There’s this conversation from one of our early Sea Change episodes, and it's about our relationship with the ocean--with water. How being in or near water changes us for the better. The marine biologist Wallace J Nichols has said: “It is true that oceans give us life, but our planet’s wild places also make life worth living and help heal us when we are broken.” He said it's not going to be fear and guilt that motivates us to protect the ocean; it happens when people are connected to the value of the ocean. Because when we value something, we want to protect it.
Wallace J Nichols died last year. He was a passionate ocean lover and sea turtle advocate. He was dedicated to science and helped start many ocean conservation projects. So, in honor of J and all his amazing work to protect this blue planet, we wanted to bring you again this inspiring conversation. To leave you with J's signature email sign-off: wishing you water.
For more about Blue Mind, and Wallace J. Nichol's work, click here.
Hosted by Carlyle Calhoun and Halle Parker. Our managing producer is Carlyle Calhoun. Our sound designer is Emily Jankowski and our theme music is by Jon Batiste. Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and The Water Collaborative. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
TRANSCRIPT
*Note: Transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors (including name spellings). Please be aware that the official record for our episodes is the audio version.
Ambient: Ocean waves
Carlyle: Did you notice anything change when you heard that sound? Even just hearing the sound of the waves, the sound of the ocean, has the power to create a sense of calm.
Halle: Can we play that again?
Ambient: ocean waves
Halle: Ah, so relaxing.
Carlyle: Why do we want to be by water and why does it make us feel so good?
Halle: Understanding how the power of water makes us healthier and happier is actually a growing field of research.
Carlyle: We’re finding that being around water actually lowers stress and anxiety. It boosts our creativity. Even just staring at the ocean actually changes our brainwave's frequency. Being around water changes us.
Wallace J Nichols: The ocean gives us peace, a sense of freedom, helps us calm ourselves in an anxious world, connects us to the people we love, boosts romance. And cover 71% of the planet
Carlyle: Wallace j Nichols is a marine biologist who wrote the book all about the science behind the transformative power of water. He coined the term Blue Mind.
Halle: Ooh, a Blue Mind. What's that?
Carlyle: Well, blue Mind is this theory backed up by a whole lot of science about how we respond to water, how it puts us in this meditative state. I think Dr. Nichols, who goes by Jay, explains it best.
Wallace J Nichols: When we get near, in, on, or underwater, it moves us into this blue mind state, which turns out is a place that's very good for creativity and connection and collaboration.Being calm, being curious, and even being courageous, it's a place of contentment. We need that.
Halle: Mmm. I feel calmer just hearing him talk about it. So you spoke with him about how we can use this so called blue mindset to help us heal ourselves?
Carlyle: Yep, that's right. And also about how it can help heal the planet.
Halle: Let’s get into it.
Carlyle: Today, we're joined by Wallace J. Nichols. He's a marine biologist and author of the book Blue Mind, the surprising science that shows how being near, in, on, or underwater can make you happier, healthier, more connected, and better at what you do. So J, you've spent your life around water. Was this love of water something you've always had?
J: I, you know, I can't remember a time that I didn't enjoy being in water, and I, as a kid, like a lot of kids... You couldn't get me out of the pool or out of the ocean or out of the lake. And, um, that love of water kind of grew into a career as a marine biologist.
Carlyle: How do you describe that feeling you knew you loved as a kid?
J: The best way to understand blue mind, that feeling, is to start with red mind, which is our on land, anxious, maybe stressed, distracted, busy lives. And, and as a kid, I'm going to say my life wasn't that busy, but I stuttered and I was an introvert. And so any, anybody asking me a question was a little bit stressful because I knew my answer would be difficult for them to understand, which would create a more stress and more stuttering and this kind of not great negative feedback loop. And, um, when I was underwater, people didn't ask questions, there were no, no words spoken. There were just thoughts and you could be underwater with somebody and do sign language or do backflips and swim around and that just felt better, you know, the, it took away a piece of my, my anxiety. And so I pursued it and tried to align my life with that feeling.
And now I know everybody's walking around dealing with their version of red mind and trying to avoid what I refer to as gray mind, which is burnout, which is caused by too much red mind. All of us are, I mean, by all of us, I mean, eight, 8 billion of us have some of that or a lot of that. So my goal is to take this idea of blue mind and, you know, and share it.
Carlyle: So recognizing this feeling and that love of water has led you into your career, but because you're a scientist, it also led you on a quest to understand the science behind it. And then you decided to write a book about it called Blue Mind, which is a term you coined. Why'd you write this book?
J: So I've studied for many, many years to be as useful in the conservation world as possible. I got a degree in economics and policy and. Uh, doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology and set out to be a problem solver to try to fix some of the things that are broken on our water ocean planet and work with sea turtles and fisheries and plastic pollution, climate change. And I realized that the story we're telling about why we need to protect biodiversity and wild places was just not working.
And part of the reason was. It was based in fear and guilt and a lot of factoids, which is effective, but in the short run just kind of moves people a little bit, but we left out the emotional wellness benefits such as peace, freedom, calmness, creativity, romance. We just completely left it out of our story, um, of our textbooks, of our documentaries, of our reports.
But of our conferences because it was considered soft. And I thought, well, wouldn't it be good if we added it in? So I went looking for a book about our brain on water and I couldn't find one and tried to get some smart people I knew to write it so that I could read it. Finally pitched it to a guy named Dr. Oliver Sacks. And when I pitched the idea to him, he said, that's a fine idea. You do it in his British accent. And my, my thought internally was, oh, and it was like, not a suggestion. It was a command. And then I ended up getting, getting a lot deeper into it than, than I had initially set out to.
Carlyle: I'm so glad you did write the book. You write about, you know, all of these emotional, psychological, social, spiritual, all of these benefits we get from being around, you know, and you make the point it's, it's healthy rivers and lakes and oceans, especially, um, these benefits. Can you talk about specifically what some of those are?
J: What happens when we begin to move towards water, even before we get there, we start to think about it.So you start to imagine going to the water and, and you start to shift into Blue Mind. Of course, when we see the water, uh, it, it simplifies our lives. Visually. Your, your brain gets a little break from all the visual input. Uh, water is, is interesting, but not overpowering cognitively. When we hear the water, the sound of the water, it precludes a lot of, uh, noise that we need to process, like voices, language.
Once you slip into the water, you get the somatic benefits, you're, you're not negotiating gravity. So I'm sitting here right now, uh, there's a lot of things I can see if I look around, uh, I'm listening to your voice, I'm kind of... Tracking my voice and processing all that, and my body is coordinating 200 muscles so that I don't fall over.
That's all going on right now, and my brain is processing that. But when we get near, in, on, or underwater, we get some of that bandwidth back. And we don't just go to sleep on it. It moves us into this blue mind state, which turns out is, is a place that's very good for creativity. And connection and collaboration, um, being, being calm, being curious and even being courageous.
It's a place of contentment. We need that, especially right now. We need creative collaboration from a place of calm contentment, uh, more than ever, maybe in human history. We've got some big hairy problems to solve. We're not going to solve them through fear and guilt. Lakes, rivers, oceans, streams, creeks, tubs, waterfalls, showers, pools, solid liquid and gas form, so fog and clouds and rain, ice and snow, all of the water that surrounds us, you know, on this water planet.And if we tell a better water story, teach it well to everyone, to 8 billion people, make it common knowledge, it will transform public health. and environmental health. I'm convinced of that from what I've seen so far. And so the science is clear. It's good for us. Healthy, yeah, healthy water is good for us. Big, big newsflash, but not just for hydration and hygiene and not just for our physical bodies. It's for. emotional, social health. Uh, so we've got work to do there. And that's, yeah, that's, that's what we're up to.
Carlyle: I want to ask you about something you've talked a lot about. And that is that even though we know how important water is and that all life is dependent on it, We've still undervalued water, and you've said, when we undervalue something, bad stuff happens. So, can you talk about both why you think we've undervalued water, except maybe it's economic value, and what that has led to?
J: When we undervalue each other, history has shown that bad things happen. People mistreat each other and bad things happen. Same thing is true for nature. When we get the value equation right for each other and for nature, good things can happen.And they do. We see that over and over again. Collaboration and connection and understanding, beauty, art, scientific breakthroughs. And with water, when we fix the value equation, when we bring in the third E, the emotional benefits and add it to the ecological and economic benefits, it's powerful. It makes everything work better. Um, it changes the value equation. So for example, if you live in a town and it's near a lake and that lake is being used The town's first responders, the medics, the nurses, the teachers, um, the journalists, when they're stressed so that they can come back and do their service careers, they can do that better.
If that lake is used by veterans. To heal themselves of their post traumatic stress and perhaps depression and anxiety that story along with the ecological benefits and the economic benefits of the lake near your town will build a stronger movement to protect and restore that lake. And we talk about that all of a sudden, wow, that lake is a superhero for that town and everybody will defend it and defend it with their lives.
Carlyle: The idea that water can help us heal and kind of through that we can help heal, you know, the planet.
J: Yeah. I would say those things and I could see the eyeballs rolling back, you know, in people's heads. They're like, Oh, come on. Are you from California? What are you talking about? Well, it turns out there is a big pile of science and clinical research that backs up this idea. I can remember when the connection between exercise and physical emotional health was not well made. And the research started coming out and people were like, Oh, wow, if you exercise your body and your mind get healthier now, now that's not eyeball roll stuff anymore. Now it's you don't graduate from medical school unless you understand that exercise and eating well are good for your body and your mind. And that's good for society. Now we're adding a kind of a component to that, which is nature, uh, in particular water, which is the basis of all life. And that's so important.
Carlyle: And it's really never been a more important time for that paradigm shift. And you've mentioned you're, you're not only a marine biologist, but you're also a conservationist and you've spent a lot of, a lot of time working on ocean and water conservation. Can you talk about why we haven't been totally successful in our efforts yet and how if we view conservation with a blue mindset, what does that change?
J: I've been fortunate to be involved in a whole bunch of conservation projects that have been successful and. Also involved with some that, you know, sort of are along the roadside, you know, and not, not working. And I think the thing that distinguishes them isn't funding, isn't celebrity spokespeople. It's way more fundamental and it's, it's dignity. It's community involvement. I call it full immersion conservation, and we're not taught to do it that way. We're taught to sort of create an academic distance and not be unbiased. And to not bias the subject, you know, our fellow humans to pretend that we don't love turtles. I love turtles. And you're not supposed to say that into a microphone on a serious podcast. So
Carlyle: I love turtles too.
J: Good. Oh, good. That's why we're talking. And it turns out, neuropsychologists will tell us that you cannot make a decision without emotion. Like it's just physiologically not possible. You can give people a load of facts and they can continue to acquire them and you're just never going to have all the information. So neuroconservation, as I refer to it, means that we use neuropsychology to inform our conservation approach. So we want to be informed by human behavior, by the way, our, our, our nervous systems work and respond to information, to ideas, to emotions, to nature, and use that to the benefit of, of life on earth. A sustainable regenerative economy rests on a foundation of emotional and social well being.
Carlyle: Yeah. And this is so interesting because I feel like Blue Mind and what you're saying is coming at conservation from a whole... different angle where I think a lot of us are just kind of getting hit with a lot of data and science that is scary about climate change and rising sea levels and all the plastic pollution. And, you know, you can go on what you're saying is that. That fear and that shame of kind of what we've done as, as humans is not going to motivate us to change or motivate, you know, the conservation success stories, what you're seeing is successful is connecting to that, that feeling, that blue mind feeling, and also that, that love. All the squishy, squishy stuff is actually what, where we could see real conservation success.
J: You know, and, and there's the idea that we, we call it the squishy stuff. If you open up a neuropsychology journal and dive in to some, anything that looks interesting, you'll immediately realize that it's, it's math and it's technology.
And it's neurochemistry and neurophysiology. My PhD is in evolutionary biology and neuropsychology is, is, you know, quote unquote, harder science by far. So the notion that somehow this is touchy feely, squishy, okay, crack that journal and get back to me and then we'll just get on with the work. So part of it is that ecologists are generally not educated in neuropsychology.
They are conservation organizations. We'll all agree that we're in the behavior change business, human behavior change business. We're not trying to change the behavior of turtles or whales or kelp. That's not happening. You meet people where they live, the things they care about. Unfortunately, not that many people really care about biodiversity enough to change their lives.
Carlyle: Yeah. And it's interesting what you said about biodiversity because I feel like maybe people don't think in those terms necessarily, like I love biodiversity, but I think when people see the lack of it or all of a sudden they're not seeing the same kind of fish or as many fish where, where they go fishing or the lightning bugs aren't there anymore, or the birds aren't chirping as loudly. People do miss it. And you talk about that with blue mind, that there's kind of levels of blue mind, right? Like you get benefits from being in the bathtub or taking a shower, but also the benefits from being in a biodiverse blue space is kind of other level.
J: Yeah. When you're experiencing blue mind with your plant and animal friends, it's better if you're surfing or swimming and. A dolphin or an otter or a bird goes by, if you're just watching the river and you see a salmon or out on a lake and you see a balloon or hear one, I mean, it's just all of that adds depth to use a nautical term, it adds fetch. So you, you're going to stay in that blue mine place longer when there's biodiversity. We did a little experiment in an aquarium where the tank was being emptied. cleaned and then filled and repopulated and turns out an empty tank with water will calm people. They get bored pretty fast. Then you add in one species of fish and they stay a little longer and their heart rate drops a little more and they report personal wellness goes up.
You add another species, another species, and you keep seeing the emotional physiological benefits increase. So there's a great argument for biodiversity without ever using the word biodiversity. I'm an evolutionary biologist, but I, in some groups, if I say the word evolution, I'd lose people. So I don’t. Sometimes I'll quote the 23rd Psalm, which is the Blue Mine Psalm, written 3000 years ago by a guy named King David. He knew that water soothes our soul. Every ancient text, every spiritual tradition. Says that and we dropped the ball now. We're picking it up. Not a new idea. This blue mine stuff It's one of the oldest ideas actually.
Carlyle: I love thinking about it like that. Tell me a success story about how, instead of moving with guilt and fear to inspire conservation, how you've seen or used a blue mindset to have a different outcome.
J: Yeah, I got involved with a sea turtle called the black sea turtle a number of years ago in Northwestern Mexico, and they were on the brink of extinction.An agency said, too late, it's not worth the effort. The turtles that remained were being eaten, sold in the black market for lots of money to powerful people. And there's a cultural component, poaching as they say, black market. But I decided I'd do my PhD on the black sea turtle ecology and conservation.
And what I found was the fishermen who were once or currently turtle hunters, adored these turtles. I mean, they had a reverence for these turtles. They also like to eat them. And so we found the common theme, which was nobody really wants them to go extinct because they revere them and like to eat them. And I, as a biologist, just thought they were cool animals and I don't like extinction and I do like biodiversity. So we found the common ground, had meetings, we were told you're not supposed to involve lowly fishermen in the conversation. That's not cool. We ignored those bits of advice and had meetings with turtle hunters and said, you know, I think we agree extinction of the black turtles, not great. What would you do if you were in charge of saving them? First of all, they said, nobody's ever asked us what we think. Thank you. So the dignity piece comes in. The tacos were good. They had beer, helped each other in other ways outside of the turtle realm, just in life. It was interesting and fun. We started studying the turtles together and coming up with communications plans together, making videos. Um, then the media started to pay attention and say, Oh, this is interesting. Turtle hunters saving turtles, let's put them on TV and just started to snowball. The black sea turtle has been downlisted, which is a good thing, meaning they're recovering. And now there's turtle watching, whereas before there weren't enough turtles to do turtle watching.
And there's this feedback loop and, and it's a love fest, I have to say, you go to these turtle meetings and it's like. Part scientific conference, part family reunion. It's great. It's really great.
Carlyle: You are finding common ground with a diverse set of people, which was not really the way to conduct science then. It does seem like that's gaining traction.
J: Absolutely. Thankfully, it is quickly gaining traction and it is becoming the norm, um, thankfully. And then going back and sharing everything you learn rather than just publishing it. In our journals that are read by small groups of people.
So as we understand that we are aquatic mammals, seeing, identifying, distinguishing, and moving towards water is something that mammals do.We are physiologically connected to water. We need it to live and we respond accordingly. And so when you touch the water, when you see the water, when you feel the water, when you think about the water or it's, it's scarcity, it moves us. And that's good to know, you know, as far as changing behavior to, you know, pro nature, pro water activities.
Carlyle: Well, Jay, this has been such a great conversation. And now I want to go get near some water. Thank you so much for talking with us today.
J: My pleasure.
