One Man's Mission to Measure the Ocean: Jeremy McKane

Happy Planet Wednesday ! 

Our guest today is Jeremy McKane, Founder of Ocean Currency Network whose mission is to create an ocean map with real-time ocean data. The goal is to map 30% of the ocean by 2030. Sound ambitious? It is. But as Jeremy say in the podcast, if we can’t see the problems, we can’t fix them. Getting real time data will give us the information we need to find solutions.

Jeremy kicks off this interview with a reference to the Tragedy of the Commons. Commons refers to shared resources such as land or the ocean. And the tragedy of the commons is the theory that if people share a finite resource they will tend to over use it, thus ruining it for all. While that might sound depressing - and it is - my conversation with Jeremy is definitely not! So tune in!

Just a reminder, you can listen to Happy Planet pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts, or by following one of these links:  Apple , Spotify, Google, or our website.

SPONSORS & PARTNERS

Many thanks to Maine Technology Institute, Maine Venture Fund and Spark No.9 for their sponsorship. 

I’d also like to thank our promotional partners. Investable Oceans is a US-based angel platform specializing in ocean-related startups. 

Oceanovation is a fast-growing hub for entrepreneurs and investors in blue-tech innovation. 

Transcript

Abigail:

Welcome to the podcast today where we celebrate Innovation for a Happy Planet. I am your host Abigail Carroll. 

Our guest today is Jeremy McKane, a US based entrepreneur who has created a company Ocean Currency Network. We are going to talk about measuring the ocean. We’ve talked to folks like Aquai who measure specific areas of the ocean with their robotic fish, but in this case we’re talking more about creating an ocean map with data. 

Jeremy kicks off this interview with a reference to the Tragedy of the commons. Commons refers to shared resources such as land or the ocean. And the tragedy of the commons is the theory that if people share a finite resource they will tend to over use it, thus ruining it for all. While that might sound depressing - it is - my conversation with Jeremy is definitely not! So keep listening!

Welcome to the podcast, Jeremy.

Jeremy:

Well, thank you for having me. This is gonna be so much fun today.

Abigail:

You are doing good work, and my listeners and myself, we all wanna understand more about what you're doing. So you have a company called the Ocean Currency Network. Tell me what you do.

Jeremy:

It's really important for us to understand the tragedy of the commons. But yeah, I guess you should ask yourself the question, why is it a tragedy? And, you know, we think that largely it's the tragedy because it's not properly measured, and this isn't anything new. Essentially this has been done for thousands of years in the Pacific. It was an ancient practice called Tombu, or as they called it, in Fiji or Tapu in Polynesian culture. And it was the idea of like, if we protect an area then a lot of these Tombus they would go back and they would count fish and they would understand really what that management looked like. And we seem to have gotten away from that, which I think is quite bizarre because this is the planet's largest carbon sink, and it's the reason why we're breathing today. It's every second breath is coming from the ocean. Doesn't it make sense to measure what's there? So that's what we do.

Abigail:

You've really said something very interesting there. We think of destruction of the ocean or, or over-usage of the resources is a modern problem. But it sounds like people have been aware of this far before it became the sort of massive problem that it is today. 

Jeremy:

I was first made aware of this a couple years ago. I was sailing with TBA 21 on their vessel. And we had this guy, Rauccasau, who was the paramount chief of the entire Laos group with us on the vessel. And he explained to me what Tombu meant. I think in that particular sense, it was in the beginning from the way that he tells the story, it wasn't as if it was like, oh, we need  to protect this area of water. It was something that happened that they realized that when they started protecting areas of water that the fishable areas became very abundant. But they also looked to count the fish because they noticed that there was a period of time when the fish stocks would go low. And so they had the foresight to say, well, well, let's protect it, but let's also measure it. And that, that was, I would say, probably one of the most inspirational moments for me, because then I started to realize what if we did this on a global scale, you know, what if we really understood what the tragedy was and the tragedy of the commons,

Abigail:

You can't fix it if you don't know what the problem is but it's a huge task. How do you go about something like this, like measuring the ocean? Are there certain things that are more important to measure than others?

Jeremy:

Yeah, so that was my question cuz I tell everybody, I'm not a scientist, I'm a last mile scientist. So I work with really great scientists and try to figure out how do we get their work out to the public. And one of the questions I had asked specifically was, how do we know if we're doing the right thing? You know, if I was to measure the ocean, what should I measure? Dr. James Porter, along with others Dr. Peter Gergis from Harvard University, they worked with in trying to come up with this concept of really trying to say, well, here are these 10 different things that you need to measure. And in each ocean, obviously it's gonna be a little bit differently.

But essentially what we're doing is we're measuring water quality. You know, things like turbidity, temperature, pH salinity, like all of these factors, they kind of have to be, well, kind of like what we say about the earth, and the solar system. It needs to be in the Goldilocks zone, right? And when they're operating in the Goldilock zone, then it becomes conducive in it for an increase of biodiversity. So why is this important? Well, what if we are doing something that we don't realize? What if we inadvertently put something in the ocean that maybe starts to affect some other chain reaction? If we're not measuring it, we won't really truly know the impact that humans are making on the planet. And so that's why this is really crucial. I think what we're also realizing is that there are nature-based assets that exist in the ocean that really provide value to human life. Nevermind the countless other lives that exist on this planet.

Abigail:

And then there's the good intentions that we have, you know, if we have an overabundance of seaweed, we're gonna be talking about that soon. Without the right data, we're probably gonna make some bad moves, trying to do the right thing.

Jeremy:

I mean, how often do you check your checking account balance? Right? Do you just willy-nilly just go buy things? [Don't think I wanna answer that. <laugh>] If we're going to be responsible financially, [Yeah] we need to know how, what's, what our credit limits are, what, how much money's in the bank account, what our revenue looks like, you know, personally. Only a fool would just go wave that credit card around and buy countless things, and then realize that when it's far too late, there's nothing they can do about it. That's really the situation that we're in with the oceans. We've been waving this credit card around for so long. We think that we can just take whatever we want to outta the ocean as if it was our right. And maybe it is our right to take from the ocean. But how much is too much? And that's where measurement comes in.

Abigail:

So what are some of the measurements that you're gonna be making?

Jeremy:

So we mentioned a few, right? So salinity, pH temperature but we're also looking at other things too. One of the things I'm really interested in is dissolved oxygen. Dissolved oxygen, I think, is a key marker in a lot of things. I've been trying to solve a problem ever since 2015. Dr. Sylvia Earl said to me. We don't know how to value a healthy ocean. What can we do to get people to value a healthy ocean? [Yeah]. And man, that is such a hard question to answer <laugh>.

Abigail:

It'll take away their oxygen.

Jeremy:

Well, that's one way. Right. I struggle with the fact that there are people like you and maybe your listeners that say, well, obviously we need to protect the ocean. But then there are people who are like, sure, we need to do that. But right now, I need to run my business. I need to put food on the table. It seems to me that the common language that we all understand is finance. And could we tell the story of how a healthy ocean or a healthy environment as a whole in the entire system, what is that financial value to us? And I know that sounds controversial to many people because some people might say, well, we don't need to find a dollar amount on nature.

But I push back on that a little bit because I say, yeah, well, for some people that's the only language they speak. You need to meet the people where they're at so that they understand the conviction at which you have. And so I think finance is that tool. And so I think dissolved oxygen is actually an interesting thing because I can actually start to look at things like seagrass to see if they're performing like we think that it does. I have a hunch that it isn't. Again, going back to that Goldilocks zone, I think that we can help markets understand that we need to have things in a very certain way in order for this to work.

Abigail:

I mean, nature is so resilient, but it can't probably fix where we are today. I mean one of my sort of sources of optimism is during the pandemic, seeing how quickly animals started taking over cities and, you know, dolphins were in Venice. That just brought me great joy to see and great hope that like, if we kind of get out of the way nature is resilient, but there is a point where we just have to stop. At some point, if you just keep depriving of oxygen, depriving of the things it needs, it will expire.

Jeremy:

It was an inadvertent scenario of unification, right? Mission Blue has a really great case study. Cabo Pulmo is a place in Mexico, and they were virtually void of fish. But a unification occurred. The locals said, Hey, no one's coming in or outta here anymore. This is a protected area, it's a sanctuary. Politicians, fishermen, they all agreed. And Dr. Sylvia Earl had told me that she dove that site and she remembered that there was nothing there. No sharks, no big jacks, the things that once used to thrive in that area.

And then she told me, I dove that site 15 years after it had been protected. And she goes, Jeremy, would you believe that it was like the ocean I remember 50 years prior. So going back to an investment analogy, they essentially made a 15 year investment. And what they got back in return was 50 years worth of health and wealth. And I think the greatest threat that the planet faces isn't climate change or deep sea mining or any of these other things. The greatest threat that the planet has today is lack of unification.

Abigail:

I wanna talk about how you go about measuring the ocean  So we know what you're measuring now, but, but how do you do it? What does this look like? 

Jeremy:

It's not easy, you know, but what's interesting is that there are a lot of people doing a number of different types of measurements, around the ocean, there are non-governmental organizations that are doing various expeditions. There are nonprofits and then there are things that your tax dollars pay for, right? There's this wonderful space organization called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They do earth observation all the time. They do chlorophyll, they do sea surface temperature. So could we take all of that data and could we put it together in a concise form and use artificial intelligence to be able to, to interpret this data in a near real time analysis? The answer is yes. But then what about other people who are collecting private data? Well, obviously, if it costs you a hundred thousand dollars to collect some data, you're not gonna just want to give it away for free. So what we've done is we've kind of taken the model of like stock photography, right? If I'm a photographer and I photograph a beautiful humpback whale in the ocean.

What happens if I put this on Getty images? Well, I don't get paid the second I upload it to Getty Images, but Abigail happens to be searching for a beautiful humpback whale image, and she picks the one that I took. And guess what? I get royalties on that image. So what if we did that with Ocean Data? A couple reasons why I like this one, it includes a whole bunch of citizen scientists. And the other aspect of it is it inadvertently creates a decentralized collection process of individuals who are globally incentivized to collaborate. By doing we can get a certain amount of trust because we know that it's not one entity. It's not Jeremy saying the ocean's healthy. It's saying the ocean's healthy, but it's a collection of human beings who don't necessarily know each other, um, saying, Hey, you know, the water's been 27 degrees or 25 degrees or whatever and all of a sudden it just went up to 35 degrees. God forbid it ever did that. Right? Well, we know that's probably the truth, because multiple people are now reporting that same thing. I think this becomes a very interesting platform for global collaboration, and it's not something that's been done yet. 

Abigail:

Is there an issue there about, you know, making sure that data comes in that is correct and accurate, you know, if you're getting it from all sorts of different parties, do you have to worry about that? And how can you just make sure maybe it works on averages?

Jeremy:

Well, that's exactly how it works. We use a number of different systems to be able to determine what, what is accurate or what isn't. But the most easiest is a trustless form. Let's go back to the temperature thing. Let's say, you know, we're in the British Virgin Islands, and we've got 200 sensors that are all floating around in the water collecting just temperature. Let's say. Everything is coming in at maybe 25 degrees Celsius. And then Abigail, she has one sensor, and it's registering zero degrees Celsius. Well, that can't be, right?

Abigail:

Technical problems.

Jeremy:

Right. Your sensor might be biofouling, right? You might have kept it out there too long, you didn't maintain it. So I'm probably gonna say, Hey, we're gonna flag this. We're not gonna report any of Abigail's sensors, because she hasn't gone out there and cleaned them. But yeah, I think, when you look at kind of consensus, that's really the key here. Is it saying, okay, well what is the consensus? Is it off by one or two, three degrees? Yeah. Maybe. Could that be a hardware issue? Possibly. You know, again, what we're trying to do is not say, Hey, we have the most accurate data, we're using the most accurate sensors. I really don't care about that stuff.

Jeremy:

And that also is controversial. What I think is important is that if we take a grid and we have at least some data, because that's better than the no data that we're collecting, now I can go now go back to scientists that have these expensive sensors and say, Hey, there are a number of individuals that are reporting this anomaly in this specific location, could you please go here? And what they will find is that will extend the use of their grants that they often apply for instead of going throughout the ocean, looking for a problem, we can direct them and say, Hey, there's something very strange happening here. What that's gonna do is it's going to accelerate our capability as humans to address anomalies before they become major catastrophes.

Abigail:

And is most of this, do you think gonna happen in more coastal areas, or are you gonna be able to hit the deep sea and deep in the water too?

Jeremy:

I think right now to start off with our focus is within the economic exclusion zone of some of the countries that we're dealing with. But it is in a relatively short order my intention to take it out to the deep sea.

Abigail:

There's a lot of mystery yet.

Jeremy:

The deep sea is the final frontier in human knowledge, for sure. 

Abigail:

We’ll be right back with more Happy Planet.

Break.

Abigail:

We’re back with Happy Planet

I really like this value putting a price on things. I mean, there's certainly a price for using it. If you're harvesting fish, there's value there that you're getting. Is there a system in the works? And maybe it would work like the carbon credits. That's gonna help us get to that kind of situation for the ocean?

Jeremy:

Yeah, I mean we're talking with groups, you know, in the blue carbon credit sector, not because it's about blue carbon, but it's because it's the thing that, again, you're meeting the people where they're at. It's the thing that they understand. There's financial instruments attached to this. But I think what's interesting is if we look at nature, right? We look at seagrass, salt marshes, mangroves, but we also look at the biodiversity. It's not so much the ocean or the phytoplankton, but it's the way that these animals interact with the flora and the fauna. That's where the value is. And if we look at carbon sequestration, and we say, okay, well, the seagrass is sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, but in order for it to do so, we have to make sure that humans don't come in there with their anchors and rip things up or bottom troll or all the things, right?

And we wanna have sharks in there, we wanna have turtles. What if we said, it's not the seagrass that has value, but it's what it does what we call ecosystem service value. What if we could say, Hey, you're gonna buy this carbon credit to draw down X number of tons of carbon, but in exchange, what we're going to do is we're gonna basically take a velvet rope, we're gonna put it around this certain area, and we're gonna say nobody comes in or outta here. And part of those funds go to the individuals in the community to keep an eye on things, to make sure that it continues to perform. I mean, without doing so, it would be like, if you invested in an apartment building and you said, I have this multi-tenant building, there's, you know, retail on the bottom floor, and then you just walked away.

What do you think would happen to that building? <laugh>, it would get destroyed and people would start coming in there and God knows what would happen. So it makes sense to be able to protect that investment as much as possible. And I think by doing so, what we'll find is we'll see an increase in biodiversity, because again, you're allowing kind of that Goldilocks zone to thrive. And that's where I think this really starts to make sense from a conservation standpoint. Because now, you know, you've given the financial markets and private businesses a way to help contribute that previously they did not have a way in.

Abigail:

Right. So what about the fishermen though that needs to catch fish?

Jeremy:

The thing I'd like to tell fishermen is that today you're taking dead bodies out of the ocean for value. So today you're a fisherman of fish. Tomorrow, I think you can be a fisherman of data, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> data should be able to be by the numbers that we're looking at, just as valuable as pulling fish out of the sea. I think what we'll find is we'll find that the value of a fish, of a tuna, of a snapper is worth to the economy far more than it is on the plate. And don't get me wrong, I love fish. I love to go fishing, but I think that we have pushed ourselves to the limit at this point, and we need a correction. It's kind of like what Cabo Pulmo had, you know, 15 years, we got the 50 year investment. What if we did something similar on a global scale? Could we incentivize those who make their livelihoods in fishing with a new injection of our new economy, something we call a nature based economy? And that's the very thing that we're actively testing right now in the British Virgin Islands.

Abigail:

So tell me about the BVI.

Jeremy:

The British Virgin Islands is very interesting because, you know, they've got basically a voting population of about 13,000 people or so. I can test out equipment anywhere in the states. I can get permits for that, or I can find people who already have permits, and I can do that, that's pretty easy. But where can I go that I can create these types of systems, a real nature-based economy? Make sure that revenue is generated for the country and that jobs are created prove that this works in a very isolated, small place.

I can't do that in Texas. I can't do that in Florida. Just politics and rules. I can do that in the British Virgin Islands. And now what we end up doing is we have a new nature-based economy that's independent of tourism. And the reason why I say that is that there's this phrase that I keep hearing, and that's when the wind blows, the tourist goes. What's going to happen to some of these Caribbean nations and other island nations when the next hurricane comes, cyclone depending on where you are in the world, or  the next pandemic. They're gonna be left high and dry. They're gonna be asking for relief and help because there's no other way to get income.

But when we look at seagrass, just as an example. Seagrass globally is worth $3 trillion. [In the water.] That's right. In the water. [Not harvested on your plate.] That's correct. And The Bahamas, as an example, is sitting on, we now know they're sitting on 30% of the world's seagrass, that's $1 trillion. So these small island nations, could they at some point be considered, no longer small islands, but great ocean states. I think that there's a change. I can smell it in the air. Something is about to shift. And I think that's our understanding and how intrinsically connected we are with our economies, with our healthy ecosystems. 

Abigail:

Wow. I'm in agreement with you about this shift. I hear it all the time from the people I interview. Even in the business models, the number of entrepreneurs that I've spoken to that have a for-profit and a nonprofit entity it's just really interesting. Like they're truly mission driven. So you have a Furthermore foundation. What is that?

Jeremy:

You know, there's a lot of things that we do that obviously make sense for the private sector. But we wanted to build  a foundation for things that needed to be done around the ocean that isn't necessarily a profit center, if that makes sense. [Yeah.] You know, let's say that you're one of those fishermen that you mentioned earlier, and he says, Hey, great, awesome for creating this new economy. I can't afford a sensor. And so that's where the furthermore foundation comes in, is that we want to be able to accelerate ocean tech. But we want to be able to incentivize individuals and say, Hey, look, you know what, here is a sensor, and this is gonna be something that you can use while you're out at sea collecting data.

Hopefully you start generating an income and you can buy more sensors. And by the way these could be sensors from hundreds of different manufacturers, right? Again, we, we don't care. We just feel like it should be measured. That's really the start of the, Furthermore, we also have a mission in Maui. We've got  House Resolution 135 that was passed. And this is to identify chemical and conventional weapons that have been purposely dumped in Hawaiian waters. And our plan is to map them. Because essentially as the casings start to kind of degrade, they start to emit, you know, various chemicals that get into the coral reef that get into the fish. We eat the fish, we get cancer. So this is a human health problem. [Yeah.] And it ties into what we do at OCN because again, we plan on measuring a lot of these types of things inside the water column to tell a bigger story. 

Abigail:

For a very long time, we've sort of seen the ocean as a dump. [Right], right.? People were throwing tires in there. I mean, there were sewage pipes.You know, as a child here in coastal Maine, we had pipes that just went straight from people's houses out into the near shoreline. I used to play on them. I mean, the generation above me used to, you know, flush the toilet and sprint out the door and see if they could beat it <laugh> all the way to like, like, [wow], this was, we are so much more aware of the degradation. I mean, people were also clamming on those same beaches, you know, it's like, we just, we were so clueless. So I do feel like we've grown leaps and bounds in our understanding of these ecosystems and our impact. But, this has happened in relatively recent history that we were just really using these coastlines the absolute wrong way.

Jeremy:

Again, it goes back to what we don't know, right?

Abigail:

Yeah. So the idea is that you're gonna subscribe to a dashboard service, right? This is a software as a service situation?

Jeremy:

Yeah. We call it measurement as a service, but yeah, it's a SaaS model. I mean, it doesn't have to be our dashboard. The way that we charge for use of our platform is through API calls, whether that's on our dashboard or if you use our API to, to tie into something that you've already built. We're trying to make this as, [super open system, yeah] malleable as possible. So that it can be used and we can find ways to collaborate with people who are collecting data in and around the ocean globally.

Abigail:

So how are you gonna grow this out? Where are you and what are the next steps?

Jeremy:

I think the reason why we're in the BVI is because, you know, our plan is to go to 14 plus countries in the next two and a half years. And in order for us to do that, we need to show how we can work with a country, work with locals, not inject foreigners, because that never works. If we're going to protect 30% of the world's ocean, which by the way, for those that you don't know, SDG 14, which is the sustainable development goals, number 14, life below water as defined by the United Nations. One of the targets underneath there is to protect 30% of the world's oceans. And as Sylvia Earl, if she was here right now, she'd say, well, Jeremy, that's a good start. We gotta keep going. And she's right. It is a good start, but right now we're only at 2.7% fully protected, which is somewhat criminal if you ask me,

Abigail:

Can you say that number again?

Jeremy:

Depending on who you talk to, right? 10% is protected paper wise, but 2.7% is protected and enforced. And so we need to get to 30% protected and enforced before 2030. And if we can do more than that, that's even better. But we're not going to do that on altruism. We have to be able to create the financial tools to make this fiscally sustainable because it's not gonna work by us creating nonprofits and NGOs and then going around asking for the same pool of money. 

Abigail:

<laugh>. All right. What are your pearls of wisdom for young entrepreneurs today?

Jeremy:

When you think about starting something you're gonna have a lot of negative feedback. To hear negative feedback is probably very crushing. But don't let that stop you. Embrace it. Because some of the most negative things I've ever heard from people to me were the very things that I used to empower me. I have been told that what you're doing is not possible. I'm also dyslexic, and my teachers told me that I was stupid. They didn't know how to deal with dyslexic thinking. [Right.] I've learned that dyslexia is actually a superpower. You know, when you are passionate about something, stay passionate about it, stay focused. Don't lie to yourself. If your idea that you've fallen in love with is really that amazing, be open to criticism because somebody's ultimately gonna come to you and say, Hey, there's some things that you should change and be willing to let that person obviously if it's a respectable person, let them open everything up, tell you what their experience level is, and then use those individuals as you, as the president would use, you know cabinet members in, in his office. You know, figure out what role do they really play, because the last thing you want is a bunch of yes men.

Seek mentors, build a really diverse team. I always say be the dumbest guy in the room. When it comes to my team, I have some of the most amazing human beings I've ever met. The last thing I would tell a young entrepreneur is learn what the rules are only so you know how to break them. Because you can't break rules until you know what the rules are. And that's what I'm trying to do right now is just break as many rules as I, as we possibly can because obviously the status quo is not working and it's time for change.

Abigail:

I love it. I think that's just a great note to end on. Thank you so much, Jeremy, for coming on the show. It's just been a huge honor to have you here.

Jeremy:

Yeah, it's my honor. I really was, was tickled pink when you asked me to be on your show, so thank you for inviting me,

Abigail:

We’ve spoken to a lot of people about ocean health and the key role the ocean plays in all of our lives, whether we live on the coast or inland. And we’ve spoken to companies like Fed by Blue and OPCR that want to use these commons more. These inherent conflicts makes for a great space for innovation but they also really play to Jeremy’s project. We want and need to use this resource for the better of the planet, but we are not always sure of the ramifications. And we can't fix what we can’t see. So if Jeremy is successful and we can map the sea we can really make great strides towards fostering a Happy Planet.

Thank you for listening. Please follow Happy Planet wherever you listen and leave us a rating and review - it really helps new listeners discover the show.  Happy Planet was reported and hosted by me. I am also the Executive Producer. The talented Dylan Heuer is our producer and editor. Composer George Brandl Egloff created our theme music. Learn more about my work and get in touch by visiting happyplanetpodcast.com.