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). 

Pre-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.

What starts as a walk on the beach with a trash bag can turn into a movement.

In this year-end episode of Rising Tide, we head to San Francisco’s oceanfront for an on-the-ground conversation with Vince Yuen, founder of Refuse Refuse San Francisco, to explore how small, consistent acts of care can ripple outward—transforming neighborhoods, waterways, and the relationship people have with the ocean.

Joined by Holden Hardcastle and Nick Paz, Vince shares how Refuse Refuse began during the isolation of the COVID pandemic as a simple way to get outside and make a difference, and how it has since grown into a city-wide, volunteer-powered effort to tackle urban litter before it reaches the sea. Along the way, the conversation connects the dots between city streets and ocean health, showing how everyday trash becomes a marine problem—and how community action can interrupt that cycle.

This episode also looks beyond cleanup days to the policy changes needed for long-term impact, from reducing cigarette butt waste to curbing single-use plastics. It’s a grounded, hopeful reminder that protecting the ocean doesn’t always start offshore. Sometimes it starts right where we live, with people willing to show up, pick up, and care.

As the year comes to a close, End the Year by Refusing Refuse offers a powerful invitation: reflect on what’s possible when community, consistency, and purpose come together—and carry that momentum into the year ahead.

In the latest episode, David Helvarg & Vicki Nichols Goldstein talk with the Reverend Robert Wilkins about how his faith led him to his work with the Seafarers Ministry, serving ship crews arriving at the Port of Oakland, California. Wilkins and his team make ship visits, help crew members connect with families in places like the Philippines and Bangladesh, and check in on conditions such as time spent at sea and food quality — often doing follow-up when issues arise.

They also support mariners on shore leave with recreation, transportation, and other needs, and even coordinate doctor visits when necessary, frequently working with Customs and Border Protection to make it happen. 

Each holiday season, the ministry delivers gift bags to seafarers and continues to grow its volunteer program, expanding ship visits from 250 vessels to 370 this year — supporting the people responsible for moving more than 90% of the world’s goods.

Wilkins also shares his perspective on shipping automation and decarbonization, exploring how these changes are already affecting seafarers and may reshape their livelihoods in the future.

Tune in to this insightful conversation with Rev. Wilkins and gain his unique perspective.

The latest episode of the Rising Tide Ocean Podcast features an excerpt from a recent conversation between David Helvarg and Chris Clarke of the desert podcast 90 Miles from Needles. Clarke discusses Helvarg’s first book, The War Against the Greens (1994), which was highly influential in exposing a violent environmental backlash funded by western industries such as hard-rock mining, beef, and timber.

Helvarg draws parallels between that earlier backlash and today’s top-down right-wing attacks on environmental laws and agencies under President Trump. He explores how violent rhetoric and climate denial merged within a Republican Party that once championed both environmental protection and democracy. He also explains how the oil and gas industry applied lessons from the past to obstruct the growth of clean energy, and reflects on what he now believes is most effective in the fight to protect the planet’s blue world—and humanity itself.