Our Ocean to Save: Emily Cunningham on Protecting Our Greatest Climate Ally
Release Date: 11/10/2026
Silence Is Taking a Side: Why Scientists Belong on the Campaign Trail
How To Protect The Ocean
Every scientist makes advocacy choices every day, whether they admit it or not. The questions you ask, the communities you engage, the issues you spend your time on, and the moments you stay quiet all push the world in one direction. Oceana's Chief Scientist, Dr. Katie Matthews, argues that staying silent on an issue you care about quietly props up the status quo, and in ocean conservation the status quo is usually the problem. Recorded between meetings while Katie was in Panama, this conversation previews her plenary at IMCC8, the 8th International Marine Conservation Congress in Edinburgh....
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What's New and What's Next in Ocean Science Communication
How To Protect The Ocean
Ocean science only protects the ocean when people outside the lab hear it. Dr. David Shiffman, interdisciplinary marine conservation biologist and author of Why Sharks Matter, returns to the show to preview the symposium he organized for the International Marine Conservation Congress: Ocean Science and Conservation Communication: What's New and What's Next. Andrew is one of the presenters. Dave explains why IMCC stands apart from other scientific meetings, with government officials, practitioners, advocates, teachers and artists in the same room as researchers, and why the tools and the policy...
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Our Ocean to Save: Emily Cunningham on Protecting Our Greatest Climate Ally
How To Protect The Ocean
Ask most people what the lungs of the planet are, and they'll say forests. Marine biologist Emily Cunningham would point you to phytoplankton: tiny drifting algae that produce about half the oxygen made on Earth. That gap between what the ocean does for us and what we think it does is why she wrote her first book. Our Ocean to Save: How to Protect Our Greatest Climate Ally is Emily's answer to the question she hears more than any other: "What can I do to help the ocean?" Not a list of don'ts, but a hopeful, practical guide for anyone, anywhere. In this episode, Emily tells Andrew how a manatee...
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Small Grants, Big Impact: How Sea-Changers Funds Community Ocean Action
How To Protect The Ocean
Have you ever had an idea for your community, like a beach cleanup, a water fountain, or a patch of shoreline that needs some love, and thought, "If I just had a little money, I could make this happen"? That kind of funding is hard to find. In the UK, there's a charity built for exactly that. Sea-Changers was founded about 15 years ago by Helen Webb and Rachel Lopata, two divers with no background in marine science who watched the places they loved underwater start to decline. Instead of starting one project, they started a way to fund hundreds. They bring in money from businesses and...
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From Small Towns to a Global Treaty
How To Protect The Ocean
"We'll never see that in our lifetime." You've probably heard it about the ocean. Andrew has heard it plenty, and admits he's said it too. For years it was the standard answer about protecting the high seas, the two-thirds of the ocean that lies beyond any country's borders. Then the High Seas Treaty was agreed, entered into force in January 2026, and passed 100 countries in September, Canada included. In this week's wrap-up, Andrew uses that win to show why a global plastics treaty can happen too, and how it gets built from the ground up. He walks through the ladder: a town like Tofino...
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The Straw Backlash: Why Guilt Doesn't Work
How To Protect The Ocean
"You can't care about plastic. Your phone is made of plastic." If you've ever heard that, you know what it's for. It's designed to make you feel like a hypocrite, so you give up. In this episode, Andrew goes back to one of the most famous moments in plastic pollution: the 2015 video of researchers in Costa Rica pulling a plastic straw from an olive ridley sea turtle's nose. A few months later, the same researcher pulled a plastic fork from another turtle. The straw video helped spark a global push against single-use plastics, and then the straw itself became a punchline. Andrew explains why...
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The Beach That Doesn't Need Cleaning Anymore
How To Protect The Ocean
Picture a beach cleanup. Two hours of hauling bottles, wrappers and foam off the sand. Now picture the same beach ten years later, where you walk the whole length and come home empty-handed. Not because nobody cleaned it, but because there's nothing left to clean. That's a real story, and it happened in Tofino, a surf town on the west coast of Vancouver Island. In 2016 its beaches were covered in plastic, and the local Surfrider chapter realized they could clean every weekend for the rest of their lives and it would never stop. So they changed tactics. They went to the businesses handing out...
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Too Enthusiastic? How to Find Your Place in Ocean Action
How To Protect The Ocean
Do you ever feel disconnected from ocean action? You sign the petition, you donate, you share the post, and you still don't feel like you're doing the work. Andrew knows the feeling. Fresh out of his undergrad, he emailed organization after organization offering to help for free, and mostly heard nothing back. In this episode he explains why that happens (it usually comes down to trust and how organizations take on volunteers), and how to get past it. He also retells the story of Lilly Woodbury from yesterday's episode: an environmental studies grad who kept hitting the same wall until she...
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Come for the Impact, Stay for the People: Inside Surfrider Canada
How To Protect The Ocean
Do you ever feel like ocean action is happening somewhere else? You sign the petition, maybe donate, but you're not really part of the work. Lilly Woodbury knows that feeling, and she found her way in by walking into a Surfrider meeting in Tofino in 2016. Lilly is the campaigns and storytelling director at Surfrider Foundation Canada. In this episode she tells Andrew how a small volunteer chapter helped Tofino and Ucluelet ban plastic straws, bags, cutlery and foam containers, and how Tofino became the first municipality in Canada to ban single-use plastic water bottles. Ten years in, she says...
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One Promise: How a Postcard Changed Behaviour for a Year
How To Protect The Ocean
Picture a kid at an aquarium in Durban, standing in front of the penguins with a pen and a postcard. She writes one sentence, a promise to change one habit for the ocean, and drops it into a little post box. More than a year later, researchers emailed visitors like her to ask if they'd kept their promise. About half could point to a real change they'd made. This week's episodes covered a lot: marine protected areas nobody can name, a reef that rebuilt itself, and why "fishing is bad" pushes people away. If all of that left you feeling heavy, this episode is for you. Andrew talks about...
info_outlineAsk most people what the lungs of the planet are, and they'll say forests. Marine biologist Emily Cunningham would point you to phytoplankton: tiny drifting algae that produce about half the oxygen made on Earth. That gap between what the ocean does for us and what we think it does is why she wrote her first book.
Our Ocean to Save: How to Protect Our Greatest Climate Ally is Emily's answer to the question she hears more than any other: "What can I do to help the ocean?" Not a list of don'ts, but a hopeful, practical guide for anyone, anywhere.
In this episode, Emily tells Andrew how a manatee CD-ROM game turned a landlocked kid from Staffordshire into a marine biologist, how a viral Twitter thread from Antarctica led to a book deal, and why she started seeing ocean threats as symptoms of bigger social problems after volunteering with a community-led turtle project in Sri Lanka. She explains shifting baselines in plain language, how she went from restoration skeptic to convert, why hope is a verb, and why research suggests we only need about one in four people on board to change what society expects. And she shares how Motion for the Ocean, the local government ocean recovery declaration she co-founded, has been passed by more than 40 councils across the UK, and how you can bring it to your own town, even if you live by a lake.
Links mentioned in this episode
- Our Ocean to Save (North America), Chelsea Green: https://www.chelseagreen.com/?p=2121059
- Our Ocean to Save (UK), Pan Macmillan: https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/emily-cunningham/our-ocean-to-save/9781035065271
- Motion for the Ocean: https://oceanconservationtrust.org/project/the-motion-for-the-ocean/
- Emily Cunningham: https://emilycunningham.co.uk
- Emily on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marinebiologylife
- Billion Oyster Project: https://www.billionoysterproject.org
- Last week's episodes on Tofino and the plastics treaty (2059, 2061):
- Tofino Plastic episode: https://www.speakupforblue.com/show/speak-up-for-the-ocean-blue/podcast-245/
- Plastic Treaty episode: https://www.speakupforblue.com/show/speak-up-for-the-ocean-blue/podcast-247/
- Andrew's earlier interview with Emily, recorded in Malaysia: https://www.speakupforblue.com/show/speak-up-for-the-ocean-blue/reaching-out-to-politicians-and-international-adaptation-of-motion4theocean/
Takeaways
- The ocean is a climate ally: phytoplankton produce about half of Earth's oxygen and the ocean absorbs huge amounts of heat and carbon
- People do care about the ocean; what's missing is a clear, positive path to action
- Shifting baselines hide how much abundance we've lost, so imagine the ocean you want, not just the one you know
- Let yourself grieve, then channel that feeling into action with other people
- Many ocean threats are symptoms of poverty and injustice; conservation works best with communities in the driving seat
- Restoration isn't a substitute for tackling causes, but it's a powerful way to bring new people in
- Your action: ask your local council to pass a Motion for the Ocean, or set a calendar reminder to follow through on your own ocean action