Exploring the Depths: An Investigative Dive on Ocean Conservation and Cultural Impact

In the latest episode of Rising Tide the Ocean Podcast David Helvarg and Vicki Nichols Goldstein have an engaging conversation with Paul Greenberg, author of the best-selling book ‘Four Fish’ and more recent writings including his latest novel ‘A Third Term’ (George Washington takes on Donald Trump). A Writer in Residence at the Safina Center, a former Pew Fellow and recipient of many honors, Paul discusses growing up fishing, his literary journey (with a short jaunt into Semiotics) how people’s habits and perceptions often differ from common environmental messaging they receive and why Bluefin Tuna give him hope for the future. Tune in for a thoughtful and thought- provoking conversation in depth with our guest Paul Greenberg.

Unraveling the Threads of Change: From Photography to Global Environmental Advocacy

Academy Award-winning director Louie Psihoyos returned to the Rising Tide Ocean Podcast for a conversation as wide-ranging and urgent as his films. Host David Helvarg sat down with Psihoyos before a live audience during SF Climate Week at the downtown San Francisco studios of KALW public radio — and the exchange didn't disappoint.

Psihoyos traces his unlikely path to ocean advocacy: a kid from Iowa, drawn early to photography and the sea, who eventually landed at National Geographic — beginning, as origin stories often do, at the bottom, sifting through a garbage dig. From there he rose to become one of the most consequential documentary filmmakers working today, a man who doesn't just point a camera at environmental catastrophe but builds covert operations around it.

He recounts the making of The Cove, his shattering exposé of the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan — a film that required as much tradecraft as filmmaking — and discusses his latest work, Plastic Detox, now streaming on Netflix, which takes a hard look at microplastics and their alarming effects on human fertility.

The two also range across a broader landscape: adventures, causes for concern, and — perhaps most valuably in these grinding times — reasons for optimism.

It's a talk worth diving into.

Additional Resources

The Plastic Detox — an eye-opening journey into the hidden dangers of plastic in our homes.

When six couples embark on a plastic detox within their homes, it changes their families forever. This eye-opening documentary explains what microplastics and their chemicals are doing to our health and how we can take matters into our own hands.

From hormone disruption that’s fueling a worldwide fertility crisis, to growing rates of cancer, and early heart attack and stroke, this powerful documentary reveals the shocking science behind plastic’s impact on human life.

Blue Frontier / Substack — Building the solution-based citizen movement needed to protect our ocean, coasts and communities, both human and wild.

Inland Ocean Coalition — Building land-to-sea stewardship - the inland voice for ocean protection

Fluid Studios — Thinking radically different about the collective good, our planet, & the future.

Exploring the Forgotten Frontlines of Our Ocean's Battle Against Climate Change

The tables turn on the latest episode of Rising Tide the Ocean Podcast as Blue Frontier’s Natasha Benjamin interviews Rising Tide co-host and author David Helvarg on his latest book, ‘Forest of the Sea – The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp’ (coming out May 5th). As co-director of the award-winning kelp forest documentary ‘Sequoias of the Sea’ Natasha is also steeped in the mystery, wonder and peril of these great underwater forests of life and light. So, their discussion ranges over both familiar territory – how a changing warming ocean is impacting kelp forests that have been around over 30 million years - to some of the newer things David discovered during his two years researching the book, interviewing and diving with a wide range of people and creatures from Alaska to California, Maine, Turkey, Palau – for his chapter ‘Kelp is the new Coral’ - and other far-flung waterfronts where the world’s kelp forests, cover an area larger than the Amazon rainforest. He talks about how they’ve gotten into serious trouble even as they provide us half a trillion dollars of services a year including as ‘the mother seed’ for global food security in fishing and seaweed aquaculture.

It’s a fun romp through an entangling wonderland, which is why Rising Tide recommends you give a listen and then buy David’s book (preferably through your local independent bookstore).

Additional Resources

Pre-order Forest Of The Sea — Veteran journalist David Helvarg takes us on a riveting journey beneath the waves to understand kelp’s natural and human history, the billions of dollars of products and services it contributes to our global economy, the unwitting human activities that threaten its survival, and the powerful movements around the world to restore its disappearing habitat.

Sequoias Of The Sea — tells the story of the environmental, cultural and economic destruction impacting a coastal town that has lost its coastal kelp forest. It’s a deep dive into the lives of fishermen, tribes, scientists, and a community working to restore a habitat devastated by a warming climate.

Blue Frontier / Substack — Building the solution-based citizen movement needed to protect our ocean, coasts and communities, both human and wild.

Inland Ocean Coalition — Building land-to-sea stewardship - the inland voice for ocean protection

Fluid Studios — Thinking radically different about the collective good, our planet, & the future.