In this episode, we hear from ocean activist Bodhi Patil. Bodhi is a UN recognized ocean-climate solutionist and co-creator of Ocean Uprise. In our conversation, we discuss the intersection of ocean health and human health, ocean justice for coastal communities, blue carbon, deep sea mining, oceans & spirituality, and joy in activism.
In this episode, we hear from ocean activist Bodhi Patil. Bodhi is a UN recognized ocean-climate solutionist and co-creator of Ocean Uprise. In our conversation, we discuss the intersection of ocean health and human health, ocean justice for coastal communities, blue carbon, deep sea mining, oceans & spirituality, and joy in activism.
Bodhi is the founder of Inner Light, co-creator of One World Breathe, impact advisor at OnDeck Fisheries AI, an advisor at Earth Elders, and a member of the Wisdom Keepers Delegation. Bodhi has been a speaker for TEDx, the UN, Forbes, CNN, and among other international media platforms. He recently completed his Masters of Management at the University of British Columbia, with a focus on Environment, Sustainability, & Climate Action.
Connect with Bodhi:
Resources:
Blue Mind by Wallace J. Nichols
Credits
Hosted and produced by Kiana Michaan
Co-produced by Lucy Little
Edited by Maxfield Biggs
Music by Naima Mackrel
For resources, transcripts, and more information about the guests: https://www.climatewithkiana.com/podcast/ocean-solutions-with-bodhi-patil
Kiana: Welcome to Climate With Kiana, a podcast about climate solutions shared through a framework of joy and justice. I'm your host, Kiana Michaan. A solar and clean energy advocate passionate about just climate action. This season, let's dig deeper into solutions to the climate crisis through inspiring conversations with climate experts who are leading important and innovative work to shape a more just and sustainable world. Let's cultivate hope and joy by exploring these climate solutions and visioning new possibilities together.
In today's conversation, I speak with Bodhi Patil. Bodhi is an ocean-climate solutionist, ocean activist, the founder of Inner Light, co-creator of one World Breath and co-creator of Ocean Uprise.
Bodhi Patil: And at the end of the day. [00:01:00] It's simple, no ocean, no climate, and no life. So a healthy ocean, a healthy climate, and healthy life on earth. So when you really think about it, ocean health is quite literally human health. And human health is directly connected to ocean health. So by protecting the ocean, we're protecting ourselves.
And by taking good care of ourselves, we can take good care of the oceans and it can be a positive feedback loop.
Kiana: Bodhi has been a speaker for TEDx, the UN, Forbes, CNN, among other international media platforms. He serves as an advisor for earth elders and as an advisor for a number of ocean and environmental organizations.
He is currently completing his masters of management at the University of British Columbia with a focus on environment sustainability and climate action. In this conversation, we discuss the intersection of ocean health and human health. Ocean justice for coastal communities, blue carbon, deep sea mining, oceans and [00:02:00] spirituality, joy in activism and more.
Please note this conversation was recorded in 2024. Enjoy this discussion of ocean solutions. Here's our conversation.
Climate with Kiana is brought to you in part by support from the Clean Energy Leadership Institute. Also known as CELI. CELI's goal is to equip emerging leaders with the skills and expertise they need to lead the transition to a clean energy economy. To learn more about CELI work, to support leadership and drive an equitable, decarbonize and resilient energy ecosystem, visit clean energy leaders.org.
Bodhi Patil: My name is Bodhi and I come from the ocean, just like all of you. I'm an ocean climate solutionist. So what that means is I find ways to help heal and restore the ocean. And I've been working in ocean conservation for about [00:03:00] 16 years now since I was four years old. And I really am interested in exploring different dimensions of ocean justice, and I've worked a lot on ocean health and human health and its interconnection.
And as a surfer and free diver and lover of the ocean in all ways, I continuously educate, advocate, and share different solutions that the ocean has to offer. For combating the climate crisis and also healing us all.
Kiana: Thank you for sharing that. The ocean is such a incredible part of our planet. I feel like the ocean's such a magical place, and I know definitely like as a child, I was super.
Inspired by nature, documentaries about the ocean or just loved being in the water. I feel like not many people can say they started this work at four years old, you said. So I'd love to kind of go back a little bit and hear what inspired you to be in the ocean environmental space, a little bit of your journey to, to doing the work you're doing now.[00:04:00]
Bodhi Patil: Yeah. When I was a little kid, I lived in Jakarta, Indonesia. And I moved there when I was two years old and lived there till I was six. And as a little kid, I was so excited and joyful, and I love exploring different ecosystems and places and meeting new people. And I would go to school every day through the crowded, busting streets of Jakarta in a car or walking sometimes when it wasn't too hot and humid out.
So I wouldn't shrivel up and I would walk to school and start to notice all these different things about Indonesia, about people selling rice crackers on the side of the street and children begging for food. And I realized that there was so much inequality and there was so much hardship that a lot of communities, especially in these, you know, small island developing states or large ocean states are feeling.
And then a month later after we moved there, we went to the beautiful Gili islands, [00:05:00] which are stunning and beautiful and bout averse and rich in terms of their coral ecosystems. And they have ecotourism setups and there was a lot of inequality there as well. And I realized that the ocean was something that actually equalized everyone.
And the ocean brought a lot of healing. To spaces and places where it seemed like your social status and your race and who you are, define how you live, and the ocean actually does something that's completely different. It humbles you and it teaches you. That your ability to live and coexist with an ecosystem much more powerful than you actually defines who you are and how you live.
And it was really special to see both the power the ocean can have to destroy, which it does, including in typhoons and hurricanes that are coming up the east coast right now of the United States and typhoons and hurricanes that [00:06:00] have hit. Indonesia multiple times, killing hundreds of thousands of people.
And that same power can be used to create and in the ocean because of these magical things called coral. We have these expansive coral reefs and falling in love with the coral reef on that island near Bali, near the Gili Islands, across the chain called Gili Trawangan. I really knew that ocean conservation and having a job as someone that loves and cares for and ideally protects the ocean is something I want to do and connect it to all these other threads that exist in our life on land, including our mental health and wellbeing, including our understanding of different planetary health systems.
And it all just became this really clear message that Ocean health is human health.
Kiana: Beautifully said, and I want to dive into that more. Can you say a little bit about the work [00:07:00] you do with your organization? Inner light.
Bodhi Patil: Yes, so Inner Light is an organization I started and founded in seventh grade. After realizing and going through a lot of climate anxiety and depression, and the depression stemmed from feeling like I was uprooted.
Always moving around to different places and not having a home base, not having a consi consistent group of friends, really not feeling like I had the adequate soil and the fertility of the soil to grow into a budding fruit tree. Mangoes are my favorite, so call it a mangrove. Fruit bearing fruit. And. In seventh grade after I went through a really dark time in my life where I was really anxious and depressed and skitting around really a lot in my life and in my head and in my mind and in my heart and soul, I realized that a lot of other students.
Also felt similar ways. They felt anxious about [00:08:00] the state of the Earth. In fact, seven in 10 young people have climate anxiety, which is feeling confused and scared about the future health of our planet and its people and its ecosystems and, and of course wildlife and in the process of kind of processing those emotions, inner light was born.
And now it is incredible connective tool to help young people find climate health and human health's connections and use the power of water in all its forms. And as the largest entity in the world is the ocean to heal. Different spaces and people and to restore this connection to Blue Mind. And Blue Mind is essentially the idea that people are more calm and connected when they're by the water.
And so the story and journey of Inner Light stemmed from, yeah, so the idea that are. [00:09:00] Beautiful ocean and waterways all around the world that all flow into the ocean. Connect to our mental health was something created by my mentor, Dr. Wallace J Nichols. And Dr. Wallace J Nichols is not only, uh, a huge hero in the ocean conservation world.
He was a pioneering force for marine turtle conservation. He was an ocean educator. Uh, he was a huge advocate for all of our natural ecosystems, keeping them healthy, both upstream and downstream. And he unfortunately passed away last week and I think it. Serves as a really strong reminder for us all to connect to the importance of the water and its power to heal.
And always remember that by honoring and protecting marine ecosystems, we protect legacy of Dr. [00:10:00] Wallace J Nichols, who created this beautiful idea that were calmer and more collected by the water. That we are essentially aquatic beings, and I just really intend to build in our light in a way that honors his legacy by strengthening the connection between ocean health and human health, through communications, through policy, through ocean finance, and through a number of vehicles that all lead back to protecting our beloved heartbeat of the planet, our ocean, and of course ourselves.
Kiana: I'm sorry for your loss with your mentor and I've actually been just reading his book, which was gifted to me recently, and I think it's so powerful, the impact of the ocean on our wellbeing. All that to say, I've very much noticed the impact of being around the ocean and bodies of water and how that has.[00:11:00]
Impacted my mental health and improved my wellbeing. How are you thinking about the intersection of human health and ocean health?
Bodhi Patil: I think ocean health and human health are inextricably connected for three main reasons. Number one is our bodies are 70% water. The Earth is 70% water or around 70% water, and the human body depends, of course, depending on who it is.
And in general, the same water that cycled through our bodies, that cycled through dinosaurs, that cycled through the earth's hydrological cycle. The water cycle in all its different forms, has flowed through the ocean for thousands. And millions of years. And so we're directly linked by the water that's in each and every single one of our cell.
Number two, is that the same salinity? Our mother's womb is that of the ocean. So it's almost like we're born from a mini ocean, [00:12:00] which is very exciting because for nine months of our lives we spend time learning basically how to swim and be underwater to a certain extent. Number three is that we actually have something called the mammalian dive reflex.
So our ancestors and past. Evolutions and forms of human beings have been amphibious and apes that can dive for a large and long amount of time in order to catch food and harvest shellfish and catch fish. So we actually have something called our mammalian dive reflex that literally gives us the ability, including web fingers.
That's why we have webs in the middle of our fingers. For better swimming to be able to be in the water and standard water survive underwater and derive food from marine ecosystems and river vine ecosystems, which are just, you know, freshwater ecosystems. So [00:13:00] we are directly into the ocean. There's also about.
1001 times a million Other ways that we are directly connected to the ocean, including anything from corals, providing genetic insights into how we can make our cures for cancer and other diseases that are large and spreading quickly how, how different sea sponges can be used as a cure potentially for COVID and be even more effective than different treatments on the market now with.
Big pharma, how the ocean provides us billions. And billions of dollars of revenue every year from different ecosystems and how it directly connects to our economic health through ecotourism, through fisheries, through small scale artisanal fisheries. That be it, large scale fishing that's heavily subsidized is actively destroying fish stock in the ocean, and people that depend on fish, including the fishermen themselves [00:14:00] that are actively pillaging and the ocean.
Really does provide us so many ecosystem services. The biggest one being the fact that every other breath we take about 60 to 80% of the oxygen on Earth comes from the ocean, from Photosynthesizing, phytoplankton, zooplankton, prochlorococcus, and Syno caucus, and mostly it's the phytoplankton that provides this abundance of oxygen.
And at the end of the day, it's simple. No ocean, no climate, and no life. So a healthy ocean, a healthy climate, and healthy life on earth. So when you really think about it, ocean health is quite literally human health. And human health is directly connected to ocean health. So by protecting the ocean, we're protecting ourselves.
And by taking good care of ourselves, we can take good care of the oceans and it can be a [00:15:00] positive feedback loop.
Kiana: I didn't know that fact about the womb and the salinity and that. That blew my mind a little bit. Super interesting. Curious also to know, in terms of the linkage, you mentioned like smaller and larger fisheries of sort of our food systems and human health, because I know even the food systems we have in the oceans impact that which is on land as well.
So how are you, you thinking about that, that intersection?
Bodhi Patil: The food systems in the ocean are critically important to human welfare on earth. The ocean and seafood provides 3 billion people their primary source of protein, and countries like India and Bangladesh, and across the Pacific and Indo-Pacific women depend on fish as their primary source of protein and nutrients, including Omega-3 acids and fatty oils in order to birth babies [00:16:00] that are healthy and well, that are above the stunting line, so they're not stunted in many cultures and communities. Fish and shellfish are not only vitally important to their diet and their health, they're also important to their ways of life and being, they're culturally significant and there is the sense of biocultural, just biologically and cultural culturally part of their heritage.
So thousands of communities around the world depend on these fish, on these shellfish, on seaweed, on alternative forms of marine protein as their primary source of sustenance. And for that reason, the ocean is critical to our food chain. And when it's done locally, just like on land, when ocean farming happens locally.
When it's regenerative ocean farming, just like there's regenerative agriculture. Then the inputs in [00:17:00] the ocean aren't destroying the ocean. They're helping the ocean co produce more and more of this rich nutrient and high protein food without causing outsized impact. And then when you start to putting put in and pump in microplastics and leachate from fish farms and large industrial fish farms.
There's, there becomes this cycle that's increasing the speed of growth, but really destroying the health of the ocean and its surrounding ecosystems and wildlife while doing so. And so we have to make sure that when we're thinking about consuming marine proteins, if we have the option, which we all mostly do in the developed world, we make choices not to buy farmed fish, especially farmed salmon. We make choices not to get fish that potentially came from illegal, unidentified, unreported, or slave labor vessels because there are still millions of people that are [00:18:00] trafficked illegally.
Both through the modern day slavery industry and through different trafficking related to drugs, sex and other criminal activities are essentially occurring. And in order to support these communities that depend on the ocean for their livelihood, we need to mitigate the illegal fishing that's happening at the industrial scale that's wiping out entire populations of fish.
That's pillaging ecosystems, that's destroying the sea floor, the benthic layer, and there are ways to fish and eat local sourced regenerative ocean. Foods and regenerative ocean products and seaweed and alternative forms of protein like low carbon shellfish, for instance, that are reef builders like oysters, mussels, other mollusks are really good choices.
When we look at [00:19:00] local food systems that are open systems, so they're not requiring any inputs. The ocean is growing them naturally.
Kiana: Thank you for sharing that. I wanna talk about something you just touched on, which is kind of environmental justice, ocean justice. You were mentioning those intersections of social challenges that occur in the ocean space.
So what are some of the challenges with regards to environmental injustices occurring between the ocean and human communities, and how is that also being impacted by climate change?
Bodhi Patil: There are so many atrocities that happen on the high seas, and there are so many things that happen in the ocean that you oftentimes can't see.
Mm-hmm. They're underwater. They're on areas of the ocean that very few people have ever been, that very few people have access to on the high seas. They're in high, very treacherous waters that are moving quickly, that if you [00:20:00] fall into, sometimes you can't make it out, and there's tons of illegal activity happening through really.
Prevalent industries like modern day slavery, like fisheries abuse at the industrial level that needs to be uncovered. And so there are also a lot of solutions that are working on finding ways to protect the ocean and the people that are looking to actively source. Positive forms of marine protein that aren't having a detrimental impact on marine ecosystems.
And so these folks are folks like Global Fishing Watch. Look and use satellite imagery to find different activities happening on the high seas and identify them on a global map that transparent, that different policy makers, marine enforcers, and different local governments can use to [00:21:00] make better informed policy and economic decisions that consumers can begin to use and understand to know the full supply chain of where their seafood.
Where this different product that they're using might come from, where their pet food might actually originate when it's fish. And I think it's really important for us in thinking about the average human being on this earth, that's a conscious being. Is really important for us to understand the full nature and the interconnectivity of the ocean because unlike land in the ocean, when something happens in one spot, it's not isolated to that spot alone.
It can spread very quickly with the currents and tides, and we have to be really careful about what activity is happening on the high seas and how to promote and encourage. Legal, safe, equitable [00:22:00] activity on the high seas and justice on the ocean isn't just on, you know, areas beyond national jurisdiction.
Oftentimes it's associated with coastal communities that are most affected by the impacts of climate change, especially with sea level rise increasing by about, I believe, two millimeters a year now. Which doesn't seem like much. However, for many communities that are low lying, that means their houses will be underwater in just years, and in less than a decade, their entire islands might be gone.
They might be fully underwater. It might become a dive site. And so for a lot of. Communities and ocean justice communities, just like environmental justice communities, they're really on the front lines of climate change. And in order to give these communities the best chance they have to protect their cultural heritage, to protect their ecosystems, we have to be ocean literate.
We have to be informed about the illegal [00:23:00] activities that are happening that are outsizing the impacts of negative on of negativity in the ocean, and equip these communities with as many resources and educational support systems and tools, both financially, economically, technologically, socially, culturally, to be able to stand up against rising sea levels and as we say, as the oceans rise. So do we.
Kiana: I love that, that phrase, it's really beautiful. As you mentioned, I think the, it is tough because so much that happens in the oceans are unseen when it comes to ocean justice, and especially in international water policy is like really hard to enforce. I mean, we have like UNCLOS and other structures, but it, it's hard to enforce because things can take place without it even being seen, right
or noticed until significantly later. And there's so many challenges. Rising sea levels, which you just mentioned, which is [00:24:00] one of the most, I think, visible aspects of climate change that is in in the, the global consciousness. But things also that maybe are less noticeable if you're not directly engaged with the ocean, you know, in your everyday life, such as ocean acidification, coral bleaching, right?
These are huge, huge challenges we're facing. So, on a more positive note, what are some of the solutions that you are. Working on what are some of the most key solutions that we can employ to address the challenges we're facing and hopefully ensure a healthier future for our communities and our ocean?
Bodhi Patil: Yeah, the ocean has been the hottest ever recorded this year, which is not good. And there are a lot of things in the ocean that have the ability to help absorb and sequester. Excessive carbon dioxide emissions released into the atmosphere to help cool our [00:25:00] earth. And so because the ocean has absorbed 90% of excess heat because the ocean absorbs over 30% of excess carbon dioxide emissions were released into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution when fossil fuel burning at scale became prevalent.
It's really important to understand that. There are some really big solutions that the Ocean offers. One of the big solutions is blue carbon. Blue natural capital. And that's the idea that these ecosystems like sea grass, salt marshes, kelp forests, and mangroves along with many others, sequester and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide and carbon into their root systems, into sediment, and then at times sink to the deep ocean and others go back on shore and are, are part of the food chain or are consumed in the ocean.
And the idea of blue carbon is that the carbon sequestered in the ocean is oftentimes [00:26:00] 20 times faster and more effective at being sequestered in the long term than terrestrial trees. So sea forestation is really exciting. Just like reforestation on land is exciting. Sea forestation in the sea is very, very powerful and.
Two things that excite me on sea forestation are an organization called Sea Trees that works on educating people about the importance of preserving blue natural capital and actively supporting restoration projects and ocean uprise that has yet many young people in our communities advocating for the protection and actively cleaning these ecosystems.
Both from plastic pollution and from other sorts of highly toxic pollutants, including effluent coming off of wastewater discharge, sewage discharge, and other chemical flows, and getting their communities literate and engaged on taking action to reduce pollution in these critical environments. 'cause we [00:27:00] need to give these environments every chance.
They can to thrive so that these communities that are literally on the front lines that have the environments like mangrove ecosystems and estuaries and coral reefs, right in their backyard or front yard. The best chance to protect them. And by protecting these ecosystems, we're protecting people. And at the end of the day, the ocean is all about people and all about different types of people connecting because it's one thing that will touch us all and connect every continent together, no matter what geopolitical state we're in the ocean remains constant.
Kiana: There's so much beautiful life in the ocean. And I think. Making that connection that like we are part of that beautiful life as well. Thank you for bringing that up about sea forestation. Another piece I'm thinking about is obviously plastic pollution in the ocean, but stopping destructive industries, right?
So that we have the chance to restore ecosystems. How do we [00:28:00] approach combating destructive industries in the ocean, such as older industries? Such as offshore drilling and newer industries such as deep sea mining, because even as we're seeing, I think, increasing support and movement to protect the oceans, we're also seeing these industries, you know, kind of push harder for profit over the health and wellbeing of us and the ocean.
Bodhi Patil: That's a great question. Number one in general to protect the ocean and the climate is ending harmful subsidies. Ending harmful subsidies of fisheries, which are in the millions of dollars, ending harmful subsidies on fossil fuels, which are in the billions to trillions of dollars, and making sure that taxpayer dollars in the US and globally aren't going towards extractive practices that are leading to the demise of both humans and nature.
And so in specific with deep seabed mining an [00:29:00] industry that fortunately hasn't started yet. However, just like the gold mining rush is projected and prospected in a lot of ways to be a boom, which it's not, is really important to consider. How we can stop this industry before it starts. And the biggest ways to stop deep seabed mining before it starts is, number one, be educated on what deep seabed mining is.
Understand that there are these mineral rich elements and these mineral rich nodules called polymetallic nodules that look like, look like, you know, solidified turds at the bottom of the sea floor. That companies like the Metals company. Want to extract and as a result, create incredible damage to the sea floor and billions of creatures that live in the deep ocean.
The deep ocean is not a barren wasteland. It's a rich and abundant ecosystem that is the largest carbon [00:30:00] sink on our planet that is vitally important to our health. That is vitally important to the largest migration on earth that occurs every day, which is billions of species coming from the deep seed of the surface.
To feed on the smaller species and up the trophic cascade, and then returning to the deep ocean as daylight starts to trickle in. And so stopping deep seabed mining is about building community, being educated on issue, and most importantly, understanding that we literally came from the deep ocean and our eldest ancestor 565 million years ago.
Was a creature, a type of bacteria in fact that lived in the deep ocean. And that in order to protect ourselves and our own heritage and our ancestry, we have to protect the deep sea and the deep ocean and sea floor from extractive industries. And building movements is critical to that and advocating for that and educating is the most important thing you can do.
'cause the more people that [00:31:00] know that deep sea red mining is an industry. That economically is unviable, that ecologically is destructive and that socially doesn't make sense. The more people we can support and get on board to stop this industry before it starts and to start protecting the ocean in meaningful ways.
Kiana: Thank you for sharing that. Shifting gears a little bit. I'm glad you mentioned the ancestral connection. I wanna talk about spirituality and the ocean, which is, I know something you're thinking about in your work. I would love to hear your thoughts on the spiritual dimension of humans' relationship with the ocean, and perhaps even how that intersects with, I know many indigenous cultures and how we can think about this, particularly in an era of climate change.
Bodhi Patil: Our connection to the ocean has always been extremely strong, just like going back home. And what we've done essentially is we've become farther removed from the ocean and aquatic ecosystems is basically remove [00:32:00] ourselves from a home that we once had so constantly, and so importantly is a key aspect of our lives.
If you look at most major cities of the world, you'll notice that they're coastal. They're connected to a riverway that eventually leads to the ocean and you'll, you'll notice that they're near large there. They're near large currents and near large areas that can speed up how transport occurs. And so the ocean has always been an important dimension physically of our earth and our societies.
And our cities. And on a spiritual level, I think the ocean has been something that has. Been quite literally forgotten because we oftentimes see the ocean for only the surface of what she has to offer, a calm or a stormy day. A windy day or a flat day, and I think we forget that there's a vast ecosystem [00:33:00] that lies beneath the waves and underneath the surface that has incredible spiritual connection from whales alone.
We have all sorts of different cultures and subcultures and different ecosystems. And that they're engineers for. And whales, just through their fecal matter and fecal deposits store and support huge amounts of carbon absorption into the deep sea and onto the sea floor, and fertilizes the ocean as a base for food for phytoplankton with iron rich matter.
And we often forget now, living more in industrialized and urbanized ecosystems that the ocean has an incredible spiritual capacity In so many ceremonies and cultures, people say water is life, and there's many ways to say it. And the Lakota people say Mní Wičhóni and [00:34:00] Jordan Daniel, who's a Lakota runner, taught me that and she is from the plains, the great plane ecosystem in North and South Dakota, and even the folks that are far removed from the ocean have a spiritual attachment to that, a spiritual attachment to the waters that flow within us and without us and with the ocean. I think there's so many cultures around the world that worship the ocean, that worship the God of the ocean.
You know, if you look at the most common and, and you know, famous God of the ocean, which is Poseidon, which is in Greece, there's this incredible lore of how Poseidon is a caretaker of the ocean, has a Trident that's three-pronged, that is able to, that basically, you know, harm anything that would otherwise pose a risk to the health of the ocean.
That he comes from the ocean or, or they come from the ocean. And in a lot of cultures there are a lot of, you know, [00:35:00] totems and sacred sites that are by the ocean, that are in the ocean, that are under water. And so must we not forget the health and importance of the ocean's health to our spiritual wellbeing.
Just because it's something that requires us to look beneath the surface, and I think there's a lot of metaphors to a certain extent that the ocean offers because just like it requires deep healing to understand where we're headed with this ecological crisis we're in, it requires a lot of depth in the ocean to understand and feel like you're a part of this.
Largely vast, interconnected ecosystem, and I think the depth that the ocean presents us and offers us is an opportunity to explore our own depths within.
Kiana: Water is life. So, so beautifully said. There is just so much inspiration and as you said, [00:36:00] metaphor and parallels between thinking about the ocean and other aspects of life.
I've had the pleasure of hanging out with you in person a little bit, and you, I would say exude joy. You just have a joyous energy and spirit and mm-hmm. One of the things I'm thinking about on this show and in my own work is how do we. Infuse joy into climate work, particularly as we're engaging young people or those who are just transitioning in their careers to wanting to be involved in more environmental work.
So I would love to know how you are thinking about joy and love as essential parts of your activism and what is bringing you joy in ocean work.
Bodhi Patil: I think we have to lead the ocean conservation movement with love and a youth led love-based ocean. Climate action movement is something that is really important [00:37:00] that we continue to cultivate because at the center of effective Climate Action is joy at the center of effective social change and environmental protection is love and care is respect for an ecosystem that's more powerful and vast than you could ever be or imagine even is understanding the nuance between these different spaces within the ocean itself, even in the intertidal near shore.
Offshore, the deep sea, the high seas, everything is so vastly unique and different yet interconnected just like our bodies and our societies and how we operate in this world that we can seamlessly navigate through now, and it needs to be connecting with the ocean needs to be something that everyone.
Can feel the joy [00:38:00] from, and feel the joy of through the power of water, through the power of the ocean and salt water as a healing mechanism. Um, we say salt water heals everything. And I think it reminds us that even the wounds that cut deep within can be healed when we start to rekindle a relationship with something that's of greater power than any other human or any other being.
That's something that is our shared and common heritage site. And beyond that, joy is something that is a choice. I think we really have to choose joy every day and choose to live from a place of joy so that first of all, we can enjoy our lives because things do, quite honestly as a Gen Z, look quite grim for our generation and B, so that we can actually, rather than falling into [00:39:00] apathy.
Lead to being empowered self-starters so that we can go and solve problems. I think joy actually helps your productivity and your impact in the world because what you're doing is vibrating literally at a frequency energetically that's higher than what fear is or what self-doubt and loathing is, or what.
Feeling insecure, which is okay, which we need to channel into a feeling of joy and empowerment. You're vibrating at a higher frequency and that that higher vibration brings other people up along with you. Just like dolphin song and, and whale song. You know, they're vibrating and communicating at a higher frequency and when they sing to each other, it brings up the entire frequency and the energy of the ocean in that ecosystem and of the whales in their pods and in their family groups and family units.
And yeah, I think if we don't have joy. [00:40:00] And hope for our ocean. It's hard to feel empowered to really be a meaningful steward, and joy drives everything that I do because it's just more fun to live from a place of joy.
Kiana: Yes, I try to choose joy every, every day. The final question I'll ask you is when you're envisioning.
The future of our oceans and the climate. What are you envisioning when you think about a future that is kind more equitable and just, and where we are able to take action for healing of our oceans?
Bodhi Patil: I think of a future where having a job and protecting the planet and the most important regulator of our climate, our ocean, is something that is commonplace.
I think of young people growing up and saying, when I want to grow up, I wanna be an ocean guardian When I grow up, I want to be a coral gardener. [00:41:00] I wanna be a seagrass planter. I work in integrated multi trophic aquaculture and basically plant seaweed below mollusks and plant clams. Below that, I wanna help educate kids about the ocean.
I basically dream of a world there where kids, especially those most connected to the ocean, most healed and touched by the waters, feel like they have a career pathway that is something they can both create and something that's both supporting them. While being set out for them. And I hope that our economy, our society, our governance systems, supports and facilitates the protection of our common, our global commons, our common heritage zone.
As different workforce pathways and as Gen Z starts to be and fill up the majority of our purchasing power in the US and global economy majority, and [00:42:00] at least a third of our population by 2030 and almost 30% by 2025. And oECD countries, just having opportunities for young people of all backgrounds, of all races and religions to be unified and healed by this power of the ocean and for the ocean to be a symbol for global peace and unity.
Because regardless of what geopolitical hate driven activity is occurring, regardless of what wars. Are in store or how much the climate is changing. The ocean will always be there on earth to regulate, and the ocean will always be relatively constant. Although in recent years it's been fluctuating rapidly.
And in order for us to be the best stewards we can, we need to really bring in and listen to the voice of the ocean so that we too can be [00:43:00] symbols for global unity and peace in our lives, in our communities, and our work in everything that we do. And remember to embody the ocean because we are all a part of it.
Kiana: Thank you for listening. Climate with Kiana is co-produced by Kiana Michaan and Lucy Little. This episode was edited by Maxfield Biggs. Theme Music by Naima Mackrel. Thank you again to the Clean Energy Leadership Institute for their support. This podcast is recorded and produced in New York City on unceded Munsee Lenape Land.
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