Join us on this episode of the Rising Tide Ocean Podcast as we dive deep with Curt Newport, an underwater salvage expert and author of the new book, 'Ready to Dive – Five Decades of Adventures in the Abyss.' Curt shares his incredible experiences using ROV robot submarines and advanced technologies around offshore oil platforms, fiber optic cable laying operations, military crash sites, and more.

Curt recounts some of the most challenging recovery missions, including the 1986 Challenger Disaster, where he helped recover the booster rocket that identified the crash's cause, the TWA 800 airliner crash, and Air India Flight 182, which was brought down by a terrorist bomb. Please note his discussion on body recovery operations is graphic and may disturb some listeners.

Discover the fascinating shift from hard hat divers to robotic recovery and the realities of working at sea. With a career spent on the frontlines of marine salvage, Curt Newport offers a unique and compelling perspective. Don't miss this episode of Rising Tide.

Join us for an inspiring episode of the Rising Tide podcast as David Helvarg & Natasha Benjamin sit down with Bob Shavelson, a seasoned conservationist with over 35 years of experience in the environmental field. Growing up along the shores of Atlantic City, NJ, Bob's journey has taken him from the east coast to the rugged beauty of Homer, Alaska, where he has led significant efforts in environmental protection and advocacy.

In this 110th episode, Bob shares his rich history in conservation, from his early work with MassPIRG on toxic use reduction to his fight against the passage of NAFTA. We delve into his impactful tenure with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, where he tested and regulated landfills, and his extensive legal work bringing citizen suits under the Clean Water Act. Bob also recounts his experiences as a Knauss Sea Grant Fellow on Capitol Hill, where he influenced environmental policy.

As the leader of the nonprofit organization Cook Inletkeeper from 1996 till his retirement 3 years ago Bob dedicated his career to protecting Alaska's vital waterways. He currently serves on the Board of the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council, overseeing oil tanker and terminal operations in the wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.

Bob’s passion for conservation extends beyond his professional life. He actively volunteers for various community groups and now operates a water taxi on the stunning Kachemak Bay, where he lives with his wife and two young daughters.

Tune in to hear Bob's incredible stories and insights on environmental protection, community engagement, and the ongoing efforts to safeguard our natural world. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in conservation and the power of grassroots advocacy.

On this episode of the Rising Tide Ocean Podcast! Today, we sat down with Kiera Foti, the brand manager for Atlantic Sea Farms, the leading aquaculture kelp grower in the U.S. Based in Maine, this innovative company supplies edible kelp to stores like Whole Foods and numerous restaurants. They also produce branded products and sell kelp for cosmetics, fertilizers, and more. Discover how Atlantic Sea Farms collaborates with local lobstermen to cultivate kelp during their off-season and learn why Kiera refers to these carbon-absorbing algae as a "climate hero crop." Tune in to explore the fascinating world of sustainable kelp farming!

On this, our latest episode we talk with Kate Toniolo, U.S. Fish & Wildlife’s project leader for Delaware’s coastal refuges including the 10,000 acre Prime Hook, an area devastated by 2012’s Hurricane Sandy. Since then, she’s overseen restoration efforts that have seen the comeback of its sandy beaches, fresh and saltwater marshes and wildlife including threatened shorebirds, horseshoe crabs and their surrounding communities.  We’ll talk about this and her past work in Hawaii, the remote Pacific Islands and elsewhere.

To celebrate Earth Day (which is 71% ocean) we’re speaking with Margaret Spring, Chief conservation and science officer for the world -famous Monterey Bay Aquarium, in California.  Before coming to the aquarium Margaret was an environmental attorney and a leader at NOAA. Today she oversees the aquarium’s science policy work including on plastic pollution, its Seafood Watch sustainable seafood program and much of the deep ocean research conducted at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing. So, let’s take a deep dive into what Margaret is up to.  

In the latest Rising Tide we talk with our old friend Ana Blanco of the International Ocean Film Festival - coming to San Francisco April 12-14 - and Sarah Norenberg, the director of ‘Orca – Black & White Gold,’ one of the exciting documentaries playing there about how Russian activists saved 100 whales slated to be sold to Chinese aquarium parks, and instead got them released back into the wild.  A true life ‘Free Willy’ film plus some good talk about ocean documentaries. 

On this episode of Rising Tide, David & Vicki speak with Marce Gutiérrez – Graudiņš, founder and Executive Director of Azul, the first grassroots organization working with Latinx people throughout the Americas to protect our blue ocean.

Based in California where she sits on the governing board of the California Coastal Conservancy, Marce, shocked by the Chevron refinery explosion in Richmond California in 2012, expanded Azul’s environmental justice work nationally and globally as you’ll learn as you dive into our latest conversation.

Hosts Natasha Benjamin and David Helvarg speak with Kassia Meador — longtime professional surfer, designer, and ocean devotee whose ecstatic longboard style has made her one of the sport’s most recognizable figures. The conversation moves like a tide, pulling from her earliest saltwater memories shaped by a surfer father, to the changes she’s witnessed in the ocean over decades in the water. Meador also speaks to her founding of the first wetsuit brand designed by women for women, and explores the deeper currents connecting surfing and kelp to questions of creation and community. It’s a conversation rooted in the sea — and everything it asks of the people who love it.

Chad Nelsen grew up where the land runs out — raised on the beaches of southern California, working as a lifeguard before turning his eye toward coastal science and eventually to the fight to save the shores that shaped him. As CEO of the Surfrider Foundation, he now leads one of the ocean's most tenacious grassroots defenders: a 50,000-member coalition of surfers and saltwater devotees waging campaigns on fronts that range from protecting surf breaks to pushing back against plastic pollution, climate disruption, and the long-standing barriers that have kept the ocean's culture from being as open as the sea itself. In a moment when the tide seems to be running the wrong way, Nelsen holds to a conviction that bottom-up pressure — the kind that starts with people who simply love the water — can still change the course of things.

This week's guest is Linda Behnken, Executive Director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen's Association — a woman who has hauled lines in some of the coldest, most unforgiving waters on earth for more than four decades. Behnken is not the kind of person who watches a fight from the dock. As one of the most outspoken advocates for Alaska's fishing communities and the marine ecosystems they depend on, she has spent years going toe-to-toe with the industrial trawl fleets dragging nets across the seafloor and pressing lawmakers to reckon honestly with a changing climate. This episode takes on safety at sea, the creeping threat of large-scale gold mining and widespread logging, and the broader battle to keep Alaska's coastal way of life from slipping beneath the surface.

This week, David Helvarg sits down with Kramer Wimberley — lead dive instructor and board member of DWP, Diving With a Purpose — a man who has made the ocean floor both a classroom and a reckoning. Through the discipline of citizen science, DWP has become a leading force in locating, surveying, and documenting the shipwrecks of the Atlantic Slave Trade, pulling history up from the dark water and honoring the lives swallowed by it. But Wimberley's work doesn't stop at the past. He also helms DWP's youth program along the coral reefs of Florida, where a new generation of Black and other young divers are learning that the fight for the sea and the fight for a better future are, at their core, the same fight.

David Helvarg speaks with Nick Landon, a young mariner who chose to bet his future on the sea. Landon traces his path from four years at the California Maritime Academy to the working reality of life as a third mate aboard an oil tanker — the long watches, the constant decision-making, and the particular solitude of open water. He recounts the ship’s stretch in dry dock in the Bahamas, where steel meets salt and the unglamorous machinery of maritime commerce gets laid bare. The conversation moves through the environmental shifts reshaping the modern fleet, the marine wildlife Landon has encountered along the way, and the message he carries to high school students weighing a life defined by tides and trade winds over one anchored to shore.

Activist Hilton Kelley was raised in the segregated, predominantly African-American west side of Port Arthur, Texas—often cited as the most polluted coastal town in America. He went on to join the U.S. Navy and later became a successful actor. At 39, Kelley returned home to help restore his community and confront the pollution that had long defined daily life there. He emerged as a leading environmental justice advocate, winning key battles against air pollution, PCB incineration, and the Keystone pipeline. Alongside his reflections on oil spills and industrial harm, Kelley recites the poem that helped shape his path forward, “My True History.”

In this episode, host David Helvarg and Vicki Nichols Goldstein sit down with Dionne Ybarra, director of the Wahine Project, whose path to the ocean was anything but direct. Raised in an inland Mexican American farmworker family, Ybarra didn’t find surfing until she was 38 years old — and when she did, she looked around the lineup and didn’t see many people who looked like her. Rather than paddle back to shore, she did something about it. Ybarra launched the Wahine Project — wahine being the Hawaiian word for surfer girl — and has since taught thousands of young girls, along with some boys and adults, to read waves and face their fears, from the kelp-cold waters of Monterey all the way to Mexico, Gaza, and beyond. It’s a story about belonging in the surf, and about what it means to ride waves not just for yourself, but for the ocean itself.

From Iowa to an Oscar, Louie Psihoyos continues to engage people with his famed National Geographic photography, award-winning films including ‘The Cove’ and ‘Racing Extinction’ and projected images. His larger than life endangered species vying for our attention on the Empire State building and the Vatican and his evolving views on food and social movements are just a few of the things we discuss with him.