Oh, the Places Ocean Plastic Will Go with Dr. Delphine Lobelle | Rising Sea Voices Podcast

October 27, 2021

We're swimming in plastic with no easy way out.


Join Rising Sea Voices’ host Felicia Olmeta-Schult and Dr. Delphine Lobelle, physical oceanographer and post-doctoral researcher at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, to talk ocean plastic! In this episode, Delphine explains her work on computer simulations that estimate where tiny pieces of plastic (smaller than a grain of rice) will end up in the ocean. It happens that algal growth on these tiny pieces has an important role to play. Delphine does not stop there. She strongly believes that stakeholder engagement, scientific communication and collaborations, and synergies at the nexus of society, policy, and science are necessary to take effective actions in the clean-up and management of plastic. Outside of her postdoc, she dedicates time to inform and connect people via webinars, a global summit, and an intergenerational network so we can together find ocean solutions.

We hope you will enjoy this episode and join us monthly to discover new guests and their work! In the meantime, look below for Delphine’s bio and contact information and links to events and organizations she mentioned in this episode.


Alt-text: A young white woman with blond hair, a brown scarf, and white jacket smiles in the foreground. She is on a vessel on a sunny day with a clear sky. Behind her is the open ocean with an iceberg in the far background.

Dr. Delphine Lobelle is a physical oceanographer and post-doctoral researcher at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. She works in a team called TOPIOS or Tracking of Plastic In Our Seas, which aims at exploring where plastic ends up in the ocean. Delphine specifically investigates algal growth on tiny pieces of plastic (smaller than a grain of rice) and how this affects global 3D transport of ocean plastic. She is also working half-time on a material flow analysis of Dutch plastic waste to estimate how much ends up in the environment. She received her Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography at the University of Southampton (UK), her MSc. in Applied Marine Science at the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and her BSc. in Biological Sciences at Warwick University (U.K). Delphine is the co-organizer of Ocean Plastic Webinars, she coordinated the global Ocean Visions summit on ocean solutions earlier this year, and she is always interested in getting involved in public engagement and science communication events.

You can contact Delphine by email at d.m.a.lobelle@uu.nl and you can find her on Twitter @delphinelobelle.

The Tile for Rising Sea Voices was designed by Brian Gionfriddo.
This episode was recorded on October 22nd, 2021.

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Show Transcription
This transcription was generated by a computer. Please excuse any errors.
Felicia Olmeta-Schult

Felicia Olmeta-Schult is the 2021 Oregon Sea Grant Resilience Fellow and works to increase the resilience of Oregon communities to the impacts of climate change and coastal natural hazards. She is also ASPN University Project Lead. Felicia has a B.S. in Oceanography from Hawaii Pacific University, a M.A. in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island, and a Ph.D. in Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences from Washington State University. Her dissertation investigated the North Coast of California Marine Life Protection Act Initiative by studying how stakeholders interacted and were involved during the marine protected area (MPA) planning process and how they perceived socio-economic and ecological effects of MPAs. She was a 2018-19 Washington Sea Grant Hershman Fellow at the Washington Department of Ecology Shorelands & Environmental Assistance Program where she participated in the Washington Coastal Resilience Project. She lives in the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys the outdoors hiking and playing in rivers and the ocean. She loves traveling, especially back home to Corsica, a French Mediterranean island, so she can spend time with her family and swim in the warm sea (and not in the frigid waters of the North Pacific Ocean). You can contact her at felicia@coastalnewstoday.com and follow her on Twitter @FolmetaSchult and on LinkedIn.