Academy Award-winning director Louie Psihoyos returned to the Rising Tide Ocean Podcast for a conversation as wide-ranging and urgent as his films. Host David Helvarg sat down with Psihoyos before a live audience during SF Climate Week at the downtown San Francisco studios of KALW public radio — and the exchange didn't disappoint.

Psihoyos traces his unlikely path to ocean advocacy: a kid from Iowa, drawn early to photography and the sea, who eventually landed at National Geographic — beginning, as origin stories often do, at the bottom, sifting through a garbage dig. From there he rose to become one of the most consequential documentary filmmakers working today, a man who doesn't just point a camera at environmental catastrophe but builds covert operations around it.

He recounts the making of The Cove, his shattering exposé of the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan — a film that required as much tradecraft as filmmaking — and discusses his latest work, Plastic Detox, now streaming on Netflix, which takes a hard look at microplastics and their alarming effects on human fertility.

The two also range across a broader landscape: adventures, causes for concern, and — perhaps most valuably in these grinding times — reasons for optimism.

It's a talk worth diving into.

** Additional Resources **

The Plastic Detox — an eye-opening journey into the hidden dangers of plastic in our homes.

When six couples embark on a plastic detox within their homes, it changes their families forever. This eye-opening documentary explains what microplastics and their chemicals are doing to our health and how we can take matters into our own hands.

From hormone disruption that’s fueling a worldwide fertility crisis, to growing rates of cancer, and early heart attack and stroke, this powerful documentary reveals the shocking science behind plastic’s impact on human life.

Exploring the Forgotten Frontlines of Our Ocean's Battle Against Climate Change

The tables turn on the latest episode of Rising Tide the Ocean Podcast as Blue Frontier’s Natasha Benjamin interviews Rising Tide co-host and author David Helvarg on his latest book, ‘Forest of the Sea – The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp’ (coming out May 5th).  As co-director of the award-winning kelp forest documentary ‘Sequoias of the Sea’ Natasha is also steeped in the mystery, wonder and peril of these great underwater forests of life and light.  So, their discussion ranges over both familiar territory – how a changing warming ocean is impacting kelp forests that have been around over 30 million years - to some of the newer things David discovered during his two years researching the book, interviewing and diving with a wide range of people and creatures from Alaska to California, Maine, Turkey, Palau – for his chapter ‘Kelp  is the new Coral’ - and other far-flung waterfronts where the world’s kelp forests, cover an area larger than the Amazon rainforest.  He talks about how they’ve gotten into serious trouble even as they provide us half a trillion dollars of services a year including as ‘the mother seed’ for global food security in fishing and seaweed aquaculture.

It’s a fun romp through an entangling wonderland, which is why Rising Tide recommends you give a listen and then buy David’s book (preferably through your local independent bookstore). 

Order Forest Of The Sea — Veteran journalist David Helvarg takes us on a riveting journey beneath the waves to understand kelp’s natural and human history, the billions of dollars of products and services it contributes to our global economy, the unwitting human activities that threaten its survival, and the powerful movements around the world to restore its disappearing habitat.

On the latest episode of Rising Tide the Ocean Podcast, host David Helvarg and co-host Vicki Nichols Goldstein sit down with James Workman and Amanda Leland, co-authors of Sea Change – Unlikely Allies and a Success Story of Oceanic Proportions — a book that makes a convincing case that empowering fishermen to work together, even as they compete, can create miracles.

Workman brings the instincts of an award-winning journalist and entrepreneur to the conversation, having already explored humanity's most elemental struggles in his earlier work, Heart of Dryness. Leland came to the sea the way many do — through a grandfather and a fishing line at age five — and never left. Today she serves as Executive Director of the Environmental Defense Fund, the international nonprofit working to align healthy communities and economies with the hard realities of a changing climate.

Together, they dig into the market-based system known as catch share fishing: what it is, how it's reshaping the destructive race toward overfishing in U.S. waters, and why it may be one of the most promising tools we have for getting this right on a global scale. They also explore the human cost baked into commercial fishing — still one of the deadliest jobs on earth — and how catch shares are changing those odds. And they explain their choice to tell this sweeping story through the life of one rugged Gulf Coast fisherman named Buddy, a narrative anchor that grounds the policy and the science in salt, sweat and consequence.

All of it plays out against the backdrop of a rapidly warming, rapidly changing ocean — and what that means for the millions of people whose dinner plates depend on getting this right.

A story of hope, hard-won transformation and new challenges. Dive in and take an audio bite.

Examining the Tidal Wave of Environmental Threats Under Current Administration Policies

Host David Helvarg and co-host Vicki Nichols Goldstein devote the episode to how the Trump administration is reshaping U.S. ocean policy amid an oil crisis, spotlighting emergency moves to expand California offshore drilling and a broader “drill, baby drill” agenda that includes deep-sea mining. Guest Angelo Villagomez of the Center for American Progress, who helped create the Mariana Trench National Marine Monument, describes mining plans targeting international waters and U.S. areas near American Samoa, the Marianas, and Alaska, while the U.S. sidesteps International Seabed Authority norms. He warns that marine national monuments—covering about 26% of the U.S. EEZ—are under attack via executive orders to reopen areas to industrial fishing, alongside efforts to derail offshore wind using whale-harm claims. The discussion links policy volatility to NOAA staffing losses and urges voter registration and local organizing.

On the latest episode of Rising Tide, hosts David Helvarg and Vicki Nichols Goldstein sit down with Erin Hudson, Director of the Seafood Watch program at the world-renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium.

With more than 15 years dedicated to advancing sustainable seafood, Hudson brings deep insight into how consumer choices ripple through ocean ecosystems and fishing communities. The conversation traces the origins of Seafood Watch’s iconic red, yellow, and green pocket guides—a simple, powerful tool that helps people understand which seafood choices are environmentally responsible, risky, or best avoided. To date, more than 65 million of these guides have been distributed worldwide.

The episode also explores Hudson’s collaborative work with the fishing industry and retailers, and why meaningful change can sometimes start with asking one clear, straightforward question.

It’s a smart, accessible, and surprisingly delicious listen—proof that informed choices can be good for both people and the planet.

David Helvarg and Vicki Nichols Goldstein welcome back a respected voice in the environmental arena, Richard Charter. With all eyes on California, Charter shares a compelling narrative about the realities facing the state's coastline and the broader implications for our oceans. As we explore this topic, we uncover the complexities of politics, economics, and the undeniable importance of activism. Join us on this journey as we dive into Richard's story and the monumental efforts to protect our precious shores.