Today I will be speaking with award-winning documentary filmmaker and marine scientist, Natasha Benjamin.

Over the last 25 years, Natasha has led a unique career spanning the marine sciences, conservation policy, and filmmaking. She worked at MARE from 2018 to 2022 where she oversaw an ecological monitoring program within the California MPA network, and directed their Deep Sea Education Program.

Natasha currently serves as the Associate Director of Blue Frontier, a grassroots conservationist organization which seeks to spread scientific ideas related to sea life and conservation through books, films, and countless nationally published articles.

Her most recent film, “Sequoias of the Sea,” which will be a major focus of this conversation, is one of these projects. The film won the Environment Award at its premier at the 22nd International Ocean Film Festival in San Francisco, California, on April 13, and will be touring cities up and down the West Coast in the coming months.

“Sequoias of the Sea” tells the story of a small town on the Mendocino coast as its marine ecosystems experienced a sudden decimation in healthy kelp forest habitat as triggered by disease outbreak among a key apex predator, the sunflower seastar, and exacerbated by coinciding temperature anomaly events known as marine heatwaves. “Sequoias of the Sea” elucidates the nuances of the ecological phenomena at play, and offers viewers the chance to see how this ecological disaster has made waves in many different cross sections of society, from professional divers, to indigenous tribal communities. It leaves us with the question: what’s next for these immensely productive and globally significant ecosystems?

Give it up for Natasha Benjamin.

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Today I will be speaking with a good friend, Brady Bradshaw.

Brady has in some ways lived two lives, one as an elite freediving athlete, and another as a prominent marine conservationist.

He holds the current United States national records in all three distance pool freediving disciplines, one of which I had the opportunity to personally witness. At the time of this recording he has set 13 United States records, and 4x North American records.

In some circles, his name carries as much weight as any top-caliber olympian or extreme athlete.

While he has become something of a living legend in American Freediving, his decade-long career in marine conservation has left perhaps an even greater mark on the world. He was a key player in passing the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act (effective December of 2022), as well as in developing California state legislation aimed at reducing plastic waste on the California coast.

He has an impressive track record working with those in power to enact change, but is also a successful grassroots activist: he has previously founded the Coalition for Protecting the Pacific, as well as the San Diego Plastic Free Seas Coalition.

Currently he serves as the Senior Oceans Campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity where he is working to phase out offshore drilling operations on the California Coast with a focus on retiring old oil and gas infrastructure.

Give it up for a remarkable human being, Brady Bradshaw.

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Welcome to the Marine Ecology Podcast. My name is Christian Wagner, and I will be your host along this journey through marine science, conservation, humanity, and the complex dynamic that exists between them.

The scope of this podcast is intentionally broad. I will have a diverse array of guests from all different backgrounds, but with one commonality: they have all dedicated their lives, in one way or another, to a source of infinite inspiration, mystery, and beauty–that is, the sea.

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