Marine conservationist Heather Koldewey

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Professor Heather Koldewey wants to protect our oceans from over-fishing and plastic pollution. An academic who is not content to sit back and let the science speak for itself, she wants to turn science into action and has found conservation allies in some unexpected places. Working with a carpet manufacturer, she created Net-Works, a business that turns old fishing nets into high-end carpet tiles and she has collaborated with Selfridges department store to give marine conservation a make-over. A research career that began studying the genetics of brown trout in Welsh rivers took her to the Philippines to save seahorses and a job running the aquarium at London Zoo. In 2018, she was made a National Geographic Fellow. Heather tells Jim Al-Khalili why, despite all the challenges to marine life, she remains an ‘ocean optimist’ and how she learned to drop her ‘scientific seriousness’.

Transcript

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0:28.3	Newscast, listen on BBC sounds.
0:35.0	This is Discovery from the BBC. I'm Jim El Kulele and in today's program I'm in conversation with a leading scientist
0:40.0	about their life and research.
0:42.0	My guest on the Life Scientific today is determined to protect our oceans,
0:47.0	from overfishing and from plastic pollution.
0:50.0	The challenge, she says, is not just saving our seas, it's saving our seas and ensuring that the people who rely on them can still earn a living.
0:59.0	Heather Coldaway has spent much of her career saving sea horsesorses and has been involved in multiple marine conservation
1:05.1	projects around the world. She also ran the aquarium at London Zoo for many years.
1:10.4	She is an academic who's not content to sit back and just let the science speak for itself.
1:15.6	She wants to turn the science into action and has found allies in the unlikeliest of places,
1:21.6	working with a carpet manufacturer to turn old fishing nets
1:24.9	into carpet tiles, and with Selfridge's department store to give marine conservation
1:30.0	and makeover.
1:31.4	In 2018, she was made a National Geographic fellow. and
1:35.0	in 2018 she was made a National Geographic fellow and despite the many problems facing our marine life,
1:38.0	she describes herself as an ocean optimist.
	...

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