Waterpeople Podcast

The loudest human-made sounds: Nuclear Bomb (224 dB), Rocket launch (204 dB). And clocking in at 260 underwater decibels is the seismic blast, part of a process for exploring for oil and gas in the ocean. Unlike bombs and rockets, however, seismic blasts "fire approximately every 10 seconds around the clock for months at a time."

For eight years, Marine Biologist Annie Ford worked onboard seismic blasting vessels, and felt the relentless explosions and reverberations from her bed at night. She has since peddled away from the fossil fuel industry and  become one of its most creative whistleblowers.

Annie is a mountain biking  world record holder and has spent time surfing and sailing around the world, including multiple expeditions to Antarctica.

Today, Annie is the National Campaign Manager for the Surfrider Foundation Australia, where she is currently working to halt the largest marine seismic blasting project ever proposed. It is slated to take place off the coast of her home island of Lutruwita (Tasmania) – and will emit some of the loudest human made noises ever created – to the detriment of an entire ecosystem.

We caught up with Annie as she completed a 4,000 km bike ride (that about 2,500 miles) to talk about endurance, optimism, changing careers, and her entwined commitment to kindness, climate action and adventure.

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To get a download of the seismic blasting audio file to share at your community event, school, or tense family gathering, please send us an email: [email protected]

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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

Sound Engineer: Ben Alexander

Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

Additional music by Dave & Ben

Join the conversation: @Waterpeoplepodcast 

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Get monthly musings and behind the scenes content from the podcast by subscribing to our newsletter.

You'll get water-centric reading and listening recommendations, questions worth asking, and ways to take action for the wellbeing of Planet Ocean delivered straight to your inbox.

Are you investing in yourself and your curiosities? At 63, Sally Parkin sold her home to spend the better part of 2023 surfing in Australia with her family.

Sally is known for "single handedly"  reviving  the 100 year old tradition of English surfing on wooden bodyboards. She first surfed one at age 5, and decades later, when her family's quiver started to break, she realised there was only one local maker of traditional boards remaining.

She founded The Original Surfboard Company to both produce timber boards and to recover the lost art of English prone surfing. 

Joined by surf historian and shaper extraordinaire Tom Wegener, we met up with Sally on her tour of Australia, and she talked us through the logistics of reviving a nearly-lost art, researching the great novelist Agatha Christie's surfing adventures, and the joys of adaptive bottom contours. 

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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

Sound Engineer: Ben Alexander

Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

Additional music by Dave & Ben

Join the conversation: @Waterpeoplepodcast 

...

Get monthly musings and behind the scenes content from the podcast by subscribing to our newsletter.

You'll get water-centric reading and listening recommendations, questions worth asking, and ways to take action for the wellbeing of Planet Ocean delivered straight to your inbox.

Injuries are mostly out of our control. But recovery offers many choices. Will we allow the scar tissue to stiffen or soften us?

Stu Nettle is the editor of Swellnet, one of Australia's leading independent surf media and forecasting sites, where he has written about board design, surf industry happenings, surf science, and coastal geology since 2008. 

Stu is a lifelong surfer but late-comer to surf media. He “had many unrelated life chapters, business failures, social experiments, and surf adventures before he ever got a word published.” 

We first encountered Stu’s work amongst the lively pages of Kurangabaa, an academic – leaning surf journal he helped to found and run in the early 2000s. It was a trove of thoughtful essays, along with poetry, fiction and interviews – and part of a larger, exciting, indepedent DIY surf culture of that time. 

We wanted to know: what kind of life has shaped the voice and perspective of one of Australia's most prolific surf journalists?  

Stu talks us through the Sunset Beach hold down that changed him, the value of knowing our history,  gender politics at Swellnet and the the future(s) of surf media.

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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

Sound Engineer: Ben Alexander

Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

Additional music by Dave & Ben

Join the conversation: @Waterpeoplepodcast 

Get monthly musings and behind the scenes content from the podcast by subscribing to our newsletter.

You'll get water-centric reading and listening recommendations, questions worth asking, and ways to take action for the wellbeing of Planet Ocean delivered straight to your inbox.

Raised on a diet of deep ecology and the DIY spirit of her single mom, Pacha Light earned her first surfboard busking as a tween. She then forged her way into professional surfing as a teenager on Australia’s Gold Coast: signing a big endemic sponsor,  training every day, and making a name for herself as a competitor and surf model. 

Until she couldn’t do it any longer. She felt she was not fully in alignment with her values.

Still, along the way, Pacha found her storytelling voice, bringing depth and meaning to her surf travel by  weaving in local social and environmental projects wherever she went. Her three part Women of the Sea  series dove into the rich aquatic cultures adjacent to surfing in Japan and South Korea. 

Now in her early 20s, Pacha talks us through what led her to say “thanks, but no thanks” to her long-time surfing sponsor. She shares about  the search for belonging after her father’s passing, vying for a spot in the Olympics, and “understanding that we are called to be a part of the Earth protecting itself.”

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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

Sound Engineer: Ben Alexander

Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

Additional music by Dave & Ben

Join the conversation: @Waterpeoplepodcast 
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Get monthly musings and behind the scenes content from the podcast by subscribing to our newsletter.

You'll get water-centric reading and listening recommendations, questions worth asking, and ways to take action for the wellbeing of Planet Ocean delivered straight to your inbox.

Have you ever felt like something was wrong, but you weren't quite sure how to name it?

Tyler Wilde is a teacher and bodysurfer from southern California. In 2017, Tyler won the prestigious International Surf Festival bodysurfing contest and was later voted into the Gillis Beach Bodysurfing Association as one of their youngest members.

As a physical education teacher, his goal is to help his students "feel more embodied."

Tyler went through a lengthy bout with depression and anxiety, and like many of us, he struggled to pinpoint the underlying causes. Getting back to the ocean helped - he says that "bodysurfing saved his life."

But it was supporting one of his  students through their own reckoning with embodiment, and their gender transition, that helped Tyler to understand that he, too, was a trans person. He learned a new language that helped to unlock some of what he was feeling and helped him to finally envisage a healthy future for himself, as his true self.

Tyler's story is documented in the film Gender Outlaw (watch it here), which chronicles the role bodysurfing played in his gender transition.

He talked us through bodysurfing binaries, finding his community in an unexpected place, the joy of love, and bringing kindness and compassion to complex conversations.

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Tyler's recommended resources for gender inclusionary insights, support and education:

@translifeline is a peer support and crisis hotline for the trans community

@trevorproject is a suicide prevention hotline for the LGBTQ+ community

@pinkmantaray Schuyler is a wonderful resource for people who are trying to learn more about trans people and specifically trans athletes

@alokvmenon - love their educational work

@athleteally

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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

Sound Engineer: Ben Alexander

Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

Additional music by Dave & Ben

Join the conversation: @Waterpeoplepodcast 

Get monthly musings and behind the scenes content from the podcast by subscribing to our newsletter.

You'll get water-centric reading and listening recommendations, questions worth asking, and ways to take action for the wellbeing of Planet Ocean delivered straight to your inbox.