Transcript
Speaker: our North Star goal for SeaTrees is 100 blue carbon projects by 2030.
Speaker: Hi, everyone.
Speaker: Welcome to the Alchemy podcast.
Speaker: I'm your host, Dana Davis.
Speaker: The Alchemy podcast explores a happier and healthier future for all.
Speaker: Featuring conversations with thought leaders, scientists, and change makers, we'll explore topics at the intersection of individual wellness, social equity, and sustainability.
Speaker: Join us as we look to bridge the gap between personal, community, and planetary well-being.
Speaker: Let's dive in.
Speaker: Hi, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome to the Alchemy podcast.
Speaker: We have Alina Briggs here today with us to talk a bit more about the role of blue carbon and reforesting the oceans for climate action.
Speaker: Alina is a marine biologist and sustainability enthusiast who's been an ocean loving beach bum since the first day she got on a surfboard.
Speaker: Alina manages communications for sustainable surf,
Speaker: where she uses her love for the ocean to develop communication strategies toward advancing sustainable surf's mission to promote, protect, and restore our fragile coastal ecosystems.
Speaker: Alina is a first-generation Brazilian-American based in Encinitas, California.
Speaker: Her experience in solving the problem of climate change spans across the globe to blue carbon ecosystem and marine mammal conservation projects in Australia, Indonesia, South America, and the US.
Speaker: She hopes to use her passion of surf and culture, climate change, and ocean conservation to bridge the gap between surfing and sustainable practices.
Speaker: all while promoting a low-carbon lifestyle.
Speaker: After work, you could find Alina surfing, peaking, hanging out for cat Moana, love the name, or lecturing her friends and family about how cool whales are.
Speaker: I'm really excited to welcome Alina, you here today.
Speaker: I feel like I need to hang out with you outside of Brooklyn.
Speaker: They were like, write a bio.
Speaker: I was like, here's every single thing I like to do.
Speaker: Welcome to the Alchemy podcast.
Speaker: Yeah, it's such an honor to have you here.
Speaker: And I always ask this as we have speakers come on, but can you share in a few words a bit about yourself, who you are and how you got to where you are today with SeaTrees?
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: Well, my bio covered a little bit.
Speaker: So I'm born and raised in Southern California.
Speaker: My background is also Brazilian.
Speaker: So I was very blessed to grow up seeing lots of different parts of the world and lots of different parts of the ocean growing up, traveling around.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I've kind of always had a love for the ocean and a love for the sea.
Speaker: I grew up near the beach.
Speaker: I was very blessed in that sense and learned to walk on the sand and swim in the ocean.
Speaker: So I've always had this kind of inherent connection to the ocean and what lies in it.
Speaker: In college, I studied environmental science because I knew I wanted to do something that was protecting the planet.
Speaker: I wasn't sure kind of what pathway I wanted to follow or what avenue I wanted to go down.
Speaker: So I started environmental science.
Speaker: I absolutely loved that.
Speaker: I did some environmental education.
Speaker: So teaching people about the environment.
Speaker: So that whole communicating these problems and these solutions started pretty early for me.
Speaker: I'm like, listen to me.
Speaker: Let me tell you about the planet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then as time went on, I realized I had a little bit stronger passion towards marine science and rambology and learning how to protect our oceans and what's going on in there because it's so undiscovered.
Speaker: It's so hard to tell what's going on in the ocean because we can't see it.
Speaker: You know, on land, we can see...
Speaker: a lot of these changes happening in real time and in person and just with our own eyes in the ocean.
Speaker: It's all kind of like it's all this unknown.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: We're learning about it every single day.
Speaker: So that's kind of what really pushed me to study marine science.
Speaker: And I moved to Australia to study it because like where we're better to go, you know?
Speaker: So I moved to Australia for a couple of years and got my master's in marine science and management there, studied how ports and harbor development affect mammal fitness and, you know, reproduction and just trying to figure out like the things that we are doing to the coast and to the ocean.
Speaker: How are they affecting the animals that have been living their lives these way for thousands of years?
Speaker: So learned a lot of interesting stuff there, moved back home during COVID because they were like, oh,
Speaker: If you don't leave, you're going to get stuck in Australia.
Speaker: So I was like, you know, better go home.
Speaker: And I found SeaTrees and they were hiring for communications manager.
Speaker: And at the time, I wasn't really sure if I wanted to study in more of like a lab sense or on a boat.
Speaker: I was really trying to figure out what pathway I wanted to take.
Speaker: And I was kind of having a hard time figuring out.
Speaker: You know, do I want to be in the lab?
Speaker: Do I want to be behind the scenes?
Speaker: And I realized that my passion was more telling people about what's going on and sharing the information and making it digestible to just every person understand what's going on and learn that they can make a difference.
Speaker: So finding C-Trees.
Speaker: by sustainable surf because that's the name of the not the nonprofit was just i don't know i it popped up i'm like is this real this is incredible you know mixing these two industries trying to communicate to the people that have the closest relationship to the ocean you know surfers without the ocean the sport doesn't exist without our healthy coral reefs waves don't exist so there's this crazy cycle that happens with
Speaker: These, you know, these people that are so closely connected to the ocean and I absolutely fell in love with the nonprofit and everything they do.
Speaker: And I've been so grateful to be a part of growing this project.
Speaker: You know, we started with just one project.
Speaker: Our goal is to have 100 by 2030 and we're growing every day.
Speaker: And yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker: And I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker: It's so beautiful when the universe has these kismet things that happen, they just fall in your lap and it sounds like it was definitely one of those moments where you're just, it was a kismet universal thing that just dropped in your lap and it was perfect.
Speaker: So that's awesome.
Speaker: But before we dive more into your organization, which we'll definitely get into,
Speaker: Can you share a bit more about what it means to actually restore trees in the sea?
Speaker: Like, I think, you know, for you and I with an environmental science background, I'm sure it's easy for us to like, you know, know what that means.
Speaker: But for our listeners, like, can you explain why that's important and what it is?
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: So with sea trees, you know, sea trees, trees in the sea, that's kind of a play on words that we like to do.
Speaker: We try to keep it as simple as possible, you know what I mean?
Speaker: Especially because with our restoration efforts, they start as small as just one seedling, you know, up until hectares of coastal watershed.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Planting and storing trees in the sea is helping the ocean do what it does best.
Speaker: So these sea trees, they work in pretty magical ways.
Speaker: They pull carbon out of the atmosphere, carbon that we have emitted out into the atmosphere, bury it underground and bury it in the ocean for years and years and years, like hundreds of thousands of years.
Speaker: So by planting these sea trees, we are essentially pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, putting it in the earth and saving it there, saving it there and stored where it's not going to get released again.
Speaker: And the way we do that is by physically planting.
Speaker: So we have projects that plant mangrove trees, plant little baby corals.
Speaker: We have a restoration project.
Speaker: So it's either kind of helping the ecosystem thrive again.
Speaker: So for example, with kelp forest, the sea urchins in California have like eaten all the kelp.
Speaker: They've grown out of control.
Speaker: They're essentially like zombie urchins, not even living, but they're kind of covering that landscape so the kelp can't grow back.
Speaker: So we go in, we clear the urchins and the kelp can grow back.
Speaker: We have watershed projects where we are planting indigenous plants back into the land and kind of, you know, bringing that earth back to where it was all these years ago.
Speaker: Seagrass is restoring seagrass or just protecting the seagrass.
Speaker: So informing people that are causing damage to it.
Speaker: For example, boat traffic, you know, the anchors are ripping up the seagrass.
Speaker: So we work with projects that educate these boaters to not do that and find other ways around that.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Planting seed trees is it's super broad, you know what I mean?
Speaker: And it kind of also allows everyone to pick and choose what they feel closer to, which I think is amazing.
Speaker: We're not just choosing one plant.
Speaker: We're not just choosing one restoration method.
Speaker: It's kind of all over the place.
Speaker: We're going to be adding more.
Speaker: I'm sure I'm going to be learning every day about new.
Speaker: new methods and technologies that we're using.
Speaker: But essentially, it's just planting these ecosystems and restoring these ecosystems that provide benefits to the local people living there, to the environment, to the ocean, to species that are threatened.
Speaker: So yeah, it's just kind of restoring these critical ecosystems that we love to call blue carbon ecosystems.
Speaker: And I think such a beautiful thing with planting these trees in the sea is
Speaker: it makes it more tangible for people to kind of understand the change that we're making.
Speaker: Like I mentioned before, helping the ocean sometimes seems super daunting.
Speaker: You know, it's huge.
Speaker: Heaven's 2% of the planet's covered in water.
Speaker: We can't see anything that goes on below it.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: You can't really see change happening, but you also can't see harm happening.
Speaker: And what we've been doing for so many years, releasing carbon in the atmosphere, you know, dumping things in the ocean, dredging all these crazy things that humans have done for years and years,
Speaker: we can't really see the change that's happening and the negative, you know, the negative consequences of that.
Speaker: So by planting these trees, we make it something that's like handheld for people to do.
Speaker: You can literally plant a seed in the ground and it's reversing the effects that we've done.
Speaker: You know, we make it super tangible, really immediate impact.
Speaker: You know, you're not the seedlings planted, it's going to grow.
Speaker: You're going to watch it grow.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: When we, when we,
Speaker: encourage people to donate or plant a tree, we're like, you can literally look on a map and then see that these, over the span of years, these forests are regrowing, you know, and they're rebuilding that ecosystem from where it used to be.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And I think that's so common for people to understand, you know, this concept of planting a tree on the ground, you know, and seeing reforestation happen, but we need that seeing level of reforestation in the ocean just as much as
Speaker: on land.
Speaker: And so that jumps me into this idea of blue carbon, green carbon, which I know also is talked a lot about in the environmental space.
Speaker: But for those who are as familiar with what blue carbon is, can you explain what it means and also the importance to our ecosystem and the planet's health?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So blue carbon specifically, for those who don't know, and the way it differs from green carbon, is blue carbon refers to carbon that's stored specifically in coastal and marine ecosystems.
Speaker: Blue, ocean, you know.
Speaker: Pretty easy one to figure out there.
Speaker: Yeah, but so specifically, it's ecosystems that are under the water or kind of touching the water.
Speaker: So, for example, blue carbon ecosystems include mangrove forests, kelp forests, coral reefs, coastal watersheds, seagrass meadows, wetlands, those type of ecosystems that are on the fringe of the ocean, but still...
Speaker: contribute to what's going on in the ocean.
Speaker: They don't necessarily need to be underwater.
Speaker: Most of them are like half in the water or really close to the ocean.
Speaker: And all of these ecosystems are these powerhouses for sequestering carbon, five to 10 times more efficient than any forest on land.
Speaker: So a lot of people don't know that, you know, because a lot of people are planting
Speaker: you know, trees in the forest and the Amazon, things like that, which is incredibly important.
Speaker: It's just a different type of restoration because with blue carbon, it gets put in the soil or it gets put in the ocean and it does not get released unless we go in and rip those ecosystems out again.
Speaker: So five to 10 times more efficient.
Speaker: mangroves are just these crazy powerhouses of keeping carbon in the soil and what most of these plants do just from like a scientific standpoint is their leaves pull the carbon dioxide into the plant and it gets buried in the biomass so it gets buried in the soil gets buried in the roots and it will literally live there forever until that plant gets ripped out so by putting more of these plants in there we're pulling more carbon on the atmosphere and just burying it and you know
Speaker: It's like a win-win, you know, it's burying the carbon and these beautiful forests are coming back to life.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: You started to touch on it a little bit, but what are some of the various blue carbon ecosystems and why are they so important for those even who aren't even familiar with what's a mangrove forest?
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's something that you and I might take for granted, understanding what a mangrove forest is and the benefits, the environmental benefits of it.
Speaker: But could you share a bit more about those different ecosystems?
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: The cool thing about blue carbon ecosystems too is one is so different from the next.
Speaker: You know, there isn't one way to restore all of them and there isn't one benefit that they're all providing other than they all sequester carbon, which is also a term that means store or to hold or to bury.
Speaker: You know, if you hear me say that, that's what it means.
Speaker: Just fund her for it, you know.
Speaker: So for mangrove forests, I don't know, people might have seen mangroves.
Speaker: They're usually in tropical areas.
Speaker: They're on the coast.
Speaker: They have those crazy windy roots that are inside of the water and outside of the water.
Speaker: And they grow...
Speaker: into this ecosystem where they all kind of all grow together, which just amplifies the amount of carbon that they can store.
Speaker: They're five times, specifically mangroves are about five times more efficient than any tree on land.
Speaker: So already this really skinny trunk tree is already doing five times more work.
Speaker: And they're being lost at a rate of about, I think it's 2% a year, you know, just because of people doing coastal development, people building harbors and things like that.
Speaker: Anything on the coast, essentially in a tropical area will tear up mangroves.
Speaker: And by tearing up mangroves, you're releasing that carbon back out of the atmosphere.
Speaker: And that's why it's so important to have these conservation efforts, you know, whether it's sea trees or all the other areas.
Speaker: organizations out there doing similar work.
Speaker: Mangroves also work as water filtration, nursery grounds, you know, tons of fish and other animals will breed and live like in the root system before they go out into the ocean.
Speaker: So it's just it's a beautiful ecosystem.
Speaker: Kelp forests are
Speaker: Again, widely found around the world.
Speaker: They sequester carbon in a different way.
Speaker: They pull it through the ocean.
Speaker: About 83% of the carbon cycle is actually in the ocean.
Speaker: A lot of people think it's all just out in the atmosphere.
Speaker: Most of it happens underwater.
Speaker: And so with kelp, they pull it into their biomass.
Speaker: And essentially when that kelp dies off, it just falls to the ocean floor and just gets buried in the ocean floor.
Speaker: So it kind of does its work on its own, which is incredible.
Speaker: And it's home to...
Speaker: So many species, like just in California alone, I think it's almost a thousand species live in kelp forests.
Speaker: And that's just California.
Speaker: I don't have the numbers for the whole world, but I'm assuming it's a lot more than that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And coral reefs, that one is really fun.
Speaker: It actually is home to a quarter of all marine life.
Speaker: Like a quarter of all marine life lives in coral reefs.
Speaker: We don't have them all over the world.
Speaker: And they house so many species, which I think is so important because like if you lose these coral reefs, you know, with coral bleaching or even, you know, ripping up places to build things, we're taking those homes away from.
Speaker: a quarter of all the marine animals on the planet.
Speaker: So that's insane.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I feel like this is a really important point for our listeners.
Speaker: Coral bleaching.
Speaker: Can you explain that quickly, what that is and some of the causes that are associated with that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So coral bleaching is what happens when a coral essentially gets too hot and it dies off.
Speaker: Coral is incredibly, incredibly sensitive to the change in ocean temperatures.
Speaker: Just a fraction of a degree can kill off, you know, like miles of coral reef.
Speaker: It just is so sensitive.
Speaker: And the ocean is heating up because of climate change, because of all the carbon dioxide getting released.
Speaker: So by us doing that, by us releasing that carbon in the atmosphere, the ocean's getting hotter.
Speaker: And like I said, just a fraction of a degree will just kill off coral reefs.
Speaker: If you see those photos of really, really white coral, that's what it is.
Speaker: And when these corals die, they also release that carbon back out because the way that carbon can sequester coral is it essentially it stores huge amounts of carbon from dissolved carbon dioxide as carbonate and essentially just holds it in that reef.
Speaker: So I guess a really important point at the blue carbon ecosystems that I can't stress enough is like it will do the job for us.
Speaker: It will hold everything there.
Speaker: It will keep it from getting released.
Speaker: it's on us if we tear that out and release it back in the atmosphere so it's kind of you know it does its job we like we say we let the ocean do its work it knows what to do i guess the last two i want to touch on are seagrass just because seagrass cover a tiny tiny portion of the ocean about 2.2 of the ocean floor but it stores about 10 of the carbon buried in sediment so not that much but it does a huge amount of work which is incredible so
Speaker: Like I mentioned, a lot of the seagrass projects that we work with are not only restoring, but also protecting, informing the local communities on how to avoid destroying these ecosystems, you know?
Speaker: And it's an easy thing to do, you know?
Speaker: Just, you see a seagrass meadow there?
Speaker: Don't drag your anchor through it.
Speaker: Go around, you know?
Speaker: Educating these local communities that might not know that that ecosystem is out there or how important it is.
Speaker: And yeah, I can talk about a couple of these projects later, but we work with this local women's community in Portugal and they're just going around petitioning to voters, petitioning to captains and teaching them about this ecosystem and ways to avoid doing it, but still doing their job, you know, because everyone has a job to do.
Speaker: And then the last one I want to talk about is watersheds because watersheds are, they benefit any blue carbon ecosystem they're connected to.
Speaker: So a blue carbon ecosystem, whether it's Calcores, Coris, anything is incredibly efficient when it's connected to a healthy watershed.
Speaker: The reason most likely is because a watershed acts as a filtration system.
Speaker: For example, we have projects on Maui where we are using regenerative agriculture to replant native species into the ground, species that are essentially for that area.
Speaker: It belongs in that soil, belongs in that land.
Speaker: So when water moves down through the watershed, through the water cycle, these plants filter the water so that when the water gets to the coral reefs, it isn't full of sediment, which can suffocate the coral reefs.
Speaker: It's like clear water that goes to the ocean and essentially just benefits everything around.
Speaker: So he's loved that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And a lot of these watersheds also have mangroves in them.
Speaker: They have a lot of different, they vary around the world.
Speaker: We have watershed projects, like I said, in Hawaii.
Speaker: We have one here in San Diego that we've been, we just started Cambodia in Columbia.
Speaker: So watersheds are great.
Speaker: you know, kind of open to interpretation depending on where they're located, but they always will benefit the blue carbon ecosystem and make it so it reaches that 10 time efficiency compared to any forest on land.
Speaker: And I think the thing I love about the watershed conversation that we're having right now is that it's so the land, what's happening on the land is so deeply connected to what's happening in the ocean too.
Speaker: You know, to your point, like even in that project, you're describing like regenerative agriculture on land and how it's supporting like the runoff just, you know, to support them the poor.
Speaker: Like it's all connected and that's so beautiful.
Speaker: And we didn't even plan this, but just so deeply in alignment with what we're trying to achieve here at Alchemy is just demonstrating the interconnectedness.
Speaker: activity.
Speaker: So I know that and something else I love about your organization is that it's so community led and it's restoration and engagement efforts.
Speaker: How do you actually engage community leaders to ensure that you're having the greatest impact?
Speaker: Yeah, so one of my favorite things about our organization is that we are letting the people who know the area do the work.
Speaker: We're not coming in and saying, we know how to fix this.
Speaker: We're going to do it.
Speaker: We're going to bring our own employees and do this.
Speaker: We go in and we find local NGOs that have lived on the land for thousands of years that their ancestors grew up there.
Speaker: They know the land.
Speaker: And we go, OK, you know how to restore this.
Speaker: Let us help you do it in a way that you can grow and expand and
Speaker: you know, just continue doing it.
Speaker: So we provide the funds of these project partners, as we call them, and we work with them.
Speaker: And we essentially just help them do what they do best.
Speaker: You know, they know the area, they know the land, they know the techniques that we might not know.
Speaker: And so we go in and
Speaker: we provide employment and because of the money that these people are now earning, they can provide schooling for their kids, you know, healthcare, all some of them like will work in tangent with like scholarships that get provided.
Speaker: So there's all these benefits because the local community members are the ones doing the work.
Speaker: You know, they're the ones that are out planting because they know, they know what works and what doesn't work.
Speaker: They know where to plant and where not to plant.
Speaker: We have no idea.
Speaker: We've never been there.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: I'm not going to go.
Speaker: I'm not going to go to Kenya and say that I know,
Speaker: where to plant these mangroves.
Speaker: No, we're going to go talk to the people whose ancestors have done it and be like, okay, let's give you the means to do what you do best.
Speaker: And a lot of these projects have indigenous wisdom that were passed down on ways to do restoration that you probably couldn't even find if you Googled.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: A great example is our
Speaker: coral restoration project in bali the technique that they use is so incredible and it's this ancient seaweed growing technique that was not even for coral and the locals understood that okay well if this works for seaweed i wonder if it'll work for coral and it's been so successful that we have regrown so much coral reef just in the past like three years i think our reef has grown from tiny little fragments to a full-blown reef that's thriving and
Speaker: is actually a working ecosystem right now because the locals knew that taking this technique applying it to a different ecosystem would work because they're from there you know and so by doing that we're providing jobs and all these benefits and you know they're doing incredible work and monitoring it so it's these long time employment it's not just like oh here's
Speaker: you know, here's a job for planting.
Speaker: It's okay, let's continue to monitor it.
Speaker: How can we scale?
Speaker: Can we move and plant more?
Speaker: You know, it's this holistic approach to it where it doesn't just stop at the planting.
Speaker: It just continues and continues on forever, essentially.
Speaker: And I love how you highlighted the Indigenous wisdom that it has agreed to these communities because so many, you know,
Speaker: Over time, I think in philanthropy in general, there's been so many case studies where people come into communities and just, you know, put their own thinking and ideas into what is best for that community.
Speaker: And I think it's so important as we think of collective action, how do we empower and support those who know best
Speaker: from like history and generations and generations and generations of being there and what their ancestors did to support and protect the ecosystems that gave them life, you know, and support them.
Speaker: So I think that's really, really cool.
Speaker: Something also that is very relevant in the sustainability movement in the world is sustainable development, no pun intended.
Speaker: Can you talk about a little bit too, what is the role of sustainable development in protecting coastal ecosystems?
Speaker: Yeah, so kind of similar to what I mentioned before is these projects that we do support both the environments and the ecological systems and the people that live there.
Speaker: So all of our projects that we decide to work with and kind of bring on board, we make sure that they're benefiting not only the ecosystem, but every single person that lives near it, lives in the area or is a participant in the project.
Speaker: So by, you know, implementing this project and working with these people, we're providing jobs, alleviating hunger, protecting endangered species, you know, supporting education and gender equality.
Speaker: We have some projects that are only run by women.
Speaker: For example, our Baja Mexico mangrove restoration project, pretty much all women.
Speaker: And they're incredible.
Speaker: And so with that one, we're like, yes, I love this.
Speaker: You know, that's one of my favorite projects.
Speaker: So all of these kind of all those things I just listed are all part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Speaker: And there's 17 again.
Speaker: So 17 of them, pardon.
Speaker: And if you go to our website to each of the projects, we do a breakdown of these goals and we give a little explanation on how the project is benefiting that goal and kind of carrying that out.
Speaker: So we're
Speaker: For example, you know, it will say, oh, this one project supports goals one, you know, one, five, eight, nine, 13, 14, whatever they are.
Speaker: So we like to be as transparent as we can to our audience and to our followers and our supporters who are, you know, helping us by donating to restore these ecosystems.
Speaker: We want to show them the work is getting done, you know, and not only are you planting this tree, all of these other benefits are kind of coming along with it.
Speaker: All these extra benefits.
Speaker: amazing, incredible things that are benefiting the people who then want to continue to grow this ecosystem.
Speaker: And it's this amazing cycle that just continues to continue.
Speaker: So we like to be really informative in education and, you know, kind of provide education on what these SDGs are and where you can find them and where you can learn about on our website.
Speaker: And we update them, you know, throughout the year.
Speaker: If more people get hired or, you know, this happens, we just really try to keep people updated because you guys are doing
Speaker: us a favor and donating and help us plan we want to make sure that you guys know what's what's coming of that you know all the incredible things that are happening from just the one tree that you planted yeah and i think the sustainable development goals as a framework is just really helpful for the globe to be aligned on what we need to accomplish as a global community to ensure all beings everywhere living in prosperity and so um
Speaker: It's just a really beautiful framework.
Speaker: And I think it's helpful for organizations, both corporates and nonprofits to help align to those.
Speaker: And I think it's great that you guys are so transparent, too, because there's two points, so many smaller benefits that might not be like the main focus, but other benefits of a project that come to light when you actually like think about it in the.
Speaker: in the context of like UN SDGs.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Like we're not just planting trees, you know, we're doing so much more than that.
Speaker: We're going above and beyond and just, you know, we want to communicate that impact.
Speaker: That's part of such a big part of our organization is the storytelling side of it.
Speaker: We love going to these places.
Speaker: We love filming these communities, working with them to put together this story that we can share with people to really kind of captivate them and engage them into taking action.
Speaker: Cause we want to tell these stories.
Speaker: They're beautiful stories, you know, and they're,
Speaker: incredible communities that maybe people have never seen or even heard of before and they're literally doing insane work saving our lives and saving the future of this planet you know and so far we if i remember correctly you know i think we're at we've planted over 3.6 million sea trees hoping to get up to 5 million this year that's our goal for this year um which is you know starting from zero into 2019 to have gotten to almost fourth
Speaker: 4 million by now.
Speaker: We've provided almost 2,000 people, local indigenous people with employment, long-term employment, who supported over 160 communities and protected almost 900 threatened species and threatened species.
Speaker: And there's just, I mean, there's tons more that I could list.
Speaker: You know, I could go down the entire list, but those are just a couple of big numbers that
Speaker: We love to communicate to our audience and share when those numbers keep growing and they will continue to keep growing.
Speaker: You know, our North Star goal for Sea Trees is 100 blue carbon projects by 2030 because we want to have that global impact and have those ecosystems continuing to do the job they do best.
Speaker: And yeah, essentially...
Speaker: reversing climate change by doing so.
Speaker: And I think that's what is great too about what we just explained is that like you, we're not even talking about the, the wellbeing benefits of the people that are able to enjoy that.
Speaker: And also the coastal ecosystems and like their health and wellbeing associated with it.
Speaker: You know, there's just so many, um, there's so much connection between the wellness of
Speaker: the communities that we're supporting both from an economic perspective, the wellbeing of just their health as well to the climate and then also just, you know, globally.
Speaker: So beautiful picture you just painted.
Speaker: And I think that really aligns to our kind of final closeout questions that I always like to ask our speakers.
Speaker: I cannot believe we're already, you know, getting to the end of our conversation that really flew by.
Speaker: But what role do you think blue carbon and the ecosystems really play in this collective wellbeing that we're all trying to achieve and have
Speaker: together on the planet.
Speaker: Yeah, I think from the most just general way to put it, you know, these blue carbon ecosystems are key to reversing climate change.
Speaker: They are doing the work with, you know, by themselves because it's inherently what these ecosystems do.
Speaker: You know, they pull carbon out of the atmosphere, they bury it, they do the work, they store it in the ocean.
Speaker: By restoring these ecosystems, we are reversing climate change.
Speaker: We're doing what needs the most important thing that needs to be done right now in our planet.
Speaker: And it's something that is so tangible, so easy to do.
Speaker: You know, it literally takes 30 seconds and a click on our website to plant a mangrove tree.
Speaker: Even if you sign up for our newsletter, we plant a free tree for you.
Speaker: You know, we're trying to get people as involved as possible because we know that.
Speaker: It's so easy to have a positive impact and leave a positive climate legacy because by planting these trees, by restoring these ecosystems, just by educating yourself on what these ecosystems are, like, you know, if you can't donate right now, that's so fine.
Speaker: Just learn about it.
Speaker: Share the knowledge.
Speaker: Talk to people.
Speaker: Tell them how important coral reefs are, how important kelp forests are.
Speaker: A lot of people have no clue what the job that these ecosystems are doing is.
Speaker: as we speak you know so by restoring these ecosystems it's really tackling that massive you know problem that we're dealing with right now and then planet and you know with our world so it's just a beautiful thing to kind of let the ocean do what it does yeah and you kind of touched on a couple call to actions but if you were to have just one that you were to ask your community to engage with what they can do to support coastal ecosystems what would be like the one thing that you would recommend they do
Speaker: I would say to plant a sea tree, you know, I would say, you know, we have tons of different options.
Speaker: Find the sea tree that resonates the most with you, you know, whatever your favorite one is.
Speaker: If you went snorkeling one time and saw a coral reef and you're like, oh, that's beautiful.
Speaker: Go and restore your square foot of coral reef.
Speaker: Or, you know, we have different...
Speaker: variations of that up to like a big chunk of reef that you can restore yourself.
Speaker: I would say take action because we will then provide you with the information and education and teach you about your ecosystem and all the incredible things that your little mangrove seedling is contributing to.
Speaker: And it's just such an easy action.
Speaker: And I love telling people about it.
Speaker: And yeah, it's also fun.
Speaker: You know, you get updates in your tree.
Speaker: Your newsletter also, that is just an easy way to your point.
Speaker: Exactly, yeah.
Speaker: We'll plant a tree for you and then you'll get awesome blogs and you'll get, you know, updates on our video content and cool films that we make and stuff like that.
Speaker: It's so easy, you know, type in your email and then awesome info.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, and a free tree.
Speaker: I am so grateful that you came and shared a lot of this information with us and our community.
Speaker: I know for me, marine biology was one of my favorite classes as well when I was in university.
Speaker: And I think it's hard for us not to, it's hard to understand because we can't see it, to your point.
Speaker: But yet it takes up the most landmass out of the entire planet.
Speaker: And we need to care for it the same way we think of caring about the ecosystems that
Speaker: are on land too and so thank you so much for getting us a little quick overview on I know there's a lot more we could have dived in down into around coastal ecosystems and just the ocean and ocean restoration but I think this is a really great entry point for people who are interested to start to learn more and understand the importance that the ocean plays for our collective wellness so thank you thank you for being here thank you for having me this has been such a such a fun chat awesome and then yeah thank you again and we'll see you soon
Speaker: Thanks for listening to the Alchemy podcast.
Speaker: If you enjoyed our conversation today, you can find more about the speaker in our show notes below.
Speaker: In order to build a global community committed to wellbeing for all, we need your help.
Speaker: So please rate and subscribe to whoever you're listening from.
Speaker: Finally, we cannot do this without the help of our amazing team.
Speaker: A huge thank you and shout out to Lindsay Todd, producer.
Speaker: All right, y'all have a lovely, lovely day.
