Humpback whales disappeared from New York Harbor for decades. In 2009, three showed up. Today, more than 500 individual whales have been documented in the New York Bight, and the man who started counting them had no marine biology degree.

In this episode of the Ocean Leaders Podcast, host Andrew Lewin talks with PJ Sieswerda about his father Paul, the founder of Gotham Whale. Paul began as a volunteer at the New England Aquarium in Boston and taught himself everything. He picked up knowledge from mentors like MIT's Doc Edgerton and went on to spend more than 40 years in public aquariums in Boston and New York. Along the way he built cutting-edge exhibits, joined an expedition to Alaska to bring back a walrus, and gave behind-the-scenes tours to kids, teachers and Bobby Orr.

When Paul retired, he didn't slow down. He started out tracking seals from local tour boats and asking the community to send him their sightings. Then the humpbacks returned, thanks to cleaner water and the comeback of menhaden. Paul's sighting records became the New York City humpback whale catalog, and in 2011 he founded Gotham Whale. It is a volunteer-driven, membership-funded organization where citizen scientists, boat partners and head researcher Dr. Danielle Brown turn community sightings into peer-reviewed science and classroom education.

PJ shares what it was like to watch his father's legacy grow, how Gotham Whale is moving forward since Paul's passing in 2023, and why getting out on the water helps him heal. If you lead an ocean project, this story shows what one determined person with deep curiosity and a community behind them can build.

Share your thoughts with us on Spotify or LinkedIn at Pisces Oceans Inc. The Ocean Leaders Podcast is a Pisces Oceans podcast.

Winning the grant is the easy part. What you do in the months after determines whether that funder ever gives you money again.

On this episode, Andrew sits down with Melissa Weber, co-CEO of Pisces Oceans, to talk about the part of grant work nobody teaches: managing the project once the money lands. Melissa built her research administration expertise through a PhD at the University of Ottawa, years working with Inuit communities on fieldwork funding, and her time since joining Pisces during the pandemic. She and Andrew break down what happens between the congratulations email and the final report, from finalizing the contribution agreement to tracking every dollar against a budget that funders will eventually question.

Melissa walks through the systems she relies on: a separate tracking spreadsheet with a committed and obligations column, notes logged in real time so nothing depends on memory two years later, and a running list of highly qualified personnel kept in whatever format the funder asks for. She also covers the harder parts, like why year one of a multi year grant almost never gets the full runway you planned for, how equipment lead times and research vessel scheduling quietly eat into your timeline, and why flagging a problem to your funder early, with a proposed solution attached, is what actually protects the relationship.

The throughline is that managing a grant well is what builds the kind of funder relationship that gets you funded again. For ocean leaders running their first project or their fiftieth, this episode is the playbook for that shift from grant writer to grant manager.

Takeaways:

• Set up your tracking system on day one: a dedicated spreadsheet with committed and obligations columns, and notes logged as decisions happen so you're never reconstructing history from memory.
• When something slips, tell your funder early and bring a proposed solution with you, not just the problem.
• Track highly qualified personnel (HQP) and collaborator details in the exact format your funder reports in, from the start of the project.
• Build in slack for delays. Vessel time, equipment lead times, and slow contribution agreements routinely eat into a "solid" year one.
• Treat reporting and transparency as relationship building, not paperwork. It's what gets you funded again.

Website: https://www.piscesoceans.ca/
Set up a meeting to discuss your ocean project: https://www.piscesoceans.ca/contact

Six months into your ocean project, you realize nobody knows who it's for. Now you're untangling years of work instead of moving forward.

In this episode, host Andrew Lewin sits down with Natalie Gilson, co-CEO of Pisces Oceans, to talk about the cost of treating communications as an afterthought. Whether you're running a nonprofit, a startup, or an academic research project, Natalie makes the case that communications strategy belongs at the start, not six months or a year down the road once the "who is this for" question has already gone unanswered too long.

Andrew and Natalie dig into why so many ocean projects skip this step, from academics chasing publication over public understanding to founders who confuse tactics (a social post, an article) with strategy (knowing who you're talking to and why). They cover the "first date, marriage proposal" problem of pitching before you've built trust, why transparency (even imperfect transparency) builds loyalty faster than a polished but hollow message, and how to avoid greenwashing your own brand by leading with the wrong value proposition for the wrong audience.

Natalie closes with the four questions she says every ocean project should answer before writing a single social post: what are you doing, why are you doing it, who are you doing it for, and what will the world look like once you've done it.

If you're building something for the ocean and communications feels like a "later" problem, this episode will change your timeline.

Takeaways:

• Communications strategy should start on day one of a project, not once you're already six months or a year in trying to explain what you're doing and why.
• The four foundational questions are what you're doing, why you're doing it, who you're doing it for, and what the world looks like once it's done.
• Strategy and tactics are different things. Tactics (posts, articles, ads) only work once the strategic groundwork of audience and purpose is in place.
• Building trust with your audience takes ongoing transparency, even when the update is imperfect or the news isn't great.
• Skipping early communications planning doesn't just cost time and money. It can derail team focus and mission clarity as a project grows.