The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 538: Does Wildlife Win or Lose With Renewable Energy?

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Brendan Runde, Janis Putelis, Ryan Callaghan, Brody Henderson, Spencer Neuharth, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics discussed: The musky manifesto; get tickets to our Live Tour and reserve your spot with Steve, Jani, Cal, and Clay for MeatEater Experiences; the controversy around spearing pike in MN; the very long halflife of mercury; scrubbing emissions; the BLM’s proposal for land to be developed for solar; all the places you can put solar panels; fishing around a wind turbine; 24 wind turbines currently producing power in the Atlantic Ocean; scour protection in the form of a a rubble donut; creating habitat; the aesthetics of wind farms; investigating the whale argument; impact of offshore wind on fish species; The Nature Conservancy making public lands; Runde TNC; turn your lights off and stop buying balloons; and more.   Outro song by Kenny Leiser Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We'll start it right where I said is it on. Great. I'm holding my hands right here. Who's the kid that A kid sent this in I call him a kid He's like Seth's age Called the Muskie Manifesto Observer number 5

September 18th 2023 The Muskie dossier A lot of mail comes in I don't know how this email got sent to me but I had it printed off which makes it seem more a thing. It's from a kid. It's a

manifesto full of photos and everything and it has to do with one of my favorite pet peeves which is the latest the new craze of the new musky craze like musky 2.0 This is something that you've made up no yes my as i was just saying before phil turned the machine on my maternal grandfather was a

musky fisherman now back then you just went fishing muskies now it's this whole thing of like they treat them like they're like like They treat them like they're like People treat them like they're like pets They got all these Strains they turn them out They're like it's rod and Reel guys that have gotten as Persnickety as

Catch and Release trout anglers They're all supposedly super Interested in the well-being of the fish but not so interesting that you wouldn't try to jab a big hook in its lip right a lot of the the recent uh enthusiasm comes from the fly fishing crowd no yes for muskies yes maybe totally you cast out a big lure you get close you do figure eight. They do that with a fly rod, right? You get mad if someone is mean to one. All I can say is if your new timeline is my entire life.

Yeah, I think what you're describing is like the last 25 years. No, this is an example of like, oh, this is something I just came into my universe, and now I'm interested in it, and so it's musky G. No, I'm not interested in it. In geologic time. This whole thing of like, oh, did you hear that in Dickerson Lake they released the quad four strain? Three quad four strains? Oh, I don't know about this. Me neither.

I'm making up the words. I guarantee there's a Dickerson Lake though. Brandon, are you aware of Muskie 2.0? Muskie 2.0. When was Muskie 1.0? I've caught one. The old days. 40s and 50s.

My maternal grandfather. And then there was a hiatus. Then there was a break and then it was just like fishing. And then all of a sudden it became like that the catch and release, the really precious persnickety, mean-spirited catch and release school of thought got moved away from brown trout and laid upon the muskie. Interesting. And now brown trout are being given a break? Are they, Cal? People are still mean to you if you're mean to a brown trout

Oh yeah and I guess there's a lot of top water action there's some similar baits just similar sizing folks going night time activities all that stuff going after both species Fish of a thousand casts

10,000 Muskie chat caught some muskies Caught one muskie in my life by accident after both species. Fish of a thousand casts. I caught 10,000. 10,000. 10,000. Muskie chat caught some muskies. Caught one muskie in my life by accident. Tiger muskie or muskie? No, muskie muskie. What strain?

I didn't ask it. Were you mean to it or did you turn it right out? It strained the line. Oh, that's good. I turned it loose. We took one photo. I was fishing a little spinner bait. Thought I might pick up a walleye in a little lake

in Wisconsin and thought I had a log. Wasn't a log. Fought it for about 25 minutes and my dad got it in a net. This is a little, we were in a little John boat. We'd rented for 25 bucks on this, this lake in Wisconsin. We just thought we were going to mess around. And we were messing around. Didn't think we'd catch a muskie.

And my picture's still on the wall of that place. Really? Oh yeah. How big was it? I don't know. 45 inches. We didn't have, we didn't think we'd catch a muskie and my picture's still on the wall of that place really oh yeah how big was it i don't know 45 inches we didn't have we didn't have a scale we didn't have a ruler it was a nice fish the angler you're hearing from is brendan rundy uh here from north carolina he's a marine scientist what did i say wrong his last name no no he took me aside. I'm sorry. He took me aside. Sorry. I stand corrected. I will keep my mouth shut. Think Run DMC. That's right. That's my uncle actually.

Oh, nice. Really? Come on. So now I'm real dubious about this supposed fish he's got on the wall. Yeah. Anyway. He's a marine scientist with the Nature Conservancy. And he's not going to put it this way,

but he's here to talk about what I suspect to be a little bit of a deal with the devil on alternative energy. Definitely not how I'm going to put it. No. Not a deal with the devil, but a fatal compromise.

Oh. A fatal compromise. Oh. A fatal compromise. You need a dun-dun-dun. Dun-dun-dun. But I don't want to lose sight of the muskie manifesto. I don't want to spend a ton of time on it. So this kid and his dad and his grandpa are out fishing muskies. Muska lunges.

And they catch a whopper. They catch the world record muskie by a good stretch. Well, let's hear how good of a stretch. You got to have details if you're talking world record, man. They catch it. This kid that rode in is observer number five. Okay. Out of some undetermined number of observers.

Okay. He even tells us the Linnaean name. Esauks Masquinengi. 72 pound muskie. All kinds of witnesses. They weigh it. They put it on a thing. Theyhandle it they're mean to it they rub all the slime off rub the slime off it turn it loose uh they go and they tell a guy

they go and tell a guy at the dock about it the And the guy says, man, the muskie community, I wouldn't even put it out there because the muskie community will come after you. Anyways, the IGFA kicks them off because they weighed the fish on a boat. A lot of technicalities with the IGFA. The muskie has to be weighed on dry land. So you have to kill the fish, basically.

Apparently. How are you going to pull that off with that size of a fish in a regular old boat? You have that cradle, and then you nurse the thing all the way to shore. He's got all these photos. He's got all of his evidence. But here's the problem. More stress. More stress.

Here's the fish here. But one thing he gets into is he gets in, it probably weighed more. Of course. Because they had to certify their scale after the fact. The scale they certified after the fact was dead-on balls at 50. But a 75-pound weight, when they certified their scale, a 75-pound weight rang in at 72.50. 72.5. weight when they certified their scale of 75 pound weight rang in at 72 50 72 5 kicked off and this is his story kicked off because they didn't weigh it

on land then he gets into a bunch of other really big musky that have been disqualified for all kinds of reasons our consensus for that rule is like since you aren't on a solid ground that. The boat sinks a little bit. The certified scale isn't as accurate. That's the reason. I don't know. But he's pointing out, imagine

if you'd killed that fish, what you would have heard about from the walleye, from the musky community, which apparently is a musky 2.0. But if you'd have killed it 50 years ago, nobody would have cared. Wouldn't have said nothing. Now it's catch, now it's like,

what are you supposed to do? Muskie 2.0. Well, just think about all the chipmunks and walleye and panfish that you'd save by killing that fish. It's a 2.0 catch 22. Yep. In the old days, we would have named this podcast that

2.0 catch 22 Those were title days 1.0 Now it's title days 2.0 What was your comment Yanni? Just think about all the chipmunks And smallmouth And panfish They would have saved by killing that fish.

Save a perch, kill a muskie. Don't forget ducklings. Ducklings. Yeah, little kid toes, stuff like that. There's that dude up in Canada three years ago that got smashed by a walleye in BC, tore his hand all up. Walleye or muskie?

Sorry, muskie. Yeah, muskie. Ouch. Yeah. Those walleye anglers just really perked up.'re like see we knew that fish was badass we knew it wasn't real lazy it's not just for eating so anyways buddy i hear you man you got bone your grandpa got boned by the igfa yeah that's a bummer i don't know what more to say about it. What do you want the IGFA to do about it, though? I don't know. Send the guy something?

Yeah. Consolation lure. Got to weigh it on land. It's a catch-22. What are you supposed to do? Rules are rules. Rules is rules. You kill it, and you're going to hear about it from the musky community.

2.0. You don't kill it, you can't be in the thing. Would you kill it? Yeah. I'd have made a video about it. You'd have cut it into steaks. I'd have got out my spearfishing knife right in the top of the head.

That'd do it. That'd have been like socket musky community. For context, I'd like to understand catch 21 and catch 23. That's a good point. We should come up with those. understand catch 21 and catch 23. That's a good point. We should come up with those. It's a real catch 23. Catch 23 exists.

Really? It's Michael Jordan's fishing boat. We've had a trivia question about that. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Never gets off. It's not a musky boat, though.

It's the word on the street. When are people hearing this, Corinne? First of April. Oh, hey, go check out. So we got our live tour coming up. Let me pull up the dates. not a musky bird on the street uh when are people hearing this corinne uh first of april oh hey go check out so we got our live tour coming up let me pull up the dates uh we got our live tour coming up um just to remind everybody where's my little thing april what is it 22nd or 23rd to may 5th. April 23rd, Mesa, Arizona. Bear with me here. April 24, San Diego, California. April 25, Anaheim, California. April 27, Sacramento, California. That winds up being a lot of California. April 29, Salt Lake City.

April 30, Boise, Idaho. May 1 Missoula, Montana Which is going to be a riot Hometown crowd Haven't spent many a night In that theater Above it

And in it And below it With your elevator operator buddy? Man, we used to catch pigeons below that thing. Scootin' Newton. I'm going to tell the story of Scootin' Newton. May 2nd, Spokane. May 4, Portland, Oregon.

Portland, Oregon, and slow gin fizz. If that ain't love, then tell me what is. Great tune. Uh-huh. You know it's a winner when Phil laughs. I know. This is about once a year. Oh, something tickled Phil's fancy the other day.

What was it? It was something Randall said. Yeah, the other day something caught Phil's ear. That was just a great Loretta Lynn impression. Uh-huh. here. That was just a great Loretta Lynn impression. May 5, Tacoma. Get your tickets. You can go to the actual, you can go to themeateater.com and you'll find a live

events thing and find it there. Or you can go to the specific theaters, but I didn't just name the specific theaters, which makes it very tricky. Go to your computer and type in Meteater Live'll find it come check us out it's gonna be a ton of fun it's a three-act show bring your wife you know i uh this is a little in the weeds but when we talk about reaching new audiences with the podcast if we's got to be like a Venn diagram of when Phil laughs, we're reaching new audience members. I don't know if those people would be around for a while.

They might pop in, see what's going on. Like you'd have to just catch one of them to have me walking by someone playing it. Like you left your car door open at the gas station and you left it on and some guy caught some guy like phil caught a little lick there all right yanni hit it quick hit uh if the live tour uh isn't enough for you uh you can come spend if that's not enough yanni for you three days with us uh and a new thing we're calling meat eater experiences um we're gonna have a lot more details to come but uh i've been instructed to do a quick hit here about this we're hosting a fishing trip in venice louisiana as well as a get some background on that one waterfowl hunt um

in kansas you want some background i'd like to give some background oh yeah please do uh last couple years when we've been down uh been going down spearfishing on spearfishing the oil rigs out of you know coastal louisiana and i fell into becoming friends with renee who owns cypress cove Marina. Mm-hmm. And we got to talking about something fun we'd like to do, and we're going to basically, not basically, we're going to take over Cypress Cove Marina. Yep.

So we're doing a thing where he's got a houseboat, condos, a hotel. We're getting all the spots. He's got a whole ton of charter captains that charter out of his marina and friends and stuff. So we're getting all the spots. He's got a whole ton of charter captains that charter out of his Marina and friends and stuff. So we're getting all the boats, all the lodging put together food plan. And then we're going to have meat eater crew guys there. And we're doing big fishing party guys and gals,

guys and gals, big fishing party in shore, offshore on guide boats, hanging out at night, cooking fish, cleaning fish. It's going to be a good time. Renee is going to do, offshore, on guide boats, hanging out at night, cooking fish, cleaning fish. It's going to be a good time. Renee is going to do, once per group, is going to do a big Cajun seafood boil,

which I'm very excited about. I like people that are so into doing their type of food that when you meet someone that has custom made or had someone custom made them a, the thing to cook their food in, you know, it's serious and they're, it's going to be good. So we're going to get that experience down there. Um, and then, yeah, waterfowl hunting in Kansas, uh, three different trips, uh, between November, December and, uh, well, January 1st really, uh, is the last one for that hunt. So, uh, check, go well, January 1st really is the last one for that hunt.

So go to the website. There'll be a drop-down menu under Meteor Experiences, and all the details will be there here shortly. You know what I like about the waterfall part of it is that's going to be the thing I need to motivate me to finally get me a power plucker. I'm going to have my power plucker sent there. You know, when it's all said and done, I'm going to bring that power plucker back home.

That's a good idea. What's that kind of power plucker I want? The one that my brother-in-law has now? Yeah. I think it's called the Fowl Plucker, isn't it? Dude, do you ever be on that guy's website? Nope. I got the nosing around in there.

And my neighbor, Pottery Pat, he offered to go halvesies on it with me, but I don't know if I want to like. You want to share? Well, hey, you know, whatever. Then I got to go looking for it over at his house. I mean, you guys live like 50 yards apart. It's not like sharing. I know.

Me and Pottery Pat already share everything anyway. I've told you where I've seen these things set up. Eventually there's a shack that gets built around them. Cal was saying because the, because the feather mate, the feather management so much, you eventually just.

Yeah. You kind of dig it out. Yeah. You're like, boy, it doesn't really work in the garage all the time. That's a creeping cost. If you start out with a power plucker and then you end up with a building.

Yeah. And then you have a house that's built around. Well, yeah, exactly. I think it could be modified a little bit. They're not cheap. I'm looking at it right now on the Orvis site.

There's 730 bucks. I don't know what they get for them, but it makes a pretty duck when you do it right. You read the, that guy is so serious. People place an order with that guy. And also like you go place an order. All of a sudden your phone rings.

He's calling you. To make sure that you're serious about this purchase? To be like, well, I saw you bought one of the plockers. Here's the deal. Right? Let's work together. Cal, I could see that there could be some feather build up you know i mean especially if you're i mean if you're processing you know a lot 50 a day but i mean we processed almost 20 birds and we've basically filled up a shop

full canister shop vac in that you know two hour period and it was full like you couldn't really done too many more without dumping it but it worked you said two hours for 20 birds yeah i mean i'm guessing i mean we had kids there that are you know helping and messing around but i mean yeah the key is it's got to be a dry bird well you got to read more i started reading more than you read yeah i i just send that guy a picture of my thumb say like is it gonna do better than this but it might not do better but it'll do faster that's 100 sure repetition buddy i want one of those things still man um i'm gonna have it sent there so when we there. So when we're doing our Meteor Experiences deal,

people can power plug. Totally. Go home with a bunch of birds, hopefully. You got more to say? No, I think that's good for a quick hit. Well, I'll tell you where you left off. Quick hit. Spots are available to the general public

starting the opening day of bear season. And turkey season. In Pennsylvania? April 15. Isn isn't that what's tax day yep that's it oh okay so when you go to either send your money in or file for your money who was it that had a horse named iris because she was born on apr 15th. You remember that? No. I thought that was a cute. IRS.

Yeah. April 15th spots are available. Again, we got our trip fishing Louisiana, inshore, offshore. You can even go jugging catfish. Yeah, listen, man. I would have gone way deeper, but I was asked to do a quick hit.

But yeah, we got all kinds of things we can talk about for this trip. Or ducks and geese in Kansas. Yeah. And every night there's going to be a long, we're going to give a long lecture about something. That remains true. Every night I'm going to read this musky manifesto to everybody present. That's right. And that's optional.

If you don't want to stay for that, you can just go get some rest because the next day is going to be another big day of hunting or fishing. There's a thing we spend a lot of time on. Something blowing up out of, I don't know, blowing up. That might be overselling it. A problem in Wisconsin that is just disconcerting to me. Unbeknownst to me for my whole life, I had no idea. You can't spear a northern pike in Wisconsin, which to me seems like the pike spear.

If you would have said to me before I found this out, if you said to me, what is the pike spear in a state in America? I would have just said, eh, Wisconsin. Is it because of Muskie 2.0? Is that what they don't want? That's who's driving it right now. Yes. That's what I thought.

I don't know who was driving it prior to Muskie 2.0. You cannot spear a Northern Pike in Wisconsin. You can spear a Sturgeon in Wisconsin. Can't spear a Northern Pike. Why? Because they can't spear a northern pike why because they can't trust one they think pike spears will get all the biggins and they think that a pike spears cannot tell the difference between a northy and a muskellunge man it's like looking into a aquarium at the zoo he can you can trust americans you can trust americans to tell the difference between a button buck and a spike you can trust americans

to tell if a deer has three tines on one side you can trust an american to tell a hen pintail from a drake pintail in the early season when they don't have their breeding plumage you can tell americans how to tell a hen pheasant from a rooster pheasant you can trust americans how to catch a pike and not mistakenly or catch a muskie and not mistake it for a pike and not mistakenly, or catch a muskie and not mistake it for a pike, what else can you trust Americans to do? I think, you know, fast moving waterfowl is a fantastic example for sure. You brought up hen versus rooster pheasant.

How about a sharp tail and a hen pheasant when they get up into the sun? You can trust an American to tell the difference between a sharp tail hen and a hen pheasant. Two drab colored brown birds with a pointy tail. In the sun. In the bright sun.

There's no prohibition on hunting them in the bright sun. Far from it. No prohibition against walking into the sun. What else can you trust Americans? Nothing. You can trust them. You know, men's room from the women's room. You can trust Americans to tell the men's well, you used Nothing. You can trust Americans. Men's room from the women's room. You can trust Americans to tell the men's, well, you used to. You can trust Americans to not shoot a black bear saw with cubs. You can trust Americans to identify a male mountain goat.

But apparently you cannot trust Americans to not spear muskies while spearing pike. Therefore, the entire state ofisconsin can't go pike spearing as we explained in a past episode they put it to wisconsin has this kind of cool but widely widely celebrated and widely despised um way that you can get game laws changed what's it called cal do you remember? The advisory panel? Oh, yeah. The regional, like Pat Durkin's always talking about. And Doug.

Yeah. Regional advisory. Yeah. There's an acronym, but it's a county by county or region by region citizens advisory council. So if you want to get a game law in Wisconsin changed, you can bring it to the citizens advisory panel. Like I'm going to get in there heavy duty as a non-resident because they're trying to move

through the citizens advisory panel process they're trying to move youth turkey in wisconsin from two days to four days which i firmly support and the wisconsin public supports that what the wisconsin public is uneasy about is youth deer going from two days to four days, but they're supportive of it going four days for turkey. There's a lot of people that gripe about those youth hunting seasons. I don't understand. Well, if I didn't have kids, I'd hate them.

Well. I was saying the other day, if we had a youth elk, I was saying I would have never gotten a vasectomy. I said that on the show. As a man with no children here in gallatin county here we go i pay out the nose for your kids education already i don't know i don't know why they also need to beat me out into the field well do you know what cal i mean pick one or the other how's that you've had plenty opportunity at this point in your life those kids need a little opportunity too okay help me out here um whoa i gotta put my glasses on

who can who can help me out finding this well how did the vote break so they put it to the citizen's advisory panel and it got shot down kind of they said do you support pike spearing and how in the world could someone say no but here's what happened they had a nearly even vote of yes no and you had the option to say no opinion. Okay. Which was so close that it actually advanced to the Conservation Congress. The Conservation Congress in Wisconsin, after a somewhat anemic public input, meaning evenly broke yes, no, I think it was slightly no, but then there's all these people that copped out with a no opinion so then it goes to the conservation congress and the conservation

congress in wisconsin says 35 to 28 yes we want a pike spearing season but as this guy puts it the dnr in wisconsin is now dragging their feet this guy that right writes in about it wrote this letter myself and the 2 000 other individuals i represent as part of the Wisconsin Darkhouse Angling Association and the Powerful Fish Decoy Association. National. The Powerful National Fish Decoy Association are going to continue the fight. So it's like, it's a, it's a pot boiler in Wisconsin.

Well, yeah. I mean, what, what is the risk? Like, are you aware of any, uh,

long studies that examine the abuse of overtake by spear fishermen during the ice season? Like a guy committed to a fish shack versus six tip ups. Yeah. Like, that's what I was going to say. Like I've, I've speared pike and you're, you're not out fishing.

The guy's got a whole set of tip ups out. Like no way. Yeah. And you're sitting there and like, yeah, maybe you're targeting bigger pike, but. I'm, I'm not aware of any studies and I could see an argument for going to lake by lake management. Yeah. Well, yeah, of course.

Depending on, you know, the population status of muskies or the presence even of muskies in a given lake. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be a great compromise. Of course. If there's like big treasure, you know, what was the strain of muskies I was talking about? Quad four strain. So when the guy that we communicated about this issue,

when he wrote his letter being like, hey, what gives? The Conservation Congress supported it and advanced it. How come no movement? The department came back to him. The department, the department, this is the Fish and Game Department, Wisconsin DNR coming back to him department the department this is the this is the fishing game department wisconsin dnr coming back to him the department does not plan to advance this proposal as a dnr rule change question spearing northern pike through the ice may raise user conflicts with other ice fishers it also also may not, right? I mean, sorry, go ahead.

Since implementation of a rule change in 1993 that eliminated the January and February spearing seasons on the Menominee and Brule Rivers, no winter spearing has been allowed in Wisconsin with the exception of ice spearing on Lake Superior. Spearing can be selective for the largest pike in the population. A lot of mays and cans. So if I get that argument correctly, he's saying that because spearfishing is so selective of the largest pike, then it could have negative population

consequences. No, it's other guys bitching that they're going to spear all the big pike. Yeah. That's the implication, right? It's like in your four foot chunk of a, how many acre lake, your little window that you see, you're going to be selective within that four foot chunk out of 158 acres.

But other states allow the spearing of Northern Pike? Oh yeah. Have we seen. All across the Northern tier. Have we seen a truncation of the size distribution in lakes where spearing Northern Pike is allowed? I think the problem with that is it's been historically, it's just always been historically present.

But what I can tell you, you can study the Dickens out of is the fact that there ain't nobody else spearing Pike. Yeah. A little bit. It's like a little bit. Participation. And they're not're not hurting anything yeah he goes on the department goes on there is also concern with spears mistaking musk lunge for northern pike on water bodies where both congeners what's that mean same genus where both congeners reside. Congeners, yeah. Congeners? Yeah.

That's what that means? Congenerics, yep. Good thing you're here. That's great. Yeah. Congeners? Congeners or congenerics, yeah. Same genus, E-sox, E-S-O-X.

God, I'm going to start saying that all the time. All the time. Sometimes I get a word like that, I write it on my hand for a few days. You want a pen? Yeah, then I got it down. While the public input for the 2023 advisory question was fairly close, more people did not support this proposal, with 3,143 in favor and 3,355 opposed. We just don't govern that way.

You know, it's a buddy of mine. He's a retired railroader out of Missoula. Loves Spear and Pike. Has only, to my knowledge, Spear maybe a handful in many, many seasons. Because he is actively selecting for a huge pike. Um, he has one pike mounted on his wall in his house and it does not matter if you've been through that door a thousand times or for the

very first time, eventually he'll be like, did, did you see the pike? And you're like, yep, gam, it's still there. Like, how did he get, how did he get that one with a spear? Yep, spearing through the ice. But he's like, he would be the, and this is an invasive species in, in this lake. It's, it's the lake that you can, uh, underwater

spearfish for in Western Montana. Um, he would be, he would raise holy hell if anybody, uh, decided to, uh, eradicate the pike from that system because he like loves that species so much. So that's just kind of like a, a random selection of, of dark house spear fishermen. Um, they're not, or this particular person, right? He's letting every fish go. Yeah.

And he's up there all the time. And like the economic impacts that we always talk about people who do stuff like this, right? Um, it's, it's a weird thing. The other thing that is like worth pointing out here, that's kind of a nowhere type of deal is like, you want to talk about people who discuss climate change and the impacts of that? Talk to spear fishermen. Or I'm sorry, ice fishermen. Darkhouse. Ice anglers.

Ice anglers. Yeah. The catch is going down. They didn't ice fish this year. The amount of days, right? They didn't, they didn't get out at all. But that could be a reason for the DNR to be like, well, why would we put in the expense of

rewriting the regs to, for something that's trending downward anyway? Uh, well, yeah. On the idea on that, like I grew up in big time pike country in Michigan. We fished, that was our primary ice. Nah, one of our primary ice is like, well, let me put it this way.

That was our only ice big game fish that we concentrated on. You could spear, you could tip up. You want to see some bloody ice, go out there on a big tip up day. If you were out for numbers, running tip ups is going to give you bigger numbers of fish. Well, weren't you saying that your lake as a kid had a bunch of dead pike all over during the summertime? Like people would kill them and leave them. Is that right?

Yeah. You see a lot of that. Right. But that's, and that's. After the bass opener, the lake shore is like littered with fish that got let go with a night crawler in its anus.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew! our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're

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Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more as a special offer you can get a free three months to try on x out if you visit on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all let's talk about mercury and fish for a minute sure okay uh reason i want to talk about mercury and fish is one uh we have a colleague a beloved colleague who he claims have been mercury poisoned claims um i have been eating fish uh most of my life in waters that carry a health advisory state health advisories yep uh i lived for a while um in seattle and we would have people not eat the perch we caught because they knew that those fish had a health advisory um people are aware of it there was just a recently an article in the new york times about you probably saw this

uh if we're cutting if we if we've been so successful in cutting mercury uh admit uh what's the word not admissions submission emissions mercury emissions if we've been so successful right curbing mercury emissions why do tuna still have mercury in them? It takes a very long time for mercury to leave the environment. It can be actually a bigger problem in freshwater systems than offshore because no one's taking anything out of, think of remote lakes in Canada, for example. Atmospheric deposition of mercury puts mercury in that water. anything out of think of remote lakes in Canada, for example, atmospheric deposition of mercury puts mercury in that water, uh, it's taken up by.

Algae other phytoplankton. It enters the food chain that way it works its way up into say, let's say walleye or the top predator in a given lake, uh, then if, if very few people are fishing that lake, harvesting fish out of that lake, the mercury never leaves. It's got. That's how the mercury has to be removed?

Pretty much. It's got a very long half life. It's gotta be eaten. It's got, it's got a very long half life. Yeah. And so it just stays in the system and it's actually the lakes that are fished harder that tend to have lower mercury levels in the fish.

No. Yeah. And. Like you're hauling the mercury out when you haul fish away. It's in the lakes that are fished harder that tend to have lower mercury levels in the fish. Yeah. And. Like you're hauling the mercury out when you haul fish away. It's in the food chain. Get them big muskies out of there. Well, there's, there's no, once it's in the

food web, I mean, there's not really any mitigation that can be done. It's not like you can spray a lake and tie up the mercury. Where's it all coming from in the first place? Does industrial pollution? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Fossil fuels to. Well, how are they curbing? I got a ton of questions about this now. I know we're talking about. Yeah, I thought mercury was so heavy that it just works its way down. In its elemental form, it's, it's super dense,

right? But the mercury that's dangerous to animals from a toxicity standpoint is the methylated form. So it's, it's got to animals from a toxicity standpoint is the methylated form. So it's got a carbon and a couple of hydrogens on it. The density of that molecule, I don't know off the top of my head, but it's not like the silver liquid you're thinking of in a thermometer. The fun stuff. The fun stuff.

Yeah, that you probably played with, you and I both, so I I were bald played with as kids in elementary school. Um, no, that stuff is gone. Uh, yeah. How have we slowed emissions? We haven't slowed fossil fuel consumption. Uh, well, depending on who you mean by we, we have slowed fossil fuel consumption as globally, globally know, um, how have we slowed the emissions of mercury? It's generally, it's about, uh, scrubbing

procedures, uh, when those fossil fuel, when that, that, that gas is being emitted from coal burning power. So when you hear about clean coal or whatever, or is that different? Uh, no, it's you're on the right track. Yeah. Yeah.

Although we're hearing less about clean coal, but yeah. But that would be scrubbed where the emissions are scrubbed. Exactly. And mercury is part of that. Okay. Yeah. Although we're hearing less about clean coal, but yeah. But that would be scrubbed, where the emissions are scrubbed. Exactly. And mercury is part of that. Okay. Yep. And then they use mercury in mining applications.

It's out of my pay grade. Okay. Yes. Gold mine. That's not making its way. I mean, they use mercury in like, you know, like leach mining. Okay. But I don't know if that gets into the water system.

Because everybody talks about the atmospheric mercury that gets into your fish. Yep. And depending on the fish, it could be both. It could be that point source. You know, if you're talking about a fish that's in an estuary or close to shore, like bluefin tuna, for example, you brought up tuna. Bluefin tuna have elevated mercury often. They're apex predators. They're eating a lot of fish that are associated with shore that are living in rivers and systems that might be influenced by

a single factory or something upstream. But then you have fish that never come close to shore, like blue marlin, for example, that live in the blue water pelagic environment for their entire life the mercury that's in those animals is just from non-point source from atmospheric deposition coming down in the rain an atmospheric deposition is global correct i mean you could go to the remotest corner of the indian ocean yep and mercury rains down. Yep. In that. You'd find a Budweiser bottle, a Food Lion bag, and some microplastics, and there'd be mercury

there. Yep. Got it. But not in the concentration, right, of like the Great Lakes and its heyday of the industrial output of the industrial revolution, right? Well, in general, since the 1970s, uh, mercury deposition worldwide

has gone down, um, largely as a result of the environmental movement in North America in that time. And, and again, a little out of my depth here, but we as a country put, put pressure on other countries, uh, to be more environmentally responsible with the emissions and the burning of fossil fuels. And that lowers atmospheric deposition of mercury too. Got it. So when will, do you picture if current practices continue, is there a day in which all of a sudden you notice that there's no more health advisories on the consumption of, of wild fish?

Probably out of the lifetime of everyone in this room, unfortunately. That's my guess. To take that long. Yeah. Because you have some places where there's just super high concentrations and you have some species that are just notorious, notorious for high mercury content.

But we'll see. So you can put like the fact that we're putting less of it out there, um, is not being represented in what we're seeing when we sample fish. That's fair to say. No, it is being represented because. So I'm saying we're not seeing a, like I said, with this, this article's point about tuna, we're

putting less of it in the air, but we're not yet seeing less of it in our fish. Oh, I see. Well, so first of all, I'll say that in order to observe a decline in a toxicant like mercury, you have to have a really long time series of information. So in other words, in order to observe that decline, you'd have to have the data going back to say the 1970s. I'm not a tuna guy. I love eating tuna. I'm not aware of what sort of long-term data sets there are for tuna muscle.

And we keep saying tuna, but there's all these species and all these different environments. So I was part of a study a couple of years ago where we did have a long-term data set for blue marlin muscle that went back to the 1970s. And we did observe a decline. Like who was for blue Marlin muscle that went back to the 1970s. And we did observe. Like who was collecting that? Like how? Yeah. Good question. So the, the federal government, the national marine fisheries service, otherwise known

as Noah fisheries has a laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina, where I live. And there were scientists there and at the Duke university marine lab also in Beaufort, that began collecting muscle tissue from Blue Marlin in the 1970s in, uh, from in fact, the Big Rock Blue Marlin tournament, which is something that you've covered on this podcast. So opportunistic sampling of, uh, muscle taken from the animals that were landed in that tournament. And in the seventies, also animals that were landed willy nilly and, you know, just brought to shore, uh, or maybe in other tournaments. So there was a, we had a, uh, they analyze those data then it's not like we had crusty chunks of Marlin.

Oh, I thought maybe they were drying it or something. Okay. Yeah, no, they, they analyze those data then. Uh, and then we had, uh, the, there was a gap of 25 years. And then in the late nineties, uh, scientists at that same lab, the Noah lab, Noah fisheries lab city, North Carolina took over that sampling in, uh, the early two thousands and created a long-term data set. I think the paper, the data in the paper went up to maybe 2022. So that's, uh, what, 40 year, 30 year, 40 year, 50 year time series. Yeah. Of blue Marlin muscle.

And there was a market decline in the content of total mercury and methyl mercury in that muscle from the 1970s to present day. God. Thank God. Well, good news. Good news. And the other good news is for blue Marlin in particular, for some reason, I don't know if I have a good speculation here, but for some reason, blue marlin are special in that most of the mercury in their muscle tissue is not the nasty stuff, the methylated form. For most fish, when they're forming FDA, EPA, or forming consumption advisories, they're sampling the muscle for total mercury. It's much easier to run a sample for total mercury in the muscle tissue. They're coming up with an advisory at three parts per million or

five parts per million or whatever, just based on that total mercury number, because they're assuming that all of that mercury is, is methyl mercury, the nasty stuff. That's true for most fish. Most of the total mercury is the methyl form, but in blue Marlin, it's a fraction of the total, which is really good from a, from the standpoint of consumption. Now I'm not hoping that people are going to go out and start chewing on a bunch of- Start targeting and eating blue Marlin. Exactly. Stocks overfished and apex predators. We don't want to take a lot of them out of the system anyway, but, uh, but you could, you could eat blue Marlin from a safety standpoint. Very few of the samples in our study flirted with the consumption advisory. Well, I mean, Steve will tell you what you can and can't eat

on a fisheries side of things. From an authority standpoint? Steve? Well, what do you mean? I mean, you're just going to eat it. Yeah, well, I was going to tell you my favorite quote, which I've said a thousand times. Me and Yanni were with a friend of ours that likes to, uh, fish off flatheads.

Yeah. And, and when we asked him about his feeling about eating all those flatheads, he said, if I eat, so if I catch and eat so many big flatheads that it kills me, I win. So somewhat fatalistic viewpoint. Yeah. Markedly so. I, but I have not,

I have never, uh, I've never changed my fish consumption behavior because of health advisories, but it nags in the back of my head the same way when I'm eating deer meat, even if I had it tested, if I'm eating deer meat from areas that has like CWD, it is always in the back of my head. So have you been tested for mercury?

No. No intention to do so? No, I would definitely do it. If you had a kit right now, I would do it right now. A kit. Yeah. Not somebody with a bag.

Could there ever be an at-home test for like fish meat you bring home? No, not other than from a culinary standpoint. It's a centrifuge. Like don't, isn't that what you do? You like put your blood samples in a centrifuge and spin them up and then it

separates. I left my medical career behind a long time ago, but I, I know a guy in Moorhead city who had blood drawn explicitly for a mercury test because he was wondering he's like man i eat a lot of fish how did you do fish passed with flying colors that's good to hear that's when they were doing i'm gonna text our doctor and see if we can get a mercury test well recently i texted so recently yanni text we were worried we had low t oh we we yeah so yanni sent a note to our doctor wondering about his t and then a couple minutes later i have to send her a note

wondering about my team she's like and i caught her breaking the hippocratic oath because she said are you guys sitting around talking about testosterone and i was like who exactly who exactly are you referring to because i was under the impression this is all very secret isn't the hippocratic oath do no harm that's nothing you're thinking i meant the part about people's secrets patient doctor confidential, that's what she broke. What cracks me up. I was like, who guys? About Steve is a Michigander, eats every single fish.

And I think like one of the more thorough fish consumption advisories comes out of the state of Michigan. It seems like that's the state that has put the most work into, and it's based off of like the Minton state. So it's a Michigan portion. So you put your hand up and that represents

your fish full. Oh, thank you. And then the quantity based off of your weight and size. That's right. Yeah. Is like, you can have a thumb size portion once a week.

Yep. Or you can have a palm size portion once a month. Yeah. But I've always, yeah, that's made me chuckle. The, in Lake Washington, in Seattle, I don't know what it is now, but for a while the perch, the fish advisor was very specific where they would even get into sizes of fish.

Meaning that an example would be there was no restriction or what not restrictions not the word there was no advisory on perch under 12 inches yep but perch over 12 inches carried a health advisor yeah and they do it differently for children men pregnant women um montana has some real specific like size based advisories steve would you feed a pregnant woman mercury filled fish along with not not would not would i because here's the thing about it here's i don't want to spend all of our i want to talk about alternative energy but um here's i don't want to spend all i want to talk about alternative energy but um here's the thing about it you know if you're a fisherman everything you know if you if you're a fisherman

and you dig into your regs you're seeing the health advisories but when you go to the grocery store and buy fish you're just not that would all carry a health advisory as well you've seen a lot of fresh i'm actually seen a lot of fresh, I'm actually asking a lot of fresh caught wild walleye at the grocery store. No, but there's a, there's a wild walleye commercial fishery.

Sure. In Ontario. Yeah. So when you go and buy that, or when you go to a perch fry on Friday night in Michigan, you're not presented with the health advisory information but if you're a fisherman it's you get your nose rubbed in it so i'm like i feel like the whole so

for people to think that this is a thing happening to fishermen it's a thing happening to people to go to sushi restaurants yeah so what do you mean yeah what's what's your ask you want it on the menu do you want it on the menu? No, I'm saying that this isn't a thing for people that fish. This is a thing for people that eat fish. Sure. And I just got this thing. There's this organization

that does like fish. They do fish consumption estimates 25 years, 50 years down the road. And they expect fish consumption to go up globally. So it's not like people that it's not like it this is we're talking about for people that go and catch a wahoo is people that eat a wahoo yep so i guess we need to continue to reduce emissions and keep that keep that mercury level down but people be like oh you fish you must eat a lot of mercury it's like you go out to eat with your wife you must eat a lot of

mercury i wonder if in general there's a presumption that people who fish or buy a fishing license are eating more fish than people who are going to the grocery store to get that fish i think so dude if you're a big if you love sushi and you're going out once a week and eating big pelagics, the kind of stuff that people go to sushi restaurants to eat, you're pounding a lot of mercury compared to some dude that thumps a couple walleye now and then. I mean, trout, I mean, I hate to play into Steve's hand here, but the thing of the amount of catch and release trout fishermen, we all know that the only fish that they're eating are coming from the grocery store. Yeah. They're just not. So they fish, but they're getting their mercury from down at, I don't know, the sushi joint. I can't name our old sushi joint.

They got eat fish. No, we're slowly killing it. We just don't. I don't. But I don't buy it at the grocery store. To Brendan's point, I don't buy it at the grocery store. Brody holds him up to the light trying to see the mercury in there. Give that one

um you know i just don't buy a lot of fish i'm with the honest like dude we way more like oh listen i'm an outlier we need enormous magnitude we need enormous amounts of fish yeah all right we right. We're going to now move on to where you're actually an expert. Okay. But I appreciate you just dragging me into this. Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

I just, I'm like, I was straining my brain to try to figure out the last fish that I bought at a grocery store. And it has to get like further divided because it's like the only fish I've purchased at a grocery store is a bait to go catch other fish with. I would never buy it at a grocery store. In fact, there's no way. Smelt?

Nope. Well, I mean. Oh, yes, what you bought. Right. I'll eat it all day long in restaurants, but I would never buy it at a store to prepare it at home. Because if I'm home, I'll just eat it out of my freezer. But if I go to a restaurant and there's fish, I probably getting the fish okay back on track sorry brendan runney is a marine scientist of the nature conservancy um and corinne's been really wanting to get him

on because we've been wanting to talk about offshore alternative energy development and what it might mean for fish which led to a broader conversation about where I wanted to have that discussion as a sort of, as a example of the opportunities, challenges, compromises around alternative energy development, which comes at a cost fair. All energy development comes at a cost. Comes at a cost. Yeah. Now I wanna lay out something that I said, I'm gonna tell you something I said on previous episodes, on a previous episode, when we talked

about this, and then I'm gonna let you run, but I just wanna tee this up. If I was the emperor of the world, no, if I was the emperor of the world no if i was the emperor of the country the emperor everybody if i was in charge of america if i was solely in charge with america of america and and my people came to me and said here's our plan on developing currently undeveloped landscapes, offshore, onshore. Here's our plan to take currently undeveloped landscapes and develop them for alternative energy in order to combat climate change. I would say, man, here's why i'm not into it i'm not into it because i fear that

we're going to make these changes these changes will not be enough to to to counteract what's happening on the indian subcontinent in china and russia okay we will see no net decrease in fossil fuel consumption and we will have burnt up our biggest asset which is our wildlife habitat so we'll sit we'll have destroyed a bunch of wildlife habitat and seen no difference in global average temperatures. Okay. Now you go. Yeah. So a couple of things.

So we're in a climate crisis. Fair? Yes. Well, yeah, we're seeing, yes. If you're a Michigan ice fisherman, hell yeah. We're seeing annual increases. I don't want to go back like what they do where they try to go back a thousand years because we just weren't measuring temperature the same.

But in the modern era with how we measure temperature now, we are seeing increases. And there's some little blips and stuff, temperature now we are seeing increases and there's some little blips and stuff but generally we are seeing increased temperatures and we're seeing impacts of increased temperatures on fisheries on wildlife on marine resources yep and we're seeing like some chaotic weather patterns weather patterns we're range shifts, range expansions of many marine species, many terrestrial species for that matter. The United States is responsible for 15% of the carbon emissions globally. Okay. China's responsible for 30.

All right. But we have the leg up because we industrialized 100 years before them. So we have an opportunity right now because we have the means and the motive to try to transition from an electricity generating sector that's largely dependent on fossil fuels into energy sources that do not produce any further carbon emissions. To your point about if we don't do this now, if we do this now, no one else is going to do anything else. We, we still have the opportunity to bring that down, to get rid of that 15%, to turn that 15% into zero, whether or not any of the other nations on this planet partake in transitioning from fossil fuel burning electricity production to renewable energies, we're still responsible for a huge portion of that. So as a nation, we can move towards an electricity producing sector that produces no carbon, and we should. That's why it's the goal of this presidential administration and the goal of the nature conservancy to bring us to net zero carbon emissions by the year 2050. That's only 26

years from now. We need a major uptake in the production of renewable energies like wind and solar on land and also offshore. Can I respond to one other thing that you said? You can talk for an hour if you want. I doubt it. So I understand your trepidation about the loss of habitat. Can you within this touch on the BLM proposal? Definitely. Okay.

Tell everybody about that. So right now the Bureau of Land Management is overseeing, uh, something called the Western Solar Plan. There is, this is maybe going to be a little jargony. Um, there's right now a draft programmatic environmental impact statement for the Western Solar Plan. There are several alternatives in that plan. They all involve opening public land, BLM land to solar application.

What does solar application mean? Solar application means that that land has cleared the first hurdle, the first governmental hurdle to be identified as suitable for the building of solar farms. It doesn't mean that all of that land under any circumstance will eventually have solar on it. You've seen a lot in the news about the, uh, government selected preferred alternative of that solar plan, which would open 22 million acres of public land to solar application. Public hunting ground.

Let's just call it that. BLM lands upon which a variety of recreation of, upon which a variety of consumptive and non-consumptive outdoor activities can take place. Well, you met, you like, you mentioned that and the, at the same time, the BLM has promised to like prioritize recreation activities and wildlife habitat. So how do these two things like. I'm glad you asked. So there's one other alternative in that plan that would only open 8 million acres to solar application. And that 8 million acres is lands that are both already disturbed and are within 10 miles of existing transmission infrastructure. So that's one thing to support

with this, where we know we need more renewable energy production. We have an opportunity. We can build solar on lands that are already disturbed. By the way, 23 million acres of federal land is currently an oil and gas leases, 23 million acres, 12 million acres currently producing oil and gas. Oh, hit me with those numbers again. 23 million acres of federal land, more than the preferred alternative in the draft, in the draft, uh, programmatic environmental impacts, I mean, 23 million acres of federal land are currently leased to oil and gas companies, 12 million acres currently

producing oil and gas of public land. So one of these proposals would more than double the amount of land would more than double the amount of man land given to energy production. Yeah. I understand the question, but what I'm not sure about is whether there's overlap in that 22 million acres for solar 23 for the eight million dollar or eight million acre plan they would use existing roads and things like that that are being used by fossil fuel extraction operations or wherever possible

yeah we want to use existing transmission infrastructure, which of course includes things like roads. It includes things like power lines. Right. Um, and that's what we, that's what we know we need. And that the nature conservancy is working towards identifying the lowest impact ways to build out a clean energy economy. Right. Because I mean, not only do you have like the idea of solar panels covering the ground,

but all the roads and infrastructure you would have to build is not much different than what's already being done by fossil fuel operation. The footprint of any energy installation is not restricted to just the infrastructure that's generating the electricity. Who are the biggest players that are for and against this? When you say this, do you mean the renewable energy transition in general or the BLM proposal?

The BLM one. It's got to be a bitter pill for environmental groups who've built their careers, who've built their careers, who've built their organizations on fighting energy development. I don't think it's a bitter pill at all. I think all it's in my mouth right now. It's better. Well, not certainly not for every environmental group.

So there's always trade offs with building any energy infrastructure. Yeah. And why would we not transition to building renewable energy infrastructure? Why would we stick with fossil fuels when we have the opportunity to build infrastructure, to build utility scale projects that produce electricity at no net carbon emissions you're asking a huge question um and i'm trying to keep this conversation contained because i could come i could come in with a lot of things that are sort of out of my area of direct interest and expertise and i would get into i guess guess, national security questions.

I don't know. Like, like I don't even know. I don't even know where the conversation would go. If we're talking about it from a sort of, um, a perspective of the U S economy security, uh,

it could go a hundred directions. Yeah. Okay. Fine. But, but from a public land standpoint. Okay. That,

that I'm comfortable with. Yeah. There's always trade-offs. Over the last several decades, we've seen oil and gas exploration. We've seen oil and gas, new oil and gas leases. So if we're going on public lands, so if we're going to use public lands in the generation of electricity, why would we continue to do that with fossil fuels and not transition to renewables? I can't really tell you. I, a thing that I would explore would be efficiency, meaning energy per unit of space. Okay. That's one way to measure efficiency. Sure. But it's also about containing

the climate crisis and trying to curb emissions and bring us to, uh, an, an energy and, uh, and an energy sector that's not continuing to contribute to what we've seen over the last several years, runaway temperatures, species shifting the distributions, all the things we just touched on. Are you familiar? I can't remember who there's a novelist. Um, he's a big birder. Uh, the hell's his name? Read the, uh, French name guy.

I don't know. No, he's a contemporary novelist and he's a big birder. A novelist, not nonfiction. Who wrote the corrections? Was it him? Either way. But not leaves of, what is it, leafy grass?

No, no, no. Either way, it doesn't matter. There's a perspective. His perspective was this. His perspective was, as the climate's changing, the climate's going to change, the best thing we can give wildlife is sanctuary

to withstand those changes um wildlife places to be wild and weather the storm and again like I I want you like I just I don't want to like I'm not I'm not looking to debate it i'm just trying to lay out my reticence and then i want you just to go okay but that's my my reticence is that we would give up good funk like any amount of good functioning pristine wildlife habitat in in exchange for chasing a thing that i'm not sure we can get, but I'm sure we're going to lose habitat in chasing it. We're not necessarily going to lose pristine habitat.

As I mentioned, one of the alternatives in this Western solar plan only includes previously disturbed lands. So we're not talking about cutting up. What is the definition of that? You'd have to look at the. Cause you could go to a ranch and say that's previously disturbed isn't it not from a wildlife perspective okay so then i'm a cows not condos guy gotcha yeah this is so like i'll make the um the bargain with you right now like i'd be way more into it if my version of disturbed, right? Like these old well pads, the infrastructure that go out to, you know, you know, you fly over, you know, parts of the red desert, all that stuff, that type of infrastructure, bam, gets replaced with green energy infrastructure.

I'm like, yeah, okay. I can see that. Like we're not going to in any sort of good way be able to like rehab that into the mixed grass prairie that it once was. So the good news here is that the public is involved in this process at every step of the way. Right now there's a public comment period open for the Western solar plan. This is going to drop April 1st, I heard. The public comment period is open until April 18th. There, right now, if you go to. That's three days after the tickets go on sale.

That's right. Yep. Get your tickets. Get your tickets to the live show. Yeah. You got a couple days to recoup. A couple days. Proceed right to the BLM's website.

Take a look uh there will be recordings of virtual meetings that have already happened uh but you can listen to the virtual webinars describing the solar plan maybe somebody asked what's your definition of disturbed lands maybe you can get a nice crisp answer from the blm on that and then you can provide public comment tell them what you think and And that's, that's the case with any, not just solar. That's the case with any of these environmental impact statements, which every renewable or fossil fuel related, uh, project has to go through an environmental impact statement. And that the public is involved in every step of the way. The public is involved

in narrowing down the area that's opened. The public is involved in reading and commenting on the proposal from the company, the construction and operations mistaken, like five different frameworks for the plan. And then if I read this correctly, there's a no action status quo option, which I think nothing happens. Is there any existing studies like where large scale solar operations have been built, like on wildlife impact? Like, are there like, what, what are they based in what they're going to do and what's going to happen on? That's a little out of my expertise. I mean, I, I, it almost feels like we're like,

Hey, after you, but it's just like questions I have. No, that's perfectly fair. I mean, there are ways that you can mitigate the impact on wildlife to things like a solar project. For example, most solar projects are going to have a fence around them. That's not great from a migration standpoint, but you can make a permeable fence, maybe not for an elk, but for foxes, okay, for desert tortoise. You can have openings in the

fence and allow them to move through that project even though it's there. And they do. We actually have footage of desert tortoises and swift foxes running along a solar farm's fence and cutting through. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully

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onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. There's two things I want to do and you'd pick whatever, whatever one you want. And then we should move to offshore.

I want, yeah. One move is talk about offshore. Yeah. That's a good one. I'd like you to explain. The other move is, um,

we have an election coming up this November. Hmm. What are you running for? If, well, if there's a, if there's an administration change somewhere within this conversation, if there's a change in administration, how much of this just becomes a non-issue? I mean, Trump said he joked and was taking everything he says.

He makes a joke and everybody acts like he's serious. He joked that, oh, no, I'm going gonna be a dictator for a day just a day it was he's joking he doesn't have the authority he said someone says oh everyone's afraid you're gonna be a dictator he goes no i'm gonna be a dictator one day and on that day i'm gonna close the border and i'm gonna um take some action i can't remember how i articulated it take some action. I can't remember how I articulated it. Take some action to increase domestic oil production. Then he says, then I'm going to quit being a dictator. Let's do the offshore one.

Okay. We'll do offshore, but I want to come back. Like all the things we're talking about, how much does this ride on? Like how much, if you come back next January 7, how much would everything we just discussed become a non-issue because there was a change in administrations? I can provide you with several names within the Nature Conservancy who would love to come on this program and answer that question. I got one more question on here and it's okay if we just like leave it on the table, but there's a finite amount of public land, um, and it's declining, um, of that public land habitat. A lot of it is already in question.

We, and we've, we're losing good habitat. Um, what are, what's the private land existing infrastructure option to carry out and get us to the same, you know, net zero. Yeah. End point. Like if we did this in a willing seller, willing buyer scenario. Yeah, like wind farms.

I mean, a lot of those are on private land. It's a great question. I'm a cows, not turbines kind of guy. Yeah, like wind farms. I mean, a lot of those are on private land. It's a great question. I'm a cows, not turbines kind of guy. Yeah. Well. Are we saying turbines? Turbines. Turbines.

We should decide now. Oh yeah, you're right, turbines. No, that, that, I think that there is a lot of ground to make up by putting this infrastructure on private lands. And one thing that the Nature Conservancy has done some analyses towards is rooftop solar, not, not just on homes, but on big box stores, things like that. An analysis was done that suggested that if 35% of all suitable rooftops, uh, had solar on them by 2050, which is aggressive, but

maybe reasonable. Sure. A third, a third of all roofs in the United States. This is going to be hell on pigeons. Um, that would, that would meet, that alone would meet 10% of our needs for electricity. What, what level of compliance or what level of? 35%. A third of rooftops covered by solar panels where it that's already that's 10%. So that's a way.

That's it. Right, there you go. Now imagine. Okay, there's a bunch of the problem right there. It's a bunch of the problem. And I think you recently said something about sports stadiums. Yup.

Just fill that whole thing in with solar. I would say the Bears, Chicago Bears Stadium, first one to go. Great. Minnesota Vikings, number two. Great. Any one of those things that opens up is now closed. The top, the roof, closed, covered.

What are you, a Packers fan? Yeah, that's right. Who would pay for the BLM proposal if they like did this, started doing this tomorrow. Who pays for it? I assume there's like some private individuals that are, you know, footing the bills to build these things.

Do you mean who pays for the, the build out of the actual infrastructure? All of it. Like, you know, are we paying for some portion of it or is it mostly private individuals who are like standing to make money off this? Like they're going to sell the lease or what are they going to do?

How's it work? Oh, okay. So it's a, it's a win-win. Oh. I know. Get ready for this. It's a win-win-lose.

Strap in. So the developer applies for a lease from the federal government. Okay. Or in the offshore wind space, the federal government holds an auction for the lease, for the rights to build a project on that ground. It might go for 10 million, a hundred million, whatever. It depends on the lease, depends on how big it is, where it is, whatever that money goes into the general treasury. That's in our pockets. Okay. Uh, the company then has the rights to develop that ground, generate electricity, and that goes in their pockets once they start making money.

Once they start pouring it into the grid. Which in the offshore wind space, not a lot of is happening yet, but we're on the brink. So it would operate just like fossil fuel. From a, from a economics. The BLM makes money off it. Yeah like the BLM makes money off it. Yeah. The American public makes money off it. Or cattle grazing.

And, and. I got to feel it's more lucrative than the cattle. It's definitely. The cattle contracts. Yeah. So as far as. Hopefully. As far as putting solar wind on, on private land, that does put money in the pocket of

the landowner big time the companies are really proprietary about how much money but it's more lucrative than cattle ranching or grown corn i recently i don't even want to get into any details i have a friend that is in conversation with the solar people it's life-changing money. So there you go. Like it's life, it's generation, it's generational money. So if you're listening to this and you got a big patch of ground,

you want to turn the radio, turn it off, please. If you're listening to this, got a big patch of ground, turn it off. But I mean, we got all these buildings out there that are already patched in to the grid somehow, some way. Like, right. I mean, there's going to need to be like, if you're generating some serious juice, you know.

Sure. High voltage. But that shit, I don't like lay a big gross looking cable off the top. I don't care about that. Sure. If it's fixing this problem. But like, you know, we, I just came back from um uh pheasant fest right and you know we talk a lot about grasslands right the most imperiled ecosystem in north america right and i'm

like what if you can say like this is the solution then i then I'm like, oh, some trade-offs, but I really want it to be in these places that are already messed up for wildlife. Um, but if like, we have all this stuff that is never going to go back to supporting anything but feral cats. Yep. Like let's slap, slap some rooftop solar on

that stuff. Yeah. I want to get to, I want to get to offshore bad, but it's like just for your colleagues, for you and your colleagues, please just make sure you're like really digging into like old junky vacant lots, like just whatever. Okay.

Whatever you guys can find. Well, I encourage you to exercise. Park parking lots that you park under the panels i've parked in those i've parked in those so it's not even that it's not even that you lose the parking lot yep it's covered parking and what about agrivoltaics which we haven't touched on but you can, especially fruits and vegetables underneath solar panels. You can graze cattle, dairy cattle in particular, produce more milk when they are underneath solar panels, when they don't have exposure to extreme heat, extreme sunlight. Great. This is what I need to hear. I'm here for you.

I want to talk about offshore, but I don't want to hear about, I need to hear about all the alternatives before we start talking about going out onto perfectly fine ground and breaking it up. And I would say this, I don't give, I'd say that if it's coal, I'd say if it's gas, it's just like, I just don't think we can afford to lose habitat. We agree with you. We are looking for the lowest impact alternatives. Okay. Let's talk about offshore. And while I do just a little tip for you, if you want to talk about offshore from an

improving fishing standpoint, that'd be a good way to do it. Yeah. Lean in. Okay. Lean in. We're going to lean into the. He's got that.

Is that where you want to start? What's the current, uh, give us where offshore for, okay, I do this. Explain, um, what offshore means. Cause there's like, there's state offshore and federal offshore. Sure. And then what are we currently doing for offshore wind and what are we getting out of it? Yep.

Set the stage. So the, the distinguishing characteristic between state and federal waters is, is the three mile line. Okay. So in the Atlantic, so three miles from shore, uh, the state has fisheries management jurisdiction, leasing the bottom jurisdiction. Once you get outside that three mile line into the edge of the exclusive economics on the easy at 200 miles, that's federally controlled.

Okay. Right. I wasn't aware of the, where it ended. 200. Okay. And then it's international waters. Got it. Yep. So three, it becomes fed and then at 200, it becomes sort of everybody.

Three to 200. And then it's, it's everybody. It's nobody. It's foreign fishing fleets. It's, you know, offshore accounts. They're out there somewhere. Yeah. Yeah.

Um. Little piles of money floating around. That's a fish aggregating device right there. Yeah, the bales of cocaine and yeah. Man. Uh, so here's where we are with offshore wind right now. Um, as of last week, there are 24 operational

power producing wind turbines in the United States Atlantic. Five are actually in state waters off Black Island, Rhode Island. They were the first Rhode Island thing, I think. Fished it. Totally. 2017, they built five. Then off of Virginia in federal waters,

first federal project was built in 2020. Two. Two turbines. Okay. How big? Uh, in, in what, by what metric? There's six megawatts each there. The circumference.

What is the circumference of the thing coming out of the water, where it comes out of the water? I was, what's today, Friday? I was fishing around it five days ago. Close enough that you could reach out and touch it with your fishing rod. Not that you should, because that would be trespassing. Uh, the, the diameter, which is easier for me to estimate

it was, is maybe 20 feet coming out of the, at the surface of the water. It's bigger, of course, at the seafloor, slightly tapered, larger at the seafloor. Um, the tip of the blade when it's spinning and it's straight up and down is 600, 650 off the surface of the ocean. Okay. And this is a six megawatt. And it's in how much water? 85 feet.

Hmm. 85 feet of depth. Hmm. Yep. Yep. So. How's that son of a bitch anchored down? Well, we'll get into that cause that's,

that's important, but let me give you the rest of the rundown here. I won't spend too much time on it. No, you're good. Then, uh, you've got a handful more projects that are underway right now off of between like Long Island and Martha's Vineyard, that little stretch of coast. Uh, one project just finished up last week. 12 is the number 12 total turbines. Then there's another one that's underway. They've got five. five twelve and uh two so that's 24 that's where we are currently in the atlantic ocean and u.s water u.s or state waters producing power producing power 24 uh

right now can i can i ask one more question as you set this whole thing up yeah can you compare the output of one of because i think everyone most people haven't seen that, but most people have been driving down the road and they've seen a wind farm. Yep. So in size and output, how similar is it to what you see off in the distance when you're driving on the highway? Offshore is way bigger. They're bigger. Okay. Yeah.

So on land, your typical wind turbine generator is three and a half megawatts. Okay. So I just mentioned the ones off Virginia is six megawatts. That's the, that's the pilot or research project for that developer. They will begin building a commercial scale project this may, they're going to be putting in 14s, 14 megawatt wind turbine generators. That project will be 176 turbines. It's going to power 660,000 homes annually. 660,000 homes will be powered by those wind turbines off Virginia. So that project, that's a fairly big one, 176. Fairly big one in terms of what's been leased right now.

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, BOEM, is the regulatory agency tasked with all of the permitting and all of the everything with offshore wind. Their current estimate by the year 2030 is just over 3000 turbines in the U.S. Atlantic. That's the maximum build out. I think we're going to land a little lower

than that in the twos, in the 2000. What year? 2030. Yeah, it's 2024. So six years from now, 3000, more like two to 2,500 probably. You said that's the max build out? I'm thinking about just the gold rush for

welders and shit, man. Yeah. There's a supply chain that needs to catch up. So the maximum. Oh my God, man, you need to get more kids signing up for Volk. Big time. In high school.

So I'll give you what I mean by the maximal build out. So take the Virginia project. For example, the maximal build out of that project was about 208 turbines. They, uh, are only going to build 176. Where's the other 32 going? Well, they threw a collaborative process with the public and with the federal government decided to lay off a couple of locations that were too close to important resources like shipwrecks, like artificial reefs. They said, okay, we could build one here and it's

not going to be on top of a shipwreck, but it's close enough. And this is a valuable enough piece of bottom that people like to fish that we're not going to build our turbines there. We're just going to carve out a little box. And that type of thing is likely to happen with a lot of these projects, which is why I say the maximum build outs 3000, I think we're going to be maybe, I don't know, 20% lower than that. Can you hit me with, let's, let's go to the current ones. How many miles from shore are the current ones? So the one I was fishing under five days ago is 27 nautical miles from Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Okay. Straight East. And you're still only in 85 feet of water there. Yeah. The continental shelf is a, is a, is a mysterious mistress and drops off, uh, at different distances from shore, depending on where you are. Off Florida, you have five miles from the beach,

you're in a thousand feet of water. But, uh, yeah, off Virginia, you gotta, you gotta go a lot farther to get to that continental shelf break. Okay. Yep. And then to transmit this energy or transport this energy.

Oh yeah. Um, are you, are you trying to like bring things to a centralized cable and then bring that on shore or what's the infrastructure there? So, sorry, we should hit Steve's question of how is that some bitch anchored down? Which one do you want to go to first? Transmission or? Just real quick touch on.

I'm just curious the engineering on it. Yeah. So again, I'll speak from the Virginia project that I've, that I'm most familiar with. 176 turbines will, within that farm will spider web to three offshore substations, which will then package up that power into larger cables and, uh, shoot them to shore in a cable export corridor.

Oh, I got you. Are those substations above or below water? Above water. Yep. How big is that? I'm not sure. Are those substations above or below water? Above water. Yep. How big is that? I'm not sure. Like an oil rig kind of looking thing? Yeah, it looked like an oil rig.

Yep. Yep. And. Okay. Now, how do you anchor them down? Yeah, the footprint of the actual turbine. The pole. Yeah.

Okay. The pad. Well, there's no pad. So here's. Okay. Yeah. So most of the projects that are under development right now, or will contribute to that 3000 by 2030 number are built with what are called monopile foundations,

which means you guessed it one pole, one piling, these are 30 ish feet in diameter and they're hammered into the sea floor using a hydraulic hammer. A massive vessel comes out there holds itself. The vessel has like a power pole to hold you in place, but on a much bigger scale. I've seen these things. Right.

They anchor themselves and then they drive them in. And then around the base, and this comes into the fish habitat piece to prevent what we call scour. They put scour protection. Scour is the idea that sediment will move or erode because of currents and tides and things washing by. So if you go to the beach, take your shoes off, walk into the waves and just stand there, let the waves wash around your feet. You become destabilized as the sand erodes from the pressure of your feet, pressing down on it. Same thing happens at a much larger scale offshore. So they put rock or rubble around the base in a donut around the base of the piling. And that can-

Like the sound of that. I know it. And that can extend, let's see, 60 to 90 feet maybe from the edge of the pole. It's a big donut. Where does that material come from? Well, that's a good question. So the Nature Conservancy recently put out a report about different materials that can be used to enhance scour protection. And when I say enhance, I mean from an ecological standpoint to maximize the amount of positive ecological benefit that we're getting out of this material that's being placed in the water. If left to their own devices, the developers would rely on two criteria

to decide what they're going to use as scour protection, and those would be the cost of it. We want to keep it cheap because these are $10 billion projects we're talking about. And does it accomplish our engineering objective? Does it do what it's supposed to do? So there's an opportunity here as we sit at an inflection point on the build out of offshore wind with 24 in the water, almost, you know, 2000 plus still to come. There's an, there's an opportunity to influence what material is being used as scour protection. If we can demonstrate that there is something to gain

by switching it up, what they would use if left to their own device would be like quarried rock. It would depend on your geography. It could be limestone, could be granite, whatever they get their hands on. Another option is repurposed concrete. If somebody rebuilds a bridge or an overpass, all that material that's being busted up, put that on a barge, take it out there. It works. What's the lifespan of one of these things? What percentage of its life does it spend just trying to pay for itself? The leases are generally for 25 to 30 years. Most wind turbines pay for themselves within six months or a year. What?

Yeah. Man, that's efficient. Is that the same with the ones that we see out here in the West? I believe so, yeah. I could believe it there more than I could believe what you're talking about because that just seems like a bigger pain in the ass building it out in the ocean. Big pain in the ass. What happens at the end of that 25 years? We're not really sure.

So I know you guys have spearfished around the remains of oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. There was a program. Which is hilarious because can I get, can I lay this out real quick? Come on. Um, there, there's thousands in the Gulf. There are just like you're talking about because can i get can i lay this out real come on um

there's thousands in the gulf there are just like you're talking about thousands 2300 roughly yeah in the gulf there are thousands of oil platforms from offshore oil rigs and many of them are being retired and so to kind of give a little bit of a window into where this conversation is going around this wind development is these oil rigs uh made the gulf bloom i mean the oil rigs created a fishery you're shaking your head i'm i'm i'm with you they altered they created a fishery. Now there's a debate around people are saying, well, now that they're here, please leave them here because they generate so much fish. They create so much habitat. They create all these vertical reefs. And so now people that might've lamented them coming in because of the disturbance,

increased boat traffic pollution are now have gotten used to them. The fishery is built up around them. Anglers have gotten, that's how they fish. And now they're fighting to keep the some, not everybody. Some people are fighting to keep the rigs in place to preserve the fishery that the rigs created. And that's likely to happen with offshore wind too.

The fight. I don't know. All those fights. And I don't know. No one knows what's going to happen 25 or 30 years from now. thing at this point, I believe that technically that the fine print says that the developer will take it down to the substrate and leave it looking like it did before they got there, which means removing all of that scour protection

material too. A buddy of mine said when they remove an oil rig in the Gulf, he said, there's not even a beer can down there. Yeah. Right. Probably cleaner. Leave no trace.

No, he said it's like they come in with like high test sonar and when they're done, there's nothing. Nothing. It's cut off way below the surface. Everything's gone. And think of the expense and think of the loss of what may very well be extraordinarily valuable fish habitat.

So that's a fight that we're probably going to have in 25 or 30 years and how much of a fight that is, I don't know. But the opportunity that we have now is to demonstrate whether these are valuable habitat, and in all likelihood for certain species they will be. Whether they produce new animals or simply attract animals from elsewhere is a matter of open debate. My suspicion is that 2 that 2000 plus of these structures, we will see for certain species and uptick in production of animals, especially species that are habitat limited

or recruitment limited black sea bass, for example, might be one, but where we are right now is that this whole thing is in its infancy and we have an, how in its infancy can it be if it's going to be, it's 2024. Right. What I mean is we're at, how many by 2030, what? Couple thousand. Okay. Well, it can't be that. I mean,

what I mean is it's in its infancy. We have six years to build a couple thousand. Okay. Well, it can't be that. I mean. What I mean is it's in its infancy. We have six years to build a couple thousand of these things. But from a scientific study standpoint, we don't have any large full scale operational turbines that can be used, wind farms that can be used as a study location. So the biology is in its infancy or the ecology is in its infancy. Correct. And there's a lot of money going into collecting before data right now as we're in the, for many of these leases in the waning hours of the before period. We're trying to scrape together data that will be valuable comparison down the line when these wind farms are fully built out. Man, imagine if they had done that in a really good way in the Gulf of Mexico, how valuable that information would be now.

I can imagine. So if you could go like, well, let's take a look now that it's all done, let's take a look at what we won and what we lost. Yep. And so a lot of, a lot of scientific, a lot of really cool fisheries work being done. When you compare this to oil rigs providing

habitat and, and like fishing around defunct oil rigs, like, is there like, is there going to be travel restrictions in these areas for like the average recreational fishermen, like wanting to run right under an operational. Yeah. Cause you could tie off. Well, that's a bummer.

He said you can't touch them. And I was like, there should be anchor points on there so you can put your bungee line on there. Yeah. Not supposed to touch them. My understanding is that there won't, my understanding is there won't be any restrictions

as far as how close you can get. Now there may be, there may be, there may be day-to-day restrictions. If there's maintenance or something going on on a specific turbine, the developer won't allow you to get up to it. But by and large, I think the recreational fleet or the charter fleet or any hook and line vessel will be able to transit right up into that scour protection, right up into the good

habitat. They need to get real clear on that point. If you're going to want fishermen to buy in on it, you're going to have to really clarify that point. And I would say put a couple of mooring cleats on the side of that thing. I'll, yeah, I'll place a call about the cleats.

In 2021, Joe Cimelli wrote an article on themediator.com about wind turbines off the coast of New Jersey. And the Atlantic shores manager, Doug Copeland said, you're welcome to fish by the structures. We just ask that you don't tie up to them. And in general, it seemed like they were like

kind of supportive of like, yeah, like come hang around him. Just like, don't touch him. And they are supportive and they have to be because it's, this is a collaborative process in which the public is engaged and they need as many of the stakeholders and stakeholder groups on their side as they can get they should set up some bait and tackle shops out there on those i want that yeah so a floating barge of bait so i could get on board like from the access point that's a compromise i could see uh fish where you want

don't touch it, seems fair. If it winds up being like, don't go near it, you can't be within 200 yards of it, I feel like that's going to cause a lot of tension. I don't think we're going to see that. No. And I like the idea of a tackle shop out there. I was thinking on Sunday when I was fishing

underneath them that I was putting tags on fish. Oh, okay. We're asking for, so, you know, with tagging studies, sometimes you ask the angling public to participate in some way, either call the tag in or release the fish. In this case, we're asking people to release the animals.

I was thinking it'd be great to get the developer to let us put a big billboard up there, a big sign. It says, hey, if you catch fish, looks like this, got a red streamer tag on it and a little electronic transmitter hanging off of it. Would you please do us the favor of tossing that one back?

Got it. So is there a big gripe from the commercial fishery here? Like where, I mean, there's, we're, we're haven't gotten nearly as contentious as with putting this stuff in good bird habitat, buck habitat. So like, we got to get back to the fight here.

What, what's. Yeah, it's been all positive. That's what I want to throw. The poor ocean. I want to return again to my, uh, the oil development and the Gulf. Yep. The shrimpers.

Uh-huh. Didn't like them things. No. Don't make a turn. Different critter. Just the amount of debris. Um, they're after something totally different. Shrimp don't care about the rigs.

It's all that much more debris. It's more stuff you got to avoid. Yep. So like winners, losers, red snapper, dudes, winners, shrimpers, losers. And there's, uh, an important parallel in the Atlantic too. You're right that the, there are commercial sectors of the fishing industry that aren't enthusiastic about some of these wind farms,

especially the toad gear, trawlers, uh, scallops. Bottom. Clams. Like bottom trawlers. Yep. And they're trawling for invertebrates for, yeah, bivalves. Uh, they're not enthusiastic.

When that's not the, I mean, I don't want to cast judgment, but that's not always the friendliest the ones that i know are great guys i don't mean friendly like not great guys you mean from a bike people friendly they get a cat they get a they they catch it they uh indiscriminate um if you go talk to an angler who's having a bad day of fishing and go like what do you think is the main reason you're having a bad day of fishing? He might say, bottom trawlers. Well, okay.

This is a discussion for another time. I mean, just talk about how people blame their bad day of fishing on stuff. Sure. Yeah. And I just said it's a discussion for another time, but I'll say one thing on it, which is that for some species of fin fish, the recreational sector is responsible for the majority of the mortality, not the commercial sector. They don't want to hear about that. It's not what we're talking about here because we're talking about trawlers who are potentially upset about wind farms. Yeah. Um, and on that topic, they may have a case, uh, and to that end, developers are offering, let me think about how to phrase this. The, the, the developers that are at that stage now are offering compensatory mitigation

to commercial fishermen who can demonstrate certain criteria. For example, within timeframe A to B, I drew X revenue from the area that's within your lease. I'm going to pay you not to fish. Exactly. Well, going to pay you because you can no longer fish here, but you can continue fishing elsewhere. So there's actually a financial opportunity here for these people because they can draw two revenues, one from their usual job, and then they can cash the check from where they used to fish.

It's more complex than that on an individual basis, but in any case, there is, there is mitigation involved for the commercial angler, the commercial fishermen. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can, we can assume two ways, right? It's pretty easy to prove you're a bad fisherman.

Well, one other thing to mention is that just like with on-land renewable development, the siting of offshore wind is an iterative process that takes into account things like where people are fishing. Okay. We're always looking for put the energy infrastructure in the places where we weren't using that location for a whole lot of other stuff. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. When it comes down to onshore wind development, you're looking for these places that are these high wind plateaus or whatever. There's a micro site selection. Yeah, there's a resource and you want to extract it.

You can't just put one anywhere you want one and it has like very consistent wind windy spots right kind of areas to develop you know it can't have like huge topographical features right right so is is the atlantic is the atlantic coast does it have all these sort of micro wind channels or does it wind up being more, a sort of more ubiquitous constant wind no matter where you go? It's in between that. Okay. I don't think it's as micro as on land where you have topography. Ain't much topography 27 miles from shore, but you do have areas that are windier than others, consistently windier than

others. The New England, the Northeast is consistently windy. That's where a lot of offshore wind is going to wind up. But we're talking about sort of large, you have large areas that are consistently windy, not like little teeny pockets that are consistently

windy. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yep. And when you get that far from shore, that's right. Let's talk about winners and losers all right from a species standpoint yeah um humans winners yeah what what's your guess on uh i don't know right whales swordfish like whatever like who who's gonna birds are a big part of the who's going to think this sucks.

I'll address Cal's comment about birds. So it's hard to avoid migratory pathways when migratory pathways run through the Atlantic. A lot of these wind farms are likely to be in places that historically have been, uh, migratory pathways for some species. So I want to just real quick talk about this study that my colleagues at TNC Virginia are doing, where they're putting satellite altimeter tags on a couple of species of shorebirds. Altimeter, meaning we get the altitude of the animal in addition to the lat lawn. Hmm. That's interesting. And it's super, it's more, it's three dimensional, right? It's three dimensional.

It's, it's critical to know that information because you could say, oh, well, 50% of the whimbrels that we tagged went right through this wind farm area and think that, Hey, maybe, uh, we need to not build it there because this is critical for the migratory pathway, but without knowing how far off the surface of the ocean, those animals are relative to where those turbines are. Yeah. What does that mean? That's yeah, I can see that. That's not something that would have occurred to me, but yeah. And so nailing down again, it's about building that foundation of scientific knowledge such that we can reduce the impacts as much as

possible to all species, including birds. Give me, give me a couple of species that, that are out 20 some miles off cruising through. Fish species. No, no birds. Give me a couple of birds. Oh man. I'm not a, yeah.

Gannets, uh, murs. Okay. Razor bills, depending on the time of year. Okay. A lot of, uh, let's see, shear waters, things like that. Got it. I'm less of a birder than I am a fisherman. Understood.

Sort of armchair ornithologist. You know why, I'll tell you a little something about shear waters. I don't know if you're much into etymology. Okay. He's shearing the water. I can tell you where he's at. That's right. He's licking it.

Yep. So, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of birds out there, a lot of different species and that's, some may be winners in fact, you know, there's speculation that the habitat created by offshore wind turbines will create good forage for birds that eat fish. Got it.

And invertebrates. Yeah. Um, same is true of submarine mammals. Submarine mammals, harbor seals, gray seals in the North Sea, uh, I think I have those species, right, have started feeding around wind platforms. They go right to them.

Got it. But you got that, all that activity. Mm-hmm. That little food chain in there. It's an oasis. Yeah. Well, so what about,

oh, go ahead, Brody. No, no, I didn't have that. What about whales? I was the one.

Oh, that was you? Oh, okay. That drew in a breath of air to ask a question. Do they ever think, talk about,

like, you were talking about the, to prevent the scouring effect. Like you do this thing, it creates some habitat. Like, is there someone else going like, oh, well, here's 10 other things that you guys could also do.

And it might not even be beneficial to the turbine, turbine, but it's going to be really beneficial to all these things that swim around here. I like where you're going with that. Totally. Hey, while you're out there. Yeah. But it's going to be really beneficial to all these things that swim around here. I like where you're going with that. Totally. Hey, while you're out there. Yeah.

So we have, there's a process where from an impact standpoint, the first thing you want to do is avoid. Then you want to minimize, then you want to mitigate. Right. And so that hierarchy is coming into play with all of these construction projects. There may be mitigation that these developers can partake in that would result in things like fishing opportunities. It might be scour protection enhancement, or it might be something that's offsite from the wind farm, but that they pay for like oyster reef restoration or other habitat restoration still in the marine or estuarine environment and close-ish to where the wind farm

is. Offset program. Exactly. But not necessarily at the wind farm. Have they kicked around drape sheathing those suckers and something that's real good for bivalves to hang on to? Or don't they want bivalve growth on it?

Yeah. Like the drag or something. Yeah. I don't think they want a lot of bivalve growth on it. I think, you know, that can actually destabilize the structure. The amount of biomass you're talking about

could destabilize the structure. So I think they're, they're actually cleaning bivalves off of certain parts of these things. Can I tell you something about the oil rigs? I just can't help but bring this back around to oil rigs. Come on. Those old oil rigs are encased in life. Yeah.

No one's. When you put your hand on them, you can just sit there and break away. And it's like barnacles, but all these vacated barnacles that are full of little fish and you can actually sit there and crumble some of that stuff and watch fish coming up from the depth. They just see it coming down and they're so used to just chunks of the stuff breaking off.

Yeah. They're coming up to meet it. Use that as a little bait for your, uh, spearfishing exercise. They're encased in life. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that'll happen spearfishing. They're encased in life. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that'll happen if you leave something in the ocean for a while. So if these wind turbine guys are listening. What's it like, uh, you've fished under one

now. I mean, that's obviously a very big part of the whole contentiousness of this whole thing, right? Is what it looks like from shore. So I'd like you to speak to that, like the distance they put them out and how that's been worked on. But then when you're out there, I mean, obviously like my, some of my, well, one memory that I have now that my father-in-law has for years wanted us to go and do,

he's like, you'll never experience a sunrise like the sunrise you experienced when you're 50 miles offshore. Yup. And he's right. Like when that sun breaks that horizon and there's just ocean around you, it's amazing. It's amazing.

If you're in the middle or near a wind farm, it's not the same. I'm sure that's the case. Uh, I haven't experienced a sunrise on the, on the seas underneath a wind farm. I've experienced it many times elsewhere. Sure. I would suspect that.

But you get my point. I do get your point. Yeah. There's nothing, there's nothing uglier than a wind farm. Hmm. Oil rig. There's a building, I guess. There's an aesthetic, there's an aesthetic loss, uh, of that, you

know, that sunrise observation. That's part of why they want to put them way out, right? That's part of it. The whole. So you don't have the NIMBY. Yeah, because if you built those things a mile offshore of Montauk, like. Yeah, you'd hear about it.

Yeah, go to Nantuck and be like, oh no, we're going to put them right offshore in Nantuck. You'll see how many people also aren't pro alternative energy. But you can see them from shore. You can. but they're not big so 27 miles out and they're big structures oh man yeah we got the curvature of the earth well it depends on yes that's so what distance are they visible not visible you can see them from short from 27 miles, but they're small and There there's not much to them yet

And if they weren't moving you would need a crystal clear day to even really notice Do you have to look for them to find them or do you like very aware? It's you'd have to look for them for sure in fact We took our first tagging trip for this project A couple of weeks ago And the guy that I had volunteering to help me tag fish, he and I were in the hotel room in Virginia beach. It was a fairly high floor. And we stood at the window and I said, Oh, I see him. And it took him a minute. He's like, where, man, where? So, so what I would say is this might sound a

little cynical, but if you want to observe a sunrise on the ocean near a wind farm, just anchor up used to the wind farm and then watch the sunrise, you know, that direction. Mm. That, that, that statement's not going to go over well with a lot of people. No, I mean.

When you're out there fishing on, underneath the, underneath a wind farm, like what, after a day, you're like, oh, it's just normal to have this big blade spinning above my head. Yeah, after the first couple of fish, you've forgotten about it. How loud is it? Can't hear it really. You might hear the wind rushing around the, you know, over the blades. Like anything, yeah. Yeah. What about whales?

Whales loving it or hating it? I haven't asked. I haven't asked the whales. How deep you want to get into this? To the bottom. You got the wrong guy. Okay. Service level whale.

Yeah. Okay. Let's say, let's say all, you remember earlier I said that, that, that I'm primarily interested in one thing. I'm primarily interested in not in, I'm primarily interested in anything that would pass up. Okay, let me put it this way. My primary interest when it comes to conservation is sacrificing the least amount of acres of productive wildlife habitat. Yeah.

Okay. That's my primary like i'll be like my primary objective is saving productive wildlife habitat whether it's a cattle ranch whether it's a a brushy ditch i'm with you okay if my whole thing was like i'm a whale guy top to bottom all i care about is whales would i be like uh real sweating it about these wind farms i don't think so uh it's been in the news a lot that allegedly offshore wind development is harming marine mammals okay we're experiencing an unusual mortality event for whales on the east coast is it right whales or what is it happening to the north atlantic right whale is uh experiencing an unusual mortality event for whales on the East coast. It's.

Is it right whales or what is it happening to? The North Atlantic right whale is a endangered species. There are something like 350 animals left in existence. Humpback whales have also experienced unusual levels of mortality over the past eight years. It's, it's extremely difficult to pin down the cause of mortality for a whale. One reason is you usually don't observe the whale until several days, at least after it's perished.

Okay. When they wash up dead, they were probably, they probably expired many miles from the beach and various states of decomposition. By the time they hit shore, a necropsy has performed on every stranded Marine mammal where it's possible to do so. And that includes North Atlantic right whales. It includes humpback whales in pursuit of clues

to what might have caused the death of the animal. The majority of these animals bear signs of vessel strikes. Some of them bear signs of recent vessel strikes. And I could, it could be blunt force trauma. It could be propeller marks. It could be broken bones from blunt force trauma, but good luck determining what vessel hit that whale because of time and space. So. And how long is this going back for?

The unusual mortality event was declared in 2017. It started in 2016, but there's no evidence that any offshore wind development. It was Trump. That's the year. You killed my soundbite. There's, there's no evidence that any offshore wind development has resulted in the death of even a single whale.

Okay. I mean, you asked me how deep we want to go. We don't need to go terribly deep, but what did, was there like a significant increase in offshore wind development in 2016? Well, remember at the beginning of this part of the conversation, I told you there's only 24 turbines in the ocean and half of them were just built. So in 2016, there were zero 2016, there were zero. There was survey activity going on at the time.

And it has been claimed that some of these survey boats, these serve the survey gear could have disrupted or disturbed these whales in some way. Got it. Most of them. Are they doing seismic surveys? They're doing surveys with gear that is far uh quieter and a much higher frequency than the seismic surveys that are done for oil and gas so this geotechnical and geophysical survey gear most of it is actually outside the range of hearing of these whales

it's but blunt force trauma you're talking about they're physically getting banged up. Yep. Okay. Boats are hitting them. So it's not, no one's speculating that it's the noise of the seismic survey that's. It's being speculated and I don't want to add any fuel to this fire.

It's being speculated that the survey noise could have disrupted the normal activities of the whales. Understood. That then eventually resulted in a vessel strike. Put them in different channels, like commercial channels that they typically would steer clear from or something.

Right. And so a couple more things on the vessel strikes and offshore wind. Every offshore wind construction vessel and survey vessel is required and they do carry protected species observers, trained individuals who are looking for whales, dolphins, sea turtles, any protected species. All of those that I just mentioned are obligate air breathers.

They got to come to the surface. If and when a protected species observer sees a marine mammal they have the authority to shut down the operation of that vessel whether it's the survey gear whether it's the engine whether it's all the above or divert course or pull it way back to neutral or whatever most vessels that are transiting or fishing or doing anything in the ocean do not have protected species observers on board the argument could therefore be made that offshore wind vessels are less likely to strike marine mammals because of the presence of these trained individuals who are looking for protected species with the express purpose of reducing negative interactions with vessels. While you're thinking, how much wind does it take to spin a turbine? Gosh, I don't

know why you got that in my head now. 10 miles an hour will take that turbine right off the top of your head. I hear it both ways all the time. They stop spinning below about five miles an hour. They could spin at that, but there's a break that stops them from spinning because it's a net loss of electricity to spin the blades at that, at that low level. They also shut down, I think above 55 or 60. They just start spinning too fast and that not going to work. My kids like, uh, YouTube compilations of wind turbines falling apart. And exploding. It's very popular.

Very, very popular. I'm going to ask you a really complicated question. I'm ready. You might have to do one of those things where you defer to your colleagues. Okay. I'm ready for that too. In discussing the border wall. Oh God.

To return to Trump. In discussing the border wall, I would often bring up. Okay. One, I believe we have a border crisis the border wall makes me uneasy because of the wildlife impact okay okay mountain lions jaguars mule deer antelope whatever that if you make an impenetrable barrier yep basically separating uh cutting our the bottom third of our continent off yep and you make an impenetrable land barrier isolating our portion of the continent from the rest of north america central america south america from from travel and you look at the long deep history of wildlife movements as well as the short history of the need for wildlife to move around i get uneasy

people then go well your job hasn't been taken by a immigrant okay i'm like be that as it may this is a thing to think about. Okay. It's a thing to think about the same way. If I said, we're going to go on family vacation and someone said, but that costs a lot of money. I would say, correct. That's a thing to think about in considering this though. We're going to go on family vacation, recognizing that it costs money.

Okay. With whales. going to go on family vacation recognizing that it costs money okay with whales are you so confident in our need to do this that you would say i get it it sucks for whales but we need to do this anyways are you there in our need to build offshore wind yeah Yeah. Would you be like, yeah, you know what? It's just like how we're blocking off Jaguars. Like in, in pursuit of border security, we're going to kind of say goodbye Jaguars in, in our country. Would you be like, would anybody say in pursuit of alternative energy, goodbye, Northern

right whale? I believe that the people who are best suited to answer that question. No, no, you don't think you think, you know, I'm going with this video are the, are the ones who are involved in that decision-making process. They are the scientists, the marine mammal scientists who have dedicated their careers to understanding the biology of these animals, they're the people who are doing marine mammal protection act consultations for the environmental impact statements for these projects.

And if, and if they thought the answer was no, if they thought the answer was building out offshore wind is, is going to drive a species to extinction. They would not play ball. You don't think so? No. These, these people, these people. But, but counter that with how many species are going to go extinct.

If we're, if we're, if we change the climate faster than wildlife can adapt to it, how many species are going to go extinct anyways? There's a value judgment that is made when you're making that statement on which species are, uh, more important than others that part of this process of the build out of renewable energy is consulting with the people who are best qualified to make those determinations. Mm-hmm. And those determinations are being made. And it has been determined that the build-out of renewable energy is unlikely to drive these animals to extinction. Got it.

So that's where we are. Is the ESA, the Environmental Endangered Species Act, is the Endangered Species act um that's got to be powerful enough and applicable to federal waters right definitely as is the marine mammal protection act which they go hand in hand got it got it so um if there was like a real demonstrable risk of extirpation or extinction. Yeah. Or you would've, you would've, uh, it would've got shut down. Or even the loss of a single animal in the case of the North Atlantic right.

Well, if it was suspected that any of these activities would result in the loss of even a single animal, it would have been shut down. And when it comes to the, like, when it comes to the ESA, I think, um, you know, everyone's aware, like the U S fish and wildlife service sort of manages it and oversees it. But the other party is Noah, uh, Noah fisheries, right? Like they're, they're the ones who decide on all the ocean stuff. So they are like directly overseeing that, uh, probably more like equipped to, to make calls on that than maybe the US Fish and Wildlife Service is on terrestrial things even. Definitely.

The protected species division of NOAA fisheries are the ones who make those determinations. And again, these are dedicated people. They've dedicated their careers, their lives to understanding the biology of these animals to the extent of the science. And that horizons are growing, being pushed every day on the extent of marine mammal science. And they're the ones making the calls. They're the right people to make the call. They could have a built-in bias.

You know what I'm saying? Like, hear me out. This is going to put you in a bad situation. No, no. Picture this. I wonder, this is, this is like psychology. This ain't science. I wonder if you tasked those same individuals,

let's say you had an alternate universe and you tasked those exact same individuals with determining whether an oil development was appropriate in this area. I wonder what answered those exact same individuals would have given you. But there is, there has been offshore oil development and that people who administer the

Marine Mammal Protection Act were involved in all of that too. Touche. I, uh, your little alternate universe exists. I, um, to, to weigh into this like I shouldn't, uh, I think there's so many people that want to point to this particular project and be like, that's what's killing the whales.

Mm. Don't, don't look at what's going on over here. That's what's killing the whales. Which people are those? Uh, there is some nasty shit going into the oceans at increasingly large amounts every single day. And when we're doing these, these uh necropsies on all sorts

of marine wildlife like you're pulling out pounds and pounds of shit garbage yeah plastic yeah and and some of that is a societal shift so mountain mountain dew is like listen it's not us i shouldn't point out mountain Dew. The plastic bottle companies. The plastic bottle companies. But I mean, that's just like a small layer of things, right? But I think we've learned over and over again in the conservation world. Like it is so rare to point to one thing and be like, oh, that one thing is the thing that did it. But it's also interesting that Nat, like for the longest time, like pointing the finger at fossil fuel, whether it's from the ESA or just pollution in general or whatever, like that was like just the way things were. But now you have this environmentally friendly energy source that's having to contend with the same.

Right. Detractors that yeah you know how in every kid's movie it's big oils bad guy is there going to be a new i don't know that give me an example i don't watch kids okay there's uh the forest one the avatar oh avatar my kids are watching recently it's about a guy that's a big there's like a big guy that like he's a scientist he gets turned into a bigfoot what's oils relation i missed that one he goes to alaska to fight big oil oh okay big oil is a very common villain in kids movies i'm wondering if there will be if there would be a future pixar or whatever disney movies in which big wind is where big wind is the villain you know because big oil has served as like you know like kurt

vonnegut was it kurt vonnegut yeah i kurt vonnegut said when the third reich designed their uniforms it's like they knew they would always be the bad guys in movies and uh and like big oil is served as sort of the big oil has served as the global villain for for decades um it's interesting to see if the whale community is after big wind it's just a real shit like environmentalist fighting environmentalists and kind of i think you i think you would find that the whale community may actually be at least somewhat the big oil community oh oh there's people that might not like where this is going their whale decoys well look at oh yeah the green green whale decoys um i mean con at, oh yeah, the green, green whale decoys. Um, I mean, Conoco Phillips does a hell of a lot for the old, uh, prairie chicken and the sage grouse.

Right. Yeah. Um, and I think they're into some. Well, as they, maybe I think I heard something about that. Yeah. Out of a different podcast. Being that endangered species are, I mean, well, endangered species are bad for business. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Like an industry. I mean, if you're a long playing, if you're a long playing player in an industry, generally, um, endangered species become a headache. And so as much as you can head that off. Yep. That's smart money.

Uh, I think. To head off something that's going to wind up shutting your industry down, right? This particular discussion, right, is like, are we going to be 50 years down the road and be like, Jesus, I wish we would put all that smart time energy money into, uh, nuclear energy at that point in time.

That's the last thing I want. There's two last things I want to ask. Right. It's like, should we have just gotten more efficient with this? That's coming back. 100%. There's a rush for that here.

Federal government passed some. Yeah. Yeah. I 100% think that we, like, not 100%. 80? 90 plus. Think that, uh, I think we're missing the boat. I think we should be doubling down on nuclear, but I want to ask you a question.

Can you tell me through the nature conservancy, what's your, what's your mandate? I know the nature conservancies work through. Remember I've been pounding on this idea of habitat protection. Yeah, sure. I know the nature conservancy as a major player in habitat protection and also a very even keeled um other than me no just organizationally yeah yeah um really good about access don't go out of your way to mess with hunters and fishermen and like really focused on habitat that is us. So our mission is to protect the lands and waters upon which all life depends.

Okay. Lands and waters. We are primarily a land protection organization. Got 4,000 staff of 4,000 dedicated individuals globally, uh, about 400 scientists, included myself. Um, we work on virtually every ecosystem on the planet and, uh, we work in the ocean. Uh, we have 125 protected 125 million acres. We currently protect 125 million acres of land worldwide in this country. we own 2 million acres.

We have conservation easements on another 4 million acres. We've transferred ownership of 15 million acres. That's the number I wanted to focus on because what that, explain what that, just tell people what that means. Transferred ownership of 15 million acres to agencies, federal and state agencies. Meaning you're making public land. You guys manufacture public land. We are making public land. And if Mike, oh, well, I've always, I've always, yeah, I've always loved you guys mission.

We did. I should have gotten that up, up top. I'm glad we're just end with it after you beat him up a little bit. Well, I want to, I want to point out that you guys had on this podcast, a colleague of mine named Nels Johnson, who lives here in Bozeman, had dinner with him last night on episode 261. There's no such thing as a free lunch with renewable energy. Covered a lot of ground on that episode,

including a deeper dive into what the Nature Conservancy is and what we do. So go ahead and dial that one up. What a plug. Wow. Usually we got to like work that in. that episode including a deeper dive into what the nature conservancy is and what we do so go ahead and dial what a plug wow usually we gotta like work that in but your guest comes no i wish i would have started out with that that's okay and um before we get into why i want to just hear a sort of not necessarily your take but sort of someone who's who's focused on energy like why not nuclear but first uh walk me through the steps of of um i guess we should have done this up top how how did your mandate get directed how does your mandate get directed into sort of like watching this project and making sure this project's done

effectively which project the your involvement in offshore wind. Yeah. Okay. So let me head off the nuclear thing. I'm not equipped to address that. So you can bring Nels back on if you want to talk about the nuclear thing. He's a much better guy. So the Nature Conservancy is heavily involved in the build out of renewables in the United States and elsewhere.

We recognize that offshore wind is an area where we can make a lot of gains in terms of the amount of electrons that are flowing into people's homes. We also recognize that just like any energy source building out offshore wind, uh, may does have ecological impacts and that we want to be involved. We want to be at the table to help minimize those impacts on nature to go to, to result in the best outcome for nature and people. And so I've worked for the nature conservancy for two years, a little over two years. I was involved in offshore wind from the day I started. I'm a fish guy though. Seven years of grad school to study fish. So that's the angle from which I approach renewable energies and offshore wind in general.

And I've mentioned a couple times this project I was working on last Sunday under the wind turbines off Virginia, tagging project. This is a project that's funded by the federal government, funded by NOAA Fisheries, AKA funded by the taxpayers. So thanks everybody. And we have a couple of goals of the project, but essentially we're looking to understand, to better understand the impacts of offshore wind construction activity on some species of economically important fish. Okay.

And I'm happy to get more into that if we have time, but that's, uh, that's my involvement in offshore wind. I sit on a variety of advisory panels, uh, research advisor for a couple of organizations that are consortiums of folks thinking about offshore wind, working on offshore wind. Some of them involve stakeholders. Some of them involve developers, fishermen, city council members from some coastal jurisdiction where they're going to bring power ashore, things like that. There's a lot of, what I like to say is we take a field to table approach

at the Nature Conservancy. We're in the field, we're doing the science, but we're also at the table. We're at the policymaking table. We're weighing in on things like the environmental impact statements. We're working behind the scenes to identify research needs, research priorities. Sometimes we're out there collecting data

in pursuit of those research needs and priorities. Who else got something? I have a thing to add um the other week uh the house and senate released uh final 2024 fiscal spending bills um and appropriators, this is from an article, appropriators allocated $50.25 billion to the Department of Energy, about $1.8 billion above the fiscal 2023 enacted level. And there is a ton more going to nuclear research and development. So it looks like it includes 1.69 billion for nuclear energy research and development, which is about 212 million more than where it is now. That'll be the next show.

Why not nuclear? Why not nukes? I'd listen. I want to point out the biggest mistake I made the show was the easy layup of instead of run to DMC, it's run to TNC. Ooh. I haven't heard that one yet.

Such a bummer. When you said that, for some reason my kids have gotten real into cleaning their shoes, which is driving me insane. What? Cleaning their shoes? Like polishing them? No, like they're like

always washing their crocks with a scrub brush. It's the strangest thing I've ever heard. It's like, how do you guys even know about this? And I made a joke.

It's like, you guys think you're like Run DMC? Because remember they had their whole thing that was like those super white shoes? My wife's like,

oh my God. Why is he driving us? They have no idea what you're talking about, of course. Where would a nine-year-old get the idea that he needs to clean his Crocs off? It blows my mind. I don't know either.

Do they do that to their sneakers? I don't understand. When they come in from the field, aren't you like, clean your shit? No, no, no. They're like cleaning them, cleaning them. Like with a Q-tip. Not cleaning them off like mud. Like shining them up.

They want to go to school with fresh looking sneaks. No, not fresh sneaks. Fresh Crocs. It's insane. Steve also declared this morning. That your Crocs look new. Steve also declared this morning in the parking lot that he doesn't like states

who have too many license plates. He just offered that up. Like Montana? Like Montana, specifically. He just offered that up. Like Montana? Like Montana, specifically. He said you can learn a lot about a state by what kind of license plate. How many license plates? I said there's an inverse correlation.

My native state. The greatness of a state and how many license plates it offers. My native state, Maryland, leads the nation in the number of license plate they offer. Oh, we got to be like second. Something like 80.

Something like 80 license plates. I don't support that. My last thing. Oh, we got to be like second. Something like 80 license plate. I don't support that. My last thing I have is we got to get to trivia. Everyone's running low on time here. Are you going to stay for trivia? He is. What are you going to throw him a bone about? Oh, he don't need any bones. No, that's fine. He's one of the first guests who's ever

asked, like, hey, are we going to play trivia? So yeah, I think he'll do well. I appreciate you coming on. We were all over the place. Yeah, it was great. We were talking about tech. We were talking about theory, philosophy. We didn't get to Barrow Trauma, which I was excited to talk about.

Maybe you can hit that for like two minutes in trivia. You got two minutes? We'll hit it in trivia. Oh, in trivia, sure. Can you intro Barrow Trauma? We'll see what the schedule looks like thanks for coming on it was probably frustrating for you that was great happy to be here felt like a phd defense all over again but i i get it man i mean it's like yeah uh in developing alternative energy, it's like everything's going to be a little bit painful.

It's just like where you can get the least amount of pain and the biggest amount of gain. Well said. You would love it, Steve, right? If you could just do a clean trade and just what we're already developing for fossil fuels, if we could just trade it out and do the wind. And it'll be like, and it'll be even more energy.

And like, great, let's stop talking about it. And I just want, just want to remind the public that it's important to be involved. There's a public comment period open right now. And you might bring something to the table that hasn't been said before, because one of my favorite quotes, a Mark Twain quote, I think is a fresh set of eyes. Finds more beans. Finds more beans. Yeah.

Need more eyes on this situation. Catches more fish, too. Speaking of which, we didn't sell the damn t-shirts out. Well, you're supposed to be wearing it. I know. If you want a sweet t-shirt. Okay. Much to Spencer's chagrin.

Like, this is all very complicated. Is this still, like, warranted to just walk around going, hey, make sure you turn your lights off? Definitely. For sure. We're all very complicated. Is this still like warranted to just walk around going, hey, make sure you turn your lights off. Definitely. For sure. We're all complicit. Dude, I do that. We're all complicit. Half my day at home is spent walking around turning lights off.

I do the rounds and shut them all off. And five minutes later, I come around, they're all back on again. Turn your lights off and don't get balloons for your next birthday party. I see balloons every time I go offshore. Every time. You can't. In Texas? Holy cow. You could go to the top of the highest mountain on earth

and there's probably a birthday balloon sitting there. There's a lot of complaining about federal overreach, but I mean, I think there's room for more. Banning balloons? Oh, yeah. I would ban a broad-scale balloon ban. That's sea turtle bait right there. Except for you know who you're going to piss off.

The balloon lobby. No, big buck whitetail hunters. Big helium. A lot of them will say that if you find a balloon in the woods, that tells you what the wind drafts are doing there, and that's where a big buck would like to bat. You guys think. Because he can two eye curve.

To turn the machine off, Phil. Turn the machine off, Phil. Turn the machine off. Got a bobber in the water. Toe stuck in the mud. It's a perfect day for sitting. Soaking up the sun. Dad came up and asked me, baby, it's wishful thinking. He asked, son, are you getting any?

I said, no, I'm just fishing My boat just lost the anchor But the breeze is blowing slow So I'm just out here sitting Snagging some trees and getting stoned I jog around in a can of worms And the sun creeping down the shore Got a few hours to myself. That's what fishing's for. guitar solo

Jog around in a can of worms In the sun creeping down the shore Got a few hours to myself That's what fishing's for Well, maybe you're on the water casting from the shore time just seems to fly by leaving you wanting more it always seems your last cast is really the first of many whether catching a fish or catching a buzz beats not catching any some folks they don't understand or know just what they're missing because you know that if they did they'd be out

here fishing got a few hours to myself that's what fishing's for I've got a few hours to myself that's what fishing's for