn't cover as much through my legal education and even prior to that going to university was it was stressed that we have rights and that the government owes us these rights. But the idea that you as a person have responsibilities to your community, to be a good citizen, to play a good role, that seems like it was less stressed. And I think that that's why I was sort of interested in how it affected you to kind of join a community of people that have like duty and responsibility instilled in them, because that's the challenge that I see is that

we don't seem to stress that enough, that it's not, do you want to vote today or do you not want to vote today. It's no, people died for your right to have a vote, and you need to go exercise that because that was a moment in our history, in human history, that was a big deal. It was not a small accomplishment. And when you hear military historians talk about how close the war was to, like, giving up, like, Britain and England and moving to Canada and trying to continue World War II from Canada. Instead, you realize how close we were to losing these rights that we sort of take for granted now and I think the responsibility move

is inspirational to young people. It's something in my undergrad I was super like I don't matter what is my viewpoints matter and then hearing people say no you have a responsibility to do the best you can in this class your peers

if you ask the best question your peers are all going to do better because now they have a viewpoint they didn't consider or like you make a difference in this classroom and I think it's inspirational What animals stand out to you?

What is there like a, is it the blue whale that's the biggest whale ever? Is there anything that you've seen over your years that you're just like, how am I so lucky to see this? Like things that you that stood out to you or is it like a teeny tiny fish that stood out to you? What has stood out to you in your career? Wow, that's a super difficult one. I would say within my home, I'd say, cat. Cats, cats, you know, a pet, you know, the domesticated cat, because it is a wild animal that chose to hunker down with us and the way in which they interact with us, the house and the outside world, I just find intrinsically interesting because they're really blending the positives of the inside domestic world that you create and the positives of the outside world that they love. And they, so I like cats.

I think they can give a few lessons in things. And I'm sure their dogs do the same in different ways for others. And then in the natural world, boy, I'm in awe just about any time I run into a wild animal, whether it's here or in another country. Because what's so nifty about running into a wild animal is you realize that it is basically co-designed with the environment in which we find it. It's you know, if you go down, you watch

primates, you know, monkeys in Costa Rica or something swinging around. You go, wow, look at those howler monkeys. Oh, deforestation is a real problem because they're highways in the trees. So they swing around and they're perfectly comfortable up there on the tree canopy

but they're not very good on land. You know, down when the trees are removed. diddo here where we see logging it's completely changed habitat for many species whether it's big raptors or marmots or bears

it completely changes things so when I run into an animal whether it's a bear here in Canada super imposing and intimidating because you know that if they so choose they can they can basically kill you or eat you,

to the remarkable, you know, sockeye salmon that are spanning freshwater in marine environments and back and finding the stream they were hatched into as a young individual. There are just so many things. I can't, I can't, I don't think I can begin to say that's my favorite or that's really cool. I just so many different species.

mammals, reptiles, marine mammals, migratory birds, monarch butterflies that migrate from Central Canada down to Mexico to one valley in Mexico and back again. You know, Mother Nature's got quite an arsenal of incredible stories and species. I'd be hard-pressed. Is there any one that you saw that you never thought you'd be able to see? Like I think of like whales as one where it's like, it's just they're like, from our understanding they're incredibly intelligent they have languages we don't understand um they

they travel vast distances um killer whales are not known to harm humans at all even though they're the apex predator within their space so you could see a world where like well they're the apex why don't they try and harm humans and the only times that of course that we are aware of for sure is like within captivity and so is there anything that stood out to you over your travels over your ocean journeys where you're like, I just didn't expect to see dolphins or I just didn't expect to come across this creature? Oh, I think probably for people here applying the coastal waters on BC ferries, just running into either killer whales or humpback whales or one time to Nanaimo, probably 4,000 Pacific white-sided dolphins that went right under the ship and

around the ship, it was surrounded, surrounded by thousands of these incredible creatures jumping and so transiting the area. So lots of wonderful experiences. I think probably the most intellectually challenging experiences were times when I ran into species that were extremely vulnerable or extremely impacted. And I remember when I was doing my PhD in the Netherlands, we We had a, the seal rehabilitation center that sponsored my research, sent me down to Mauritania in West Africa and Morocco to work with setting up a research, rehabilitation and education program for one of the world's most endangered mammals. That was the Mediterranean monk seal.

There's only a few hundred of them left in the planet. There are three monk seals. They're all tropical around the equator. Mediterranean monk seal, so there's probably 600 individuals. The Caribbean monk seal, extinct, and the Hawaiian monk seal, probably 900 left. So the number has been fluctuating, but generally declining. And so went down to Mauritania, and there was a remnant population that had not been hunted and harvested over the thousands of years.

years that humankind have been hunting these beach-loving seals. And the remnant population was surrounded by mines, sea mines, bombs, explosives that were floating around the ocean because of the war between Morocco and Mauritania in the former Spanish Sahara. So the remnant population was living in caves along this area. And it was protected by mines. ships and boats couldn't come near as protected by landmines so vehicles couldn't come near. And we went there, the United Nations was there, and we went along a mine cleared roadway

through the sands and sand dunes and lands to an area. And there was one Mediterranean Monksiel I saw swimming in the surf there. It's the only time I ever saw one. But for me, getting to see one of the world's top ten most endangered mammals, in the wild, surrounded by mines on land and at sea, in a way that didn't harm them, but protected them. And I had to take some personal risk because one of the biologists working previously on a project

was killed by an explosion because of the military conflict. And so just realizing how difficult was to get to this spot, see that rare creature, and understand the precarious, nature of its existence just kind of an intersection of conservation, human history, military

history, personal experience and science kind of all mixed up into an interesting experience for me. Yeah, I find that aspect of nature so interesting that when we make a mistake, because I think it was the oil spill, the BP oil spill

where we were basically I guess smacking the back of our heads being like, how did this happen? How did we cause such harm? But from my understanding, with work by Paul Stametz, who's a mycologist, they're working on, like, mycelium trying to, and like different types of mushrooms, trying to address the oil, because I guess this type of mushroom likes to eat oil or something crazy like that. But they also saw, since they basically said nobody can go within this radius, that the wildlife actually started to come back in that area. And I think that's the same with Chernobyl, that they're starting to see, like,

rise in animals and it's like you just didn't expect you didn't see that when coming that nature is sometimes more resilient than we like we often view ourselves as like we need to fix if nobody if we don't fix it nobody's going to fix it but we kind of sometimes forget the nature can play a role like with minds like you you don't think that that's going to be the thing that protects them but it actually protected them from from us yeah absolutely and I think to a large degree the solutions to conservation problems like the southern resident killer whales don't necessarily lie in us doing more. But sometimes the successful outcomes are contingent upon us doing less, i.e. making less

noise, disturbing them less, polluting less. So for me, when I look at the needs of something like a killer whale that has large habitat needs, it's a very specialized feeder, and has important communications. requirements with its kin, it's about us stepping back, giving them some space, letting them listen and echo locate for their food and talk to their relatives

within their pods or outside of their pods, etc. So exactly. Sometimes we need ingenuity to solve things and become activist and apply ourselves. And other times we have to just, as you put it, just step back. and let Mother Nature kind of manage that recovery or that species or that habitat. Yeah, you worked with the Vancouver Aquarium, I believe.

I'm interested in your thoughts on that because I think this is a good example of, like, it's an imperfect model, but there's benefits to it. The proponents of aquariums often argue that, like, would they take in animals and creatures from the wild that are in danger or in harm's way or weren't going to make it otherwise? We take them in, we raise them. Hopefully we release them back into the wild. but I've heard from, I don't know if you know who Paul Demers is, but he worked at not SeaWorld, it's in Ontario, or it's in the east, and he was working with an animal

and they weren't treating it right by his expectations, and so he ended up leaving and then got into a lawsuit with them. I'm just interested in your thoughts on the model, because I think zoos particularly are under a lot of scrutiny right now. Aquariums have been over the years that fluctuates. I'm just interested in your philosophical views on aquariums and your work there. Well, I think, to be clear, there are probably a lot of bad aquariums and bad zoos around the world, and there are some good ones.

And by that, I mean, you know, there is, I've seen some atrocious ones. I was in Asia. I won't mention the country. And I was walking along this beautiful stretch of beach. It was semi-tropical, and there was a small building with no windows. And it said aquarium on it. And it said, today at 5 o'clock, come join us for our dolphin and monkey show. Oh, no.

And they had dolphin and monkeys train so the monkey would actually ride on the back of this dolphin. It was just kind of weird and surreal. So I think there are lots of bad examples. And nobody likes those. I mean, it's bad for the animals. It's bad for all of us, et cetera. I think zoos and aquariums have played important roles in the past in terms of informing the public or scientists or conservation about certain issues.

You know, I think that there is a potential role for rescue and rehabilitation for a lot of things. I think that there are certain species that do very poorly in zoos and aquariums. Think about polar bears in captivity. do not do well. Think about killer whales, they do not do well. Other species seem to do just fine. So I think, you know, there's there's the prospects of a good aquarium doing the right thing and having the right mix of within their collection as long as they're meeting the needs of that species or those individuals and they're supporting them, etc. Where I guess I get a little

frustrated is where a certain aquarium might have a species that is, or an individual that's 30 or 40 or 50 years old, and all of a sudden animal rights group saying, free it. Well, number one, the federal government isn't going to let you do that because how do you do that? You freed an animal that was born in captivity or, you know, brought in the captivity a long, long time ago. And if you release it, it may not be able to survive or it might actually introduce a disease into a wild population that you're trying to protect. So I think there are certain things that are a little bit confused by the arguments in the, in the media, et cetera.

Keiko was a good example, the killer whale that was, was trained for release from the United States, and they built an enclosure in Iceland. They raised $48 million U.S. They trained it to be released. He had a skin disease. He had not very many teeth. He refused to eat living fish. They barely got him to eat living fish.

And finally, they ran out of money and just opened the gates and leave. And he was dead within, I think it was eight months or less. He was just hanging out different docks and boats and communities. So, you know, if you simply decide to free an animal, there's a real risk to the receiving environment and to that individual. But if you say, hey, we're learning, we're shifting, we're not going to capture or breed new animals and so forth. And we're going to take care of this one and we're going to acknowledge that, you know, when this one dies of old age, hopefully, we're moving on. You know, I think there's something to be said about slow, steady, reflective, you know, you can't just, I'd hate to see an individual within an aquarium or zoo fall victim to. internet flavors of the month kind of thing. And those do happen. And we've got to watch out that

we don't victimize the animals we really love and we respect. We need to make a plan and talk about it and move the dial on what is the best practice for a zoo or an aquarium. What is appropriate? What is not appropriate? Can we do better? And as long as we're all engaging in that conversation, then I think we're going to be going in the right direction. But it's hard to simply, modify the mix of species in aquarium when it costs tens of millions of dollars to build the tanks. So resources become a very challenging budgetary conversation when one is trying to shift the design of a facility, for example. But I think there's always room for improvement when it comes to animal care and the ethics of maintaining anything in captivity.

Yeah, I think that that's one of the things is like whales stand out to us so much and so do dolphins because we see them as so intelligent and it's interesting to see perhaps humans development over we perhaps previously have looked okay so indigenous people definitely look at animals as if they're like equal to them and interviewing people like Eddie Gardner he describes bugs as like the ones that crawl rather than bugs and he describes like the ones that swim and like it sounds less derogatory and um thinking of people People like Susan Simmerd, who works at UBC, who talks about how, like, trees are able to communicate with each other. It seems like we're at this time right now where we're realizing that the nature around us is far more intelligent than maybe we once realized or than we once thought.

And dolphins and whales seem to be leading the way on that because we go like, is it their prefrontal cortex is like it's larger than ours. And they communicate in the language we don't understand. is there any facts about animals that have just kind of like taking you back? Because the one about trees communicating with each other, I was like, oh, I just need to throw away my preconceptions about how smart I am or where I am on this pecking order when you start to learn those things and realizing that birds can migrate from one end of the planet to the other and they know where to go. Fish are kind of the same way.

It's like something is going on here and I'm not in charge of how complex this ecosystem is. Has that ever happened to you where you're like, oh, I thought I knew a lot about this, and this just blew my mind. Gosh, I don't, I can't, nothing crops to mind right now. But I think the point is that every time I'm out, you know, fully immersed in nature, I have a tendency to listen, look, and be open and aware to the environment in ways that I might not. normally do it home or in a city. And it just strikes me that, you know,

the collection of individuals that I'll see, whether it's a squirrel or a bear or a coyote or a fish, and the way in which they're, they're, you know, intricate part of their habitat or the ecosystem that I'm entering, it just humbles me to sort of imagine that that species has been here for a long time, is reproducing, is feeding, is escaping predation, is, is interacting with its food supply and other individuals in ways that are completely mysterious to me. So for me,

it's, there's, I can't think of any one particular example now, but lots of examples of experiences where I've interacted with an individual, we've come face to face and it's like, or who's going to win or who are you, or what are you, or are you a threat? So I've had Kate, where bears have come face to face with bears and they've gone the other direction. I've had circumstances where bears have stood their own right beside me. I had one time when I was chased for 200 meters by a black bear at my heels. So there's that fighter flight thing that you both as predators are deploying to survive in that interactive element. I've had cases, I've worked a lot with seals and sea lions.

I remember one funny time. I was on Sable Island, Nova Scotia. Graveyard of the Atlantic is 200 kilometers east of Halifax. Spectacular place. 600 wild horses that have been there for hundreds of years. Some harbor seals that breed there and tens of thousands of gray seals. And we're studying harbor seals. I was there for several field seasons.

Really nifty. And we're on these ATVs. And one time I decided to go down to one of the spits. This is the confluence of the Labrador current in the Gulf Stream. So you have the spits at each end of the island. It's like a wispy, narrow crescent of a moon. Tend to be simmering and frothing and foaming because of the two big major currents that meet and actually form the island, which is all sand. and I went down on my own on one of these ATPs and I stopped and I was looking at

you know all these gray seals in the water and then I'm there just sitting there quietly it's a little bit foggy and I'm there's no nothing else on this bit right now there's gray seals offshore in the water and I look south across the island so it's flat, no dunes in the way, I'm looking about 600 meters away. What is that? I'm seeing this little figure and it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. I realize it's a gray seal. He's coming straight for me from hundreds of meters away and then he's coming for me and I'm going, what do I do? And he starts circling me and snapping at the top. the ATV, and I had to, I was, he was basically chasing me around the ATV and finally had to just

start it up and get out of there. But for me, it was just one of those perplexing interactive experiences with an animal, a gray seal, a big seal, who was snarling and snapping at me, but he clearly saw me from so far away and he made the decision, I'm going after that for whatever reason. So there are these confusing interactions or experiences you get with another animal or mother nature. And they're sometimes funny. They're sometimes dangerous. But I think they're always humbling because they remind you that, you know what, I'm mortal and I'm here and I'm alone. And there are times when I'm going to have an experience with a big thing or a small thing or a thing with fangs or a thing with talons. And it's all part of it.

of that adventure with Mother Nature. I think that we need more of that. I think light pollution is probably the biggest problem I see for people because you forget that we're a ball hurtling through space and that you have no control over whether a meteor hits us or not or if a volcano goes off. It's just a humbling to look up and go, wow, this is what my ancestors would have saw.

Whoever your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, they would have all seen something very similar. and you don't control this little planet. You're just a participant. You get 80, maybe 100 years to participate and to pass on your knowledge and your wisdom to your family members and to leave a legacy of positivity, to be remembered hopefully for the good. And so there's just small opportunities. And so I'm interested also to understand you work with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

I think I got that right. Can you tell us about how you got started with them and the projects you're working on? Because I think you're working on a few really interesting apps or something in that area. Yeah. So Rain Coast Conservation Foundation was set up in the early 1990s in British Columbia. And it was very, very focused as a conservation NGO on protecting, you know, charismatic predators and wildlife in the Central Coast area of British Columbia. So they're very concerned about trophy hunting, where there's. no consumption of the animal. They're very concerned about the grizzly bear hunt. They are

very concerned about salmon, very interested in the coastal wolves, which have proven to be very, very interesting animals with distinct populations and cultures and feeding ecologies. And I think as an organization, it's one of the few that I think embodies that land-to-sea connection and brings it together into one story. And that's, to me, something that is profoundly lacking in Canada or the states or elsewhere. It's that idea that, you know, it's not just about land. It's not just about the ocean. It's about what happens between the two.

We have the coastal. We have the intertidal. We have the estuaries. We have the Enadermith's fish going back and forth between that sort of, you know, freshwater brackish and marine zone and back. We have grizzly bears that, you know, coastal grizzly bears or grizzly bears or grizzly bears with access to salmon, they're far more productive

than their interior counterparts. They have two to three cubs instead of one or two cubs. They are bigger. They're vulnerable when it's a bad salmon year, so they'll suffer, maybe even starve when it's a bad salmon year. So these are grizzly bears that are really

connected to the ocean, which is super interesting. And then we've got wolves, de-do, wolves that are going around and eating sometimes seal pups, crabs, shellfish, salmon. So we've got wolves that are connected to the ocean. We tend to think of both wolves and grizzly bears as terrestrial predators. So Raincoast was, to me, a conservation organization that tapped into this really marvelous niche, this storytelling, this conservation niche, this interplay between land and sea that is

undervalued, under understood, underappreciated, and under managed or poorly managed. We have to put our cities on the shoreline and we dump wastewater into the ocean. And we protect the city and the health of its inhabitants and the water and the food for us, but often to the detriment of what's immediately beside us in coastal waters, et cetera. So Raincoast was very, very strong on working with indigenous communities in the Central Coast area to better understand and protect some of these predators and iconic species. And to understand the role that habitat and watersheds played in supporting a vibrant abundance of salmon and wildlife for future generations. So Raincoast had been around a long time.

They've done lots of creative science, very keen on science. They want to be armed and dangerous when it comes to, you know, providing advice or commentary. And they're working a lot more in the South Coast now. They're working on southern resident killer whales. They're working on oil spill, sort of mitigation. They're working on habitat restoration in the Fraser Estuary. Some interesting work there, putting breaks through the jetties that allow Chinook salmon and other salmonds to move more freely into the habitat that they would have. formerly used, but it's been cut off by all this, uh, this rock, uh, and berms that have been

created. So, um, so that's a practical, uh, element that they're newly embarked on. And, um, and now the program that I've been designing and setting up is one called healthy waters. And it's really about my expertise. So what can I do to fill a void, to, to fill a gap and to, to provide, uh, expertise or support for an issue that I understand where I can advise, support, carry out, or share my expertise in ways that builds capacity to protect water from pollution, whether it's freshwater or marine water. And so healthy waters is being designed to roll out a community-oriented water pollution monitoring program. Monitoring sounds like, oh, you're not doing anything. You're measuring contaminants of water.

Yes, but in those measurements, in those data, when done well, we get power. We get the power to inform on what priorities are. We get the power to understand what the sources are, and we get the power to innovate around how we can prevent pollution or mitigate that pollutant, whether it's polyester fibers, whether it's oil, whether it's pesticides, whether it's insecticides, whether it's nutrients, metals, you name it, pharmaceuticals. So lots of different things that the data will inform. And our desire is to basically look at water in all of its forms from the headwaters up in source water regions,

the upper valleys and mountain, mount peaks and watersheds down into communities looking at tap water because we in our homes are borrowing water from fish habitat. And then we're releasing it back through effluent into streams, rivers, lakes, and the ocean. So, tracking the water down into the ocean so that then we can monitor water in a number of key watersheds and understand what the issues are, what the emerging concerns are, and what we can do to protect waterways, watersheds for salmon, for whales, and for people. How can people support this? This sounds like brilliant work.

Is there like, I'm sure they have like a donation button? Is there a way people can support the work that you're doing in regards to this? Well, there is. It's expensive work because analyzing water in the right way means doing the Cadillac approach or the Mercedes approach, which means a single sample of water might cost $4,000 to measure all the contaminants that we're interested in. But I'm looking at ways to design a template that informs using the high resolution, high value, high cost analysis, but not all the time in certain locations at certain times, a certain frequency that's more affordable. We're working on the design, but I'm not cementing the design just yet, because what we're trying to do is engage very intimately with indigenous communities, municipalities, indigenous organizations, other custodians of the water conversation, because I don't want to simply design the Western science model for healthy waters and go out and apply it. Because, number one, I don't think people will be terribly interested in it. Number two, I don't think it'll garner as much traction. I don't think it will be as valuable because we won't be engaging and sharing from the get-go. What I'd love is to have this rolled out in a way whereby the design helps to inform and meet the needs of the communities that are in a certain watershed

and are interested in learning and training and acting on those concerns. So we're trying to secure federal resources to support this to get a core operation up and running. Obviously, yes, as a non-profit, there is a donation button on our Healthy Waters website at Arenko's Conservation Foundation. We'd be delighted to have all donations, small and large. To me, it's part of the team, but I would love to see governments of all levels and colors, industry foundations, individuals, communities, to get involved in any way, shape, or form. So hopefully we'll have good traction over the next.

year or so to get this up and running. And I think, you know, to be practical, it will probably focus on a few select watersheds where there's a good community of engaged citizens that are looking for a role, for looking to help, looking to get involved and has a sense of valuation of that water in that area. And that's something that will make it a lot easier for me to get a successful Healthy Water's program up and running. Yeah, is to have the good partners that believe in. the work that you almost bring in and like build capacity with so that they're champions for

the project as well because if it's just a top down approach, one of the challenges you're going to face is continuing that momentum because maybe the first day they're super interested, but six months a year, five years, ten years, that loses momentum where if there's early buy-in and an understanding and they can incorporate and they can see the value, then their passion and their commitment grows over time rather than dissipates. I think that's a really good strategy. I'm interested to know, like, what was it like to choose Raincoast? Or, like, do you have different chapters of your life where you've been closer to perhaps working with governments? Now you've worked with aquariums, which you could argue maybe pseudo-cooperation, and now you're

in the NGO kind of area. And you also work as a professor and an educator. Is there any aspect of that that stands out to you or that you took a lot from? Is this the most exciting time in your career, like what kind of is the highlights of the work that you've done? Well, I didn't always dream of shifting careers in the middle of things, but I worked very loyally and proudly for the federal government, and I saw where my science was valuable and helped. But in the end, the previous color of federal government axed my national program and 20,000 civil servants. That was the prime Mr. Harper. So there was a big cleaning of house, notably science staff.

And so that was a bit of a slap on the face. It wasn't enjoyable. I thought it was a disgrace to the Canadian people because it meant that we were losing national capacity to look at pollution in the ocean, completely, completely axed. And then moved over to the Vancouver Aquarium. It's a non-profit, and that was ocean-wise conservation

Association. So that was a really interesting time because I was there for seven and a half years because I was able to set up a new capacity to continue what I was doing. I worked with industry more closely as well as governments. It was a really dynamic time. But unfortunately with COVID, things changed and our research establishment was axed. And things changed. And so I faced another decision. Raincoast was an NGO I'd long respected and supported and admired. And they're a fantastic, nimble, creative, outside the box, conservation science powerhouse.

And so I thought, well, you know, that'll allow me to continue with science, but maybe with more of a community orientation, whereby, you know, I might be able to still publish and mentor students and so forth. But I'll also hopefully create some value-added capacity by training and engaging with different communities so that they can take on some of my mantra and expertise, but combine it in ways that suit the needs of their management or their watershed approach to clean water. And so that's where I find myself. I made the decision. They were delighted to work with me on getting this started. And we're just busy fundraising now and continuing that path forward towards designing or co-designing something that provides the best of all possible worlds.

Strong Western science, strong indigenous knowledge and sharing and input from elders and councils and staff and students. and then, you know, best practices, opportunities with municipalities, wastewater treatment plant operators, industry, and all of the sectors that might be polluting, but we don't know it right now because nobody's looking. Yeah, that is incredible. I'm interested to just understand you're now in this point where you're sharing your passion with others, whether it's through universities or whether it's through rain coast. what has that sort of experience meant to you to be able to, like you speak so eloquently, very thoughtfully, it's clear that you're an expert and you're passionate about acting in the best interest of everybody. What has that been like to sort of pass on these really strong high quality values to other students and to perhaps help inspire the next generation, the next group of people to take up the work that you've started to save the planet? Well, I've been, I've been, most of my work with university students has been with a master's and Ph.D. students. And I was a happy supervisor for probably 40 graduate students that are now off and running, working with governments, provincial governments,

federal government, NGOs, and consulting. And so I guess I see that as, a practical outcome whereby my role and my work did help in the training of expertise in their respective areas and in the general area of environmental sciences. I'd say my biggest disappointment or perhaps failure was not in being more successful in supporting indigenous students along the way. I think there was always a desire and an ambition to work with indigenous students, but there were big challenges, lack of capacity, some socioeconomic hurdles within communities, often the communities are smaller. I think to a degree, perhaps as a white scientist, I was viewed as not to be trusted or something.

There are those sorts of elements, but, you know, I've learned a lot, and we did a lot. lot of work with traditional seafoods on Vancouver Island. I just had such incredible experiences, notably with some elders. And I, you know, some of my most engaging, endearing moments were times laughing at meal time time in small communities where, gosh, life was hard, but, you know, around a meal and a shared experience and a joke, you broke through the barriers. And anyway, just to say, put it up there, that I never quite figured out the recipe for really good practical success with some indigenous students.

And I regret that to a degree. I certainly, you know, notice the way in which, oh, the baggage of history and the times of history have made that for a difficult relationship and path. And I guess with healthy waters now, I'm trying to say, okay, look, you know, it's not about me and a student or about a student and me. It's about the topic that we want to share and that we want to protect or we want to value or understand. It's about clean water or a healthy watershed or it's about a bun, healthy salmon for us to consume. And so I'm hoping that with healthy waters, there might be a little bit more runway, a little bit more opportunity for that reconciliation. pathway whereby we can

champion the combined collective aspirations and needs of all of our communities and all of our people and in doing so deliver capacity and hopefully clean water to those salmon, whale

and people constituencies that I strive to do right now. That is beautiful and I think it shows a level of courage and it builds trust, I think, when people are able to admit where they would have liked to have seen more progress or make more of a difference because, as other guests have said, nobody's

perfect. I'm not trying to say that. But I think that that humility and that eagerness to make that difference, it's inspiring and it goes to the path that other people can follow. And I think that that's what you set for people. What would you say to people who are like, I've heard this, now I'm terrified. What do I do? How do I make the difference? Do you recommend just supporting raincoast. Do you recommend any stores where people can buy better clothing that's going to have less of a deleterious effect on the environment? Is there anything that you recommend people can start to do starting today

that they can make a better difference? That's a great one. I'd say go for a walk. Go for a walk today. Clear your head. If this is evoking anything in your mind, then go for walk. Preferably in an area that you like that's aesthetically pleasing. It smells good.

The tree blossoms are out or up. it's up in the forest and reconnect with yourself and with nature or invest in reconnecting with yourself and with nature um i think you know in the the bustle of the modern world it it's easy to to forget you know the the you know the redwing starlings that are making their their their songs and making their presence known in the spring in wetlands or um or the blow of of whales as they swim by it's easy to forget the sounds the presence the experience. And I'd say, just reconnect.

And that, you know, if you close your eyes, you know, you're sitting on a peat moss, some peat moss covered rocks in the middle of the forest. Maybe it's a clearing. Maybe it's a sunny day. That would be nice. And just close your eyes and go, who am I? You know, there's a lot of crap going on out there. There's a lot of noise in the Internet and politics and international security.

It's, you know, it's a little bit daunting. So, who am I? What am I thankful for? Who am I thankful for? What do I value? And where do I belong? You know, my community and my watershed. And that's where one can start to explore those allegiances to your obligations as a citizen,

as a homeowner or as a resident, and then a community and then so forth. So, I don't know. I think, yeah, I'd say invest in reconnecting. I think I could do a better job reconnecting or connecting with the ocean. You can never have enough ocean or stream or forest or mountain. I mean, so, yeah. That is beautiful. Have you at all, and I'm sure you have,

but have you thought it all about starting a podcast or a YouTube channel or some way of getting your knowledge, your expertise, out to the broader public, because one thing you mentioned previously was that there are successes throughout our history, whether it's like the ozone layer, whether it's the Accords that you mentioned previous, the, oh, I'm going to forget them, the Stockholm Accords, there have been these successes, but they don't seem, I hear a lot about we need to do X. And then we do X and we don't really talk about it anymore. Like, for example, within Chilawak, we just signed an agreement that we will no longer use single-use plastics.

And so we're paying for our bags now, our straws, all those things. And people are a little bit frustrated, but we can see that longer-term impact. And I think, according to the mayor, he was like, from everything we heard, we polled everyone, and they want to be, Chilliwack wants to be a leader in this. They don't want to be a follower. And so we're doing the best we can. But, again, it doesn't seem like there's that message of inspiration that, like, wow, look at what we accomplished.

Now everybody's like, now I have to pay for my bags. It's like, well, we need to inspire that this is a really good thing and that, yes, you're paying, but you're also contributing, perhaps, in some small way, to saving the planet. And that 15 cents is you're saving the planet spending or something like that. So have you ever thought about perhaps taking it down this route, sharing your passion so it can reach a broader audience and they can learn about the issues, but also some of the successes? I might have to take you up on that idea, but maybe you can brief me technically on what the opportunities look like for that. I'd love to think about that. And I think, you know, I mean,

the question, it strikes a little bit of accord insofar as I've always, you know, been very loyal to the scientific method with an acknowledgement that it's good at this and it's not so good at that. And it has a role here, but not there. And with that mindset that it's not the only belief system or way that we look at the world. It's a toolbox that we can apply. So that's where the indigenous knowledge becomes, it adds value to the Western scientific method when we're trying to deal with problems around environmental management. And so as I get sort of older, I sort of say, well, what's missing or what am I missing? Or how can I, you know, what has been the weak link in what I've been trying to do? And yeah, I mean, I've done a fair bit on, in public media.

And I find that public is far more intelligent than the Internet or media companies like to think. And very engaging and engaged when you don't patronize. You know, you speak to them as your friends and colleagues and peers. And you provide a meaningful way of expressing yourself. So I think there's always good value and a good opportunity for experts or scientists to show. share their wisdom or their expertise in different ways that, that, you know, add value to that science-based decision-making, as we like to call it. So, yeah. Yeah, I just think of like, I love this medium of communication because for me, I had to travel a lot. And so that's where the

interest in podcast came from. But then also recognizing that this is like, I come from an oral culture and so verbal communication i've always just enjoyed more i enjoy um like if when during the pandemic when professors would release like uh audio recordings of their lectures i loved that because i could go for a walk could be out in nature um i could be on my drive and i could be hearing these ideas from somebody who cares from somebody who this is important to and when you read an article whether it's like by like a news organization it often has a catchy headline and then you get like a sentence or two sentences of like actually what you think and then the rest is all piecing together kind of the story and I think that we miss so much of the person behind the scenes and with certain

people as I said they're too political it's hard to kind of trust the information but you do such an amazing job of being authentic of saying this is what could be done better here here and here none of them are perfect none of them are 100% the problem and I think that that's that's where that respect for the listener comes in. That's where the respect for people's intelligence comes in because when we start to look at the United States model that they have one team that thinks this way and another team that thinks that way, it's individuals like yourself who remind us that we all make mistakes. There's going to be mistakes on all sides and how do we move best forward and these are the steps that we're taking. I think that that sends a message of

inspiration and I love this medium as well because truck drivers love this and those are the people I think of as the people who, again, get kind of treated like, you don't know things. You drive vehicle, you don't think. We don't expect these things from you. And I think that that's, it's a, it's a travesty when that happens. And talking to people like Chris Koo, who's interested in birding, he used the term citizen scientist. And I hope that term becomes more common because that's what we need more of is people who go, yeah, maybe I didn't get an A in biology in grade 10, but I'm interested in the environment and I enjoy my walks or going out and camping and having these experiences. And so what can I do from here? And that term just, it gives a little

bit of life back to the idea that you're not defined by what happened in high school. And people like you make the topic accessible where people go, maybe I, maybe I do like science. Maybe I do like the scientific method. Maybe I do like learning about how I can make a difference in the world through this avenue. And I think that you're just, you're a really good person to that because you've been so engaging with how you speak, with how you kind of go through the different levels of analysis that you apply. And I think that that is a form of education for so many. Wouldn't it be kind of interesting you have a podcast where you had six or eight people around the table all from very different backgrounds, educational or occupational or

cultural? And you had one topic in the middle of the table. And you get kind of a round table, relaxed, impromptu discussion among the different parties. Because you say you can have truck driver, a scientist, you know, an activist, you know, lawyer, and then see where it goes. Absolutely. And realize that there are different ways of looking at things. And we get so kind of locked into our gear of like, this is how I see things because I'm a lawyer and I look at it from this analysis. And I think that that's where there's like a certain hubris that we miss out on things because for so long we've looked at indigenous information as less than.

But when you realize it's just a different perspective, it's just, it's adding to your toolbox of things you can pull from when you're trying to understand an issue. And that's perhaps the challenge that we've faced over the past hundred years is we've tried to take a technology lens to this or a business lens to it. And it's like, well, we need all of these so that we have a balanced approach and so that we don't destroy this beautiful world that we're living in. And I think that that would be so enjoyable to have you kind of ask people what they think of these issues. and your understanding of how people kind of divert to these teams, you'd be the perfect person to sort of choose who those people would you sit with to talk to because they'd be vetted by you. And I think that's the beauty of podcasts as well,

is that the person hosting it is sort of the vetting person to make sure that they're confident in the ideas. Right, right. Well, a small planet, we're hurtling through space at X thousands of miles an hour around this little sun of ours. A lot of people, a lot of cultures, and we have to survive ourselves if we're going to, you know, manage to have, you know, future generations. So the journey is, we are on the journey. It's a humbling one.

It's a challenging one. It's a stressful time, no matter what age and stage we're at. And, yeah, just trying to keep in touch with our inner workings and stay sane and reconnect and converse. You know, some of the incredible conversations I've had with so many people around the world about their opinions of politics or their views on Mother Nature or whatever. Let's just hope that we manage to keep the crazies in the room with us and engage them in ways that we both find exciting and stimulating, but also sanguine and warm. Absolutely. Can you tell people how they can connect with you on LinkedIn, Twitter, how they can connect with Raincoast Foundation? Well, they can connect to me by email peter at raincoast.org, quite simply. I think if you googled Peter Ross and Wales or Peter Ross and pollution, you probably find me fairly easily. there's a website at raincoast.org

where there's some resources around healthy waters and my program and where we're going. And, you know, Twitter, LinkedIn, I mean, they are what they are. Happy to have followers of any kind. And looking forward to over the next few months to communicating, sharing our findings from the flood water quality assessment

that we carried out. this winter. After the floods in the former Sumas Lake Basin, I assembled a team of First Nations and government and NGO communities to go out, sample the water, and carry out a very high quality pollution assessment. Really, we wanted to figure out, is the water, is this fish habitat contaminated with pharmaceuticals or pesticides or metals or hydrocarbons or tire chemicals or other compounds of concern and did the floods make it worse? Because this is fish habitat. And to our surprise, nobody was really looking. So there was a role for us to do that. And we'll be sharing those findings on our website and in the scientific literature over the next few months. And I think it'll be an opportunity

to refocus again or revalue our conversation around water and what's important to salmon, whales and people. I have learned so much in this conversation. I find you to be so inspirational. I think throughout this conversation, you've been consistent in your belief in people, in your belief in having a balanced perspective and looking at different viewpoints in keeping consistent on something that happened to you at five years old, to see where you are today and to realize that was the beginning point of somebody who would become an expert to make such a difference to highlight issues that weren't on anybody's radar and to continue to be doing that work today in regards to the river and our quality of food, the life around us, and to take

care of these ecosystems. I just think it's so motivational for people to hear from someone like yourself and go, wow, if this person can do it, I can definitely do something because this person's dedicated their lives to working and having a positive impact on others. And I just, I feel very blessed to have sit down with you today and to have heard your story, you're more than welcome to come back on if you want to share those findings and tell us more about what we can learn from this. If I can help in any way for you to start a podcast or share your knowledge and expertise, please let me know because it's been such an honor to sit down with you today. And we just did three hours and four minutes.

There you go. Well, thanks very much, Aaron. It's been a pleasure. It's been a bit of a long hall here on this podcast, but it's certainly nice and relaxing and engaging and delighted to be here. And hopefully we reach every one of your listeners and hopefully they realize overtly, implicitly, that we really need them. We value them. They're important. So I need them to stay sane, healthy, and connected with their watershed and the world around them because our little planet really needs them to be good people, good citizens, as they are, but to know that they're good and that they're available to help understand and protect our ecosystems. That is a beautiful way to end this. Thank you, Peter.

Thanks, sir.