Episode 1 — Chris Goldblatt: The Fish Reef Project

Chip:  This is Chip Carter. Welcome to the Non-Profiteers Podcast. Chris Goldblatt is the CEO and founder of the Fish Reef Project, which converts empty seafloors into thriving new biogenic marine communities (ecosystems) to provide a home breeding ground and feeding grounds for all kinds of new marine sea life.

Chris is a fascinating leader. He’s faced down some horrendous obstacles in the course of his career which have not dimmed his spirit or Fish Reef’s progress. His perspective on nonprofit work and leadership is both unique and amazing. So now I give you a deep dive with Chris Goldblatt and the Fish Reef Project.

——————————————–

Chip: Chris Goldblatt, welcome.

Chris: Hey, Chip.

Chip: Thank you for joining me.

Let’s start by talking about Fish Reef. How did you get started with it?

Chris: Yeah, that’s a question I get asked a lot and I guess I just keep shifting the line of commencement. So, I have to go all the way back my mother bought me a scuba Course at Catalina Island at a place called CIMI, which is the only place that will take people under 14 to get certified.

So, I got certified for scuba at 12 years old. I think it was in 1986. And then the first thing I started doing was going out with my hoodlum buddies in Santa Monica Bay, which is 30 miles of mud, but you haven’t been able to commercial fish in there for 100 years. Any structure in there, after hundreds of dives over mud, you’d find any structure, usually man-made. People put different things down there, and you’d see this big halo of life, the black, you’d first see the indicator fish lead you to it. You’re following this ominous dark mass and then this kelp and the lobsters and the halibut sitting around it.

So it burned into my mind at a very young age the value of critical habitat in an otherwise empty sea floor.

Chip:  Interesting. Tell us about the mission and vision of fishreef.org.

Chris:  The mission is to help ocean life thrive and doing that through placing what we call biogenic reefs throughout the world. Now a biogenic reef is different than an artificial reef. It conjures up things like sunken ships or in the past, there were maybe even bad materials used like rubber tires and things like that. But those tend to be fishing and traction devices where they’re attracting the fish and the divers to a spot. But a biogenic reef is what we do, which is where you’re trying to emulate through biomimicry the form and function of nature.

So you want to make your reef that looks and acts and feels and lives like a natural reef insofar as humans can reproduce that.  When you put down sea caves in a couple of years, or even one year, you should be able to swim over it and your brain goes, yeah, that looks like a natural structure and it should be of size and scope to where it exports life out of it over time versus importing life or attracting it to it.

And coral ecosystems. With a very strong food security component mixed in there to provide food and jobs for developing nations at the same time,

Chip:  Have other people worked on this?  It seems like the sea cave concept is pretty new.

Chris: I invented it.  We’ve just gotten our U. S. patent approved. The name is trademarked and the photos are copywritten in this and several other different countries around the world. So that is a certain novelty.

There have been other designed reef units that have been around for 50 years. We experimented early on with a couple of those, and some good ones are out there. The Japanese pioneered it in the early 70s. When the 200-mile sovereign limits went around, where every country got 200 miles for its economic exclusive zone, Japan was pushed back to its shores for its fishing operations and had to increase its food supply in the ocean around and it turned to making a bunch of different design reef units and some are more successful than others.

But they were species-specific. He had one for abalone, one for lobster, one for kelp, and one for sea urchin, and they were cumbersome and took a long time, days to weeks to make one. We wanted something that was one size fits all that worked for every application and was mass-producible, yet was superior in quality, in terms of its durability, and the way it functioned and worked.

And that was the genesis of the sea cave. The proof is in the pudding. If you look at the pictures of all the kelp and the fish and the lobsters and the abalone and the coral, I’m very proud to say that we scored a pretty perfect bullseye on that one.

Chip: I’ve seen the pictures and it’s fascinating.  Do you have to seed the sea cave with kelp or with other biological forms to get it started?

Chris: So we have experimented with transplanting kelp from high density onto the sea caves, and it does take work. But if you put the sea caves within about 3 miles of a natural extent, kelp bed, it will provide enough ambient seed and you just let mother nature do its job. In Mexico where we have almost 600 on the seafloor.

Now, those seeded and grew giant kelp to the surface in just 7 months with no transplanting occurring. So I would say no, you don’t need it. But you can do it in extreme circumstances if you feel that it’s needed. Coral’s a little bit different; it’s very slow-growing. We have a nice video of our Papua New Guinea reef, which has been there for seven years, and there are some very nice exaggerated cauliflower corals and stag home corals.

And it’s a really good way to keep the locals involved and employed, too. It’s a really good way to give the locals ownership in places like Papua New Guinea to have a coral out-planting program.

Chip: So I don’t want to get into the technical weeds here, but my engineering brain is not going to let me pass by a couple of technical questions. I know you described using concrete for the sea caves. And I know just from home ownership and domestic projects that concrete is very alkaline, right?  So how do you deal with that?

Chris: It’s a good question, Chip. So the pH of concrete standard is about 10. The pH of the ocean is about 7. 3. So if you throw regular concrete or road rip-rap in the ocean, it’s too alkaline for sensitive things like corals and macroalgae typically to settle on it.

So you overcome that with certain additives. Microfiber is one and then there are certain densifiers that we put in a proprietary ratio that neutralizes the concrete (brings it down to about 7. 3).  It also prevents any leaching of anything into the ecosystem. It closes all the porosity of the concrete. It increases the tensile strength. And then that’s what gives it the 500-year sub-sea design life as well.

Chip: Wow. What differentiates the Fish Reef project — not just in terms of the sea cave technology, which you’ve invented and that’s new — but also in terms of your general approach to nonprofit leadership.

Chris: We have our pockets of folks around the world, but, once people join the fish reef project, they tend to stay with the same group of women and men that have been together for about 14 years. That’s the first thing is the dedication to a cause that’s larger than yourself. And we operate through attraction, not promotion. This is the first podcast I’ve done. We don’t do a lot of social media. We prefer just to do the hard work and let it speak for itself.

We don’t go around saying, look at how wonderful this is. We don’t burn up a lot of money in redundant salaries. We don’t do fancy advertising. We don’t try to tell people what to do or what not to do. We don’t try to dictate people’s lives and past policies and brainwashing campaigns.

We just do the hard work. And I would say what differentiates us is this: to do a durable project in the ocean that is measurable over the long term requires such an intense amount of expertise and insanely hard work because the ocean’s a cruel mistress, and it will basically wreck anything that you put in it unless it’s well designed.

Chip: Oh, sure.

Chris:  Yeah. And no disrespect to fellow NGOs, but a lot of them just don’t have the backbone to see something like this all the way through. You have to be an absolute true believer in the outcome of what you’re doing. I would say that’s the fundamental difference.

Additionally, we’re not opposed to fishing. We defend the right to do that and that’s why most of our reefs remain open for fishing.

If a government we work with puts the sea caves in a marine protected area, that’s what they choose to do. And that has happened and that’s fine. But we do protect young people’s rights and native people’s rights to access the ocean for their own food supply and to maintain their culture.

Chip:  “Just do the hard work” without advertising and marketing might make you all alone. I love the fact that you’re letting the work speak for itself. And I also love that you don’t have a dogma you’re beating people over the head with.  In the modern world with all the opposition and the polarization, it doesn’t work.  We know it doesn’t work. It just makes things worse.

Chris: We take the Zen approach; life is transient and short, especially if you’re human. And the reality is that anything we do or don’t do really isn’t that important. Okay.  But it’s very important in the meantime to tend to the garden, right?  To account for our existence, account for our use of the ocean and that resource.

Chip: It’s primacy of experience and modeling good behavior over words and marketing. By the way, I teach mindfulness class every week and we talk a lot about that.

Chris: Oh, fantastic.

Chip:  What occurred to me was that the real way to convert people and to get them aligned with your work is just to set a great example. And like you put it, do the good work. As an example, there’s a lot of research that shows that only telling your kids what to do doesn’t work.  If you model good behavior, if you pay attention to them, if you give them opportunities, right?   It sounds like some of that philosophy is embedded in your team a bit.

Chris: Yeah. And I had a very unique mother who encouraged me to go take risks at a very young age. And that’s why the reef in Baja is named after her.

Chip: Oh, wow.

Chris: Yeah, we actually put her ashes along with my dad’s ashes into a sea cave and put a plaque on it.

Chip: Nice.

Chris:  She just let me go out and explore the ocean from a young age, and expose myself to a great deal of danger. I’ve sunk at sea twice, one time extremely violently. I’ve had my neck ripped open by anchor chains.

Chip:  Oh, good lord.

Chris: I’ve had all kinds of stuff happen; propeller sliced my arm open and stuff like that, that you normally wouldn’t expose a young person to.  But all of that has led to the ability and confidence to do something like this.

Chip: What do you think are the impediments to other nonprofits taking risks like you’re taking and being all in?

Chris: In a word “vanity”.  That’s because, unfortunately, the donation model requires vanity. It requires donors looking good for having made the donation and then the nonprofits need to appear to move the dial with that donation.  So social capital that can be harvested out of it.

And some nonprofits do agree to occupy a certain extreme part of the nonprofit spectrum [where action speaks louder than words] and their donors are perfectly fine with that. I’ll take action over inaction any day. Some of them are totally bananas, but at least there’s some action there, right?  At least there’s some actual risk there. Even if it’s misguided, I’m like, all right, at least they’re doing something.

Chip: I just wrote an article about mistakes that nonprofits make. A lot of nonprofits succumb to exactly what you’re describing. And there was even a name put on it several years ago, more than a decade ago, “the starvation cycle”.  Where in order to appear as if costs are low and to appear as if they’re having an impact and not just glorified employment agencies, they under-report expenses and over-report outcomes. They spend a lot of time doing that instead of getting deeply embedded in the program work.

Chris: Exactly, and the payoff is — speaking from my situation only like a decade ago – I’m not a fan of tattoos, but I got a tattoo of a reef on my arm.  A reminder that if I didn’t succeed, I’d live the rest of my life with a picture of something on my arm that I didn’t succeed at.

So I needed a reminder to go all the way through. When you are [struggling for funding] — and I’m quite comfortable and proud of that — I’ve had to let go of more comfortable living.

For a while I went without a vehicle, things like that. I come from a business background and a nonprofit is first and foremost, a corporation that’s a public benefit corporation. Set up in the eyes of the law with the secretary, a treasurer, and a president. And then it also has its C class officers who you have to list with the state, the CEO, COO, CFO, etc.; basically officers that are responsible for it. And that tells me that the government’s expecting you to run this like a business with the only exception being that you ask for money instead of selling a product. So that’s the only exception. So some people see nonprofits as a place for their flightiness, to subsist, or they want to be involved in something [with little] accountability. So one reason for our success is that I’ve never allowed that to enter into our world. I’ve always just run it like I run my businesses, which is really good accounting,

We certainly haven’t had to [flaunt] our starvation. In fact, quite the opposite. We don’t wear that on our sleeves. There’s been a great deep struggle for us personally, just to exist where we’re doing this. I don’t wear that on my sleeve. And sometimes people look at what we’ve done and they say, you must have 10 or 20 million in the bank to do that, because that’s what it would take larger nonprofits to pull it off for the government.

And I say, no, just every single dollar has gone into it. And so sometimes they think that we’re really well-healed because we don’t complain. Okay, and that’s fine. But soon enough the resource and the resources are finding their way to us quite rapidly. So we’re about to go through a very large growth cycle and then reality and perception will somehow meet up in the middle.

Chip: So throughout the last 12 or 13 years, what have been the biggest challenges and the biggest transitions for you — running Fish Reef Project?

Chris: First of all, I love challenges. It’s just like the scene in Star Wars where you can strike us down, but it only makes us stronger.  Was that with Obi Wan Kenobi?  It’s very true.

And so you had your organic challenges of just not knowing what you’re doing in the beginning.  How do you make a reef?  Where do you put it?  How do you permit it?  What do you tell the public?  What’s our logo?  What’s our slogan? What’s our mission?  How do we manage this financially?

There’s zero knowledge base. So that’s just the learning curve, right? And some things have a much smaller learning curve than others. This had a massive learning curve. And then you have regulatory challenges, such as in California, where there is no reefing permit, period. What we had to do is go through all of the state and federal agencies, all 14 of them and guide them on what we’re doing.  Basically going through a permitting process that was akin to, say, putting in an oil rig or a pipeline. And there were no discounts financially given for this either. They did treat us with respect,  but the price tag was just as high as if we were Exxon Mobil or putting in something like that With a negative environmental impact. So we had to overcome that and many people thought it was just impossible.  I’m happy to report that we have our permits for Goleta [site of a new reef] in our hand. So we’re going to deploy and it really is historic for California to permit the first biogenic designed reef like this. And we can rebuild our entire kelp forest. That’s been missing since 1983..

Chip: Yeah. Good for you. Kudos for getting through all the regulatory morass.

Chris:  Let me give you one quick anecdote. So we’ve been at the United Nations Seabed Authority as permanent observers since 2014, where we were voted in by 170 countries as permanent observers, which gives us the rights and access almost of a delegate. So when we speak there, it goes right into the ear of all the world leaders in their own language. And we were able to get a code and laws passed that require mitigation for ocean impacts when mining in the ocean.  And when we were doing this, we were taking direct shots from the largest environmental groups in the world (I won’t mention their names), but you can figure out who they are because they didn’t want to share the pie.

They didn’t want to share the vision. Just me sitting there taking shots from a multi-billion dollar organization to such an extent that the secretary general said, “you guys need to go out in the hallway and settle this before I kick you both out”.  That level of intimidation — and I am so grateful that those folks did that to us — brought us all the way up to their level.  Overnight, all that attempt to expunge us from their world did was to give us a permanent seat at the table.

Chip: It showed that you can go toe-to-toe.

Chris: And so that’s the kind of example I want to give.  I cannot tell you how terrifying that experience actually was, because you’re to the point where the security services at the UN told me I should take a 2-day holiday and take a breather and think about things [Chris laughs].  I came back two days later, completely [calm] and accepting of any outcomes. And that’s when (all of a sudden) the system started to give itself over to us.

Chip: You have to be super passionate about your work and detached from outcomes. That’s a very good way to move through the world.

Chris: And I don’t always succeed at that. Sometimes I hold on to the outcome a little too tight…

Chip:  None of us do all the time. It takes a lot of practice, which sounds like you’ve had.  And I was going to ask which is more fun: working with regulatory bodies or deploying a Sea Cave, but I know the answer to that [Chip laughs].

Chris: Yeah, yeah. On that, loading and deploying of course is nerve wracking because you’re dealing with… it’s not unlike the invasion of D-Day where, who was the general? Was it MacArthur?

Chip: Yeah, MacArthur [both of us were wrong; it was Dwight Eisenhower].

Chris:  He’s sitting in England looking at the weather reports going, “Oh, all right. It looks okay. Go ahead and go into June 5th…. And I got a little weather window that hopefully it doesn’t turn out too bad.” It’s not unlike that, because you’re launching and once you’re loaded on that barge and you give the order to pull the trigger there really is no going back.

And we’ve been lucky. When you go back and you see the growth a number of months later, that’s really the Shangri La moment. That’s really when you have your moment.

Chip: How did you stay motivated during that period? And the other thing I was going to ask is, did the state of California actually learn anything from you in the process?

Chris: That’s a very good question.

Chip: Because…. deploying an oil rig and deploying a small neutral device is going to encourage ocean life.

Chris: There were two parts to that question. One was did the state learn anything and how did I maintain motivation?

Chris:  It’s not that I didn’t feel the darkest depths of despair along the way. That wasn’t absent from the equation. I think it comes from spending a life on the ocean when you’re by yourself at sea 300 miles from land. It doesn’t matter what happens; you need to get to safe harbor. It doesn’t matter how, it doesn’t matter what obstacle that you hit. You have to get to safe harbor.

So in my mind, that’s basically where I was all the time. I just needed to weather through a storm and I just program like that, but ultimately it comes down to belief in what we’re doing. The belief is strong enough to drive it through. And on the regulatory side, I think that the state and federal governments probably have learned that there is a road map. It’s complicated and convoluted, but there is a road map to this type of project versus no road map.

And I think above all, we had to prove ourselves as a trusted entity to those agencies.  We’re not going to go do something ridiculous, because in the past, there have been some bad projects where people put bad things in the water and then they go, “I got a permit, I’m not removing it.  Or I’m not going to pay attention to you”.  A gold miners mentality around whatever it is they made and “get off my lawn”.  We took the exact opposite approach that this is for the public benefit.

The reef belongs to everybody and it’s simply managed under the same auspices as any other sovereign piece of sea water. The seafloor it’s not ours. We don’t own it and we don’t dictate what happens on it. The laws of the land.

Chip:  Would you consider the state of California to be a partner now and could you talk a little bit about the partnerships you forged and why they work with you.

Chris: When you say the state, there’s a number of agencies, right?  You have California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which is not a permitting agency, but they do advise the other agencies.  And they do make you put together a very comprehensive monitoring program. Then you have other agencies that actually issue the permit.

I would say that they’re really remarkably helpful.  And the buck stops with the U. S. Army Corps of engineers. They’re the big boss at the end of the tunnel. I have to say that they were very thorough. “Look under your fingernails” to just make sure that nothing bad is happening in the ocean. And I respect that.  Although as you’re going through it, you’re pulling your hair out and want it to be over, that’s for sure.  But I would say that we’re a partner with the state in so far as the kelp and seagrass restoration act was passed in the state legislature last year, which kind of requires the agencies to participate in any scheme to rebuild our kelp for us.

To put it conversely, if you go make a reef in Alabama, it costs $35 and takes an hour to get a permit. It took us 14 years and $250,000 to get a permit in California…. Florida has got a good program where it costs about $1,000 and takes about 6 weeks.

Chip:  You’re a practical person.  What principles do you bring to bear? With management, because I’m sure as CEO, you have to cover a lot of terrain, not just the program work, but dealing with fundraising and everything else. What have you learned over the years?

Chris: Yeah. If you notice my title CEO, it’s not executive director. So start with the buck does stop somewhere and… that’s with me. People understanding where the leadership is and having a clear, concise, unchanging vision without mission creep.

[Another principle is] …conveying to people if you do have the money to pay them then you say, “Okay, this is what I can pay you. And when that money is over, it’s over. And the job is over unless you want to volunteer beyond that.” And so clarifying the fact that if you want to contribute something, a skill, whether you’re an artist or something that you are a willing volunteer, and you’re not in this… to leverage, financial gain now or in the future.  If people can be salaried in the future, that’s something that we will explore if the funds are there.

So there can be confusion about that. So I think clarifying that people are volunteers, what their duties are, etc.  It’s still holding them to account. Don’t let too many flakes into your world because that eats away at your energy.  So making people do something — a gentle hazing — to make them come towards you and make them prove that they actually are worthy and want to be part of the organization has been very successful.

It’s part of the… cycle. Let’s say that you could wind the clock back knowing what you know.  What might you have done differently?

Chip:  I realize this is a loaded question because, as you suggested this earlier, every mistake or challenge [includes] an opportunity underneath or alongside it. But is there anything big you would have done differently, or any mistakes that you made that were impactful?

Chris: Yeah, maybe three small things. Number one, I would have made it very clear contractually [with volunteers] that there were volunteers and not employees or contractors with deferred income. I would have made that very clear .

[Number two} I anticipated saying, ”Yeah, I know all these people. I’m in Santa Barbara. I know half of the folks in Hollywood; no problem. We’ll raise a couple million dollars out of the gate.  But it’s been 14 years and I raised a total of 1. 5 million and half of that was my own savings!

Chip: Yeah.

Chris: Okay. So that’s how hard money is to raise. So I would definitely not underestimate that component of it.  If you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth, which can act against you, you don’t have to produce the outcome…. A starvation phase [is important] if you’re going to be successful — and you don’t necessarily want a bunch of money — … because you have to figure out who you are and what you’re doing before you’re worthy of that money.

The grant cycle is deeply frustrating when you go to folks like the Global Fund for Coral Reefs and some of the other folks that really claim to want to be doing something for the ocean. And then you say, here’s something for the ocean and they say, “Get lost”.  That can be very demoralizing.

And you’re like, what are you doing? What are you doing that is more worthy than this with your money? And you never get a straight answer to that. So getting past that level of frustration and carrying on.

I found that frankly, the best way to raise money is through personal relationships and getting to know people on an individual basis.  You just turn to them as an individual human and say, “I really appreciate that $10,000 you gave us last year. This is what we did with it. Here’s the proof of it. Would you like to donate again, maybe a little bit more?”  They see you’re a good bet. And then it’s incremental over years over the years.  And that’s basically the organic way to do it.

Chip: Any victories you’d like to extol recently, either in program work or operationally beyond the sea cave, which is an obvious victory?

Chris: Yeah, the full compliment of permitting that’s approved for California, which is young. We just received that a couple of weeks ago. That’s the biggest possible milestone that we could have accomplished. And the fact that those reefs are already built. They’re being trucked up from Mexico.  They’ll go in the water next week.  That’s a huge, massive milestone, not only for us, but for the general kelp restoration in all of California.

We were the first ones ever to make a reef in Papua New Guinea. And, basically, how the organization is strong and growing with the same original members.  I just spoke at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum about 10 days ago and that was televised. We were on the cover of The Independent, and a number of talk shows.

Chip: I’m happy to help with that in any way I can. I love the work you’re doing. Any last words of wisdom for anyone who’s leading a nonprofit or in the environmental space?

Chris: So as long as you look yourself in the mirror, and you’re brutally honest with yourself about why you’re doing it, and what you’re willing to endure, and as long as you’re driven by an actual true belief that makes real sense to you, you’ll be fine.  [If you] make believe in there or if you’re telling yourself a fairy tale about why you’re doing it in order to get money, you really should just go back to your day job.

Chip: Karma… It’ll catch up with you sooner, not later.

Chris: If I could just add one more thing to that…Like I mentioned, there are so many successes in the environmental world over the last 50 years and a lot of them came out of Nixon era legislation with the marine mammal protection act and The Environmental Protection Agency….

And, so we have our gray whale back. We have our seals and sea lions back. We have our white sea bass back, our halibut, our yellow tail, our bald eagles, our condors, all of these things have come back. The raptors, the foxes, all of these, the Brown pelicans. Huge successes. Huge successes.  The sharks are very abundant again in California. Maybe not quite the blue shark, but certainly the white shark is in California.

So we have to give credit where credit’s due as humans, and realize that we have the ability to positively affect the outcome. If we just focus our resources over the long term and do not fall into a state of despair about climate or anything like that….  I think that just really works against us.

Chip: Yeah, yeah. What’s the best way for potential or existing donors to plug in?

Chris:  If you go to the website, fishreef. org, you can donate up to $60,000 there.  Anything, anywhere from $1 to $60,000 is all appreciated. Over $100 and we’ll send you a Fish Reef, which is great, and then larger checks you can mail in to the address on the donation page.  We qualify for all of the donor advised funds, such as Fidelity and Schwab and folks like that.

Chip: Chris, thank you. It’s been a real pleasure to talk with you and best of luck to you. Please keep me posted.

Chris: Thank you.

Chip: Take care, Chris.

Chris: Cheers.