Giving a Voice to North Atlantic Right Whales with Bonnie Monteleone, Ep. 75

Forces for Nature

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Bonnie Monteleone is the Founder & Director of Science, Research, and Academic Partnerships of the Plastic Ocean Project (POP) whose mission is finding science-based solutions to the global plastic pollution crisis.

In 2019, she was working on a documentary about the North Atlantic Ocean. However, its plot quickly went from one about a complex, impacted ecosystem into a "who done it," following the death of a newborn critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale that washed ashore. Was it manmade noise that caused the mother to lose her newborn, a ship strike, chemical or plastic pollution, was it discarded fishing gear, or overfishing?

Bonnie discusses her work with plastics pollution and how it relates to this new documentary project she is undertaking. The threats the ocean and its creatures are facing are vast, but Bonnie dives deep into viable solutions that everyone can support to preserve the sounds of the sea and the marine life in it.

This film, which asks what the oceans would say if they could talk, promises to inspire hope, not doom, but only if we listen.

​​Bonnie's work has led her around the world collecting plastic marine samples including four of the five main ocean gyres and the Caribbean. She also works in the Environmental Studies Department at UNC Wilmington as an Adjunct Instructor teaching a Plastic Marine Debris Field Studies course and manages a lab working with student Directed Independent Studies (DIS) research.

Highlights

• What happened to this baby Right Whale and what does that mean for the species as a whole?
• How can whales help mitigate climate change?
• If the oceans could talk, what would we learn?

What YOU Can Do
Bonnie talks a lot about solutions her organization is implementing as well as what different industries can do. But, here are some ideas on what YOU can do:

• Avoid single-use plastic.
• Support the documentary either monetarily, by spreading the word, or by seeing it when it comes to a festival near you.
• Filmmakers (and wanna-be filmmakers) contribute your ocean footage to the film so they have less of a need to go out and film (and use fossil fuels to do so).
• Spread the word about the danger these whales are in so people are more likely to support ideas and legislation that protect them.

Resources

• Information about the documentary, If the Ocean Could Talk.
• Plastic Ocean Project (POP) Facebook
• POP

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