Conservation Connection – Details, episodes & analysis

Heavy metal music seems to attract sharks, but do you know why?

On the final episode of Season 10 we sit down with the world's only Heavy Metal Marine Biologist! Tom "The Blowfish" Hird tells us all about his his wild stories from the field, including how he performed heavy metal music at sea to get a closer look at the ocean's coolest predators!

Enjoy this episode and stay tuned for Season 11 of Conservation Connection, coming October 1st 2024.

This episode was recorded at EarthX2024 in Dallas Texas!

New tools allow us to collect more data than ever before, but is that always a good thing?

When it comes time for policymakers to make decisions, a complex system of stakeholders, limited resources, and unclear goals can make it hard to figure out the best way forward. That's where decision scientists like Dr. Jennifer McGowan swoop in to save the day!

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This episode was recorded at EarthX2024 in Dallas Texas

Rainforest sounds recorded by by AdrienPola, accessed on FreeSound dot org

When he learned that 95% of California's kelp forests had disappeared in the past 10 years, Adam Hussain devised a plan to put his underwater film skills to use saving the ecosystem that he loved!

This week we sit down at EarthX with the director of the upcoming documentary Seaforestation to learn about the critical role that kelp forests play in the oceans and how researchers and citizens across the globe are solving the threats that kelp forests face!

Check out the trailer to Seaforestation HERE

In this episode we sit down with Erica Bjelland, a Program Development Specialist at the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance! RREAL is a nonprofit organization who's goal is to make solar energy accessible to communities of all income levels, providing support for anyone who is interested in bringing solar energy into their community. Listen in to hear a great conversation about the importance of renewable energy and the ways in which RREAL is making it easier to access! 

Click here to learn more about our nonprofit: www.lastchanceendeavors.com

Click here to learn more about the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance: www.RREAL.org

Listen in as we sit down with Erik Sotka, an evolutionary ecologist with the Grice Marine Lab at the College of Charleston. He's an expert on invasive species and the ways in which they're changing the ecological make up of marine habitats in the eastern United States. Did you know that the vast majority of introduced species do not go on to become invasive, but instead fizzle out? Erik Sotka is fascinated by why some species succeed where others fail, and the effects that they may have once they're established!

Click here to learn more about our nonprofit: https://www.lastchanceendeavors.com

Listen in to this EarthX micro-episode to hear what the Mexican government is doing for the critically endangered vaquita! This species of shy porpoise is endemic to the Gulf of California, and is on the brink of extinction. Often caught as bycatch in illegal nets set for a species of fish called totoaba, the number of vaquita remaining in the wild is estimated to be fewer than 30 individuals!

If you'd like to learn more about our nonprofit, click here: https://www.lastchanceendeavors.com

If you'd like to learn more about vaquitas, click here: http://www.vivavaquita.org

Join us for our final interview to come out of WhaleFest 2019 as we sit down with Janet Neilson, a whale biologist who works at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Janet's job is to understand how many whales are in Glacier Bay each summer, and to figure out where they're concentrating! She and her team use a variety of techniques to monitor their whales, and spend the entirety of the off-season analyzing all the data they collect in the few short months that the humpbacks visit the park. If you've ever wondered what the day-to-day life of a whale researcher is like, this is a must-listen episode!

If you'd like to learn more about our nonprofit, click here: https://www.lastchanceendeavors.com

If you'd like to learn more about Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, click here: https://www.nps.gov/glba/index.htm

If you'd like to explore the "humpback yearbook" click here: http://alaskahumpbacks.org

Join us for another episode recorded in Dallas at EarthX 2019! This week we're sitting with Emily Hazelwood and Amber Jackson-Sparks, two leaders in the Rigs-to-Reefs movement and the co-founders of Blue Latitudes! Their company designs sustainable, creative, and cost effective solutions for environmental issues in the offshore industry. Offshore oil rigs are massive pieces of infrastructure that are put in place for decades at a time to extract petroleum, but once the oil reserve has been depleted a new issue arrises: what to do about the infrastructure left behind? Emily and Amber argue that after decades in the ocean the structure has built up an incredible amount of sea life, and that it's beneficial to allow everything below the surface to remain. In fact, these man-mad oases can become important safe-houses for marine life in an increasingly over-harvested ocean! To learn more about our nonprofit, click here: https://www.lastchanceendeavors.com To learn more about Blue Latitudes, click here: http://www.rig2reefexploration.org

 Join us for another gripping episode coming all the way from Sitka, Alaska! We sit down at WhaleFest 2019 across the table from Mayumi Arimitsu, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center, to discuss the shift that the mysterious "Blob" has caused to the food chain in the eastern Pacific! A massive die-off of critical sea birds puzzled scientists, and Mayumi's work has helped clarify some of the possible links and mechanisms behind it!

To learn more about our nonprofit, click here: https://www.lastchanceendeavors.com

To learn more about the Alaska Science Center, click here: https://www.usgs.gov/centers/asc/

Join us for another EarthX episodes with the CEO of Fresh Food Connect, Candace Chandra! Fresh Food Connect is a tech platform that allows small-scale urban agriculturalists to connect with the people who need their produce the most, and was launched as a way to lessen the impact of food deserts- urban areas with no easy access to fresh produce. It's important to remember that environmental issues go beyond just preserving habitats or species: if your family has no access to nutritious food you've got a lot more on your mind than trying to go green. 

If you would like to learn more about our nonprofit, click here: https://www.lastchanceendeavors.com

If you would like to learn more about Fresh Food Connect, click here: http://www.freshfoodconnect.org