I think the hardest part about my job is the best part of my job - the travel.

I'm a biologist. At my core, I'm a naturalist.

Whether it's exploring the woods around where I grew up, or even today exploring the coastal habitats and environments where I live in New England, or in a remote wilderness we're featuring in one of my series - I love to be in the field and I love to explore.

The number one issue that Ocean Mysteries has opened my eyes to is, no matter where you are, whether you're on a beach in Hawaii, you're diving in the Pacific, you're in a remote archipelago, or you're in the middle of nowhere - I am blown away and sobered and crushed, emotionally crushed, by the amount of marine debris, of garbage, that is now in our ocean.

Many scientists would argue that we are now in what is called Extinction, and it's caused by this perfect extinction storm: climate change, habitat loss, pollution, unsustainable exploitation of species and habitat resources, and of course, human population explosion. All of these factors work together and conspire to drive a species to extinction on our planet, every half an hour.

Many of the medicines we use today, to fight everything from AIDS to cancer, originate as a toxin in an amphibian skin. When we lose these animals, we lose resources. We lose keystone species in the environments where they live.

Today, I’m a conservationist because I believe that my species doesn’t have the right or option to determine the fate of other species, even ones that inspire fear in us.