Last Call

LAST CALL Jon Cybulski, Nat Geo Explorer, ecologist and competitive weight lifter

Veer Mudambi

Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

Dr. Jonathan Cybulski wears many hats — ecologist, coral researcher, National Geographic Explorer, diver, TED Talk speaker and competitive weightlifter, to name a few. While many people juggle divergent passions, not everyone is able to draw such a clear connection among them. In his TEDX talk, “How to Build Your Climate Fitness,” Cybulski discussed how environmentalists could learn something from athletes in how they approach problems and frame them to themselves.

He was named a National Geographic Explorer in 2017 for his work on studying coral in Sri Lanka and received his PhD from the University of Hong Kong earlier this year. While in Holden visiting his family, Cybulski sat down to talk with Last Call about both his own journey and how the gym and the laboratory aren’t all that di erent.

Competitive weight lifting and ecology — how did you juggle that?

I’ve played competitive sports my entire life. Throughout my career, I always had two di erent lives — my gym life and science life, with friends and acquaintances I’ve made through each. Always thought they were scratching di erent itches but realized during my PhD that I love them both because they’re so similar. At the gym, like in the lab, you have a goal and question you want answered — you follow a method to a T and afterward assess if it worked or not. The di erence is, one worked my body and the other worked my brain.

John Cybulski gives a lecture NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

I noticed that people in the gym had a better attitude towards problems and achieving goals than environmentalists. At the gym, whether your goal is to build this or that muscle or lose 15 pounds, every day going in was a win, and you build on those small gains. Whereas as environmentalists, if your goal is to protect the coral — and by extension, the ocean — it’s all viewed as a failure and focusing on what we haven’t done and how much of the coral we haven’t protected.

So … a glass half full versus glass half empty approach would help?

My biggest issue with the environmental movement is framing it negatively and with very few wins. Humans don’t do well with the mentality of no successes. This idea of small, everyday gains would help. It’s not enough but you can build on that. Everyone understands that just walking around the block won’t make you lose 15 pounds on its own but it helps make a di erence. I want the environmentalist mental space to make that leap. Just like recycling or developing sustainable practices alone won’t be enough to counter climate change, it’s still needed.

Small progress is better than no progress and major progress always has to start with small progress.

So how did you get into ocean science — what set you on this path?

I went to Northeastern University for my undergrad and originally started in behavioral neuroscience and realized I didn’t want to go to med school. Sat down with an advisor and they asked why aren’t you in Earth Science? I said, you can study rocks and be outside for a living? Awesome. I love nature and science.

From earth science to coral?

Corals are what I fell into and then fell in love with, so that’s how I became a diver. Really wanted to go into research science — I wanted to focus on human impacts on ecosystems and I’ve always been drawn to oceans. I knew I had to get a master’s before a PhD so I went to American University and interviewed with a coral reef biologist who wanted someone with a geologic background. I wanted to get into eld ecology so it was a perfect t. Corals are a fascinating and important animal and extremely sensitive to environmental change.

Two things I loved and succeeded in — being in the eld and science communication. I really loved giving talks and the outreach side of science, encouraging people to get into science, since the world can bene t from more people interested in science, even if they’re not scientists.

So from American University to the University of Hong Kong?

My supervisor’s former student had a job at the University of Hong Kong studying coral reefs, so I went there in 2016 for my PhD in Ecology and Biodiversity and now I’m o cially a doctor as of March. Picture Manhattan, but if Manhattan had over 90 species of coral. Fun fact, Hong Kong has more species of hard coral than the entire Caribbean Sea.

What’s it mean to be a National Geographic Explorer?

I became an explorer for Nat Geo in 2017. Their model is you pitch a project on their website, and I proposed an idea looking at coral through time in Sri Lanka. They anonymously and blindly review them before choosing and I got picked! You get a little bit of money but the big deal is the title of Nat Geo Explorer — it’s a great brand and great network. My project took place in 2018 to 2019.

And you mentioned it was around then that you started thinking about the connection between the gym and scienti c study. Your TED talk was in 2020. Why do you think you came to this conclusion during your PhD?

Because as a scientist, there is never a time you are more embedded in the scienti c process than during your PhD. An extremely personal and individual time in your life when you’re literally just being paid to think. Research, the gym, research, the gym were the two biggest things in my life, so I started connecting them. When I started to break down why I thought society’s outlook had failed during the environmental revolution, I realized we had a poor framing of the problem.

So I started thinking hard about this and when I was brought in to give a climate talk at TEDX, I said “yeah, I’m going to talk about the gym!” They were a little surprised [laughs]. I still remember that phone call.

What do you think is the most personally meaningful result of your work?

When I come home and meet friends and family, people say how they heard about my work and how it got them interested in science. And that’s humbling, to know that I had that e ect. It’s nice to know that someone like me from a small town can change a few minds — that’s amazing. It all helps — it’s about the small wins.