(inspiring music)
- I'm not sure what I would be without the ocean,
and I'm not sure where in space I would be
without having the majority of the planet
as the centering place.
It feels like home, it feels right,
and you protect what's home, protect your family,
you protect what you love.
San Francisco 2007,
this oil container ship hit the Bay Bridge and all the oil
was headed out to the Marin Headlands where I live.
Wave upon wave of toxic
goop-ed up oil was just washing in over the beach.
I started to feel this cognitive dissonance,
I'm using the ocean and I'm not giving back to it
and it's changing literally under my feet.
We've lost half the world's coral reefs
in the last 50 years, half the world's mangrove forests,
half the world's kelp forest,
you name it and we've messed it up.
I realized that I had to make a change
and dedicate my life to trying to fix this problem,
and that was the start of SeaTrees.
To me being an Ecopreneur really means one thing,
you're looking at the most pressing issues on the planet
and you're looking at how to solve them
as part of a business.
And you're keeping the planet
at the center of every decision that you make.
- So as a geologist I think about geologic time
and the history of the earth.
And there's been six major mass extinctions on the planet,
all of them have been caused by CO2 emissions.
And we're actually emitting CO2
faster and at a higher magnitude
as ever happened in the history of the earth.
- No matter how many trees we plant on land
we will never reverse climate change
without including the ocean ecosystems, sea trees,
as a part of this plan.
(birds cawing)
- The ocean plays a huge role in sequestering carbon
because it's the original carbon sink.
Since the beginning of time it's always been this place
where excess carbon dioxide could be captured.
Now we're seeing so much extra
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
because of burning fossil fuels and deforestation,
it's reached its cap, it can't handle much more.
- This is an existential threat.
I want my daughter to have a livable world,
that's more important to me than anything else in the world.
(soft music)
- [Kevin] You realize, okay this is a way
to make blue carbon conservation tangible, plant a sea tree.
- To put back more of that seaweed, more of that plankton,
more of those sea grasses
so that they can do what they do naturally, absorb that CO2.
- I wanted anyone in the world
to be able to have this impact literally in the same way
that you could order up
a Rideshare or something on your phone.
Go to SeaTrees and restore 10 square feet of kelp forest,
it'll take you 45 seconds to do it.
Why isn't saving the planet as easy
as buying something off the internet?
(energetic music)
- The place that we've been focusing our efforts
is the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Over 100 years of time we were able to document
the loss of over 85% of that forest.
If I went out and showed you the loss
of the red woods in California,
that 85% of them went away in 100 years
people would be pulling their hair out.
It's an invisible forest to most.
- So we are here in California
at the Channel Islands Harbor
and we're gonna be looking at the kelp forest ecosystems
and we're gonna be exploring
how we could possibly get involved.
(energetic music)
Let's do it.
- [Man] Pull the gear out here. (equipment clinking)
- See you on the bottom.
(light music)
- [Danni] I think people aren't talking about the ocean
as a major solution for climate change
because what's out of sight is out of mind.
But scientists are clear,
the ocean really does hold the key
to helping us mitigate the impacts of climate change.
(birds cawing)
- So the work that we've been doing
has been down in the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
That kelp forest,
the main problem there was an overabundance
of these purple sea urchins.
It's the sea urchin divers who will go down there
to put the kelp forest in that ecosystem back in balance.
Our role is to try to find the funding for it
to create scientific partnerships
and then really bringing the story home.
(soft music)
(birds cawing)
- We've been restoring kelp forests for a couple decades.
The decades prior to SeaTrees involvement
we were hammering away in a vacuum.
And SeaTrees has now just made us available to the world
and we've had more people interested, more curious folks,
more support coming in from around the planet
than I could've imagined was possible.
- I think SeaTrees success to date
is establishing a repeatable model, a template.
- I love the fact that this project
also creates a beautiful synergy
between the scientific community,
the volunteers that are in that area,
the fishers that are in that area as well
creating jobs and living wages for people that need it.
- [Tom] We just gotta assemble the right team,
give them the right tools, give them the proper support,
and then voila in a years time you have an ocean
that went from a moonscape to the most amazing
underwater environment that I've ever seen in my life.
- Protect what you love.
And it's kind of that simple.
And that's what SeaTrees is about.
And to be a surfer is to kind of
have a very intimate relationship with what you love.
- [Ryan] But that's where I think
surfing can be really helpful
because surfers are the face of like loving the ocean.
And we use that power of surfing to engage and inspire,
to help tell the story of the ocean,
can help us solve climate change if we help the ocean.
- For 20 years I was so grateful to travel around the world
as a professional surfer.
That also gave me firsthand access and understanding
to our ocean health and how that has transformed
in the 20 years that I was traveling and surfing.
And I really think as surfers
we're really like ocean stewards.
We're the ones that are really aware of that ocean health
because we're living and breathing it in.
I'm so grateful to be an ambassador for SeaTrees.
They're not talking about what they're gonna do
they're doing stuff now.
And sharing that stoke with my community
is what being an ambassador is about.
- I think the surfing community's a perfect ambassador
for that message because we don't have a sport
without the ocean,
we don't have a sport without the environment.
- I want the world to know exactly what SeaTrees is doing
because they're doing really important work,
they're literally helping save our planet.
- With the app and with how easy that SeaTrees has made it
for people to donate, and get involved, and activate,
it makes you feel good.
- [Ryan] We literally plant a tree, dollar plants a tree.
Dollar plants a tree, two clicks you've done it.
- If we can galvanize people to understand
that they can have a hand in restoring the ocean
and helping mitigate climate change
I really believe that this is the number one solution
that we can all be a part of.
(soft music)
- [Jim] To push an idea beyond California
takes an insatiable desire
to commit your life to influencing the world.
Michael and Kevin, that's basically their life's work.
They're spending their currency of influence
on reversing climate change.
(people laughing)
- Don't be scared to be the only or the first.
That's how you create change is by being an innovator,
by being you know someone that breaks the mold.
- [Tom] And it doesn't have to be that complicated.
Really it's about things that are very natural to us
which is taking care of the planet that takes care of us.
- I tell my daughter Oceana who's just about to turn 10
that I wake up every day
trying to make the ocean as good a place as I remember it
when I was growing up and I was her age.
I keep that you know in my heart and in my mind
of like this is who I'm doing it for,
this is why I'm doing it.
Yeah there's a larger world out there
that I wanna do this for, but for my daughter,
that's where it hits hard.
That's.
Sorry.
Yeah.
That's it.