Big Fight Blue Soul

Send us Fan Mail This week I feel extremely grateful to sit down with Kristin Hoel, a project manager in the East Coast Whale Entanglement Mitigation Program for Ocean Watch Australia AND one of my closest friends. Kristin works to balance both fishers livelihoods and humpback whale conservation outcomes, describing the constant jigsaw puzzle of human-wildlife conflicts.   She shares with us about...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Asia Haines fondly calls manta rays "the gateway drug to marine conservation." Have you ever wanted to know why manta rays aggregate in large numbers in places like the Maldives? Why they are so big? What they feed on? And did you know there’s a pink manta ray?! This week's dive into the marine world interviews Dr. Asia Haines for a peek into the lives of the ma...

Send us Fan Mail If there’s any scientific focus right now that feels like a constant uphill battle, it's climate change. But for dive instructor and social scientist Dr. Yolanda Lee Waters, she saw an opportunity to investigate how we can inspire climate action with the deep connection that people already have with the Great Barrier Reef. Since completing her PhD, she is now focused on commu...

Send us Fan Mail How do you find the intersection between storytelling and beautiful imagery while supporting yourself ($$) and the Earth? Arisa Yoon sits down to share with us her path from her environmental science degree to brand photographer and creative director. With an ethos of  “empowering others to care about the planet and themselves,” Arisa aims to create branding strategies that foster...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode we share the knowledge and work of Dr. Simon Foale, a marine scientist and anthropology professor at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. Growing up in the Solomon Islands, he always had a love of the ocean, but it was only when he recognized the importance of traditional ecological knowledge that he started wandering into the anthropology realm. We disc...

Send us Fan Mail It’s our final week of a month of refusing single-use plastic and decreasing our reliance on plastics ! Thank you all so much for participating, and I hope you all come back to these episodes whenever you want to take on a challenge to reduce your reliance on plastic.  This week we try to Strengthen our Voice: that means educating ourselves about the issue we are trying to combat....

Send us Fan Mail We are halfway through Plastic Free July and I'm so proud of all of you!! I'm so excited you've been keeping up with these episodes, and I hope you've learned a few things and are eager to expand your plastic awareness beyond yourself this week, because it's all about caring for our community. Additionally we speak to Caitlin Smith, a PhD student at Univer...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to Week 2 of Plastic Free July and our new episode series! We hope you're joining us to keep going on your Plastic Free July Journey. In this episode we reflect on last week's tasks, and how it feels to start becoming aware of how much plastic is in our lives. Our topic for this week is about greenwashing, how to break up with Amazon, and how to better criti...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the first episode of our new shorter format episode series! The microdOcean aims to communicate information on marine science, species, and sustainability topics. And what better way to start it out than with a month-long challenge, and new microdOcean episodes every week?! Plastic Free July was founded by what is now the Plastic Free Foundation, and aims to challenge p...

Send us Fan Mail We love friends supporting friends! Dylan shares his experience on working towards his passion of starting his own non-profit based on diving and citizen science where local community members can contribute to reef  resilience in Oahu, Hawaii through monitoring and restoration efforts. We also take the time to discuss how the context of Hawaii and local ecological knowledge plays...

Send us Fan Mail These days with social media showing us pictures and videos of wilderness adventures and unbelievable animal interactions, everyone wants to be a content creator. I mean, the perks have to be great right? When you work in media, there's a lot of competition, which means there's a lot of rejection, but when you find your niche - thats when it all comes into alignment. Thi...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is a bit of a switch up! Instead of having a conversation with someone else, Aliya takes the opportunity to share and dive into her current state of mind after taking a little trip away to restore and reflect on everything going on in life. We start the episode with a poem on change and how to find meaning in our lives, which is touched on throughout the episode. We a...

Send us Fan Mail We continue our conversation with interdisciplinary scientist Dr. Brock Bergseth to discuss avoiding burnout, making authentic connections, framing our perceptions and how to empower ourselves with the magic of life. Listen to hear about philosophy, a little bit of science, and a whole lot of goodness! ______________________________________________________________________ Episode...

Send us Fan Mail Aliya chats with supervisor and mentor Dr. Brock Bergseth, a DECRA research fellow at James Cook University and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. An interdisciplinary conservation scientist, Brock bridges the domains of marine biology and human behavior to help bolster conservation outcomes. He’s also a man driven by his passion and love for the outdoors, huntin...

Send us Fan Mail Aliya chats with Krystina Jarvis, an inspiring friend that she met during her time in undergrad. After completing a zoology degree at The Ohio State University, Krystina pursued a Master’s in conservation biology where she discovered the world of zero-waste. Join to learn how and why her focus of conservation shifted from large-scale research science to a focus on sustainable livi...

Send us Fan Mail Aliya connects with her dear friend and fellow recent marine biology graduate Matt  who sheds light on how lockdown helped illuminate an idea that he hopes to now manifest into reality. Marrying the lessons from his aquaculture course and his passion for food and the connections it brings, he envisions creating a farm to table homestead that will be “a lifelong project”. They get...

Send us Fan Mail How do we move forward in a globalized world that seems to rejects genuine connections, embraces broken systems, and is on the brink of ecological destruction? If you’re like me, you may not have a clear vision of what our lives or the future holds…but you do have an intuitive belief and hope in what it could be .  This is the moment to embrace and fight for a life driven by purpo...