Wherever You Live You Can Contribute to Ocean Conservation - Vicki Nichols Goldstein
About Vicki Nichols Goldstein
Vicki Nichols Goldstein is founder of the Inland Ocean Coalition. Her impressive credentials include a master’s degree in marine policy from Yale University and working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to co-write documents for the designation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Vicki served as the Executive Director of the California-based Save Our Shores. When she moved to Colorado, she founded the Colorado Ocean Coalition and in 2017 Vicki rebranded it as the Inland Ocean Coalition. Inland Ocean Coalition empowers citizens wherever they live to be leaders and make positive contributions to ocean protection.
Inland Ocean Coalition and Mobilizing Inland Communities for Ocean Conservation
Vicki grew up across the street from her grandparents. Her grandfather, who hunted and fished, felt it was important to give back to nature. For example, after her grandfather trapped snapping turtles it was her job to help collect the eggs, bury them and then water them. When the turtles hatched, they took the hatchlings back to the wetlands, so the cycle of life was continued. Throughout her life, Vicki’s has kept the philosophy: if you take you must give something back.
Growing up she loved the ocean. She loved to swim and boat and crab. She chose to go to college along the coast of Maine at the College of the Atlantic. When Vicki graduated, she stayed on to work in their museum. Eventually, she became its acting director. She stayed in that position for several years and while there started a field studies program for kids. Eventually, she decided that living on an island in Maine (Mount Desert Island), had become limiting even though her work included being an adjunct faculty teaching students interpretive science. She went on to attend a masters program at Yale. Towards the end of that program, she set up interviews with the National Oceanography and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)to learn about how they designated Marine Protected Areas (MPA). The interviews led to a job offer. She was given the opportunity to focus on the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary designation process. After which she left NOAA and moved to California to work as Executive Director of Save Our Shores.
When her husband got a job in Colorado she assumed she’d be able to find a job there where she could use her skills and continue to focus on ocean conservation. Finding no such opportunities she decided to figure out how she could design and implement a program that would engage inland dwellers to work toward ocean conservation. This became the impetus for the Colorado Inland Coalition. Her vision was to educate and raise awareness of what inlanders could do to make a difference. This included lobbying legislators who typically didn’t get constituents interested in the ocean. She recruited people by throwing parties. “Blue drinks” were monthly events at bars that donated a part of their proceeds to the cause. People at the events had the chance to talk to one another and learn how they were connected to the ocean and discuss what needed to be done.
As her organization grew, it increasingly didn’t make sense to call it the Colorado Inland Coalition as volunteers represented many other states. To date, the Inland Ocean Coalition (name for the group since 2017) has volunteers in more than 30 countries and nearly every state in the US. It demonstrates that there’s something to be done wherever a person lives. One of the programs of the Inland Ocean Coalition (IOC) is their Ambassador Training. There are enrichment opportunities every month and activities to get involved in. For example, IOC is working on a petroleum sunscreen ban, deep sea mining education, nurdle watch, support for the 30 X 30 initiative and more. Petroleum sunscreens are made from toxins (herbicides). As the sunscreen gets into the ocean it attacks the plants that live in the coral with dire consequences.
Vicki believes that a sense of optimism is very important. She believes that we know how to fix problems but need more support to get the work done. There’s always something that each of us can do to educate ourselves and let leaders know that they have constituents that care.
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00:00:01 Pam Ferris-Olson Today on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com, I am speaking with Vicki Nichols Goldstein, who founded the nonprofit Inland Ocean Coalition. It was her belief that community-based ocean conservation belongs to everyone, not just people who live along the coast. Vicky's career has included writing documents to help establish the Monterey Bay National Sanctuary, serving as executive director for Save Our Shores, and founding Inland Ocean Coalition. In all these endeavors, she has made a positive contribution to ocean protection.
The Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com, engages artists in conversation about their work and explores their connection to the ocean through their stories. Wo(men) Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures.
Today I am speaking with Vicky Nichols Goldstein whose impressive credentials include a Master’s degree in marine policy from Yale University and working with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration to cowrite documents for the designation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Vicky served as the executive director of the California-based Save our Shores. When she moved to Colorado, she founded the Colorado Ocean Coalition. In 2017, Vicki rebranded it as the Inland Ocean Coalition. Inland Ocean Coalition empowers citizens wherever they live, to be leaders and make positive contributions to ocean protection.
00:01:48 Welcome, Vicky. I applaud you for your vision to create Inland Ocean Coalition. I should state here that I recently went through Inland Ocean Coalition training and am now certified as an Inland Ocean Coalition ambassador. This means that I have first-hand experience with the training. I was impressed by the variety of topics covered during the sessions and the global reach of the people enrolled in the program.
But what I think impressed me the most is that you found an impactful way to promote ocean conservation for people living along the coast and those living inland. I'm looking forward to hearing about your journey and having you share information on why anyone can make a difference no matter where they live or what their background is. Let's begin by learning something about where you grew up and where you found a passion for the ocean.
00:02:47 Vicki Nichols Goldstein Pam, thank you so much for that great introduction and it is a pleasure to be here with you. I grew up across the street from my grandparents, my mum mum and pop pop. What my pop pop always did or instilled was he would go into the forest, he would go to the coast, he would go into the ocean and he would take. But he always felt that it was important to give back. So one of my earliest memories is when he would trap snapping turtles and we would have a harvest day. [He’d ask] “Would you grandkids help? And the kids would help. And we would collect the eggs. My job was to help bury the eggs, water them. And then when the turtle, the tiny snapping turtles hatched we’d collect them take them back into the wetlands so there would be that cycle that would continue going. And so that was very impactful for me. And I've always had that philosophy, that if you are going to take from nature, you have to give something back.
00:03:51 Pam Ferris-Olson So when did you decide to devote your studies to marine science?
00:03:56 Vicki Nichols Goldstein Growing up, I loved the ocean. You know, I went swimming and clamming and crabbing and boating.
And so I decided to go to College in Maine on the coast of Maine at College of the Atlantic. And I was attracted to that because it was a human ecology degree. I chose to focus on marine biology because I just always loved the ocean. So I thought, well, let's really try to formalize that. So I spent four years as an undergraduate at College of the Atlantic.
When I graduated, I had been volunteering for their Natural History Museum. So they asked me if I would stay on and work at the museum. Then it turned out that the director had some health issues and I became acting director and then moved into a full-time director position. So I stayed on the island for another four or five years. While I was there, I started up the field studies program for children to try to get kids out into the wetlands, out into the ocean, get them kayaking and learning about nature, and learning about the ocean and all the wonderful things that this ocean provides. It's been a pretty consistent theme since I was a kid.
00:05:16 Pam Ferris-Olson Quite a coup and then getting a job to work for NOAA. How did you come to get a job coordinating the designation documents for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary?
00:05:29 Vicki Nichols Goldstein I kind of hit the glass ceiling living on an island running a Natural History Museum. I was also an adjunct faculty teaching college students how to do education and interpretive techniques. So I decided it was time to move on. I applied to grad school at Yale and got into their master’s program. And at the completion of that, I was in my final couple of months, I set up appointments with NOAA in DC to go down there and interview them on marine protected areas. You know, how do you designate a marine protected area? What is the process? How much citizen engagement is included? And by the time I finished my third day of interviews with them, they offered me a job.
00:06:27 Vicki Nichols Goldstein So I always tell people reach out, you know, get to know people, get to know the area that you want to work in, establish relationships. Because basically that was really key on how I was able to get my first job out of my master's program. And then when I was working at NOAA, there were a variety of things that I had a choice to do. I was very excited about the potential for the designation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. I was able to focus my time on that project, doing the EIS or the draft environmental impact statement and doing all of the responses to comments. When you have a document, you put it out to the public. They respond back and then the agency has to compile all of those responses. So that was really my first big job at NOAA.
00:07:23 Pam Ferris-Olson Well, as a bicoastal girl speaking to a bicoastal girl, I grew up in New York and I moved to California. What is the story behind your move to Colorado? And did you have any concerns about moving inland? I know that when I moved away from California, I went through a long period of withdrawal. I don't think I got over it until I moved to Maine. Now it sounds like we're dancing in each other's footsteps here. I imagine that my longing would have been significantly reduced had I had an idea to create something like Inland Ocean Coalition. What led you to your vision to create such an end?
00:08:04 Vicki Nichols Goldstein Well, after I left NOAA, I went to California. I was there for 10 years running Save our Shores and started up a number of programs. And during that time I married a really cute guy and we had two children. That guy I met in grad school got a job at the University of Colorado. I was crest fallen, heartbroken, just really quite upset to realize that we were moving way in the middle of the country. So we moved. We got the kids all settled in, got the house and I started researching where I would work assuming that there was going to be an organization or an agency somewhere in Colorado that would actually look at the connection between what was happening inland and the ocean. I spent a year researching that and sadly there was no such organization. So I thought, well, be careful what you wish for. All the years that I was working on ocean conservation, either on the West Coast or the East Coast, I've been wondering, how do you get people in Kansas or Colorado or Wyoming to care about the ocean, especially after they've gone to the ocean, gotten really inspired, and then gone back home. So I figured, well, this is my chance to figure out how to do it. So it was really my inspiration of moving here, realizing there wasn't something for me. And then designing it and implementing it.
00:09:53 Pam Ferris-Olson So what was your initial vision for the group?
00:09:57 Vicki Nichols Goldstein Well, my initial vision was, you know, if you can get people in a community to care and they can start doing things locally that would make an impact, like you know for example, plastic pollution. Just having that awareness about how to recycle, you know, carry your own water bottle, things that people know about now. But ten years ago in Colorado, there was really no connection to how the heck is that going to affect the ocean?
00:10:24 Vicki Nichols Goldstein The other thing I wanted to do was to encourage political leaders to vote back in DC pro ocean, pro climate. Many of those congressional leaders didn't think they had any constituents in the inland states that cared about the ocean. So having people in geographic regions inland communicating with their House of representative leaders or their senators… my goal was to get the legislative leaders enthusiastic. By saying, hey I've got constituents. So I'm going to go vote when I have a chance to be on the Hill for this piece of legislation or that one that would promote and protect the ocean. And that was sort of my two concepts when I got started.
00:11:12 Pam Ferris-Olson So how did you go about recruiting people?
00:11:16 Vicki Nichols Goldstein Parties, parties, parties. So I started out with this idea of blue drinks. A social, you know, literally. I would call up a bar and say, “Hey, if I can bring some people in for a social would you give us a discount or would you create a special blue drink and then donate those proceeds? So we started having blue drinks every month and this was obviously before COVID. It kind of fell off after COVID or during COVID. But yes, I'm having blue drinks every month in different geographic areas. And then our volunteers who learned from us, who took our training, they would hold their own blue drinks in their community. It just kind of started happening that people would have a glass of wine or a beer and start talking. And you got a teacher with a university professor or an underwater photographer talking with a dive shop owner. So it was a really great way to mix people up who either somehow liked the ocean or worked in the ocean space or had hobbies around the ocean, to come together and start kind of brainstorming about what we can do as a community to protect and promote the ocean and it work.
00:12:38 Pam Ferris-Olson Apparently it did. So what was the impetus for changing the name from the Colorado Ocean Coalition to Inland Ocean Coalition?
00:12:49 Vicki Nichols Goldstein The impetus was primarily the volunteers that we had in other states. We had people that would start chapters up in Utah, Upstate New York, Arizona. They started contacting me and saying Vicki, I mean, this is ridiculous. “We're in Wyoming. How can we possibly fall under the Colorado Ocean Coalition?” And so in 2017, we said, “OK, well this is clearly no longer just a Colorado organization. It's much bigger.”
00:13:12 Pam Ferris-Olson I can see that, yeah.
00:13:24 Vicki Nichols Goldstein And it really has the mission that goes beyond a state. And so that was the impetus to call it the Inland Ocean Coalition. Think we're up to 36 countries that we have volunteers. The funny thing is, it's not just coastal people. Excuse me. It's not just inland people. There are people, for example, we have a nice group of volunteers that went through the training that are on the island of Roatan. You know, we have people in California along, you know, with Rhode Island. So someday we might even change it to another name. But the idea was you don't have to see the ocean to protect it. You don't have to be living on the coast. There's something for everyone to do to make a positive difference.
00:14:14 Pamela Ferris-Olson Clearly there's a passion there that matches yours. What is your organization doing today to empower people to make a difference?
00:14:22 Vicki Nichols Goldstein While we are continuing with our Inland Ocean Ambassador training, we have enrichments every month. We're encouraging people who are trained to go into their community and do things that are meaningful to them with our assistance and some of the tools that we have been able to provide them. A couple of examples: We have a petroleum sunscreen ban initiative that we are working on in Honduras, in Roatan. I'm working with a group of students who are here in Colorado on deep sea mining for them to understand all of the pros and the cons, and we'll be putting on a webinar on China with other people that are part of noodle watches in different states. They are going out and helping to collect these virgin plastic pellets that are being transported around the United States and internationally. The [noodles are ]feedstock for single use plastics. [We’re] trying to get them out, collecting it to get them out of the environment, and then also collecting data that can be used for policy initiatives to help ban some of these substances that are going into the environment. So there's lots of different activities. There's different cleanups. There's events. It's really remarkable when you look at the number of graduates, including you who is doing your podcast. So it's really neat to see people doing great things and working together as a team as well.
00:16:05 Pam Ferris-Olson Do you know how many members Inland Ocean Coalition has, and do you have any metric on how active they are?
00:16:13 Vicki Nichols Goldstein We don't really have a formal membership situation. We have supporters, so oh gosh you know, we have thousands of supporters. You know, it's funny, when you have volunteers, I think any organization especially an organization that doesn't have a facility like a museum or a nature center; if you don't have a gathering spot, people tend to come and go in cycles. So somebody might be involved for two or three years and then move off into a new arena. And so I think my staff has been keeping track of that. I don't have that at the tip of my fingers, but I do know at any given time we have hundreds of volunteers that are actively working on projects that promote the ocean well.
00:16:58 Pam Ferris-Olson You used to be the Executive Director, but I gather, you've stepped down and moved into Director of Special Projects. So what does that mean for you? What are the special projects that you're working on?
00:17:12 Vicki Nichols Goldstein So one of the special projects that we are working on currently is the project I just mentioned about the Roatan sunscreen ban. We're using that as a pilot project to see if we could get that passed with the help of the dive shops and the businesses in Roatan with the idea that that could be a blueprint for other areas. It doesn't seem like it's necessarily that huge of a project when you think about it. But when you consider that on an annual basis, you know, thousands of pounds of these toxic petrochemical sunscreens are going into the ocean environment, and many of those areas are very close to coral reefs. Oxybenzone. Octinoxate. A lot of the materials that are in these sunscreens are really an herbicide. So when you put these herbicides into the ocean near a coral reef, it really attacks the plant base. A coral is a symbiotic relationship between a plant and an animal. So you already have the stresses of warming oceans, non-point pollution, and then you have this low hanging fruit. If we could get people more aware of this, they're now dumping all of these chemicals that they really don't have to because there are alternatives. So that's one big project that we've been working on. And then the other is just doing a lot of the policy work that we have been really promoting. For example, the 30 by 30 and America, the Beautiful Act. We've been working for years. Really trying to get that highlighted by the administration. So they've adopted that. So now we're working with our partners and our collaborators to try to get more National Marine Sanctuaries implemented in the US and additional Marine Protected Areas set aside as areas of special concern. Where there will be more no take areas around the world's oceans. That takes a lot of coordination and communications with different groups around the world to really kind of get that promoted and getting communities engaged to help facilitate that achievement.
00:19:29 Pam Ferris-Olson As you're pointing out, the ocean, which is 2/3 of our planet, has many challenges facing it. You mentioned plastic pollution. You didn't mention acidification, but it's part of global warming and there's so many others. So how do you balance educating people about these challenges with keeping them hopeful that they can make a difference?
00:19:56 Vicki Nichols Goldstein Well, I deal personally with a lot of college students and elementary students. I speak frequently and I think that having a sense of optimism is very important. There are challenges and we know it, but I think the exciting thing is we know what to do. We just have to create the political support to get the right things done. Six to seven years ago we would not be sitting in Colorado talking about ocean protection. You know, people thought I was really wacky when I started this up back in 2011. Now it's become a, you know like oh, that's great. You know the more people that know about it, the more where we are, and the more that we can get done, having an awareness of all the challenges. It's very, very important, but also having the sense that we know how to fix it. If we just get more engagement and really try to work within our political framework to get legislation, regulations and laws, and then have enforcement, there's a lot that we could do. Also with plastic pollution we're getting closer and closer to creating, excuse me, an international plastic treaty. So where I think that's very optimistic that the whole idea of plastic pollution has now reached an international level, where we're all working together to really try to get on top of it.
00:21:28 Pam Ferris-Olson I hope so. Finally, I'd appreciate it if you'd offer our listeners suggestions on how they can be successful advocates for the ocean.
00:21:37 Vicki Nichols Goldstein Well I think probably the most important thing is do is what you feel good about. If you feel like your contribution is biking more and driving less and using less fossil fuels that is helping the ocean because as you know, as we burn these fossil fuels, the carbon dioxide goes up into the atmosphere, goes back down into the ocean, and it creates the acidity change which is what you were talking about, ocean acidification. Where it's changing the pH and it's making it harder and harder for animals to create their shells and do what they need to do in the ocean. If your thing is education and communication, talk about it with your friends. If it's plastic you know, carry your own water bottle and your bags. There's always something for everyone to do #1. Then two is just to educate yourself so you are aware. And then I love to suggest to people to write their congressional leader, especially if you're living inland and your political leaders really don't hear from their constituents about oceans. It's always really cool to be able to drop a postcard saying, “hey, I live in such and such area. Your district. I love the ocean. I know the importance of keeping healthy water shed that drains to the ocean. Letting those leaders know that they have constituents in areas where they might not expect it. So just be an educated, active, and willing [person]. Just be able to talk about it really goes a long way.
00:23:20 Pam Ferris-Olson Well, I am really pleased that you accepted my invitation to be on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. I hope our discussion helps listeners understand where they live they can make a meaningful contribution to protecting the ocean.
I'd like to remind listeners that I've been speaking with Vicky Nichols Goldstein, an advocate and founder of Inland Ocean Coalition. Vicki has worked diligently to make positive contributions to ocean protection. Vicki Nichols Goldstein is the latest guest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. The series can be viewed on womenmindthewater.com, Museum on Main Street, and YouTube. An audio-only version of this podcast is available on womenunderwater.com, on iTunes and Spotify. Wo(men) Mind the Water is grateful to Jaine Rice for the use of her song Women of Water. All rights for the Wo(men) Mind the Water name and logo belong to Pam Ferris-Olson. This is Pam Ferris-Olson.
